There might be a “real” post later on. I had a great weekend last weekend at the Spin-In on Whidbey Island. Dorothy and her husband Bill were great hosts, as was Maggie the Corgi girl. Dorothy unfortunately didn’t feel well, but she soldiered on and finished her sock yarn for the class anyway. When I get the photos together, I’ll post something. My sister will be here visiting this weekend, so I need to get my butt in the shower so we get to the airport on time. Have a great weekend!
This is for Lora. She and her husband are moving to the Pacific Northwest this year, and I got a very plaintive email recently asking about the weather. (Remember when you did this, Kris?)
Here’s the photo of the day. It was cool and grey this morning, then all of a sudden I looked up and the sun was out, one of those famous sun breaks that we get.
Not the best photo in the world, but yes, Lora, the sun does shine here. This is not an April Fools’ joke. Of course it’s supposed to rain all weekend, and it’s only 40 degrees right now. It’s sort of a wimpy little sun break, but sun nonetheless. You can even see shadows on the lawn. All the trees are leafing out, the camellias are bloomed, the pansies are out in full force. I caught a Stellar’s Jay in our front tree right outside my home office yesterday collecting twigs for a nest, so baby birds can’t be far behind. The boy ducks on the lake are starting to jockey around for the attention of the girl ducks. I think spring might be my favorite season here, but then I say that about summer and fall when they roll around, too.
What’s your favorite season where you live?
Well here we are again. It’s that time of year again, the Wintergrass festival. This year is one of great changes. The festival has had 16 years in Tacoma, and this year, its 17th year, it packed up and moved up north to Bellevue, for a variety of reasons. This was very traumatic to those of us who have been loyal fans for years. It’s always been convenient for us since we lived twenty minutes from the previous venue. As I’d already purchased tickets when they announced the move, we decided to go for it. Of course this means a three-night hotel stay, and figuring out pet arrangements, and a house-sitter. I went into this figuring nothing could be as good as the old Wintergrass. Bluegrass, at the upscale Hyatt, in upscale Bellevue? Hmmph. I was prepared to be disappointed.
Boy, was I wrong. This is a fabulous venue. All of the concert venues are in the hotel complex itself, instead of being scattered all over downtown Tacoma. There are literally dozens of good restaurants and shops within a few blocks, if you choose to leave the hotel. The staff at the Hyatt have just taken this on as a mission, and could not be more welcoming. The public spaces for vendors and the multitudes of jammers are much more spacious.
The festival runs Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday. We had tickets to the Seattle Symphony on Thursday night, so we missed the first evening. Last night was terrific. My favorite group from yesterday was the Infamous Stringdusters, but a close second was the Steep Canyon Rangers. My only complaint so far is that there are too many fine artists here, and it is impossible to see them all. Oh, and one of us forgot to put the camera cord in the bag, so there will be no Wintergrass photos posted to the blog for now.
I also brought numerous knitting projects with me on the trip. You can’t have too many knitting projects when you’re away from home for a few days. So far all I’ve worked on is a spindle project. I’ve gotten most of the way through a half a pound of natural-colored Blue Faced Leicester over the past few months, and I brought the spindle and fiber to the Ballroom with me last night. If I thought knitting was an oddity here, you should see the looks I get while spinning in between music sets. I’m certain that I’m the only one with a spindle here, but I’m hoping to start a trend. I’ll have John get photos so I can post them later, when we get that camera cord. We’re off to find breakfast, then to stalk some banjo men.
Just a photo:
This was one of those “captcha” things you enter for comment verification. Sometimes I just try to make words in my head out of them, but this one made me laugh out loud. Yes, I’m easily amused.
A day late, but better late than never. At least I have an excuse. Over the weekend, that would be last weekend, I developed something I’m calling Ebola virus. I got both flu vaccines earlier in the fall/winter, but the symptoms are quite flu-like, and I’ve now had it for 7 days. I took two days off work last week, then fortunately have the 3 day New Year’s weekend off, so hopefully I’ll mostly be recovered by Monday when I have to go back to work. I actually went in to the office on Wednesday, but the nurses quarantined me, then sent me home as soon as they could get the patients rescheduled. So, Happy Fracking New Year! I’m having so much fun so far! I have a relentless cough, a squeaking voice, and today I got to add Imodium to the lineup of pills I’m taking for this! What fun!
We did sort of celebrate the New Year, though I was out cold long before midnight. If there were any fireworks on the lake this year, I missed them. We had clam chowder and champagne for NYE dinner, then blackeyed peas yesterday for supper for good luck. Today I’m thinking tea and toast, since my tummy is a little iffy.
Now, on to New Year’s knitting resolutions. They’re pretty much the same as last year. I want to knit more of everything, knit more of my stash, learn to be a better spinner (a new resolution this year!). First up is to go through all the WIPs and UFOs and clean house. It will be finish or frog around here.
Here’s the first UFO/WIP. It’s now officially a WIP again. This is the Froot Loops Morning Glory stole, which according to the blog and Ravelry, I started in May of last year. Who knows why it got sent to the UFO pile, since the pattern is a lot of fun, and the yarn is delightful. Here’s the non-Rav link for those of you still in the dark ages. The yarn is Brooks Farm Harmony, which has been discontinued. It’s a mohair, wool, and silk blend that is very lustrous and just a little bit on the fuzzy side.
The stole is knit in two pieces, then grafted down the center. I’ve finished the edging and the mesh border on the first piece, and am in the first repeat of the main part of the stole.
I’m off to find more cough syrup. Stay tuned next time for the next WIP/UFO!
Everybody else is doing it, so I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and show photos of some of the ornaments on our tree. Our ornaments are best described as “eclectic”, with no apparent theme. We’ve collected them over the years, and a few are from our respective childhoods. Here are some of our favorites:
And last, but not least:
Have a very merry and blessed Christmas, everyone!
Just a quick post. The past few weeks have gotten away from me a bit. Work is going well, but Christmas is one of those holidays that gets me tied in knots. I love the peace, joy, and blessings part, not so much the shopping, frenzied decorating, and gift exchanging parts. My general response is to bury my head in the snow and hope that the Christmas elves will do it all for me. We had our big annual solstice party for close friends this past weekend, and we still haven’t gotten all the wine glasses washed and put away. I have the last of the Christmas gift shopping to deal with today, then I’m home free.
As far as knitted gifts, here’s my take on it.
I’m done with my Christmas knitting, because I don’t do Christmas knitting. So there, bah humbug!
Hopefully there will be a “real” post, with real knitting even, later this week. If I don’t get to it, have a blessed and safe holiday!
Your Birthday?
No wait, I did that already. But it’s my sweetie’s birthday today. It’s sort of a special one, and there’s a You Tube video at the end of the post just for him. First, here’s where I am on True Blue, the plain blue sweater I’ve been knitting for him for decades*.
OK, never mind. My camera is being recalcitrant, and won’t upload the photos. Just imagine it, OK. I’ll try to post it later.
Updated. Here are the photos:
And Lewey, supervising the sewing.
I’ve finished all the knitting except for the neck band, and have the sleeves attached. I’m sewing up the first side. I’m hoping to have this finished by Sunday, since that’s November 1st, when the big Faery Ring Knit-a-long starts!
And here’s the video. Note that there is knitting content in the song.
Happy Birthday, Sweetie!
*OK, it only seems like decades. Whatever, it’s almost done.
OK. I know I said the contest ended on Thursday, that would be two days ago. I’ve gotten sucked into work again for a week, and things got away from me. More on that later.
I was highly entertained by all your comments on my “Free Yarn” post. Thanks to you all, we now have about thirty years of vacation spots lined up, and we’ll likely never get to all of them. (Just like I’ll never get to knitting stuff from all the yarn in the stash…when did that ever stop me from trying?)
Without further ado, the winner is, by way of the Random Number Generator:
Charity, author of the blog Knitting In The North. Go check out her blog. She is a wonderful knitter, and has lovely children. Her little Liam is just the cutest thing ever born. And she lives in Canada. Who doesn’t love Canada? She gets the lovely electric blue Aran weight yarn, and perhaps a couple of little extras that I’ll throw in.
As to the work week. This is my last work week at the old job. I’ve joined a new practice as an internist in the same city, same hospital, but a different group, starting in November. I have two more days in my current position, then a couple of weeks off to re-group and get oriented, then it’s off to the races in a new capacity. It should be fun and exciting, and a little more of a sane work schedule, I hope. I definitely need more time to knit and spin (and sleep!), and to travel to all of those places that you guys recommended. Wish me luck! I’ll be back with a Project Update next week!
Now that ought to get everybody’s attention! First, though, thanks to everyone who sent fine birthday wishes, and also for putting up with the endless travelogue in the past few weeks. We made it home safely, though I’m still not quite recovered from the time changes. Even the switch to and from daylight savings time messes with my head, so an eight-hour change is really doing it to me. I’ve been waking up at 4 AM, which wouldn’t be so bad, but I’m a zombie again by about 6 PM.
I just downloaded all the photos off my camera this morning (after I woke up at 4 AM in the middle of a Halloween-slasher kind of nightmare). There are over 700 of them, and all I can say is thank God for digital. John has his own camera, and I suspect an equal number of photos. He’s in charge of photo selection and album content, and once he gets them weeded down to a reasonable number, I’ll provide a link to the online version for anybody who hasn’t seen enough already. I might post one or two here and there, just because I can.
OK, here are a couple before I get down to the business you are all really interested in.
One last Guinness:
We found this building in Kinsale. Read the sign over the door. I might need to join after 16 days of Guinness, wine, and Irish whiskey. Click to make it big enough to read.
Here’s that sweater that several of you asked about. As we rounded Slea Head on the Dingle peninsula, we had to make a stop for the “facilities”, and found a nice craft shop. A lot of the “craft” shops in Ireland are full of cheap trinkets, what I like to call “rubber tomahawk” shops, but some are quite nice. They had some lovely Aran sweaters that were labelled as hand knit, and were pretty inexpensive if they really were handmade. I couldn’t resist. John thought it was pretty hilarious buying a wool sweater when I’m a knitter, but I was cold, hadn’t found any yarn as of yet, and there it was.
It’s quite warm, too. I more or less wore it for the rest of the trip.
OK, now the moment you’ve been waiting for, the free yarn. I found this in a craft shop in Leenane, which I blogged about while we were on vacation.
As the label says, it’s Aran weight tweed, 100% Donegal wool, in a lovely blue color with little tweedy speckles. There is no weight or yardage listed on the labels, but it’s all one dyelot, and each weighs 50 grams. This would be enough for a hat, and perhaps hand warmers as well. It’s labelled as “A Green Product”, and “Natural Feeling”, which I find amusing. Once again, click to embiggen and get a better view of that electric blue.
One of my lucky readers will win this yarn, along with perhaps a tiny surprise or two. This is simply shameless promotion on my part. Since I moved the blog, my RSS subscribers have dropped from over 700 to 38. The competitor in me finds this a bit demoralizing, so one of the purposes of this contest will be to get you to subscribe. Just hit that button over there that says “subscribe”, pick your blog reader, and Bob’s your uncle. Of course, I won’t really know which ones of you are subscribing, so here’s how you can get a chance to enter the contest. Leave me a comment on this post, telling me about your absolute favorite place to travel. If you don’t have one, tell me where you’d like to go, if time and money were no object. I’ll let the random number generator pick a lucky winner. The deadline will be, oh, let’s say Thursday, the 15th, at midnight my time. Good luck!
Well, yesterday to be exact. I was having too much fun last night to finish the post, so you get it early this morning.
We’re in Clifden, on the west coast in County Galway, and yesterday was just a glorious day. We have friends in England who warned us that this was a horrible time to visit Ireland due to the weather, but we’ve had just grand weather. (Notice how I’m starting to talk like the locals?) We had one day when it just plain rained, and we’ve had a couple of windy days, but mostly it has been sunny for at least a good part of each day. It’s been cool, but that I can live with. It gave me an excuse to buy a nice little sweater while I am here.
So how did I spend my 53rd birthday? We drove around the Sky Road west of Clifden in the morning, with glorious views of the ocean and the many (300) surrounding islands. Then we drove to Leenane, stopping at Connemara National Park for a little hike. In Leenane, I finally hit pay dirt.
I finally found yarn! There were four kinds, all of them Aran weight. My sweetie bought me enough pretty yarn to make a sweater. The prices actually were quite reasonable. Here’s what I got.
The color of that is all wrong, but I think you’ll have to wait till I get home to take an outdoor photo in natural light. I already get mighty funny looks just for knitting in public. I can’t imagine what the locals would do with me if I started taking pictures of yarn in the parking lot. There are roughly 2700 yards of that (not marked on the yarn itself, but I measured the hank, counted strands, and did the math). It’s a pretty, tweedy deep forest green. It will make a lovely sweater.
I didn’t stop there, always thinking of my readers. There’s more.
Those are both Aran weight Donegal tweed, about 200 grams of each color. One of these colors will go in a big blog contest when I get home, so stay tuned later this week.
But wait, there’s more! There was a little spinning and weaving museum attached. The lady who normally is there giving demonstrations was out, but the woman running the shop saw my dejection and let me in.
Here are just a few of the wheels that were on display.
After we left Leenane, we headed for Westport, where we walked around and then had a couple of pints in Matt Malloy’s pub. The bartender bought me a Guinness when he heard it was my birthday.
We drove through some more fabulous scenery, getting back to our hotel just in time for cocktails and dinner.
Back at the hotel, one of the owners, on discovering that it was my birthday, bought me champagne, and at the end of dinner, a birthday treat and singing.
And I got to knit! What could be better?
We’re in Clifden again tonight, then we head back towards Dublin tomorrow, then home on Thursday. We’ve been gone long enough that I actually am ready to be home, though I’ve enjoyed every minute of this trip. Well, maybe not the parts where we’ve been nearly run off the road by tour buses going 100 km an hour, but all the rest of it.
There may or may not be another post before we head home. Someone else thinks I’ve been hogging the computer, so I have to give it up. Remember, check back later this week for a contest post!
Pippin: What’s that?
Merry: This, my friend, is a pint.
Pippin: It comes in pints?! I’m getting one!
Who knew? You can get the internets from an airplane, and our new Mini Dell takes photos. Here you go.
We’re on our way to Chicago, then we change planes for Dublin. As you can see, I started the new sock. John has changed the color name to Squashed Frog. Who knows, maybe Lowenzahn means Squashed Frog in German!
I got nothin’, so I’m reduced to posting cell phone photos of the lake at sunset. Here are two recent evenings. Man, I love summer.
Knitting and spinning are proceeding. I’m working on a stealth project, possibly there will be a Ravelry link soon so the intended recipient can’t see it. Not yet, not yet. Yes, there will be a new baby in the extended family this summer.
Spinning is coming along. I’m having enough fun that I’m looking at wheels. Yes, I know. It was inevitable. I’m at least trying to be smart enough to not just order the damn thing sight unseen. I have an appointment with a local spinner-shop owner-fiber-lady next week when I’m off work to test drive* some wheels. My current flame is a Kromski Minstrel, but I’m certainly easily swayed. What do you all have, if you are spinners?
*Shhhh. Please, don’t tell my spouse that “test drive some wheels” is code for “buy a wheel and bring it home in the back seat of the car”. Let him have his little delusions.
By special request!
Blogless Manise dared me to post this one, so here goes.
The Peacock Russian Babushka look!