Quadruple Happiness!

Wow, the happinesses are just multiplying around here!

First, Sandra Rude finished the double-happiness banner she was weaving as a wedding-present to me and Mike.  You can read about that, and see the cool photos, here and here.  It’s just gorgeous, a Chinese double-happiness character in gold on black, with our names on top and the wedding date on the bottom.  (The Chinese double-happiness character symbolizes wedding well-wishes, and is plastered over every Chinese wedding; it’s the word for “happiness” written twice and merged into a single character = marital bliss.)

Second, my mom finished the double-happiness symbol she’d been working on: gold character on a silver lattice background, made from precious metal clay:

It’s about an inch and a half on a side.  The lattice is to hold the parts of the symbol together and also to give me a way to attach it to whatever I’m going to use it with; my mom included instructions on how to color it with watercolor pencils to match the background.

Is that cool or what?

I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, I’ll probably either put it in my hair as a hairpin on the opposite side of the flowers, in my hair with the flowers, or change the flowers on one side in the hairdo to a circlet of flowers, with the double-happiness in the center.  I kind of like the last idea, except then I’d have to redo the hairstyle, which means getting in touch with my makeup/hair person, and she’s traveling through the end of May.  I may do it anyway.

Finally, the wine for the wedding is nearly ready.  My brother has a small winery (he’s making a career transition from an aeronautical engineer to a vintner), and has been brewing a special batch of wine for the wedding.  Here’s a preview of the labels:

Aren’t they cool?  The image is the image we used on our wedding invitations (a generic pair of wedding rings against a background of the eternity-knot fabric from the dress) and the font is from the wedding invitation as well.  The one change that we made was to make the names “Wedded Bliss Red”, “Wedded Bliss White” (for the lunch), and “Honeymoon White” and “Honeymoon Red” for the dessert wines.

Yes, we are a multitalented family!

Meanwhile, in wedding-prep land, we’re at T minus three weeks, and have settled basically everything except the various speeches to be made at the wedding.  The two speakers (Mike’s sister and a friend of mine) need to write their speeches, the officiant needs to write his intro, and (most importantly) Mike and I have  to write our vows and our words to each other.  That’s going to be very special, and also very difficult.  I’m planning to spend at least part of this weekend working on it.

On the weaving/dyeing front, I’ve done three more sets of samples, have wound nearly all the warp yarn onto cones, and have bought canvas stretcher bars.  Goal for this weekend: finish dyeing the entire Sabraset sampler (another 5-6 batches of samples), make small tapestry loom using stretcher bars, clean up studio, finish the bookmarks, and start beaming on the doubleweave warp.  I probably won’t complete that last, but I’m hoping to make a good start, at least.  I also have a tapestry lesson tomorrow from 10-12 – I’m trying to cram in as many tapestry weaving lessons as I can before the wedding, so I can work on my tapestry samples during the honeymoon.  (Since I get up about two hours before Mike does, I usually have free time in the morning that I’ll have to fill.)  The small frame loom is portable enough that I think I can fit it into my suitcase.

Off to the farmer’s market!  Cherries, apricots, and peaches have just come into season.  In a few weeks, they’ll have reached peak season, so right after we get back from our honeymoon, I’m going to make some apricot jam.  Yum!