All the Pretty Words

wedded bliss

Originally uploaded by striatic.
So, I have disappeared for a while and left only a couple of fairly cryptic hints as to why this was so. Now see the photo above for the reveal!

We got married on the 15th in a smallish but very sweet ceremony in the area where I grew up. We wrote our own vows, I got a pretty and simple wedding dress, Bryan got a brand-new suit, and we had a big lunch at which we stuffed ourselves full of chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and cake. All in all, it was a great day. Bryan’s mom and sister came down for the weekend, and almost all of my immediate family was there (this may not sound like much but remember there are 20+ of them).

We’re back in Seattle now, loving being married to each other and loving our apartment. The super-secret project I knitted? There were two, actually–a lace shawl for myself and checkerboard socks for Bryan. I don’t have decent photos of either of them, but there will be photos once we’ve received copies of the wedding photos.

Now we just need to figure out what our rings’ special powers are…

After months of searching, we found a really cute little apartment in the Eastlake neighborhood of Seattle. We found it three or four weeks ago, but didn’t get to move in until Saturday. We made a seven-hour IKEA trip on Sunday (it was truly epic) and have been assembling furniture since it got delivered this afternoon. We just finished assembling the bed at 1:30 AM and we are tired but it’s so worth it! We’ve been sleeping on a teensy futon on the floor, and it is wonderful to have a real bed again. We even got the slatted mattress support that folds up into a sitting position, which is pretty awesome.

We don’t have any photos yet because the place is a cardboard whirlwind right now, but the pictures will be copious once everything is set up.

Wheeee!

Behold:

My new haircut! I wanted something new and different, and that’s what I got! I went to a salon here, and I wish I could keep going there because it was so great. The stylist was tons of fun and said she really enjoyed cutting my hair because she doesn’t get to cut curly hair very often.

I also have this:

My other hat is a gray fedora, and while I love it, I think this one better suits me.

As for knitting news, I’ve finished the front and back of the Ogee Tunic and am now working on the first sleeve. I hope I’ll be done by the time we get to Seattle, but we’ll see. We’re going to leave on Sunday, drive through the Canadian Rockies, then camp in BC on the first night. Assuming we survive–I’ve never been camping before–we’ll drive to the coast on the second day and will have a few days to play around in Victoria, a city we both love. I’ll get to visit Beehive Wool Shop, which is my favorite yarn shop ever! There’s also a spinner in Sidney (a few miles north of Victoria) who Bryan’s aunt says will let people into her house to try out her spinning wheels, and I’d love to do that since I’ve never spun on a wheel before. After that, I’ll go on to Seattle and do some serious job-hunting. Wish us luck!

Well, it is! We went swimming today, which was the first time I’ve been in several years. I even had to buy a new swimming suit since I’ve no idea where my old one is or if it even fits anyway. I wound up with a cute black tankini with white spaghetti straps and a skirt-type bottom. It’s so much better than my old swimming suit, and is very comfortable too. We had tons of fun swimming, and I even jumped off the high (3 meter) springboard a couple of times. After we went swimming, we went to a bike shop to ask about a rack to hold our bikes on the car. We didn’t buy one, but now we know roughly how much it will cost to get one, and that we’ll be able to get an adapter to make it work with my bike, which had been worrying me since I don’t have a bar that goes straight across from the handlebars to the seat. Overall, it has been a pretty good day!

Tuesday wasn’t so good, though. I was flying back to Edmonton after going to Missouri for a week for my brother’s wedding, and ran into some trouble with customs and immigration. They wanted to know the purpose of my visit, so I told them that I was coming to Edmonton to arrange a move to Seattle with Bryan, which was the truth, but made them suspicious. Apparently the lady was very skeptical of looking for jobs online, because she made all kinds of weird faces at me while I was trying to explain things to her. I won’t go into it all, but suffice it to say that my life is pretty complicated right now and that does not seem to impress customs and immigration officials. It didn’t seem like she wanted to let me into the country, but she finally stapled a scary-looking paper into my passport and told me that I have to leave by August 31st. This isn’t so bad since we were planning to go to Seattle anyway, but Bryan can’t come into the US for another couple of months since he already used up his alloted six months of visiting time and the cycle won’t refresh until then. So this means that I’ll be going to Seattle early, and some very generous friends have offered to let me stay with them for a while until I get a job and a place to live. Bryan will go to Victoria, BC and move in with a friend of a close friend who needs a roommate for a month or two, so we’ll be able to visit each other, and then he’ll come to Seattle to live with me.

As Bryan says, it will be an adventure! The new situation both removes some stress–no more worrying about finding a job in Canada without permanent resident status–and adds some stress–I had no idea that I was going to be moving to Seattle in just a month! We’ve also made an appointment for a consultation with an immigration lawyer on Tuesday, so we’ll find out more about what that paper in my passport means and what our options are. Wish us luck!

Today is our first anniversary, and I came home after a full day of running errands to find these:

They’re pretty, smell quite nice, and came with a very sweet note. To celebrate some more, we went out for some pretty tasty (but huge!!) sushi and watched The Lives of Others, which was a great film. This first year has been a great one, and I hope we have many more together. It is rare to find someone who loves you and understands you so completely, and I am so happy to have found such a person.

During the errand-running, I went on a bit of a yarn crawl through Edmonton and discovered River City Yarns, which I think will become my new LYS. They have a great selection of yarn, most of which I have used and liked or have heard about and want to try, the lady there was very friendly, and I found out that they have a weekly knitting night on Thursdays. I’m planning to bike over tomorrow evening to try it out! I’ve never been part of any sort of knitting social circle, so I’m both excited and nervous about it. I think it will probably be fun, though. Anyway, here is my haul for the day:

I almost came home with a Della Q bag, but decided I should think about it for a while first. I might buy it tomorrow, though…