Holiday Report

Starting at the beginning. No, we did NOT get a smooth crossing from Ireland to France. There was a storm at sea and we had a very rough crossing indeed.

So bad, in fact that on a visit to the Irish Seal Sanctury this weekend we met some baby seal pups who had been separated from their mothers and rescued the morning after the storm. Poor little things. Such cuteness. BTW, they will be released into the wild at 3 months old when they can catch their own nourishment. But. I digress.

Fortunately, due to a comfortable cabin and liberal doses of anti-travel sickness medication, nobody was actually ill or felt too rotten. This is a minor miracle and I thank heaven for modern medicine. My childhood method of sitting out on deck, clenching my teeth and staring at the horizon would not have been much use to me this time.

It was bliss. For 2 weeks we swam, cycled, ate, knitted (well that was just me actually) and rested. The weather was mixed, but overall it was good and we split the time between the pool, the beach and the deck.

On the less-than-sunny days we had trips to the circus, Sealand, a lovely zoo and some high adventure at the Feeling Forest where we swung, crawled, clamboured and zipped between pine trees at a great height and got some great thrills and many interesting bruises. (Well, again, that was just me.)

Fearless Little Monkey in action

And oh yes, there was knitting. More on that anon.

Perfect Love

I know it might seem odd, but something has been haunting me.

After the previous post, I remembered that years ago I used to play a game of words with poetry which distilled the rhythm and words of a poem further than the original.

I'm sure I thought it was very clever at the time tho' I wouldn't have been able to describe it in any way.

Therefore I give you:

sweater,
nubs,
been.
machine
think
breathe
knuckles
knit
exhale,
perfect,
love.


Try it out yourself. Sometimes of course the meaning and tone of the original poem is completely altered - but that just makes it more interesting!

There's something about that 'perfect love' that gets to me.

.
..

When You Knit My Sweater

Home at last. We had a really great holiday and there was lots of knitting done, tho' Iced isn't quite finished.

Photos and more details in a few days.

In the meantime, look what I found on the ever-entertaining blog of Sheknitupthatball.

---

by Gayle Brandeis

When you knit my sweater,
leave some holes, some knobbly nubs,
I want to see where your hands have been.
I don't want anyone to think a machine
has knit this, don't want anyone to think
it came from a store. I want you to breathe
through the gaps in the wool, want your knuckles
to bulge at the collar, the hem. I want to feel
your knit and purl like an inhale and exhale,
surrounding me like a fly in the perfect,
imperfect, spiderweb silk of your love.

---

Isn't that just wonderful? I defy anyone not to be moved by that, and especially knitters.

You already know that I'm very sentimental so I'll freely admit that I got a lump in my throat.

.

Bon voyage

Finally the time for holidays has come and we are off to La Belle France tomorrow. The girls are beside themselves with excitement and I'm not far behind. This is a picture of me singing an Aria of Happiness in honour of the occasion.

Er, ok, seriously tho'. I have shorter hair. This is from the latest Knitty, a pattern called Iced with which I instantment fell dans huge amour. Isn't it wonderful? Cool, casual, stylish, flattering and ideal holiday knitting. It's by the fabulous Carol Feller and I gotta say, she just keeps outdoing herself. Her patterns are wonderfully produced with great photography so I'm a bit of a fan.

It just so happens that I scored 6 skeins of Araucania Nature Cotton in a lovely cream colour at The Yarn Room 1st Birthday sale last weekend.

Soon as I realised that Iced was a perfect project for the yarn it became clear that I didn't have enough yarn with only 600 metres. I swooped down on the YR last night just before closing time and snatched up picked up the last 3 skeins available. If it wasn't for the fact that I did pay for my purchases it was more like a drive-by yarn mugging, since I had to divert at high speed from my commute. Talk about a Yarn Dash.

I haven't had time to swatch properly yet so I had to swoop down again this evening to get more needles, just to be sure that I have every possible needle size that I might need depending on gauge. Can't be too careful y'know.

Also in my suitcase is this book, Confererates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz, a travelogue/series of essays about the American Civil War. Since I love love love history and especially social/human history, I'm really looking forward to this.


Plus I have Love of the World, a collection of essays by John McGahern. Just because there isn't enough John McGahern in the whole wide world.

AND Ghost Light by Joseoh O'Connor. As a writer he just gets better and better. Plus see above comment re human history. This is a fictionalised story of a woman who had a long affair with the (real) Irish playwright J.M. Synge, famous for his play The Playboy of the Western World which was part of an Irish Nationalist artistic revival in the early 1900s. It's a great play of human nature which I believe has stood the test of time.

There are in fact more books to bring, but who am I kidding? I'm not going to get that much solo time, not to mention the knitting that I'm so looking forward to. Which brings us back to where we came in.

So, this is by way of an au revoir for a while. Needles crossed that the knitting goes ok. Needles crossed (and fingers and toes) also for a smooth crossing to Cherbourg tomorrow. There was a big swell on the sea today and today's crossing was rough. I am a very very very very very bad sea traveller so I'm praying for Neptune's Mercy tomorrow.

Take care ya'll and happy knitting.
.

WIP

Not much to say about this other than it's part of an ongoing design process that has occupied me fully for the past few months. It's for a 2-colour bag roughly 16" square. With wooden or knitted or I-cord or leather or something-else handles. You can see that I'm winging it I've really thought it through.

Seriously tho'. I've learnt something very important here. I spent weeks tricking around with the design elements, (colour combinations, charts etc.) before I picked up the needles. Once I started knitting, 80% of what I'd planned went out the window and the other 20% was on shaky ground.

It just goes to show that all the overthinking and planning in the world is no substitute for the practical work.

Plus I somehow thought that it had to be 'right' before I could even start it. And that the design process was mostly a mental one. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Another lesson learned as knitting kicks my ass once again. Le sigh. Still, I'm happy that it'll be an improved version in the end, so I forgive it.

.

.

Mayday Mayday

Is this your knitting?

I'm passing on an APB Knitting appeal from the Dublin Knit Collective. This lovely piece of knitting was found on a train at Heuston Station, Dublin, Ireland.

I don't know where the train was coming from, but my guess is that if it's yours you'll recognise it.

(Including a picture of the station just because I've always liked it.)


Please comment here if you recognise this lovely red cabled item.

.

Finally!

You know? You guys need a lot of patience to hang around here. I just want you to know that I acknowledge it and appreciate it, even tho' I can't promise to do much about it.

Recently I took some long overdue photos.

At last here's the answer to a question that I just know has been torturing you. Unless of course (like myself) you had completely forgotten all about it.




This is the squishy soft lovliness that awaited me on my return from that volcanic ash-thwarted trip to Paris in May.






It's a Nuno felted scarf in wonderful granite colours from the truely fabulous Nicola at Clasheen. I spotted it in her Etsy shop sale and zing pow click it was mine. Just 5 ft of exquisite felted lovliness. Le sigh.





Doesn't it look lovely against the stone wall and the...er...stones? I can't wait to take a Nuno felt workshop with Nicola sometime. Gorgeous.



...