Tea and Cakes

I have been knitting too, bits and pieces here and there.

My not so mini minisweater is coming along nicely – I’m pretty much done with the pattern, and I’m just knitting down for the body now. Sleeves to go too of course.

The baby blanket has stalled a bit in favour or faster knits, but it’s still pleasing to look at anyway:

And, I started a hat on request – something I’ve wanted to knit for a while anyway, so am delighted to be making.

I got this far:

Then I realised my gauge was off and turned it in to this:

Sigh.

The monkey socks are on hold at the moment – I’m still enjoying them, but other things are holding my attention more, so they may not be finished for a while. That’s ok though, I can live with that.

Last night after work I headed East, into the city centre, instead of North, to home. I drove: as yet I haven’t found a method of public transport that takes less than 90 minutes, compared to a 30 minute drive, so driving it is.

On my way I passed:

- A vomit pink stretch limo. Because nothing says class like that. Except perhaps a hummer limo. Those are around too. Perhaps a vomit pink hummer limo?

- A group of kids waiting by a bus stop. A person walked by them and as she did so knocked a traffic cone into the road and ignored it, carrying on walking. The kids waited until she’d gone, and then picked it up and put it back where it should be.

I drove through the suburbs I used to live in, past the best Indian take away in the city, past the coffee shop the Tuesday night knitting group meets at, over the canal that I’ve walked down many times, up past bars where I’ve seen some awesome gigs, through the small detour that only locals know to beat the no right turns and one way system. It felt like my city.

I stopped for a delicious pancake in Lemon – my usual veggie powercrepe plus: spinach and black pepper and garlic mushrooms and creme fraiche and cheese, before heading on to pub number one to meet friends.

Then I was on the move again, heading North. Through Temple Bar, dodging the kids and the hen parties, over the Liffey on the millenium bridge with the great view of the H’appeny bridge all lit up for the night. Through the Italian quarter, cafe bars packed, people sitting outside with tiny strong coffees and woolly hats on. Past the soulless shopping centre, and into pub number two, a converted 18th century church.

Later then, retracing my steps back to pub number one. It’s dark, but the warmth in the air offsets the slight edge that comes to the city at night.  I skirt the groups of tipsy revellers, give directions to a drunk student, and hit the river again. It’s high, and still, and reflects the bridges that cross it. I pause, and take in the city. It’s beautiful.

I remember this as I drive home, slowly at first, drunk people throwing themselves in front of my car in the hope that I might be a taxi; stuck in traffic at 1am because a taxi has broken down and is being collected in the middle of the road rather than at the side. I pull over to let a Garda car fly by, then an ambulance.

Then home, and thoughts of tea, and a bowl of warm apple crumble. But I’m too tired, so instead I curl up in my bed and fall fast asleep…

So, last week at knitting group we were discussing stash, and how some of us may possibly have enough yarn. This is of course until Laura arrived with the news that Kidsilk Haze was on sale at the woollen mills (“It’s practically free”) and everyone started planning to head there after the group. I’m immune to the appeal of kid silk haze as silk (except for tussah silk) isn’t vegetarian, so I was spared that particular peer pressure. Anyway, the discussion moved on to how our non-knitting living companions seem to feel that we have an unreasonable amount of wool, so I suggested a Dublin Knitters flash-your-stash, to show that actually we’re all the same. Now that the draw for more yarn that Diane was offering has been finished I can safely post mine knowing I won’t be adding to it.

The stash-flashing has thrown up a few things.
Firstly, when I came home and mentioned it the response I got was that “Oh, I believe you all have huge amounts of wool. It’s like some collective delusion about how much you need.” Ok, so this wouldn’t help me then.

Secondly, a few people have been a bit shy about posting theirs, as it might be a bit overwhelming. Interestingly, this has been accompanied by the defence that actually they only have lots of odd balls of things left over from projects so it’s not like they really have any at all. Yes. Right. I won’t name and shame, you know who you are.

Thirdly, a few people have flashed theirs and, well, you guys need to buy more yarn.

I wasn’t brave enough to empty out my boxes, especially as I did it all fairly recently for Ravelry. However, I have collected most of it in to one place, so here you go:

The other side of the wardrobe has my fabric and sewing machine and a few other bits and pieces in.

For more detail, some of which has now been used up or given away, you can see my flickr set.

It’s not tooooo bad, but the cones of laceweight don’t help. I do have enough for several sweaters. That’s enough yarn in general, not enough laceweight. I do have enough laceweight to make several sweaters, but seriously, sweaters from laceweight yarn? No chance.

What do you make for a gamer sort-of-geek friend who’s just moved into his brand new own apartment?

Yep, pacman dishcloths.*

Congratulations on the apartment dude, it’s lovely.

*Pacman not shown. My phone doesn’t want to share the picture with you all. I’ll get a picture from Linus sometime soon. And yes, I’ll type the pattern up over the weekend.

New update: Pattern is up and in the links on the right hand side. Any problems with it give me a shout.

About a month ago I managed to pay off my credit card completely for the first time in a long while. I’d used it to pay for my masters, so I hadn’t been feeling guilty about it, but it’s a nice feeling to have it paid off and back under control. Anyway, what’s the thing to do when a credit card is sitting there nice and empty?

Yep, you know. Buy stuff.

My car helped out at this stage by having a problem with the exhaust, but despite its valiant efforts I decided that I was still allowed to spend some money on something that I wanted.

Now, this time coincided with Cheryl’s trip back to the US for the summer. There’s a certain yarn company over there that doesn’t ship to Ireland, and Cheryl very kindly offered to accept a small delivery for me and bring it back with her. I really meant to stick to small, honestly, but, well, the yarn is such good value too, and, ok, I totally took advantage of a friend’s kind offer, in a way that was very, very cheeky, and I really am incredibly grateful to Cheryl for hoofing all this stuff back for me. Seriously. I owe Cheryl one big favour.

So, what did I get?

Enough navy blue wool of the andes yarn for a man sized sweater. I’m thinking an Elizabeth Zimmerman seamless hybrid.

Telemark yarn for a fair isle sweater for me. The main colour is the deep red at the back. I’m going to make the Equinox yoke from last year’s Interweave. (fall or winter, I forget which)

And…

The options interchangeable needle set.

This is what I really wanted. Since I bought it you can buy it outside of the US, but Knit Picks have decided that Ireland should be served by the UK stockists, which is a bit unfair really, as buying things in sterling when we live in the eurozone isn’t really much fun.

Anyhow, I’m in love with this. I love the folder, I love the needles, I love how the cables are purple, I love how I now have a gazillion sizes of needles. It’s just great.

Thank you Cheryl for playing courier.

And now, in combination with my French purchases, I think that I may have reached the point where I have enough yarn. Yes, you read right.

I. have. enough. yarn.

I had big plans for knitting in France, and I did spend a good amount of time at it, but certainly not the whole holiday. I don’t like to knit in the car, and I got hooked in to a couple of great books too. There was, however, some fibre aquisition, and I think this, combined with a knit picks incident that I’ll post about later on, means that I may actually have enough yarn. For now. Probably.

Anyway, Phildar shops seemed to be in most towns, and we found a couple of other smaller yarn shops, and one crafts superstore thingy that I ran through quickly. Acrylics and blends seem to be very popular, and there was a lot of fun fur. Some nice stuff though.

Here’s what I came back with.

The purple and fuschia is for a Carolyn cardigan. The red, orange and yellow is for a Jayne Cobb hat, the bright pinky dishcloth cotton is probably for dishcloths, and the pink, green and blue I’ll get to in a minute. See, it all had a purpose. No random yarns.

I needed to finish my Jaywalkers off first. These were almost done – I was about half way through the foot on the second sock, so it was pretty quick to get them finished:

Details: Jaywalkers by Grumperina
Lana Grossa Meilenweight Fantasy Yarn
2.5mm bamboo needles

Now, the new things:

I’d planned to make a pinwheel blanket out of some stash cotton:

But we had a bit of an argument after I messed up a yarnover at the end of a row (I was magic looping, and should have shifted it so I didn’t end on the yarnover, but didn’t, and regretted it) , plus I wasn’t loving the cotton for a baby – too heavy and not soft enough, this one. So, I cast it off and it’s now a scrap dishcloth.

However, I then came across some lovely bright coloured cotton-acylic blend yarn in Phildar, and decided to start again, using the zig-zag pattern from the jaywalkers. I’ve added stitches so that there are 10 stitches between increases and decreases, and I have a 5 stitch garter border for stability. The rows are long, but it’s fun to knit, and lovely and soft and light and pretty.

I started the Ziggy scarf, but I made a mistake on the very first lace pattern row and ended up with too many stitches on the needles, couldn’t work out how to fix it, took it as a sign, and this is how it still looks:

I’ll get around to starting again sometime soon.

So, instead of the Ziggy scarf I cast on for Monkey socks, and it was a great choice.

The pattern is very simple, which is what I needed – interesting enough to stop me getting bored, simple enough that I could manage them with very little brain power.

So, there we go. I’m back now and have a few things to get finished and gifted and then I can catch up with the projects I left behind too.

Two lovely, relaxing weeks away. We travelled over by ferry, which takes 17 hours, overnight. Irish Ferries have one ferry on the route, and it’s due for replacement at the end of the year which is a Good Thing. Some parts of our cabins had been repaired with duct tape, the boat had obviously had several owners as there were signs up with the old Stena line logo, and there was a frustrating lack of places to sit. It didn’t really matter though, because we were both so tired, and the crossing was so rough, that we spent to whole time in bed, being tossed* around in the dark. I don’t really mind the sea, so I read for most of the way. The other good thing is that we were able to take our car over, which meant we could bring over all the stuff we wanted and not have to worry about weight allowances or pointless security checks. The war against moisture’s not being fought at sea.

Our first week was spent in Northern Brittany, in a little gite in a national park.

It was lovely and I really couldn’t recommend the place (Kergudon House) enough – the owners had really thought everything through, the gite was lovely, the welcome bottle of wine much appreciated, and there was heaps of really useful information on what to do in the area.

The weather was much the same as Ireland for our first couple of days, so we headed out for a 14km walk from an excellent walking book leant to us by the gite owners. It was quite a hike in the wind and occasional rain. There was a small mention in the book about being careful on the wooden duckboards over the marshes.

We perhaps should have paid a tiny bit more attention to this. A good couple of km was along foot wide wooden duckboards running straight through the middle of a massive, massive marsh that had been rained on all summer. Think Lord of the Rings. I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and see the bodies of dead kings looking back up at me. Local legends say that the marshes are the gateway to hell, and that washerwomen ply their trade along them, trying to take people to hell. The marshes were followed by a road walk through a couple of small hamlets, and then a final hike up a big hill, to the chapel of Mt St Michel. I was shattered at the end, but a nice hot bath sorted me out.

We went further afield over the rest of the week, spending a lovely day on the Crozon Penninsula,

popping to Brest**, and wandering around Quimper, a lovely old town with plenty of character.

Our second week was spent in the south of Brittany, in Carnac. For this week we’d rented a tent on a campsite – quite different from the peaceful luxury of the previous week!

Campsite life forces you into a routine of relaxation – everything takes longer, so rushing around just isn’t really an option – washing up becomes an event – taking the dishes and everything else needed up to the communal washing up sinks, and washing and drying alongside everyone else. Going to the toilet at night involves putting on warm clothes and shoes and using a torch. Being surrounded by families was mostly nice – catching snippets here and there made me smile and brought me back to how I think I might have been as a kid – really earnest about some things, and a wee bit whiney and annoying sometimes too. It also meant that at times we were witness to some not-great parenting, which was, well, frustrating.

We spent a lot of time in Carnac just sitting around, reading, writing, knitting, exploring a little bit. There are loads of megaliths around Carnac – fields of thousands of standing stones in alignment, dolmens, and a passage tomb just behind the campsite. It’s a strange feeling, standing on a passage tomb, next to a large standing stone that’s been there for thousands of years, watching the full moon rise.

I love France. It might be because we’ve both been there so many times, and will go back again so many more, that there’s little pressure to see everything and experience everything, so we could just get on with relaxing – spending an afternoon sitting in a bar by the river with an excellent coffee, having crepes and citron presse by the sea, having a leisurely breakfast of coffee and croissants with apricot jam by the tent.

After Carnac we had one night to spend before we got back on the boat for the journey home, so we headed up to Mont St Michel for a lovely relaxing evening by the simply stunning abbey

then visitied the Normandy beaches on the way to Cherbourg.

A super holiday.

~~
*You, at the back, stop sniggering.
** Yes, ok, you can snigger at that. I did.

I’m still working my way through washing, and well, to be honest, spending more than a little time procrastinating rather than doing the things I should be doing, like packing for the trip to the UK.

While I get sorted out, I suggest you go over to Donal’s site, and have a read of what we did on our last day in France. He puts it a lot more eloquently than I could.

I’m home, and still settling in, unpacking and wrestling with piles of washing and a new airer that keeps collapsing when I put washing on it and stupid no sun weather slowing the whole washing and drying clothes process down.

I’m not back in work until Monday though, so I get to carry on pootling around, get caught up with posts and pictures and seeing friends over the next few days. Some of the internet catching up will be waiting until the end of the week, as I’m heading back to Sussex in That England for a couple of days.

Anyhoo, there will be tales from the camspite, knitting, excellent books, and pictures and the like coming soon. I have my holiday snaps up on Flickr, but my favourites will be here in the next day or so.