Meet Onawa, one of my oldest friends, awesome christian role model, mother to the cutest red haired little 21 month old girl, and talented graphic designer. Its the latter title that concerns this post today. Onawa has thoughtfully offered to design the wedding invites. I'm excited for several reasons: She has great taste, so anything she can whip up will be a treat for the eyes; she's my friend, and I love including meaningful people in the wedding chaos; also...she's so creative. You would know if you visited her house. Anyway, I sent her this little inspiration nugget today:
I said I'd update you on the knitted bolero front, so here I am.
torn so much out and dropped and picked up so many times now, I can now make up patterns and figure out patterns by looking at pictures. I never could do that until now. Courtney one, Knitting.....57. But I'm catching up. Here are a few picture samples of my work so far.
home on Christmas break from school and today we, along with her step sister Olivia, had quite a wedding shopping adventure. A very productive adventure actually. You have to understand where we live first of all. Helena, Montana is not a mecca for shopping. On the contrary. You can rarely find anything you want if it is something you are actually looking for. But today, we stumbled upon a few things which really helped put us down the road to the wedding decor look of nature and birds that Courtney was after. We are all about being thrifty and getting a good deal. We first went to Jo Ann Fabrics and we did manage to find two of the three patterns needed to make the bridesmaid dresses. Unfortunately, no good fabric finds, but we do have ten months. Next, after a well needed lunch break, we went into a scrap booking store with the hopes of finding some bird die cuts. No such luck there, but there is the Internet after all. (When you live in Montana, you learn to love the Internet for shopping.) Next, we ventured to the Mall, if you can call it that. Helena, Montana's mall is pretty lame, but there is a nice bridal gown store there and Courtney, Olivia, and I had a ball having Courtney try on bridal gowns. She has mostly decided on a gown that will be custom made in Bali, but it never hurts to try on other gowns 
to see what you might like better. Besides, every girl getting married should try on wedding gowns. It is part of the experience of getting married. Anyway, she looked truly lovely in most of the gowns she tried on. Very fun! Next, we went to Pier One and that's where we found our treasures for the day. Gotta love after Christmas sales!! I found a really cute bird under a bell jar, which Courtney fell in love with and decided that would make a great cake topper. I have to say, it will look terrific on the top of a small wedding cake.
While asking if it was on sale, the sales lady found a collection of wrought iron bird candelabras. They were all on crazy sale and we bought every one of them. I couldn't believe the deal we got on them. Since we don't really know how many tables we will actually have set up, we just bought all they had. Even still, we saved a huge bundle doing so. It will definitely be the basis for the rest of the wedding decor. It pays to ask the sales people what they have in a certain thing. We would have never found these otherwise. Anyway, we came home with a car load and quite pleased with ourselves for finding a bargain.
Mum and I are going fabric shopping this Saturday. Since Olivia will be in the vintage slipper satin we purchased in Butte, I'd love to have Casey in a nice deep green color. While shopping for Christmas presents a few days ago, Mom spied some curtains in Pier One that are perfect! Its a little unusual, sure, but what else is new? Its a very nice deep green silk shunting I think, and there is tons of fabric if we buy two panels. We'll find out this weekend if it'll work. Cross your fingers!
Its a wedding bolero, and one that I have already started knitting. I've been searching the web for weeks for a little fuzzy bolero that a: isn't grandma-ish and b: isn't huge with no luck. Once I spied this pattern, however, I figured "why not make my own?" I'm a pretty capable knitter and I love learning new things, so here goes!
I'm not following her pattern exactly (it can be found here), instead I'm making it three quarter cut sleeve and cutting out the dopey droopy thing she's got going on (I mean I'm a hippy, but COME ON). I've also made the lace a little differently, so that it isn't so open, and has more stockinette in it. I am using the general pattern and measurements. I'll be sure to post a picture when I'm done. Its slow going, especially since this is my first attempt at knitting lace, but I do love a challenge! I already have several inches (although if I hadn't had to tear so much out and start over, I might be done with a sleeve by now!). I think it would look great with my wedding dress, and even if it doesn't, I have so much else I can wear it with anyway. Yay!
