I've Almost Recovered

The wedding went off beautifully. Not perfectly, which I knew already, but beautifully anyway. Here are a couple of pictures of the lovely-though-ill bride. I'll wait while you ooh and ahh.

Done? She cleans up nice, doesn't she? I can finally post a link to the dress page so you can see it in more detail. She really was stunning, and her waist looked like it was about eight inches around. Fabulous!! Poor baby, she was really sick, and only a big slug (or two) of DayQuil got her through. Once the dancing started, though, she seemed to forget all her troubles! She nearly killed me on the dance floor. I'm sure there's a picture of that little incident somewhere...

As soon as my son gets the rest of the photos uploaded and fixed to his liking, I'll have a few more. I figure I'm obligated to show one of me, so I'm hoping there's one in which I don't look totally frazzled and exhausted (or lying sprawled on the dance floor.) And I hope there is at least one of Rugrat taken before her ringlets drooped!

We had tons of desserts left over, so I was begging people to take things home as we were cleaning up. And we had about a hundred twenty five pounds of cake left over too. It was delicious, but the cakes were the only real issue we had with the entire event. We were so excited about the groom's cake, because we ordered a carrot cake because the Fiance/Groom loves it so much. We were specific about the decorations--tiny carrots with a little piped vine, a few forget-me-nots to match the flowers on the topper, and the sides were to be decorated to match the main cake. Here's what we got:

I can laugh (sort of) now, but when we walked in and saw that, we were speechless. I really wanted to cry, and my mantra did not help a bit at that moment. Missy just looked at it and then staggered off to the dressing area (probably for another shot of DayQuil) and I tried to deal with the hideousness of it all. There was nothing to be done but to scrape the orange "poop" blobs out of the center so we could put the topper on. You can see a little bit of orange still there at the base of the topper, but the friend who was serving the cake took a little frosting off the back and covered it as best she could. We were soooo disappointed, because we wanted that cake to be sooper-special for The Groom, and I was actually embarrassed to show it to him. Here's the kicker: when we were ordering the cake, she had one like this in the display case. I said, "Now, our cake is NOT going to look like that, is it?" and was reassured that no, it would have tiny carrots, vines, etc. and space open in the center for the topper. Epic Fail.

This was the main cake:

This was closer to what we had ordered, but you can see some problems with it. Besides the gap between the tiers and the cockeyed swags, the color was wrong, and there were supposed to be swags of roses on the top tier--even more roses than on the bottom. Like I said, we told the baker all this, and she carefully wrote it down and drew diagrams, and even had the picture from the Martha Stewart wedding cake book to refer to. I don't think her decorator read those notes very well!

But it tasted wonderful, and it ended as well as could be hoped. When I returned the cake plates, I told the baker that we were not happy with the cakes, showed her the pictures, and said that I really hated to complain and had been putting off the trip to the shop because I just did not want to have the conversation. We talked a bit, she apologized (what else could she do after seeing that groom's cake???) and said she appreciated that I was being nice and polite, while expressing my disappointment. She ended up refunding all but about $100 of the cost of the cakes before I even could ask her for a refund, so that was very cool and upstanding of her. (I'd like to have heard the conversation she had with her decorator!!)

So now we're settling back to normal life, whatever that is. I'm swiftly reclaiming Missy's room for my sewing area, and have already moved in the fabric shelves, my portable cutting table, and my sewing machine. The next step is to get the window AC unit in, because it's already getting too hot to work up here. I got DH busy with painting one of the downstairs bedrooms which is now the office because I'm working from home. Once that's done, I can move my office stuff out of the sunroom, and then the sunroom can be reorganized into my sitting room and music room. It also needs to be painted, but I haven't dropped that little tidbit on DH. Next is the kitchen, then the bedroom, and then...maybe the bathroom, but we'll have to wait and see.

I have been knitting. I got quite a bit done on my Jo Sharp cardigan. I've finished the sleeves, and I've gone as far as I can on the back, and I've started one of the front panels. The fronts have to be finished, then the back finished to the same length, so the back is on a holder for right now. The original plan was for this cardigan to be somewhere between mid-thigh and knee length, but I'm not sure if that will happen. It really hurts my hands to work on this, and I am nervous about whether I'd have enough yarn to make it that length. The pattern shows it as hip-length, so I estimated the extra amount I'd need, but I worry about getting through the whole sweater and coming up short when it's time for the shawl collar. I think I'll make the fronts to the point of decreasing for the neckline, then make my final decision based on how much yarn I have left. Here are some older pictures of the sleeves, but I'll take some of recent progress when I get a moment.

You can see how much cabling there is in this pattern, and it's turning out beautifully. The color in the top picture is pretty accurate--a lovely silver-gray. I think I've put these pictures on the blog before, so sorry for the recycling!

I also have my usual sock project going, and the sock blankie as well. Now that I have the space again to work on quilts, I may get back to the one I was making for my bedroom. I haven't decided yet. I have so many UFOs that it's hard to decide which one takes priority, and now that I've been sorting and moving things in my sewing rooms, I'm rediscovering things I'd forgotten about. I did not need that!