Travel

Well, it is a good thing I braved the wind and went to the library last night. They had my size 2 sock needles and little blue crochet hook in their lost and found! Apparently I turned those in inside KnitKnit the other day. KnitKnit, by the way, I found an interesting read but an impractical choice for my knitting library. I don’t see myself ever donning gloves and a safety mask to cut hundreds of fiberglass strips and knit them into a totally huge, totally unsafe teddy bear. I also don’t see myself knitting a wall covering with a vest in it so a houseguest could fasten herself into the vest and be part of the decor. There was an asymmetrical cardigan that used a stitch pattern I liked but I didn’t like the asymmetry.

It has been a not-so-nice week leading up to my vacation that starts tomorrow after work. Life occasionally likes put us in our places. I mildly sprained that one knuckle that I already mentioned here, injured a calf muscle, and also came down with a cold yesterday. I stayed home from work today so I could try to sleep that off before flying. But looking at my little pile of my freshly-wound yarn cakes makes me smile:

It’s all sock yarn. That’s Fearless Fibers in Robin’s Egg on the left (still waiting to be caked), Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock in Rockstar at the top, Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Newtown on the right, and Claudia Hand Painted Yarns in Sharks (as in San Jose Sharks, the hockey team) at the bottom. I plan to bring 2, maybe 3 of these and haven’t decided which ones are making the cut.

Mystery Stole 4 will stay home, I think. I’ll see tomorrow morning. If I can cram it in the suitcase, it can come along. While basic shawls are great travel knitting, this one with all the teensy beads isn’t exactly portable. I need good light, space, and focus to work on this. But I might bring it to show off to my grandmothers.

For our vacation, we will spend one week in Paris on our own,  then travel around Germany visiting relatives of mine for 2 weeks. I haven’t heard anything too spectacular about yarn in Paris craft shops yet so I’ll leave those to chance. If I see one, I’ll go in. I hear buttons and ribbons are fabulous but the knitting bug hasn’t bitten there the same way it has here. Saarbruecken, Germany, has a shop called Tausendschoen that I definitely want to go to. I have read about it in several blogs and seen enough fiber and yarn photos from that shop that it’s become a must-see. The other shop I like in Germany is a chain called Wolle Roedel that can be found in many cities. They have a great basic line of worsted weight superwash wool that I really like for children’s wear plus a lot of sock and novelty yarns. So if I run out of sock yarn, I can rest assured knowing that I will be able to buy more. (For any of you who might be nit-pickers of German orthography, I can’t type umlauts with Wordpress).

We are not taking a computer, so I doubt I’ll be able to blog at any point this trip and if I do it will be short. See you in three weeks, when any completed travel knitting will be revealed.

Friday morning I noticed some action (finally) on the kitchen windowsill. That black strip in the background is the window. Due to the time change it is now pitch dark when I get up in the morning:

That barely visible teeny tiny sprout in the upper right quandrant is the first of I hope several basil plants I’m growing from the seeds of the previous plant. It only took this sprout 6 weeks to show itself (insert sarcasm here; 6 weeks?!? Is that normal?). And the other seeds? Perhaps they’re shy, or perhaps they have heard of my black thumb and have entered some sort of suicide pact, deciding to stay in the dirt rather than face my unique version of plant care. Time will tell.

After work we drove to my parents’ house and Saturday we had a fitting: I am very happy to announce that my mom’s socks fit! Before socks, though, my mom, Mr. MmmYarn, and I went for a walk along the coast. The California poppies are in bloom and are mighty glorious:

What? Not close enough? How about this:

The view on the other side of the path was nothing to sneeze at, either:

For poor Mr. MmmYarn it was all something to sneeze at as the pollen was out in full force. But for me, the luckily allergy-free, it was just so pretty out there that I had to snap a bunch of photos. Both sides of the path seen together, our walk looked something like this:

Nice, huh? But I did promise you socks galore, too, so here they come. We got back from our walk, my mom tried on all three pairs of socks, and I got to work grafting the toes. My stepbrother and his family showed up when I was nearly finished and my stepniece asked me what the socks looked like before I grafted them. I held up a skein of yarn and her eyes went wide with amazement and she gave a big grin. Future knitter? I finished up the last couple of toes, then the socks all went outside for their photo shoot.

Pair #1 with its banded colors reminds me of a snakeskin:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Austermann Step; 75% wool, 25% nylon, contains aloe and jojoba oil; color 01
Needles: size 2

Pair #2 looks like army camouflage to me:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Regia Stretch Color; 70% wool, 3% nylon, 7% polyester; color 88
Needles: size 2

I actually took several photos of each pair, against varying backdrops, but the lawn photos turned out best in each case, so you’ll need to see pair #3 against green, too. Ah, Trekking, with its lovely gradual and blended color changes:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Trekking Pro Natura; 75% superwash wool, 25% bamboo; color 1603
Needles: size 2

I hope you are not tired of socks yet as I have one more to show you. Mr. MmmYarn drove part of the way so I worked on my sock in progress in the car, but I am still working out some kinks in my design, making for slow work. The sock came to knitting group tonight. Now you see it:

Now you don’t:

Sigh.

Not so much progress, really. It was too hot and humid to knit the first two days we were in Mexico and in general during the trip I was more interested in reading than knitting. How on earth can you sip a mojito or piña colada with both hands on knitting needles? A book was a much more logical choice for that, not to mention booze really messes with my gauge.

However, sock #3 saw the beach briefly:

And sock #4 went to the Chichen Itza (I got a whole lot done in 6 hours on a bus as you can see )and also enjoyed the glorious ocean view at our hotel:

Notice how bent over the trees are? That wind is the reason we could not go snorkeling the whole trip. The seas were so rough that the harbor was closed for 3 days.

We saw large lizards on the hotel grounds on the warm days. Iguanas, maybe? On our last day there we went on a quick iguana hunt and found this one on one side of the pool:  

And this one over by the spa:

I am glad I packed very little knitting this time. I worked on part of a bootie on the airplane but wasn’t too motivated. On the ride home, my seat’s light bulb was out so it was too dark to see what I was doing with the black yarn (non-traditional bootie) even though Mr. MmmYarn kindly suffered through having his light on for me. Knitting-wise, it was a vacation. Probably good for the wrists.

I like other textiles besides knitting and was excited to look for Mexican embroidery on our trip. I did try but as we only took an organized bus tour, when the bus stopped we only got to see a real tourist trap of a market, offering some handmade items selling for a pittance but catering to the “I went here and all I got was this t-shirt” crowd, meaning a rough embroidered Chichen Itza or an “I heart Mexico” logo. It was too bad, really, as my local library has some great books on Mexican textiles so I know what can be found.

I am always on the lookout for great signs and the red “Severe Weather Area” sign outside all the restrooms (and only the restrooms; we looked for them elsewhere and did not find them) in the Dallas / Ft. Worth airport made me grin:

Perhaps they mean to imply one is in danger of a tornado only whilst using the facilities? Yikes! My guess is it’s the only place they could think of to put these things to ensure visitors actually read the warning about turbulent atmospheric conditions in Texas.

I got my Ravelry invitation a month ago but hesitated joining as the name “mmmyarn” was already taken. Weird, as a Google search back then yielded me as the only mmmyarn out there at that time. Searching yesterday, I found another blog with this name! But mine is older, hehehe. Anyway, I finally signed up on Ravelry last night as “mmmyarn1,” so look for me there under that name. So far I haven’t put much in there, mostly my books, but it is an interesting site.

Mr. MmmYarn and I got back from our honemoon/vacation last night. We had a fantastic time. We went to London, England, for two days, then took the train down to Dover and boarded the Marco Polo for a cruise down the Iberian Peninsula. The cruise ended in Barcelona, Spain, where we spent three days before coming home.

I did not knit very much on the trip. Our flight there left in the evening after work and I had the unusually good fortune to sleep for most of it, daytimes we were busy roaming about various cities, and evenings aboard ship were geared toward entertainment and had generally dim lights, dim enough to rule out using a chart and in some cases so dim I had no hope of finding a dropped stitch in something as simple as booties. 

I also did NOT (brace yourself) buy any yarn at all. We found only one open yarn shop, and I use the term loosely, in La Rochelle, France. The shop had about 5 varieties of eyelash novelty yarn and a couple of super-bulkies. The rest of the floor space was devoted to ribbons and sewing notions. I found yarn shops everywhere else except in London and Barcelona, and they were all closed, either for vacation or for siesta. Ah, well. Next time.

Some baby booties saw a bit of Brugge, Belgium, and also spent a day on deck while we were at sea. Here’s a typical view:

Glorious, isn’t it? We had great luck with the weather.  

I finished them the day we went to La Coruna, Spain, and photographed them in the first square we found:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Filatura di Crosa Baby Zarina, 100% superwash merino wool
Needles: size 2
Finished size: newborn to 6 months

I started a pair of socks for me, the first lace pattern I’ve ever worked in socks, but haven’t even gotten to the heel on sock #1. I worked about half of this on the bus to the Alhambra palace in Spain and the rest on the flight home. Blurry bus knitting in Spain: 

You may have noticed the wooden needles, a necessary departure from my usual metal ones. My past experiences with Heathrow airport have taught me that the Brits are more strict about inidividuals toting certain things onto an airplane, and British Airways’ customer service could not give me a definite answer on the subject, so I decided not to risk it and procured wooden needles for potential in-flight knitting.  

On board the ship I worked some on the Myrtle Leaf shawl from Victorian Lace Today. More frogging than knitting took place. I blame the swells. I’d love to blame the booze, but I rarely mix lace with alcohol, and it’s even more unlikely when the lace pattern is all action rows (no plain knit or purl rows to make life easier). I worked only 3 pattern repeats before abandoning the shawl in favor of reading. It’s not looking like much yet, so I didn’t take a photo. Also, I can’t photograph it as it’s currently residing in Mr. MmmYarn’s suitcase, which decided to board the wrong plane at Heathrow and is having fun without us in parts unknown. Heck, the layover ended up being something like 20 minutes and WE made it to the plane. What was the suitcase thinking, prolonging its vacation like this, and without us? Thank goodness for more advanced luggage tracking and barcodes; it is supposed to be delivered to the house tonight.

On board the ship, I only saw 3 other ladies knitting and one doing cross-stich. The cross-stitcher almost always had a beer…or two…or three, sometimes all at once. How on earth did she count stitches with the ship bobbing up and down while also drinking??? One of the three knitters happened to be the wife half of the couple with whom we shared our dinner table every evening. Her stash sounds much bigger than mine.

The ship part of the trip was pretty good. I only had one day of seasickness (the Bay of Biscay can get rough), meals were ample (”Food! Glorious food!” (see Ice Age 2 if you don’t understand this reference)), and the ship’s staff did a great job. We were in the possibly 2% of passengers under 60. There was one other couple in about our decade and some young college-age women who were there with either their parents or grandparents. Bingo, shuffleboard, and various card games were big draws on our days at sea. We went on only three arranged shore excursions. I was concerned about the first one as it was labeled “strenuous” and I’m not in the best of shape right now, but it was easy, even slow, going. I learned afterward that the average age of a cruiser on this type of cruise is 72 or 73. This changes the meaning of the word “strenuous”!

The other days Mr. MmmYarn and I wandered around the ports of call on our own, foraging for lunch (not easy in Spain or Portugal) and seeing the sights within walking distance of the ship.

One final thought, and I can’t stress this enough: a whole bottle of wine with your lunch is a very good thing.

Back to work tomorrow. 

P.S. on 9/17: the suitcase is here, so the Myrtle Leaf shawl is back in my possession. Hooray!