Month: September 2011

Jet Lag

Oh boy. This re-entry has been a bit of a bitch, and it took me by surprise. Usually I get the jet lag flying west to east, but I had no real problems when we got to the UK. Coming home has been a different story, and the past three days have been mostly a lost cause. I am finally starting to feel human again, which is a good thing, since I have to go to work tomorrow. I guess as problems go, jet lag isn’t the worst thing to have, though!

Our trip to Scotland was lovely. We saw several different parts of the country while we were there, and I could easily have spent a whole vacation (or “baycation” as one of John’s grandsons calls it!) in any one of them. Here’s the outline of where we were:

Manchester, England, for two days, visiting good friends that we met on a cruise several years ago.

Edinburgh, for two nights and one full day.

Nairn, on the Moray Firth, for three nights.

Skye, for two nights.

Onich, near Fort William, for two nights.

Glasgow for two nights.

It would be impossible for me to pick a favorite. I enjoyed the more rural places that we visited very much, but also enjoyed Edinburgh, and Glasgow was a complete surprise. It’s perhaps not the prettiest of cities, but has a ton of cultural things to do, and good museums as well as some terrific restaurants. I am still sorting through photos, so I’ll just show photos for now of what I know you are interested in: the wool!

Yes, there were sheep! This fellow was grazing near one of the two yarn “shops” we found. We were driving down this road:

And saw this little building:

I don’t have any photos of inside the shop, they were on John’s camera, and he hasn’t downloaded them yet (long story involving a dead hard drive on his Mac when we got home). It was a tiny shop, the lady inside raises sheep and has all sorts of wooly things for sale. She also had a lovely compost toilet out back that I desperately needed at that point, having had an ale for lunch. So I had to buy some yarn, right?

She raises Gotland sheep for their wool, and that’s what this is. It’s not very photogenic, but it’s the prettiest natural grey wool, light fingering or heavy lace weight, take your pick, and about 500 grams worth. It will make a huge shawl.

Next stop on the wool trail was here:

This is the view from the second shop, Shilasdair. Sorry about the crappy photo, it was a fairly moody and murky day. Here’s the shop and some photos of inside.

Those are some lovely handknit sweaters on the wall. I really like the one on the upper right (click to embiggen).

That one is from a tiny “museum” behind the shop. The owner dyes all the yarn with natural dyes. She wasn’t in that day, so I didn’t get to see the dye shop.

And here’s what I bought.

Beautiful, eh? The red on the right is a fingering weight, the rest is worsted weight. John picked the green for a hat/mittens, the others are mine mine mine.

OK, that’s enough for now. I need to get organized for work tomorrow. I’ll post more photos as I get to sorting them. And I might even have some knitting and spinning to show next time!

One more photo. This was part of the coastline of Skye:

Still In Scotland

We’re still in lovely Scotland, but finally have a reliable enough internet connection to attempt a blog post. We’ve been having a fabulous time, and I thought I’d give a little update.

Where to even start with the photos? We have hundreds of photos already between our two cameras, and I haven’t even started sorting through mine. First, where have we been, and more importantly, has there been any wool?

We started the trip by flying into London. Heathrow is a madhouse, not helped by the fact that they had high winds and had cut the number of planes that could land by almost half the usual number. It was a bit of a rocky start, but we finally made it to our first destination, Manchester. We have friends there that we met on a cruise a number of years ago. They have been to see us a couple of times, but this was our first visit to their home. They were quite gracious, as we expected, and showed us around Manchester city one day, and around the countryside our second day.

Here’s one Manchester photo that I culled out of the herd of photos.

After our brief stay there, we took the train to Edinburgh, giving me a little down time to knit. I have finally finished that Electric Blue Baby Thing, though I still have some ends to weave in, so I guess technically it’s not finished. I won’t show a photo until it gets home to its final destination, but I’m glad it’s done done done. Now I can knit something else for a change!

Anyway, back to Edinburgh. Here’s a photo from our first evening there.

That gives you a little bit of an idea of what we liked best about Edinburgh. It’s undoubtedly a lovely city, but we decided to spend only 2 nights and 1 full day there, so didn’t have time to see anything but the most touristy sites. After all, how can you go to Edinburgh without seeing the Castle, Holyroodhouse Palace, or walking the Royal Mile? The latter was mostly a long string of what I fondly call rubber-tomahawk shops, and at the Castle, they wouldn’t even let me try on the Scottish Crown. Oh well.

Given that we were far more interested in the vast Scottish countryside than its biggest cities, we rented a car and headed north to Nairn, on the coast of the Moray Firth east of Inverness. This is a lovely little seaside resort, and we stayed at a wonderful small guesthouse right in town. There was a yarn shop in town, though I didn’t get there since it opens quite late in the morning and we headed out early to be tourists before that. Here are a few photos.

That’s Cawdor Castle, still a private residence for the Dowager Countess Cawdor, though she kindly clears out in the summer so tourists can see the place.

The castle grounds has a wool shop, with some wooly things for sale, but no yarn. I struck up a conversation with the woman behind the desk, who is a life long knitter, though she had just purchased her first sock yarn to try socks. One thing led to another, I gave her a link to my blog since she needed a sock pattern, and John surreptitiously snapped a photo.

You meet the nicest knitters while traveling!

Last but not least, I’ll leave you with a sunset photo that John snapped on the beach at Nairn.

Pretty, eh? I’d show more photos, but this is a very slow internet connection. I’ll get to the rest of the shots at some point, and John will put them all together in one big photo show when we get home.

We’re now on the Isle of Skye, and we’re here for one more night, then head to the Glencoe area, then Glasgow, then home. I finally found wool yesterday and today, I’ll show photos of that next time! I’m off to drink whisky!

Summer Visitors

I promised one last post before we hit the road. Our special visitors last week were none other than Francesca of Slow Knits (formerly Fluffbuff), and her sweetie, Ben. They were doing a tour up the Pacific coast and stayed here for a couple of nights. We ate, drank, and showed them the local sights. Here are a few photos:

We took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island, for lunch and a little foray to Churchmouse Yarns. Yes, it’s summer here. In their defense, it was only in the 60’s, and windy on the ferry deck.

That’s Francesca and I knitting on the ferry crossing.

We went to the World Spice Market in Seattle. We almost had to drag Francesca out of this place.

The required photo by one of the Market pigs.

We foraged for dinner at Pike’s Market.

Ahhh. Relaxing after dinner! It was way too short of a visit, but they had more stuff to see on the way back down the coast. It’s always fun to meet someone in real life that I’ve “known” for years through the blog!

We’re off tomorrow for Scotland. We mostly have the itinerary nailed down, just a few details to plan as we go along. We’re flying in to visit friends in Manchester, England for a few days, then take the train to Edinburgh. We’re taking Ernie (the Mac Air) along with us, and we should have wi-fi here and there along the way, so expect updates. I’ve already scouted out places where I might find wool along the way!

Summer Wrap-Up

Or, A Very Big Post

Now that summer is officially over, let’s get back to the monthly wrap-up posts, shall we? This summer was a bit of a bust as far as knitting goes. I got lots of other non-fibery projects done though, and enjoyed a lovely summer with family and friends, so I count it as a success all the way around! Here’s the summary:

I did no knitting at all on the True Blood Faery sweater. The current status is that I have the main body done and blocked, and I’ve started on a sleeve.

I knit about an inch on the current sock in progress. It just seemed to want to stay in hibernation.

I am nearly done with that Electric Blue High School Graduation Baby Mystery Project. I’m on the edging, about 6 rows to go, but those rows currently are at 592 stitches, and getting bigger every time around.

I spun up several skeins of yarn.

I started doing natural dyeing. Here’s the latest:

These were dyed with chopped dried madder root. The top yarn is handspun Romney, from a sheep named Rainbow, that was a gift from Dorothy* last year. I spun it up into a two ply right after she gave it to me, and it went into the stash. I was looking for something else to toss into the dye pot and found this, it was spun undyed. The roving is BFL, about 4 ounces. The color is pretty accurate, at least on my monitor.

After I pulled those out of the dye pot, I decided that there might be some color left, so tossed in the skein of rhubarb-mordanted Perendale wool that was in the August CSA box, along with 4 ounces of a BFL-Silk blend. Here’s how it came out.

That’s also pretty accurate, it’s a pale peach color. I haven’t quite decided if I like it or not, but I can always over-dye it next time I have the right color dye pot going.

Project Details:

Fiber: Two skeins of Romney wool, handspun by yours truly, 4 ounces of BFL roving, one skein of local California wool, and 4 ounces of BFL-silk roving

Mordant: The peach wool was mordanted by Birdsong from the CSA with rhubarb. I did the rest with an alum/cream of tartar mordant. I used about a 10% alum mordant solution

Dye: Chopped madder root. There was about 230 grams of the madder, I would definitely use more if you wanted to dye this much fiber and have it all come out red.

What I Learned: As the dye pot exhausts, the color changes. Duh. Madder is treated a little differently than the fennel. For one thing, it doesn’t stink like the fennel, I did this in the house without any problems. From what I read, if you cook the madder too hot or too rapidly, it will turn more orangey than red.

Here’s another summer thing. I bought a new spindle! This is sort of an early birthday present for myself. I’ve been looking at Golding spindles for a long time, and finally saw one that had my name stamped all over it.

Do you want a close up of the top? Of course you do!

Pretty, eh? The Scottish thistle is in honor of our next big adventure. We leave for Scotland** next week for a couple of weeks. I can’t wait! When I saw this up for sale on the Golding website, I knew it had to be for me.

OK, a quick list of September fiber goals and I’m out of here, or I’ll be late for church. I’m not getting very ambitious since I’ll be gone much of the time.

Finish the baby thing.

Finish those red socks.

Read books.

Enjoy the vacation.

That’s it. I’ll try to do one more post before we go, since we had a very special visitor last week that I’d like to tell you about!

*The wool was the gift, not the sheep.

**As usual, for you stalkers thinking you can steal my yarn while we’re gone, we have a house-sitter. She brings her llamas to guard the wool, so don’t even think about it.