Back to the Grindstone.

I've been thinking about that title and how I was going to say 'Not really!!! Dead good to be back' but apparently there has been a massive cock up with the Two Of A Kind yarn and it can't be sorted until after 5 so if you're on the receiving of the cock up just bear with and it will be sorted. After five. Ugh. And maybe one day I'll explain it to the rest of you. Until then, I'm going to relive this weekend because it has been MEGA, find a book to buy (explanation later) and then knit something.

So, you know by now that I was bridesmaid at Vezza's wedding. It has occurred to me that I've spoken far too much about this seeing as it's actually nothing to do with the shop and apparently some of you don't even know who Verity is! Imagine! To explain for the uninitiated - Vezza is a one woman whirlwind. I met her in the shop maybe two years ago, I remember the first time she came in and she bought some chunky teal wool to make her boyfriend a scarf. She had a young baby (Alf) and it was obvious that she was sad. The scarf was pretty terrible (she'll admit that herself) but quickly, rapidly really, she gained in confidence and I couldn't keep up with everything she was learning! She happened upon beanies in the shape of boobs for breastfeeding mothers and as people noticed how bloody brill she was she got more and more orders. Then she branched out into other things like legwarmers and mitts and on my instruction finally top down raglans (*does a little dance*). And now she dyes wool too and it's been really lovely to see her get less and less sad. Thing about Verity is, she's sickening. Everything she does she does well. She has perseverance like you wouldn't believe and she doesn't show off about it (I definitely do if I can do something...). We bonded over baby led weaning and wool and a shared love of red wine and when she asked me to be bridesmaid I was absolutely bowled over. What an honour! Does that explain it a bit more?

So the wedding (and not too much about it - I have a rant to have later). It was B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L. Beautiful. In every way. Verity looked amazing, the bridesmaids looked amazing (there were two others too), the vows were amazing, the place was amazing. Just everything. I'll do this in photos shall I? Or it'll just be me going 'this thing is amazing and this thing was amazing and look at this beautiful thing'.

Hair. This man was AMAZING! He did Verity and her mum's hair each in about ten minutes flat and with a smile on his face. Also, he loves hairspray about as much as I do. :)

Bentley. It's Verity's step dad's. I was asked how it feels to be in a Bentley and quite frankly it felt like I was in a silver car. Boyf told me the day after how much Bentleys cost and now I know why they were laughing at me. I think I may be one of them there inverted snobs (but seriously, I could buy a house with that money... or maybe even some food for the starving Syrians? Or, for that matter... No. No politics. It's a lovely silver car. Fact.). 

In her excitement Verity ripped her dress on a pillar in the house so she had to sew it (and did a beautiful job). I was dead pleased with my photo of this. :)

In the car. Vezza told me she had no nerves. I don't believe her. But to be fair that is a massive smile. :)

THE MEAL WAS DIVINE! There was some sort of soup (with a posh name) for starters and in that soup were two little chicken wings and AN INCH LONG THING THAT WAS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING I'VE EVER TASTED! Honestly. I had half of it at first and couldn't believe my mouth so I had a drink and tried again and honestly, I could have eaten an entire plate. I don't know what it was. I'll probably never know what it was. It was a beautiful thing and I've been thinking about it ever since.

Anyway, these are the newlyweds and Vezza is feeding her lovely baby which means that she can't get to her food in a way that won't get it down her dress so new husband feeds her her whole main course. It was the loveliest, sweetest thing I've ever seen. Genuinely. He's a good man.

Then I went for a cigarette and this was the view. Wowowowow. 

The first dance and a good shot of *the* dress. It was so beautiful. 

And later, when I was properly drunk, I ended up looking after Alf - that's him in the grey and his aunty (I think?!) and that's her in her pj's. I wasn't really looking after the aunty, if I didn't know me I wouldn't have trusted me with a babbeh either (especially since I nearly fell down in front of Verity's very proper mother... It was more of a sway really, but quite a big sway. I'll call it a dance move.).

And that's it. I've tried to give you a feeling of the day without revealing too much. It's not my wedding day to share really and like I said, the husband is slightly less 'sharey' than me and Verity. OOOOOOOH but I do have one more photo to show you. It's not a very nice one and I'm hoping there might be more that I could share if other people took some of me but it's the best I can do:

 

By this time the babies had gone to bed, boyf had turned up for the evening do, I'd had a massive amount of free booze and I'd taken my belt (and inhibitions apparently...) off. The belt really did make the dress and it was a last minute thing. The shape was nice and I'd made a stiff material by working a chunky yarn on a 4.5mm hook because I wanted it to have a bit of oomf about it but that meant that the shaping I'd put in at the waist was a bit... hmm... dense... (??? Can I use that term???) (and I'd underestimated the size of my boobs so the band didn't quite sit where I wanted it to). Anyway, the belt made the outfit and I hope there's a photo of my wearing the dress with it somewhere. It does sum up how much fun I had though. 

Best wedding ever. 

And then because June is the best person ever... and she's got two kids my age... she'd volunteered to work the Saturday so I could get over my hangover (there wasn't much of one actually). Which meant that I had the whole of Saturday, Sunday and Monday stretched out ahead of me. Me and boyf decided to take it steady on Saturday, potter about in the house and garden a bit, take a few naps, knit a bit, watch Jonathon Creek and eat some hash browns. Lovely. And then we went to the pub. Ugh.

*Swearing ahead. Be warned. Swearing ahead.*

Boyf has some friends. One of which I can't stand (and he knows it haha). The rest of whom are lovely but just a bit.... Beeston? Have you ever spent time in Beeston? The place itself is lovely, bar the tramworks, haha. And a lot of people that I've met there are fantastic, small town-y, almost country-ish if you know what I mean. But I must admit I find it weird that people would go, every Friday and Saturday to the same place to talk to the same people about the same things. Boyf thinks it's normal. I think it's weird. Really weird. I don't often end up going because I do think it's important not to spend every minute in eachother's pockets and he obviously loves these people and the pub and the same seats that they sit in every fucking week. Hmph. Is this just me?

Anyway, anyway, anyway. I'd mentioned to boyf at some point that I needed a summer project - you know when the shop's slower in the summer and I have time to do something that's a bit bigger than I usually do? Like the year that I got all of the patterns on the internet or when I did the gallery (which really needs sorting/updating). I've been thinking that this year it might be an app. I think I said one sentence, something like 'this year my summer project might be an app' in the context of a whole conversation - one little throwaway sentence. One. And boyf mentioned it to one of his friends and the conversation cascaded into a whole load of mansplaining, about 20 minutes worth of it. That is, a diatribe about how I, basically, wouldn't be able to do it.

"Do you want my opinion?" - "No."

"Do you want my advice?" - "No".

"Well, you haven't got the right equipment" - and obviously I could never buy that... 

"I know you can do html but anybody can do that" - Oh right, have you ever actually had a conversation with somebody that isn't a computer geek AND listened to them? Thought not.

"You can't just do it from the internet, you've got to buy a book" - What is it about me that makes you think that I can't/won't get/buy the appropriate equipment?

"You can sell it for 79p but for all the work you'll need to sell it for £5" - Literally, said nothing about selling it. Not a word. I rarely sell things because in my view, if I can make things to make your life easier (like providing patterns or tutorials or apps) and you like them and the way that I am, then you'll buy wool from me, yes? But no, as the female owner of a female orientated business (sorry blokes, I love you male knitters and crocheters, but you know what I mean...), my business plan/ideas are quite patently wrong and what I need to do is get advice from men (or a man) who sell to men (or mainly men). Because it makes sense because men know what they're doing and women don't. Fact. FEMINIST RAGE!

"I applaud your confidence in your abilities" - I applaud your confidence in the correctness of your own worldview. 

And it went on. Do you see what I'm saying? So, you know what - I will! I wouldn't have done before the great telling-me-I-can't-do-it-of-2014 but now I bloody well will. So my summer project is an app and by hook or by crook I will make it. Ugh.

So me and Boyf had an argument but once he'd admitted that he was wrong (and I was by default, right. Haha) we were able to get on with our lives. And by gum we did it! We were going to go to Newstead Abbey on Sunday but after speaking to my mum who recommended Rufford Abbey instead we changed our plans and headed out. I love having a boyf with a car. It was so lovely! Such an antidote to the insular-ness of Beeston. People were laughing and walking and eating ice creams, kids were running and tumbling over eachother (if you know me and how much I hate kids you'll know that me appreciating this means that it was a very. good. day), there were dogs evvvvvvvvverywhere.

I'm a big fan of the boards of writing you get at these places (and blue plaques, I'll go well out of my way for blue plaques and wool. That's about it) so I spent the day hopping from board to board, learning lots about history and dreaming about having my own pool like the one that's the Orangery now. These are the good bits (but not the best, most of those have Boyf looking miserable in them and whilst I love his miserable face in the glaring sunshine, I'm not sure you lot will haha).

Look at the colour of that moss. I'm always trying to explain my favourite green to people, like grass but brighter but not apple-y, not too much yellow, not too much blue, bright but not neon. Basically just this. Ahhh.

Can you see the little diagonal bricks? This was from inside the Abbey bit itself and they were definitely my favourite bricks of the many millions that were there. 

This was the start of the canal-y thing that comes from the Orangery and what used to be the swimming pool and you can just about see the window of that in the top left of the photo, yes? Heaven. Actual heaven. I can imagine paddling in that. Whenever warm weather comes I just want to swim, preferably out in the open but I'm seriously considering just going to a swimming pool to get it out of my system. I keep waking up thinking about it. 

One of the slightly less miserable photos of Boyf - but he doesn't look happy does he? Even with an ice cream. I assure you he was. And the kid on the scooter in the bottom right corner? Well, she told us how much she loves Christmas. Just out of nowhere. Bloody kids.

When we got home we made an amazing dinner and that attracted the advances of the local neighbourhood scraggy cat. He's been hanging around for months but on Valentines Day Boyf let me invite him in for a bit and he's been coming ever since. Boyf's not really an animal kind of person I don't think but he puts up with me. And it's dead funny to see him getting indignant when the cat consistently outfoxes him when it's time for the cat to leave. Dead funny. Look:

He doesn't look that scraggy in the photo but he most certainly is - and his farts stink! I haven't worked out what his name is yet. I'm sure he has an owner and a name because despite the fact that he is scraggy he looks pretty well cared for and he's a porker. I originally thought his name might be Jasper, then Captain Dribbles, for a short time yesterday he was Balthazar but none of these fit perfectly. I'm just going to keep shouting names at him until he responds to one I think.

He either hates or loves circular needles, I can't work it out...

Also, he loves Jeremy Kyle as much as I do so I'm considering Jeremy, Jezza or Jez as his name. :)

So that was my weekend, this has been quite a slog to write! I need to get back into real work now and you do too if you've actually read all of this. From now on though, now the wedding is over, we should be back to normal service - like wool or knitting or crochet or something appropriate for a wool shop? Haha.

Love! Eleanor. xxx

P.s. LOOK AT THIS! It's a lovely little cat toy made by a dead nice customer of mine and it has cat mint in it:

Apparently, I am meant to be a cat lady because she swore that I had a cat. Well, kinda. I have Jeremy/Jezza/Jez/Balthazar/CaptainDribbles/Jasper. And now he has a toy! He will LOVE destroying this! :) Also, she suffers from seizures and apparently when she wakes up she asks to come to the 'Rainbow Shop' every time and that's us! She proper made my day. :)

P.p.s. Boyf has announced last night that he wants to make a 'crochet thing'. I asked him what 'crochet thing' he wants to make and he doesn't know. I suggested a scarf but he looked bored already (I don't blame him) and then I thought about a dead simple jumper. We don't have any blokes crochet patterns... terrible... Have you got any ideas? Links to patterns that you've done? They need to be super easy BUT ISN'T THIS THE MOST ADORABLE THING?! BOYF WANTS TO MAKE A CROCHET THING!!!!! :):)

I really am going now.

Love. xxxx