Answers, questions and tea

Holy crap guys…you all really approve of a wedding! Many, many thanks for the lovely well-wishes, gentle teasing and lovely congratulations. Joe and I read all of them, and loved each one. It’s an overwhelming party in the comments, and we’re so very, very grateful. Thanks for starting us off right!

You get questions and answers today me lovies, since I’ve caught a wicked bad cold since the wedding and simply can’t be arsed to put any more of an effort into it than that. I’m here on the chesterfield with knitting, and blankies and strong tea (I never drink coffee when I have a cold. Just tea…I always know when I’m getting sick since coffee starts to taste funny to me. It’s my cue to go buy a box of cold medicine and take a kilo of vitamin C.) Here’s questions from the comments and private mail…

1. It’s you and Joe that got married…right? Yup. (Although wouldn’t it be funny if it was someone else?) After all this time Joe and I took the plunge. We’ve been common-law under Canadian Law for years and years and years, and though that makes him my husband, and me his wife…and though that affords us almost all of the privileges of legal marriage (pensions, taxes…etc.) there were a few rights that only marriage conferred. (More interesting stuff here about being married or not, though it is largely American info.)

Mostly, our reasons for choosing to marry now are reasons of the heart, and as such, are entirely private. I can assure you with full enthusiasm however, that I am absolutely not knocked up.

2. How’s it feel to be all “mainstream”?

Had you been there (and some of you were) that this wedding was not at all mainstream. I wore red, Joe wore boots. The guests laughed, the piper played “Love me Tender”, people were knitting, our girls got rings too and we were married by a lovely woman who was Humanist Officiant. (That means it’s legal…but still godless, to answer the “are you giving up the godless thing” question.) Still, the ring on my finger is oddly comfortable, and Joe keeps talking about how “really, really married” we are… so I think it feels pretty good. I love too, that unlike in our shacked up days, someone has written down and registered in a big official book that we love each other and are a family. I didn’t think that would matter to me, I thought I was too much of a hippy to care if anyone knew what I did, but it turns out that entering that information into the public record really meant something.

Who was it who said that a wedding was a public declaration of a private intention? It feels like that. Oddly raw and human.

3. Pictures? Eventually. I promise you some lovely ones when the get here. We’re still waiting for people to send them to us. I do have a sock picture or two, taken by my lovely friend Julia, to whom sock custody was relinquished for the evening.

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(In which Julia helps me to prove that my dodgy sock pictures are clearly not just operator error.) From the far left, our daughters, Samantha, Megan and Amanda, my Best Man – Ken, my Maid of Honor – my sister Erin…then me (the short one in the red) then Joe (the big guy with all the hair) …Joe’s best Man- his brother Chris, then his groomsmen, Lorne, Jeremy and Jody. You can see we married by the lake and it was a big crowd. Friends and family from as far as Kelowna in the west and Conception Bay in the East, from the states…Joe’s sister Kate and her partner Carlos even came from Spain. It was the best part really. All of those fantastic people in one place was completely staggering.

I’ll tell you more about it as the pictures roll in. (I’m sure you’ll be thoroughly sick of it and the pictures by the time I’m done.)

4. Was there knitting? Yes knitters, there was. The place was filthy with them. I laughed and laughed when someone told me that one of the servers was pretty flipped out by all the knitting. The knitters knit while they waited, they knit during the service (not just allowed, but encouraged) they knit during dinner, they knit after dinner…..

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it was brilliant. (That’s our lovely Juno, and I don’t believe those are all her beverages, but it could be so.) One of Joe’s uncles said to me “That knitter over there never stops. I’ve never seen a thing like it.” I followed his finger and lo and behold…it was That Laurie. Made perfect sense. (Both That Laurie and I had a good laugh last week that I was posting for her while she was blogging for me while I was writing a book and she was flying to Toronto.)

As if all the knitters weren’t enough, I had a knitted guestbook,

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made for us by Emma. It’s a hand bound book made from her own handspun yarn. It’s beautiful.

5. Gonna change your name? Nope.

6. How do you do all this? I am not alone. Joe (who I deeply regret calling Bridezilla during part of the organization of this wedding- it was a bad day) did most of the work and our families were fantastic. Every time someone asks me how I accomplish anything at all I point to the team around me. I’m a loser who couldn’t manage her way out of a paper bag. They, however…are spectacular.

(Also…my house is trashed and not one person in this house has a pair of clean pants.)

7. Are you on a Honeymoon? Nope, but we did have 10 great hours at the King Eddie. Pillows excellent, ceiling height impressive, bed size staggering, bed-mate equally top notch.

Other than those hours, Joe and I are both back at work. The timing on a honeymoon wasn’t right, and since we as a family got married, then we as a family wanted to honeymoon…and that was financially over the top. We’ll get there.

Since we’re right back in our real lives, I trucked myself (cold and all) down to Lettuce Knit last night, hoping to catch some special company. ( Did I mention that I missed Tracy Ullman and Mel Clark at the Museum of Textiles this weekend and I shall never be the same? I love Tracy Ullman. I am ashamed of my feelings for her. I could have given her one of my books, I could have explained who I was…(I’m certain that would have gone well.) I could have babbled like an idiot and said things that would have had me lying in the road afterwards out of shame. I could have a signed copy of their book, I could have told Mel I really like that Euroflax skirt in there. I would have laughed at all of Tracy’s jokes. I would have asked them to hold the sock. Why don’t people tell me when this sort of thing is happening? I know I was busy getting married, but I could have worked something out for Tracy Freakin Ullman.) In any event, sick or not, I wasn’t going to miss out on anyone else. I scored big too.

I found Amy Swensen, author, designer and Yarn Shop Owner, fresh in from Calgary:

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Amy’s got a crochet book out there and she’s doing a new one on all sorts of felting. She’s buckets of fun and contaminated me with a burning desire for the incredible yarn she was knitting, Curious Creek wool/silk handpaint. (Take me now.) I’ve been trying to stay off her shops page all day so I don’t hurt myself.

If Amy weren’t enough…

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Jillian! Jillian was in town working on the photoshoot for the latest collaboration with our own Knitty Amy, a follow-up to Big Girl Knits.

I really adore Jillian. She’s centred and calm and funny and ….I just really really like her.

(I don’t know who else besides me would be stunned by this, but in addition to meeting those knitters, I also met Linda “Coach” Smith. If you don’t travel in IBCLC circles that might not mean much to you, but for me it was breathtaking. She was right there. Knitting like an ordinary person. No soft glow coming off her or anything.)

It was totally worth limping out and back with a box of Kleenex, especially to see all of the Lettuce Knit regulars, who I can’t thank enough times for the yarn shop wedding shower last week (see? It’s not just me who can keep a secret!) and for the wonderful gift they all chipped in for. I’m a lucky, lucky knitter.

For now though, this lucky knitter is going to curl up with season 2 of Lost, a big mug of tea, a whack of rather intense cold drugs and a new project. New projects heal. Pass the Neo Citran and that set of 4mm needles…will ya?