California!

No stitching in this post, but some news!

It has been an absolute crazy couple of weeks. The 17th through the 19th Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I went to Austin. Then I drove to Dallas and was there the 21st through the 23rd to pick up my mom and do my last dress fitting. The 23rd I drove my mom back to Midland and we started packing. The movers were coming either the 26th or the 27th but we weren't exactly sure which day and were told we wouldn't know until 24 hours before the movers arrived. I was impatient and I called on the 25th and found out they would come on the 27th so we had an extra day to pack. Thank goodness.

We packed and the movers came right on time on the 27th. It took them 2.5 hours to load all our stuff into the truck. It would have taken us two days to do the same amount of work. Even so, we seemed to have a ton of stuff left over to go in the cars. We started driving it out to my friend Whitney's house where we were spending the night before making the great drive back to California. We had until 5:30ish to get everything done since we wanted to leave early the next morning and we had to do the walkthrough before the office closed for the day.

This was extremely stressful.

We managed to get all our stuff out and my mom cleaned like nobody's business. But we did it. We got the walkthrough done at 5 and turned the keys in. I can't describe the stress levels that were going on at this time. But we all got through it.

We spent the night at Whitney's house and set out early the next morning, hitting the road by 7:15. We drove 10 hours and got to Tucson safe and sound, where we met up with HHF's family, had some Mexican food, and promptly fell into a dead sleep for 9 hours. Woke up the next morning, had some hotel breakfast, and proceeded to drive for 15 hours until we got to our California destination.

It was hellish.

Here are some things I have learned:

- Don't put off packing until the last moment. Ever. Do a little bit every day, but do it.
- Driving for 15 hours straight is awful.
- If you have to drive for 15 hours straight, be prepared for it to start getting really bad around hour 12. At hour 13 you start telling yourself stories to keep yourself entertained. At hour 14 (after the sun has set) you imagine that your car is a TARDIS traveling through space and that the headlights of oncoming traffic are shooting stars. I wish I was making this up.
- Los Angeles traffic is ungodly. Seriously. It's the worst.
- I cannot describe how much I missed In n Out burger.
- Don't underestimate topography. Ever.

All in all, however, we made it safe and sound and have been recovering from the move ever since. The wedding dress made it to California with us and hardcore wedding planning is in full swing.

In other, completely unrelated news, I'm training for a marathon! Hopefully I can make it to the London marathon in 2016. At least that's my ultimate goal. Hopefully it all works out!

My stitching stuff came with me in the car, but my patterns went with the movers so I'm waiting on those to come back. Until then, I'm knitting and wedding planning and enjoying being back in a place I love.

35 days until the wedding!

Happy stitching, everyone!

College 62

With the wedding and the move coming closer, and my newly discovered love of knitting, getting stitching done has proven to be difficult. But I have persevered!!!

Before:

After:

Looking at the side-by-side I guess I did more than I thought!

Handsome Helpful Fiancé and I have turned in our resignations from work and our last day will be August 15. We're moving in about 3.5 weeks. I guess that means I should start packing, but it still feels too early. I've definitely started going through things, though, giving stuff away, donating things, throwing other things away that I don't even know why I kept, etc. Today I'm relaxing but tomorrow I guess I'll tackle the first bookshelf, go through papers, file stuff, shred stuff, etc. Today: laundry and stitching.

I have been knitting a lot lately. Part of it has to do with the discovery of a super nerdy and awesome yarn store called Gnome Acres. They have gorgeous yarn and SUPER FAST shipping in nerdy themes. I keeled over at the Loki yarn and ended up buying out the stock. I immediately started making a wide scarf and am absolutely LOVING the variegated effect. It will look AWESOME when it's done. I might have to buy another skein when it's back in stock to make it as long as I want it to be, but I'm way okay with that.

I have also been working on intarsia knitting, something that is completely and totally new to me. And, of course, I started with an insanely difficult pattern, because that's how I roll. It's not perfect, but I'm quite proud of my progress so far. I'll post knitting pictures when I'm either done with a project (likely the Loki scarf) or when I have a good amount of progress (with the intarsia).

Once I move back home to California my stitching methods will have to change. We'll be living with my parents for a bit, so I'll have to go back to stitching College in secret. Plus I'll have to figure out how to stitch the secret stitching in secret. I thought about trying to finish it before moving, but that's basically going to be impossible. I can, however, do as much of it as I possibly can.

So with that, the stats for this week:

Days until wedding: 62
Anticipated completion date for College: 12/1/2016
Anticipated completion date for "secret stitching": 3/13/2016

Happy stitching!