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 B..  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 (B.’s sister and a friend of mine) need to write their speeches, the officiant needs to write his intro, and (most importantly) B. 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 B. 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!

The past few days have been productive, but not terribly interesting from a blogging point of view – did some more dye samples (the new scale arrived!), and read through quite a few wedding anthologies.  B. is going to read through more anthologies this weekend, so hopefully between the two of us, we can find readings that we like.  Also a basic structure to write our vows from; it’s always easier to adapt an existing piece (even changing it beyond recognition) than to stare at an empty page.

I’ve decided to skip the bookbinding.  My rule of thumb is to ask myself whether I am interested in the process or in the end product, and in this case I’m interested in the end product: getting my copies of Weaver’s magazine bound together, to protect and preserve them.  Given that I can get this done for around $100, which is less than the cost of books, supplies, etc. to take up bookbinding, it makes no financial sense for me to tackle it myself.  And acquiring a new hobby would only distract me from my primary goal of creating powerful fiber art.  So I’m going to skip it for now.

Meanwhile, I have found someone local (in San Jose) to teach me tapestry, and I’m going to visit her today to talk about my goals and interests.  So it looks like I might get back into tapestry weaving sooner than August!  It’ll be interesting talking to her about lessons.

Still in something of a creative slump – with the wedding only about a month away, the planning is taking up most of my time and energy.  I’m hoping we can figure out our honeymoon destination this weekend – if we’re flying, we need to buy plane tickets soon!