First up in the White Rose

Pole position!

Printing Started!

It's taken me a while to work out what the invites were going to look like, especially as I'm not all that keen to spend a fortune on what is effectively a piece of paper!

My favourite online printing website is Moo ~ http://uk.moo.com/ ~ (not moonpig) just Moo, and we've had all sorts of stationary from them over the years, business cards, mini cards, stickers. All highly customisable and really *really* cute.

So armed with my favourite photo editor (Picnik which has unfortunately just closed down) and some free paper templates with lovely damask patterns on, I've come up with some cute designs for the business cards which will be attached to the front of the plan black invitations, but which will also have loads of info on them about the order of events for the day. 

These were the templates which were then uploaded into Moo and manipulated until they fitted onto the business card format. Don't you just love the font???

These ones are for Mum to give out for the Bromborough party....

I'm loving the damask!

If you want to order some Moo stationary - use this link - it has 10% off and will credit us with some pennies to spend with them later on!

http://www.moo.com/share/hs5jpj

Tried on some wedding dresses

Janey and I went to Harrogate a few weeks ago and thought we'd have a bit of a laugh trying on some frocks - well the laugh was on us really - some really nice dresses were found for me by the ladies at Curvy Bridal.

Check out the hourglass figure!!!

We've got a date - nearly!

It's very complicated, this wedding business - you would think that getting married in Morley Town Hall was virtually the same process as doing it at Leeds Town Hall; as in, you pays your money and you picks your date. But oh no! That would be too simple wouldn't it? First of all you have to book the town hall.

Morley Town Hall interior

The rooms booking people tell you to book the town hall first and then book the registrar after. Good job I thought that was a stupid idea and phoned the registrar first to see what appointments they had on the day we wanted. 10am and 4pm. Hmmmm so I could have ended up booking the town hall, which is free all day, for, lets say 2pm, when there isn't actually anyone available to marry us then. 

Next is the fact that in order to book Morley town hall, they send you a booking form, which you fill in and send back, and then they send you the contract (based on the info from the form) and then you have to sign it, and send it back. ***Leeds rooms booking people, for your info, the form is crap***

Finally, and this is the most galling of all, is that as well has having to pay to hire the town hall rooms themselves, you also have to pay the 'not getting married at Leeds town hall' fee of £340. So, an additional £200 on top of the Leeds fee.  

Cor blimey, it's a licence to print money.

Planning has Started

Hello! Welcome to the wedding blog. We've been engaged now, since December 5th - about 3 months - but we've not been very forward about planning things...but anyway, things are starting to move now.

Firstly, you can see the colour scheme has come down to red, white and black! It was either that or a no colour/all colour colour scheme.

I'm currently planning the invitations, trying to do them without spending £300 :)

Hopefully they'll look something like this.

I've been sourcing petal fold envelopes and organza ribbon, and also, I had no idea how hard it was going to be to find sheets of paper which has the black and white damask pattern (which I totally love, by the way!!)

Watch this space for more crafty trials and tribulations!

Dinner in fazenda!

Yummy yum yum!

Nice beer mat!

Saw this beer mat at the Midnight Bell last weekend. It's from the Leeds brewery. Cute! And Morley is right in the middle in big letters!

It wasn't this warm all the time

But on a couple of the days we definitely had 18° in warm sunny spots!

A little bit of sun

It's not warm here by any means - 10° today - but by the look of things, that means we're getting at least 10 and in some cases nearly 20 degrees more than back home, so we're not complaining!

The thing you *do* notice, though, is that when the sun is on you, and you're out of the cold breeze, that it is a very warm sun. Definitely a different one from our watery English sun at home.

You can feel the heat in it! It's so nice to sit there with the sun on your face and get actually hot for a minute or 2
Just long enough to warm your bones before bracing yourself to resist the icy breeze!

Coffee again

oh and some cake

Tapas for tea, again, oh dear!

Absolutely stunning tea tonight at a local restaurant. Mega tapas. The best one was cuttlefish meatballs. Sounds like it'd be dead fishy but in fact it was completely delicious and light. Another winner was the veal cotoletta. Love veal!

I'm afraid I'm going to be drastically disappointed when we get home as tapas is probably my favourite way of eating. Multiple small plates of different food. Nothing really compares at home.

Blue sky

It's not boiling here, 10-14 degrees, but the sky is sooo blue, it warms the cockles of your soul, wherever that is!

Churros

Yum yum

Breakfast spanish style

Croissant with ham, coffee, orange juice and water! Yum!

The best coffee!

We think that the Spanish cafe con lece is just about the best coffee in the world!

Some nice tapas!

As you will imagine, we have been partaking of the excellent local tapas options here in Seville. It's very normal to go into a bar and order a small beer and a single tapas. Or rather tapa. This gives you a side plate size portion of whatever it is.it's also pretty normal to go from bar to bar doing this - a tapas crawl!

Larging it

After giving it a bit large yesterday; walked miles, ate tons and drank more, we've had a nice quiet day today - reading, walking the local area and are now SAT OUTSIDE in a Spanish/Italian restaurant waiting for our dinner!

Adventures in Seville - 8th feb

After a relatively uneventful journey down to Stansted we got parked in the (very easy to find) long term parking, and were on the bus to the terminal and checked in, in under 3 and a half hours from leaving home.

As per our normal custom, we found a nice bar and got ourselves a lovely pint of Guinness (extra cold) to begin our time away. We also are beginning a bit of a new custom, (last 2 holidays) which is to have dinner at Yo! Sushi - they seem to have been springing up in airports around the place - which I totally love!

The flight was short and again, non eventful apart from a very VERY annoying set of uncontrollable Spanish school children who swarmed up and down the plane squeaking and squealing loudly whilst the ineffectual teacher did nothing. Dan called them the 'Spanish St. Trinians'. I suppose that would make the teacher Joyce Grenful. Am I going back a bit too far?!! Anyway, kids today *sigh* !

The taxi was quick (8km from airport to the town centre) and he drove through narrower and narrower medieval streets. So now we get to the hotel which has a very grand frontage in Plaza Santa Maria la blanca.

The hotel is called...Las Casas De La Juderia 'the houses of the Jewish quarter' and is made up of 17 houses which are all in the area behind the grand palazzo which forms the frontage. They are linked together through what must be the original narrow medieval streets, and each palazzo has a central courtyard - very much the local moorish style- through which you have to walk in order to get to your room!

It took us about 3 goes to be confident about getting through to our room without error - we will post a video of the journey from the front door to our room, later on!

The room itself has a king sized bed, a full on waterfall shower (Dan's happy) and an interesting window arrangement which spans 2 floors of the adjoining courtyard; a bit above and a bit below the floor!

Currently we are sitting in the "piano bar" aka the main courtyard of the palazzo which makes up the grand frontage and reception, onto which they have put a roof and some wi-fi!!!

Sock tutorial posts

Here are all the links to all 4 parts of the sock tutorials.

http://lizadan.blogspot.com/2011/11/sock-tutorial-part-1.html

http://lizadan.blogspot.com/2011/11/sock-tutorial-part-2.html

http://lizadan.blogspot.com/2011/11/sock-tutorial-part-3.html

http://lizadan.blogspot.com/2012/01/sock-tutorial-part-4.html

Sock Tutorial - Part 4

This is Part 4 of a 4 part tutorial. The previous part is Part 3.

You've done brilliantly! You have a sock which is nearly finished and you are really on the home straight now.

At the end of part 3, you had completed all the decreases taking the number of stitches from 42 to 32. That's the original number we started with, and is the same number which we knitted all the way down the ankle tube with.

You can be proud of yourself for getting past all the complicated bits. It's now mostly just a knittathon to get this sock finished!

So, what's next? We're going to knit the foot.

Knit 16 rounds (that's it!) Keep the stitch markers in place, you'll be needing them for the toe shaping, later on.

After 16 rounds, it really REALLY starts to look like a sock!

Now for the final part - the toe!

I know that you are now an expert with knitting on 3 needles so I know you can handle this next bit which is not hard (look at what you've done already) but it is a bit fiddly. So here's what you are going to do...

Remember how for shaping the gusset, you decreased a stitch *before* the 1st marker and another one *after* the 2nd marker. And you did this on alternate rows, with a knit row in between?

This time for the toe, you're going to decrease a stitch *before and after* each marker. So that decreases 4 stitches on that row. Then there will be a knit row in between. You will be decreasing stitches until only 8 remain on the needles. This means that the last couple of rounds are quite fiddly. You will have to shuffle stitches around from needle to needle as you're knitting each round in order to get the right ones together (for the k2tog, and the ssk2tog). 

So step by step...

Row 1: Knit until 3 stitches before the FIRST marker, knit 2 together, knit the next stitch (that takes you up to the marker) pass the marker from the left to the right needle, knit the next stitch, then ssk2tog. Knit until 3 stitches before the SECOND marker, knit 2 together, knit the next stitch (that takes you up to the marker) pass the marker from the left to the right needle, knit the next stitch, then ssk2tog. Finally knit to the end of the round. 28 stitches left on the needles.

Row 2: Knit the whole round.

Top Tip: Before you begin each decrease row, look ahead at the stitches that are 3 before and 3 after each marker. Shuffle the stitches round to make sure that the stitches you are going to be knitting together are on the same needle as each other. 

Here is the toe in progress, only 16 stitches on the needles

As you get fewer and fewer stitches on the needles, it does get a bit tighter and more fiddly but just persist, and follow the pattern until you have 8 stitches left. Remember to end on a row 2.

You will see a double line of decreases each side of the toe, like this...

Yay! It' a proper sock!

Looking at the end of the toe, you then need to arrange the stitches onto 2 needles like this...

Note that the thread is coming from the back stitch, top right.

At this point, you're all but done - the only thing that remains to be completed is to stitch up the final 8 stitches. You can do this in the usual way which is just to sew normally, making sure the thread passes THROUGH each of the 8 remaining stitches, so that they don't run.

 The other way you can finish off a toe is by using Kitchener Stitch. This was invented by Lord Kitchener to make a seamless finish at the toe, to stop the seam rubbing the soldiers' toes in the 1st world war.

I use this you tube video to do my Kitchener with...I haven't yet got to the point where I can do this without following a video!

Once you have stitched the toe up - however you decide to do it - then all that remains is for you to make another one!! Oh and also to be tried on by the recipient...

Plenty of room for them to be grown in to!