fifrildi

My Japan Wedding

It was not like I had imagined, getting married. It was bigger, better and cliche enough I felt slightly different after. Giddy, yes, but also like a more improved version of myself and like I had clicked together for good with the man I love so much it’s hard to believe.

Family and friends were left behind in Norway, and we travelled to the wonderful futuristic land that is Japan. Our first night there was all sounds and light and tons and tons of very short and skinny people looking slightly desperate if we needed to talk with them. We walked around, gawking, being ever the tourist - but in Japan never feeling out of place with a camera because the natives, true to form, shoots away like crazy.

The Day of the Wedding I was finally rested. A night in the softest bed with the softest pillows and the softest comforter after taking a bath in the most luxurious bath tub had transformed my aching and travel-sore body almost back to its normal self. We woke up, had breakfast while overlooking the Imperial Gardens before we made ourselves presentable in our wedding outfits.

I had worked so hard on my dress-now-skirt (much to the scorn and ridicule of some and impressed noises of others) and it was ready and newly ironed just waiting for me to slip into it. And it was good, it was made by me - a one of a kind skirt exactly like I wanted with butterflies swarming.

The butterflies on my skirt though were nothing like the butterflies that flew around and around in my stomach on the way to the wedding ceremony. We both looked kind of pale and stared out of the window in the cab. We both felt this to be huge and real.

The ceremony itself was short. It felt like some sort of culture clash to be at the Norwegian Embassy after having spent the last two weeks solely amongst the Japanese, but the nice, very Norwegian lady wed us properly. It was a feeling to say “yes”. A feeling like no other feeling I have ever felt. It was true and good and huge and solid.

And then we went out in the sun lit Tokyo morning, cheesy, hand in hand -giggling whilst saying “wife” and “husband”. Then we took our newly wed selves, my home made skirt and the husbands home made robot tie out for ice cream. We felt ever so good about our selves; not only had we managed to get wed without the accompanying stress of having stressed out family around but we had our wedding in Japan!

For the rest of the day? Well, we made good use of having rented a very, very expencive suite for the wedding and also had dinner at one of Tokyo’s more fancy restaurants. So far, a good month into being married, I can strongly recommend married life - at least it agrees well with me.

My wedding dress - Part 2

On Monday my mother came visiting to see if we could salvage the wedding dress, or if I should go for Plan B: Make the dress into a skirt instead. We tried the dress on and my mother hmmmed, and she hammmed, and she made me turn around, then she tugged at the fabric here and there, hmmmed some more, fetched a belt, made me turn around and said that she could make this work ok if I wanted to, even if I claimed I felt a bit boxy and fat in the entire thing. I do think she wanted the dress to work because she, as my mother, have always envisioned me in a dress at my wedding day.

Then I showed her plan B with the fitted, stretchy top and the belt and she caved immediately realising I looked both better and more comfortable.

So today I have made the dress into a skirt, sown on a functional zipper that doesn’t look half bad and I have pinned on the butterflies.

The black butterflies on green have been the main concept of my entire wedding dress-now-skirt since we decided to wed last summer. The butterflies are made of felt and I custom ordered them from the very talented etsy seller kutz. I have a couple of other of her creations as well, and I simply cannot recommend her enough.

I’m quite happy to have gotten this far ahead on my wedding outfit. I’m been very stressed trying to get it all to come together, and ever since it hit me that I’m  actually going to Japan any minute now I needed to get my act together and just sew.

As for the vacation in it self I’m all made up of butterflies on the inside as well - This is my Dream Vacation coming true, and the wedding to boot!

My wedding dress - Part 1

I really, really wish I knew how to sew. Well - I do know how to operate my sewing machine (at the bare minimum), I can more or less follow a simple pattern and friends and family tend to be terribly impressed with what I present them; either just to look at and admire or to keep and admire.

But for some reason it never quite struck me that maybe they are so impressed because they really don’t have any faith in my sewing skills? Maybe I’m actually way to overconfident in this area?

The overconfidence thought has struck me now, and with such force.

I am getting married in just over a month. I am flying to Japan in exactly 18 days for a vacation / honeymoon / wedding. For that wedding I have planned for months and months to wear a bottle green 1950s dress with black butterflies appliqued to the fabric. I did have some initial doubts about making the dress myself, but when I discovered that a competent dress maker will charge somewhere between 600 and 1000 dollars my cheapness got the better of me and I decided that I would make the dress myself.

I have harboured all kinds of romantic notions about floating around in a pretty homemade dress, feeling like the top of the world and getting compliments from everyone. I started out the quest for this fantasy fulfillment by ordering a vintage 1950s pattern. I proceeded by (foolishly) thinking “how hard can it be to make a simple cotton dress” and bought fabric and thread and everything pretty.

After a while I started getting worried. I had totally neglected to take into account that I am quite busty so I would need some serious tailoring in that general area. I had also not put any thought towards the fact that I’m really bad at sewing holes for arms - something that a dress should have after all.

So.

18 days till I leave for Japan. What do I have? I have a half sown skirt, some sort of top, some scruffy looking arm holes attached to that top, brand new shoes, an underskirt ordered off eBay and a plan B to drop the dress, sew the skirt part into a, well, skirt, stick on the pretty butterflies - and then pair it off with a lovely top and a broad belt.

Plan A is still not completely lost though. I have called upon my mother to visit me next week to see if she can salvage the dress. If she can, she has to sew it all in one evening while I do things like stand stupidly around, cook dinner and act as a mannequin.

Wish me luck -

The pitter patter of tiny little feet

Well, actually we can hope that the little person I made these wont make much pitter patter for a while longer as he is only six weeks old.

I wanted to make something personal and useful when my friend A had her baby and remembered that I had seen a pattern for something that looked like easy baby booties. My only problem was that it was in English - a knitting language I’m really not familiar with. Not that I let that stop me! Oh no - I boldly knittet like I have never knitted before; and it was a long, long way into bootie A until it dawned on me that this was going to be far too big for a newborn baby and that the pattern looked seriously wierd.

So I frogged it. Then I recalculated.

And then it turned out that these booties are a breeze! I knitted them up in an evening whilest watching tv, and the little recipient loved them - especially the fact that they are cool, black and manly!

The pattern is from Bernat.com. It is a free pattern, but you have to sign ut to access it.

My colourful life

A while back a co-worker gave me a bag full of yarn. She had used it to knit a sweater that turned out way too big, so she frogged it, rolled up the yarn and put it away. When I started to knit she remembered this stash and kindly gave it to me.

The first thing about this yarn is that I have no idea why she ever, ever thought it would be a good idea to make a sweater out of it - The colour combinations are slightly mad and also the yarn has different thickness and quality to it that’s quite hard to overlook.

I used some of it to knit arm warmers and a nice winter hat, but in the end this yarn was too strangely coloured for me and I found no use for it. Also the yarn was all schrunchy since it had been frogged which made it difficult to knit nicely.

Then I got sick and I was very bored. And when the ladies at Wisteria Lane stopped being able to draw my entire attention (somewhere around the middle of season two) I needed something to keep me company while watching episode after episode of the made up lives of some housewives in a made up town.

I remembered that I have always wanted a Doctor Who scarf; stripy, broad and way too long. The original scarf is in very muted 70s colours, but I had after all a bag full of unused yarn and time on my hands. So I started to knit. And knit.

Now the scarf is done! I put everything together last night, and even if I Iook less like Tom Baker and more like a deranged home ec teacher I’m pretty pleased with the result. Pictures will be posted as soon as I have washed and dried it.

Easy knits

My current knitting project

I simply love easy knits.

In parts because I’m really not an advanced knitter. I have no concept of knitting with multiple colours and am awed and baffled when people knit complicated patterns. I keep wondering what they do with those extra threads!

Another reason why I love easy knits is because I can knit while watching tv. Not everything on that box is captivating and I feel more patient for the program I’m watching if I have something to do.

Yesterday I reached behind the sofa and picked up the boyfriend’s scarf. It’s been behind there snugly in a plastic bag all summer (it’s been HOT here, and knitting has been the furthest from my mind!). I had a couple of episodes of So You Think You Can Dance - America on backlog and it was time to see them before the grand finale this week. And since there’s a lot of blabla and comercials on this show it’s perfect as a knitting companion.

The reason why I had a couple of episodes on backlog is because no matter how much I love that show I’m beginning to seriously tire of Mary Murphy. That woman is a screamer, and I’m happy I’m not one of her fellow judges. That scream is piercing, annoying and on the fast track to ruin one of my favourite shows on tv! But yesterday I had a cunning plan. And that cunning plan was the mute button on my super fancy remote control. And I have to say: So You Think You Can Dance minus horrible screeching makes for both brilliant entertainment and a super knitting companion!

To felt or not to felt

They look nice here, but that's just because I tucked them under for the picture!

This is what they really looked like: Limp, shapeless and fit for a gigant!

I liked them anyways. A combination of the sheer accomplishment and the colour made me want to felt them - to see if that would make them shrink to Elisabeth-size. I had of course never feltet anything in my life, and again I turned to a book for help (I had also ordered “Easy Felting” [or something along those lines]) and did exactly what the author said and threw in a red towel to boot the process.

Owl skirt

It’s several years since my old sewing machine permanently broke down and I simply stopped sewing. I took up a bit of knitting instead and pushed sewing firmly at the back of my mind since a new sewing machine was nowhere to be found in my budget.

But a few months ago I found myself lusting after perfect homemade dresses and skirts. I’m firmly and madly in love with anything shaped like the 70s and 50s - it fits my frame perfectly. But it’s not like pretty a-line skirts or even 50s house-wife-dresses can be found at a store near you. And my two last vintage finds turned out to have a zipper that defected after a few months and the hem of the other one got stuck under my shoe and blatantly unravelled and left me hopping into the tram looking like some sort of hunchbacked idiot.

But lusting is one thing, doing is another. I hade decided that I would wish for a new sewing machine for my birthday in September and tried to wait patiently. But then the wonder that’s Ikea turned out to have a cheap machine that can do all the basics (and after all - what more do most people need?), and I decided that I really had other things I’d much rather get for my birthday!

Well at home I ordered some vintage sewing patterns and some iron on patches and other things I would need for my skirts and dresses.

The first drawback was that all my lovely vintage patterns came in inches… but then again - I just hit google and made the measurements into cm. Then I drew and cut and sewed and pinned together and sewed some more. I was incessantly happy actually! It’s was a bit tricky to hem, but otherwise I was pleased with the process. The result was a pretty, pretty full a-line skirt that reaches just below my knees making it perfect for most kind of weather and safe for work.

And even if the colour of it was a lovely bluegreen I thought it needed some extra jazz namely an iron-on patch from the talented tadpolecreation.