Thank you all so very much for all the congratulatory comments on the last post!! Definitely a new commenting record. We are, of course, insanely happy. The response from our friends of many stripes and family has been overwhelming. I just keep telling HWJF how incredibly loved I feel. It’s really been amazing and has been so awesome to share our joy with so many. So much so, that it’s been hard to bring myself to write a new post, but lest you think I’ve fallen on my way to happy land, here I am.

I thought I’d answer a couple of the questions that I seem to keep getting from various factions.

1. No, I will NOT be knitting a wedding dress. Plans for a shawl have been in the works for some time however. There will be a blend of cormo, angora and maybe some silk, spun up and knit by me if I can find the time between now and then.

2. No, we will not be getting married at Wildacres. Sorry bassoon camp friends!

3. No, we will not be getting married at Rhinebeck. Sorry fiber friends! Also, although we are aiming for fall of 2010, do not worry! We will not be picking a date to interfere with us attending Rhinebeck in the near or distant future. A girl has to have her priorities after all.

4. No, we do not have a place or date yet. Let’s just say the process of dealing with those two issues got into full swing last week and I’ve already been totally stressed out. We are hoping to have that nailed down by April. I’m hopeful, but a bit panicked about that at the moment.

I think those are the main ones. I’m sure I will be posting some details of the planning process here as I go along, but I certainly don’t want this to turn into a wedding blog and I’m sure that’s not what you come here for either. You should excuse me if there’s a bit of a production slow down in the coming weeks though as we try to find our place and date. I’ve felt it already. My head is still in the clouds and quite frankly I’m trying to enjoy that feeling while it lasts as much as possible. The stress is already rearing its ugly head and we’re gonna try and stomp that down if we can. But I have found myself staring out the window instead of knitting on the way to or from work lately. And I haven’t touched a wheel since before we left for Chicago. Priorities are a bit different at the moment I guess. That’s normal, right?

So let’s go back to the rest of that trip to Chicago for a bit. After the excitement of getting engaged, we spent a lovely few days enjoying the rest of our trip. As you saw in the engagement photos, we took Amtrak there and back and got a sleeper car for the longer legs of the trip. I don’t think I was quite prepared for just how small the room really was, but we seemed to get used to it pretty quickly.

What you can’t really see in this pic is that HWJF’s feet are nearly touching the back of my seat and the other bed folded down from above. Cozy for sure. We didn’t sleep too well on the way out (wonder why?!? ) but we slept like rocks on the way back. We got into Chicago around 9am on Wednesday and hit the ground running. The first stop was the Shedd Aquarium:

My only complaint with getting to the aquarium was that we had to park at Soldier field and I mistakenly thought there was going to be a bus. Hence, the lack of hat. And it was cold!! And not a short walk! Obviously I survived. It was a great aquarium and we definitely enjoyed it. My favorite animal was this funky breed of seahorse:

Next it was on to the planetarium which was another not very short walk away on the same campus.

See the wind whipping those flags? Cold!! But inside was a lot better. Unfortunately at this point the travel schedule and lack of sleep was starting to catch up with me so I was a little more tired and less interested than I should have been. We watched two shows, one of which was in a modern theater with a modern projection device. The other in the country’s first planetarium which was more like a fair ride than what you would expect, but quite interesting none the less. I must have learned a thing or two despite the tired because I found myself looking at the sky after yoga one night last week and was able to find Orion which I hadn’t been able to do before.

We finished the day by finally being able to check into our hotel, crashing for a two hour nap, getting an amazing dinner at Brazzas and I enjoyed the opening reception at the conference.

Thursday was all business for me during the day while HWJF made a trip to the Fox Bassoon factory to pick up his bassoon and have a tour.

You can see the full set of pictures from his trip here. I’m a tiny bit jealous that I didn’t get to go along, but I had plenty to do. Here’s one interesting shot from his trip.

A bunch of bassoons ready for keywork.

That evening we had a dinner of deep dish pizza (which was good but made me realize what an east coast girl I am) and I ran back to the conference for our second annual SnB where I got to meet none other than Franklin!

Franklin pictured with Laura Gayle.

He was a ton of fun and was kind enough to gift us all with a tote bag featuring his art work. I had a great time knitting with my fellow librarians for a bit and HWJF was kind enough to hang around and wait for me.

Then we took a very cold walk over to the John Hancock center to get a view of Chicago from above.

The next day went so fast it was almost a total blur. I did more conference stuff and then HWJF and I took a quick run through the Art Institute of Chicago where we both got to see a couple of favorite works of art.

That was followed by a mad dash through the Chicago Symphony store. And lest you think I’d leave a town without yarn or fiber of some sort, HWJF dropped me off at Loopy Yarns while he went to get our car so we could head back to the train station.

What a lovely shop! Franklin had recommended it and I was sorry I couldn’t have stayed for the event they were having that evening. I managed to take advantage of their sale and a couple of skeins of Lorna’s Laces went home with me. The shop owners were very kind and I ended up going home with another tote bag featuring Franklin’s artwork as well. At this point my back was not good and I had the beginnings of a whopper of a cold, and they were nice enough to let me sit and wait for HWJF inside after I had made my purchases.

After that it was back on Amtrak for our 24+ hour journey back home. I have to say I am very much in love with train travel now and I think HWJF would agree. It was definitely one of the more relaxed travel experiences I’ve had in a while and not worrying about how much shampoo I was bringing with me or taking my shoes off certainly helped. We also were able to take advantage of the nicer lounges that Amtrak offers its first class passengers (which includes roomette ticket holders like us) and that made things even more comfortable. Knowing that our luggage would arrive when we did was also quite nice. I would definitely do it again!

So I hope you enjoyed this little travelogue of the rest of our Chicago trip. Next time there will be actual knitting content including a finished engagement sweater and more!

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Tags: Travel, wedding

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Travel, We're getting Married!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.