Oh Crap More Yarn – The Knitting Doctor

Yes, there was yarn

Our excursion Sunday was to a nearby village that was the site of a small knitting factory that opened in the 19th century. The factory unfortunately closed in 1989, but it has been converted into a museum, keeping most of the old spinning and knitting machinery in working order. The original factory primarily made machine-knit (and hand-finished) clothing, especially woolen long underwear.

That is just some of the old equipment on display.

That is a bin of single ply thread ready to be made into either cloth for garments, or finished yarn for knitting.

The museum shop was lovely, with a nice collection of knit items, books, and other souvenirs. You know I was there for the yarn, right?

Some of that did come home with me.

That little guy didn’t end up in my shopping bag, though he sure is cute.

The week that was

Or, Out of Covid Jail

After John tested positive on Sunday, I did the same on Monday. We were restricted to our cabin for 5 days each, so John was out yesterday, me this morning. I felt pretty lousy for a couple of days, but have no symptoms now other than reduced sense of smell.
We missed four ports in Norway, though did get a few photos from our veranda. The prettiest day so far was Geirangar fjord, which was spectacular, with many stunning waterfalls.

Our cabin attendant, Mohammed, took good care of us for the week. He made sure our window and veranda wall were kept clean so we had a good view at all times.

We arrived in Bergen yesterday, and today is the midpoint of the cruise. Many passengers are staying on for the full trip to Stockholm, though there is also a lot of turnover from people only doing the two week portions. We did a tour in Bergen today, here’s one of the highlights.

Some fine Norwegian wool, and a sheep-themed bag to put it in.

And I finished a pair of socks.

The wool is from deep stash, Elliebelly 100% BFL. Same old pattern. These are for me.

Stay tuned for more adventure now that we are able to explore!

Blog Malfunction

WordPress has been driving me a bit nuts. I mostly post from either my iPhone or iPad, but photos taken with an iOS app end up going sideways when you look at them on a desktop. I’ve known about this for awhile, but figure most people are like me and use mostly the phone/ipad and not my desktop.

I waded in to this today, which turned into a couple hour black hole. You can rotate them all you want on either phone or desktop, and they still come out screwy. So this is one of many attempts to try to fix it.

I’ll hit post. If it’s sideways, I’m going downstairs and pouring myself a big glass of whisky.

And yes, that’s new yarn up there. It will probably be the last for awhile, since we have a couple of big trips coming up that we need to pay for.

Stash fluffing*

I dragged out all of the yarn boxes yesterday and sorted through some things. Doing this every now and then reminds me of how much lovely yarn I have, and reminds me as well (or it should) that I don’t need any more yarn.

Here are a few photos:

No, that is not all the boxes.

I don’t need any more lace yarn. That’s not all the lace yarn, either.

I apparently don’t need any more Opal sock yarn. There is more Opal squirreled away in other boxes as well.

Or Three Irish Girls sock yarn.

Or anything else, for that matter. I sorted out a few things to get rid of that I know I’ll never use, those are going to my knitting group today to see if anybody there wants them, or knows someone who will want them. I put a few things back in the boxes that I’m pretty sure I won’t use ever, but couldn’t part with (I’m looking at you, 1500 yards of black lace weight cashmere), but overall I have a pretty fine stash of lovely yarn.

Whilst I was rummaging around in the lace yarn, I found the leftover silk lace from my Evenstar shawl. There is plenty leftover, but I have no idea how much. I started with 150 grams, but I didn’t think to weigh it on the cone before I started knitting. So now I’m winding it off so I can weigh it. It’s fine enough that I don’t want to use my industrial strength ball winder, so I’m doing it the old fashioned way.

Please send whisky. This is a very tedious project.

*Stash fluffing: pulling the yarn out of all the boxes, admiring it, and imagining what it might be some day.

Alexandra

AKA, I actually finished something.

Project Details:

Pattern: Alexandra, by Dee O’Keefe
Yarn: My own handspun. The fiber is merino/silk/firestar, Abby’s Batts. There was about 600 yards of it, I still have a bit left.
Needles: 3.25mm Chiaogoo Lace circulars
Started: January 5 this year
Finished: February 17 this year
For: Me!

What I Learned: My handspun isn’t bad to knit with! This was spun back in 2009, and I wasn’t a very experienced spinner. It is mostly fingering weight, and there were only a few places where I had to splice out a bit that was too weird to knit with. It blocked nicely.

I also learned that it needn’t take me 4 years to finish something. This is likely the only thing I’ll finish during the Olympics, but I still have hopes that one day I’ll finish Evenstar. Here’s what it looks like today. As usual, click on the photos to embiggen.

For those of you keeping track, I started this in 2010. It’s a huge circular shawl, with an attached knitted on border (knitted perpendicularly to the main shawl body). I have 34 repeats left. Each repeat is 20 rows and has 50 beads knitted in. The edging is dead simple, but of course I have to pay attention because of the beads.

In other news, I fell off that no-shopping sheep this past weekend. I sort of knew it would happen. There was a big fiber festival in town (Madrona). My friend Dorothy came to visit and we took a couple of classes, which were fabulous. We also shopped. I probably would have held out if it weren’t for the Toots LeBlanc booth. They had some of their lovely lace weight jacob/alpaca/mohair blend, which can be hard to find. And it was HALF OFF people. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same. There might have been a few other things that fell off the shelf and landed in my shopping bag. Then I slipped and on the way to the floor, my credit card went through the card reader. It was totally an accident. I’m not taking photos of any of it to show you.

So now we’re back to square one. It’s now THREE days since I last bought yarn. I made it to 125 days last time. Let’s see how long I hold out this time.