Yesterday we stopped by Borders.  Myria was interested in looking at some books relating to digital photography processing and I wanted to check the knitting magazines.  We have a routine in a bookstore; we go our separate ways and pull out things we think we might be interested in (or that we think the other might be interested in) and we meet in the coffee shop later to have a drink and peruse our finds.

I checked the magazine rack and grabbed FCEK, Vogue and INKnitting.  Then I headed upstairs to the crafts section to browse the titles.  I saw “Knitter’s Stash”, but beyond noting that it was now in paperback, didn’t bother.  I had looked through it when it first came out and felt there wasn’t enough in it to interest me.  Besides, the hardcover was pricey.  I picked up several things, moseyed a bit longer and then headed back downstairs to the coffee shop.

Myria had beaten me to the shop and already had a table, so I plopped my finds down, went and got a soft drink and then plopped myself down.  Myria handed me a book and said “This had your name written all over it.” It was “Knitter’s Stash” - so I decided to have a look at it anyway. 

Knitter’s Stash

The only excuse I can claim is that the book was initially published two-and-a-half or three years ago and I didn’t know hardly squat about knitting then.  Of course I didn’t think I could do anything but the washcloths - I couldn’t back then.

But holy cow!  I can do some of them - or at least feel competent to try some of them now!  Look at this!

Well, maybe cotton or a cotton blend :)

This is one gorgeous sweater (though cashmere is right out of the budget) and one I think I could make - those cables are beautiful!

Or this!

Simple and Sweet

I could probably have managed this even in my “dumb” days.  I was just too intimidated to try it!

And this :)

So Feminine and pretty!

I wouldn’t even change the color on this one!

I decided I wanted this book, but it was a little banged up.  Myria said she had found it on a table near the front of the store - someone had picked it up and then decided they didn’t want it and so dropped it on the nearest table.  We went back upstairs to the craft books and...there wasn’t another copy.  Between the time I had passed it up and the time I got to the coffeeshop, someone had picked up the only copy, brought it downstairs and dropped it right where Myria would see it and bring it to me to look at!

Can you say fate?  I knew you could :)

The cap to it all came this afternoon at one of my favorite yarn shops.

I’m thinking shawl...

Isn’t this beautiful?  It’s 60% cotton and 40% acrylic.  It has nice body, is soft as can be and is machine washable.  And the color is soooooooo pretty!  It came from:

Country Village Yarns
20 Nashua Road (Route 111)
Pepperell, MA 01463
(978) 433-3131

Janet, the owner, is a fun, knowledgeable and extraordinarily helpful lady with a fine sense of the ridiculous.  She will bend over backwards and then some to make sure you have what you want and that you’re happy with what you get.  It’s a tiny, crammed little 2-room shop and a really wonderful place to go and Janet is a wonderful person to do business with.  NAYY - but I really, really like this place!  Could you tell?

I feel so wealthy :) Added to both my stash passions and I feel like I own the world!

Addendum

The pictures have been added to the ”Picking the Right Yarn” post.

A cruise can be a really nice vacation.  There’s wonderful food and you are waited on hand and foot.  The suites (cabins, staterooms - each ship calls it something different) are luxurious, lovely and comfortable.  And there’s nothing like being able to just go down the hall to the club, instead of having to drive 20 miles and scrounge around for parking (same for the caf, the spa and the library).

This was a trans-Atlantic crossing.  We started in Ft. Lauderdale and sailed to Lisbon, stopping at Bermuda and at Funchal, Madeira.

Grey Ft. Lauderdale

It was grey when we left Florida and it remained that way pretty much all of the time we were at sea.  There were exceptions though.  The sun decided to bless our Bermuda stop and that was the only really good weather we saw. 

Bermuda wasn’t on the scheduled trip; we were told that for refueling reasons, we had to go there first and we would then proceed across the Atlantic.  I’m glad to have had the chance to see it.  We docked at St. George and Dad and I walked around there all morning.  It’s a quiet, clean and beautiful little town.

Terrace

There are terraces like this everywhere off the main street and two or three buildings might share this space.  They are shaded and some have flowers planted in colorful arrangements.  What was most striking and appealing to me is that there wasn’t a gum wrapper, empty beer bottle or cigarette butt in sight.  The architecture may be humble, but the absence of obvious litter made things seem fresh and elegant.

St. George Town Hall

Bermuda is noted for its pink sand, but many of the buildings are also pink.  The stationers (where I bought a protractor and a compass), the Bank of Bermuda building and even the Town Hall are all pink.  There are other colors, but they are all pastels - aqua, peach, pale yellow and cream.  The island, from a slight distance, looks like it’s dotted with large bits of candy.

As soon as we got back out to sea, the weather turned on us again so the crossing was very rough.  I have enough problems with balance as it is, never mind on a ship that’s tossing around on the waves.  It’s amazing how the body learns to compensate for that though, and it’s astonishing how quickly it adapts.  I am, thank goodness, not prone to sea-sickness, though some of the passengers had a pretty miserable time.

We reached Funchal, Madeira 9 days later.  The cruise line had arranged for us all to have tea at Reids, a grand hotel, very much in the old British Empire style.  It was incredibly elegant (which, of course, made me nervous and self-conscious) and tea was superb served by tuxedoed and white-gloved waiters and accompanied by a truly excellent classical violinist.

Funchal itself is quite pretty.  Part of the Madeira Archipelago, it rise up like a mountain top sticking out of the sea.  The tip is in the clouds, so it’s rising quite a long ways up.  The streets are steep and narrow and the cars are tiny!  I saw lots of Peugeots, Renaults, Volkswagens and Toyotas and one immense (in comparison) BMW - but only one American car - a Ford Focus.  And it was bigger than most of the others.

Unfortunately, I have no pictures of Funchal as it was teeming rain when we left the ship and I had decided not to risk my camera.  You know where this is going, right?  About halfway to the hotel, it stopped raining, the sun partially appeared, and the weather settled down until we were back on the ship!

Some of the Madeira Archipelago

Two days later, we disembarked in Lisbon and went straight from the ship to the airport.

Christ the King looking over the Tagus River and bridge

Even though it was still grey and cloudy, the glimpses of Lisbon that I got through the windows of the bus made me wish I could spend a few days there.

There was a curious arrangement at the airport, somewhat reminiscent of a sundial.  Aside of the gnomon, though, there were only seven stones.  Dad and I stood there and tried to figure out what it represented, but couldn’t really come up with anything.

Shadow Stones at Lisbon Airport

If anyone has any idea what these are, please let me know - I’m really curious!  It’s probably just a bit of non-representational art, but it seems as though it might have a function.

Two or three days before the end of a trip, some idiot part of me starts chanting:

Home, home,
I want to go home...

And it keeps on, waking and sleeping, increasing in intensity, until I actually walk through the front door.

I got home late Saturday night after spending about 10 hours in the air.  I still haven’t unpacked yet as I’ve been catching up on sleep :) I can never really rest on an airplane.  I will say that British Airways really does things in style.  There were movies and music for entertainment and some surprisingly good food - not at all what I generally think of as the usual “plastic” airplane food.

This is the last trip.  I am grateful for the cruises my father has shared with me and for being able to see parts of the world I never thought I would visit.  But I am overjoyed to be home and to be able to stay home.  It occurred to me on the long flight from London to Boston, that there isn’t a single thing I would change about my life.  I am happy with it, with the people in it, with it’s rhythms and routines.  It mighn’t be everyone’s cup of tea (in fact I suspect some would find it distinctly odd) but it suits me right down to the ground.  And no matter how magnificent a trip or a cruise might be (clicking heels together three times) there’s no place like home.

Hey everyone:) I’m writing this from the Computer room of the Seabourn Pride.  Myria is going to post it for me.  It is unadorned as of now, but I’ll be back Saturday night and by Monday there will be a couple of pictures.

This is more a series of thoughts than an actual, step-by-step tutorial, but perhaps it will be useful anyway?  It was an interesting process and the hat was such fun that I didn’t even mind making it twice! *

Just for the exercise, I decided to make a hat and it’s a pretty nifty hat.  It has a slip-stitch bordered cable all around the bottom and six short-row wedges that kind of swirl to the center top.  It is knitted on two needles and seamed.

I had brought a lot of old chenille with me - nice colors and I keep trying to think of something to do with them.  Nah, that probably wouldn’t show off the cable very well.  Sock yarn? Maybe - if I want this to fit my stuffed bunny.  The only other option was some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino that I have left over from a couple of other projects.  Seemed like a good choice, so I
went with it.

It worked up easily; Cashmerino is lovely to work with.  However, about halfway through I began to notice that the cable looked a bit loose and sloppy.  I knew I was working it properly so I couldn’t figure out why it looked like that.  I just carried on anyway and finally finished seaming it while viewing “Under the Tuscan Sun” (a nice, understated film).

Well, the hat was a bit big, but worst of all, it had no body at all.  It kind of lies on the table in a boneless lump.  It should stand up.  I mean, obviously I don’t want an old-fashioned knight’s helmet but I would like my hat to have a little integrity and backbone...sigh

Back to the drawing board.

We had an unscheduled stop in Bermuda.  This was fortuitous because I hadn’t brought any go to-hell yarn with me.  You know, the stuff you don’t really care about that you try out ideas on, or practice stitch patterns on?  That stuff.  I’d only brought “project” stuff. 

As luck would have it, I stumbled into a yarn shop in St. George - almost entirety Red Heart yarn in various incarnations, and more than twice the price of the same thing back home - but it had the advantage of being immediately available.  I gratefully purchased a big, skein of SuperSaver in orchid.

I decided to try making a second hat in the RHSS.  To my amazement, though nothing but the yarn had changed, the cable was actually crisp and clear!  The edges didn’t melt into the purl stitches and disappear.  The short-row wedges looked jaunty rather than saggy.  This looked...nice!

A pair of caps

Crisp Cables

“Relaxed cables

This is probably old hat (ahem!) to most of you but it was a surprise to me and something I’ll have to pay more attention to in the future.  Soft and slinky may be exactly what I want for a sweater but it’s not going to be the right hand (is that the right word?) for everything.

*The hat pattern isn’t my own and I’m currently researching its provenance.  Hopefully I will be able to post it soon!

Hello again y’all, and welcome to the second half of my second stint of… Eh, you know what I mean. For those that are curious, Robbyn and her father will be in Funchal, Madeira tomorrow, then will arrive in Lisbon on Saturday. Everything is apparently going well and she’s having a pretty good time on her trip.

I found myself somewhat short of ideas on what to bore y’all with for this edition of And Now For Something Completely Different, so I’m kind of winging it. What I decided to do was go out for a walk, take pics of whatever I saw that was interesting, and then bore y’all with those. Am I diabolical, or what?

I grew up in Southern California where anything built before the 1950s was considered “old”, and the closest really old building was 200 miles away at San Juan Capistrano. Things are quite a lot different out here in New England, where you can hardly throw a rock and not hit a building that isn’t, at least by my standards (I can hear any Europeans reading this snigger now!), older than dirt.

This old Victorian place is probably at least 100 years old, if not a lot more. I just love the look of places like this. As they say, they don’t build ‘em like they used to.

I really like this place as well, it’s almost built like a castle. Bummer I couldn’t find an angle that didn’t include a bunch of power lines.

A nice place, but I really have to wonder… What in god’s name were they thinking when they picked that colour?

This house always reminds me of a ship. A lot of houses around here are kind of designed like this, real narrow and long, but this is one of the more extreme ones.

This is Coburn Hall at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. My understanding is that this originally was the school and it just expanded from there.

There are squirrels all over the UMass Lowell campus, there’s tons of them and since they’re used to students constantly walking by they really don’t pay much attention to humans. This one was apparently trying to figure out what in the world I was doing, he eventually decided to ignore me and go about his business. Which mostly seemed to consist of trying to dig up nuts that he or one of his compatriots had buried.

I know at least one reader of this ‘blog is a fan of squirrel pics, so here’s a few more. If you click on the thumbnail you’ll get a bigger image in a new window.

The Merrimack river is just across the street from the UMass Lowell South Campus. I have no idea what kind of bird this was, this was about as close as he’d let me get (and this pic was taken at extreme zoom at that), but he was singing up a storm just happy to be sitting in a bush by the river.

And here’s what the Merrimack looks like when it isn’t frozen solid.

So that was my little walk this morning, I hope y’all enjoyed. I’ll probably be adding larger versions of some of these to my gallery later, probably tomorrow sometime, if anyone wishes to see other/higher-res versions. I’m using new gallery software now, hopefully a big improvement over what I was using, so the URL has changed.

And that’s pretty much it for me. I’ll be adding a tutorial Robbyn will be sending me on Friday. It’ll be sans pictures, she’ll add those when she gets back. Early next week your usually scheduled knitting ‘blogging will return.

I hope everyone is having a great week!

Myria

The three needle bind-off is a useful technique to acquire a nice, neat seam while avoiding having to sew it up.  It is quite strong and especially useful in the shoulder area of a sweater which get a fair bit if stress.  It will feel a little awkward at first but with practice, it becomes easy to do.  In addition to the needles you’re working from, you’ll need one more needle in the same size.

Needles, stitches and positions

Ordinarily, you would be joining two separate pieces of knitting together - the front to the back of a sweater, for example.  Here, with a 20 stitch wide piece of stockinette, I’ve knitted 10 stitches and folded the piece.  Make sure the right side of the pieces are on the inside - you want to be looking at the wrong side of the knitting.  Make sure that the needles are parallel to each other and that they both point in the same direction.  The working yarn should be coming off the first stitch of the needle closest to you.

Knitting off the first two stitches

Insert the tip of your third needle into the first stitches on both of your stitch-holding needles and knit as though you were doing a k2tog, removing both stitches from their respective needles and creating a single stitch on your third needle.

Binding off

Repeat the procedure so that you have two stitches on your third needle.  Lift the second stitch over the first as you would with a regular bind-off.  Continue in this fashion to the end of the row and fasten off.

Back and front views of the seam

Presto!  You have just made a nice, neat, sturdy seam.  Not too shabby, hunh? 

Some folks pick up the stitches along the sides of a garment and bind them off this way to work the seam.  I haven’t tried this myself but it’s an interesting idea and would probably be especially useful on children’s garments.

Hello y’all and welcome to my second stint as guest ‘blogger here on the Yarnpath. For those that are curious, Robbyn and her father got down to Florida just fine and are currently on their way to an unexpected stop in Bermuda—apparently the ship needed to take on some supplies. From there they’ll be heading across the Atlantic to Funchal, Madeira.

What I had planned to post for today got somewhat mucked up since it decided to snow about a foot or so yesterday. No biggie, on to plan B :). I occasionally like to fancy myself a photographer so I’m going to post some of my favorite photos and talk a little about each of them. It’s kind of like being trapped at a friend’s house whilst they show you 200 pictures of their vacation and you try not to fall asleep, only I promise it’ll be something less than 200 pictures…

This is a picture of Mazey, a resident of the Southwick’s Zoo. She was born 7/19/03 and when I took this picture she was only a couple of months old. It’s kind of amazing how fast giraffes grow, and I was very lucky to get such a nice shot of her.

This picture was also taken at the Southwick’s Zoo. This guy is a Patagonian Cavy, also called a Patagonian Mara (Dolichotis patagonum). They come from Argentina and are kind of strange creatures. This one was obviously as interested in me as I was in him.

I took these next two pictures at Riverwalk Park in Methuen, MA. It’s a little out-of-the-way park that you’d easily never see if you didn’t know it was there. As the name would suggest, there’s a small river there and a walkway that follows the river south towards Lawrence for a little ways. A very pretty place, when I was there it was covered in snow and ice and the only creatures around were a family of geese and a whole lot of crows.

Anyway, sometimes in photography it’s all about shape and texture. These ice formations were in a little shaded cul-de-sac formed by some larger ice formations. I can only guess at how these strange ice Lilly pads formed, I only saw them in this one place and there were hundreds of them with sizes ranging from an inch to six inches across. In a strange kind of way I thought them rather lovely.

Plants with these red berries were all over the banks of the river. I’ve no idea what they are, but the contrast between them and the snow was quite striking.

This is a picture of the Merrimack River… More like the Merrimack ice cube when this picture was taken. As you can see, it’s rather a large river, at least by my standards. The Merrimack bisects this city, in fact it’s just a few blocks from here (though this picture was taken on the other side of the river), getting across one of the bridges during drive time can be loads of fun. Especially since about half the bridges are currently either shut down or only partially open because they’re doing repairs. On the side of the river where this picture was taken they have a park where they sometimes give concerts and a walkway that follows the river down for a mile or so. A very nice place to go, especially in the summer as the river usually ensures that it’s a little cooler there and that there’s a breeze.

This duck really struck me, for some reason. There were lots of birds on the river, mostly seagulls but also some pigeons and geese. This guy just seemed, I don’t know, lonely I guess, and I can’t imagine his feet were very warm.

I took this picture whilst standing on the rocks at Long Sands Beach in York, Maine. If you look way off in the distance there you can see Nubble Lighthouse.

And this is Nubble Lighthouse. It sits on an island just a hundred meters or so from a point in York, Maine.

This is Saint Peters By The Sea on route 1A between York and Ogunquit, Maine. According to the plaque by the door it was erected in memory of George M. Conarroe of Philadelphia, Penna. by his wife in 1897. ItҒs kind of a small church, sits on top of a hill not much more than a stones throw from the Atlantic. ItҒs a very pretty church, in an odd kinda gothic sorta of way, very calm and old feeling. All in all a fitting memorial, I think, for someone I presume was religious and died over a hundred years ago. When I was there no one was around, which was a pity. I would have loved to have gone inside to get some shots of the gorgeous stained windows and perhaps have learned a little more about the churchs history. Perhaps another time.

This is, of course, the bell of Saint Peter’s By The Sea. I just really liked this shot, in the full-sized shot you can really see the wear and weathering on the bell and the way the rope is arranged to ring it. I wonder if the bell is as old as the church itself? I suspect it is.

And, last but not least, this is a shot I took at Perkin’s Cove, in Ogunquit, Maine. Up ahead a little you can see the footbridge is up, past that and around the bend is the Atlantic. Behind is the cove itself where a couple of dozen fishing and sailboats anchor. It’s a lovely little area, there are restaurants and shops all up and down the cove, but in the Summer it turns into standing room only. A very nice place to visit, but best to do so in Fall or Spring if you can manage it. Or winter if, like me, you don’t mind the cold.

Anyway, that’s it for the boring photos, my apologies to anyone who’s already seen these on my site. For anyone who’s interested in seeing larger versions of these or other shots from these various series, I have a photo gallery here, just click on the thumbnails to see more photos and larger versions.

I’ll be posting a tutorial Robbyn wrote before she left on Friday and I’ll be back again next Wednesday for another ANFSCD entry. Until then, I hope y’all are having a great week!

Myria

Zen Garden Stole

Close-up of bobble lace

This was an exercise in subtlety.  I wanted a pattern which would be interesting to work but which would enhance and reinforce the subtlety of the yarn.  I am very pleased with the results though I realize this won’t be to everyone’s taste.  Please feel free to work this in colors (or a color) of your choice.

Materials

• Noro Silk Garden, color 39 - 6 (50 gram) balls
• US size 8 needles (long straights or circular - your choice)

Gauge

I got about 4 sts per inch at fairly loose tension.  You might want to experiment with needle sizes until you get a finished fabric that you like - after all this is a stole and gauge isn’t important to fit here :)

Measurements

Roughly 20” x 65”

Terminology

• k = knit
• p = purl
• k2tog = knit 2 stitches together
• SSK = slip, slip, knit
• p1b = purl stitch through the back
• MB = Make Bobble




1. In next stitch, work k1, yo, k1.  Turn work.


2. p3.  Turn work


3. With right needle, lift second and then third stitch over first and drop off the needle.


4. Knit remaining stitch through the back.

Basic Pattern

1. [k1, p1] twice, *k7, p1, k1, p1; repeat from*.  End last repeat k1.
2. k1, p1, k1, *p9, k1; repeat from *.  End last repeat p1, k1.

Bobble Lace Pattern

1. [k1, p1] twice, *k1, k2tog, yo, k1, yo, SSK, [k1, p1] twice; repeat from *. 
   End, k1.


2. k1, p1, k1, *p9, k1; repeat from *.  End last repeat, p1, k1.


3. [k1, p1] twice, *k3, MB, k3, p1, k1, p1; repeat from *.
   End last repeat, k1.


4. k1, p1, k1, *p4, p1b, p4, k1; repeat from *.  End last repeat, p1, k1.


5. [k1, p1] twice, *k1, SSK, yo, k1, yo, k2tog, [k1, p1] twice; repeat from *.
   End, k1.


6. k1, p1, k1, *p9, k1; repeat from *.  End last repeat, p1, k1.

Cast on 65 stiches

1. Work first 5 rows in seed stitch (k1, p1 to end of row)
2. Work Basic Pattern three times (that is, for 6 rows)
3. Work Bobble Lace Pattern once
4. Work Basic pattern 6 times (12 rows)

Repeat 3 and 4 above for the desired length of the stole, ending with 3.  Then repeat 2.  Then repeat 1.

Cast off, weave in ends and block (or not as you prefer).
Fringe or trim if desired.

To increase width, add stitches in multiples of ten.  My stole is 6 repeats wide.
Of course adding width and/or length means you’ll need more yarn :)

Please let me know if you encounter any difficulties with this pattern. I’ll be glad to help or to make any corrections that may be nessecary :)