On The Road

I have never tried to blog on my mobile tablet device, so I am about to find out how it works.

The Yarn Harlot says she now only ever wears brown on airplanes, so given that she and  I seem to share a propensity for spilling coffe on ourselves, I decided to follow her brilliant advice.  The best part was that, since it would have been OK to spill, I never even did so all day!

I did take a picture of my knitting in LAX  (using the camera on my mobile tablet device) while we waited for our flight.  Let's see if I can upload it to the blog now.

*****time passes. I attempt to use a googleplus app to backup and access my camera roll on my mobile tablet device*****knock me over and fan me with a brick; it actually worked!

RIBBING FINISHED--about to begin K1, K1below vertical stripes

Seth and I were the only ones doing anything other than just sitting/eating or looking at their phones or other mobile devices (she says self-righteously as she taps away on her mobile tablet device on the coffeeshop's free wi-fi.

So we spent the night at the Grant Street Inn in Bloomington, Indiana. It was very nice and conveniently located. Of course most things are pretty convenient here as it's fairly small.  Actually it's a really lovely Midwestern mid-sized town.  Lots of nice shops in the downtown area.  One of which was a very nice LYS called Yarns Unlimited just off the courthouse square.  I had a moment of fear that it had closed because the street numbering was weird--even numbers on one block and odd on the next.  It is at 115 Walnut and there was an empty storefront next to 118!  Luckily we persevered.  I bought 3 skeins of locally dyed organic cotton/bamboo worsted weight yarn.  Ohh I'll take a photo! 

*******time passes, photo taken, photo uploaded ******

******oh crap,  just lost another 1/2 hour work on this--photos, writing, the works******

  We are here to meet a student to help get his bass all set up nicely and then we are stealing it to put it in the instrument competition at the Violin Society of America convention in Indianapolis.  Seth is 

almost done and the Soma coffee shop has gotten about 10 bucks out of me, and I  am about to throw this mobile tablet device in the trash.  I think it's time for some actual hands on leg warmer knitting time!

******* got Seth, got bass, ate a a sweet place called Finch's Brasserie, drove to "Indy", ensconced self on couch of adorable little VRBO 2 person house in a regular old real neighborhood just south of downtown , heated up ginger tea from Soma; now to find out if maybe this works better if not sharing wireless*******

Well, I got the links to work, but you just can scroll up and down at all. And on the MTD (mobile tablet device) there are no up and down arrows on the keyboard. I am going to try again to get the pictures in here.

*******manages to add 2 pictures in "only" 15 min.******

It is DEFinately time to put down the MTD and pick up my DPNs!!!

Summer Time Flies

     No, we haven't been having a fly problem, just the usual problem of time flying by when you're having fun. We decided to stay home this summer and do Oregon things. One of them was supposed to be blogging (in my mind) but this is the first I've gotten to it as I've been having too much fun doing other things. I guess I'll just try to do one thing (or at least theme) at a time so it isn't too arduous to read. By the way, if you haven't seen Seth's website recently, you should check it out. He re-did parts of it, and it has very little reading, mostly pictures.

     

    Of course a huge amount of my time has been devoted to fibery pursuits, so I'll start with

 them. School let out on Wed. June 17th and the Black Sheep Gathering started Fri. 19th. I worked on my room Thursday, then left it in total disarray for the rest of the weekend as I took FIVE classes at BSG this year: Popular Wheel Mechanics (with the utterly amazing Judith MacKenzie-McCuin), making felted pendants (with sweet and talented Lori Flood), spinning greased lightning (mohair) (with the ebullient and exuberant Janis Thompson), spinning exotics (with Queen of the Fiber Bins Laurie Weinsoft), and Tips, Tricks and Techniques (knitting) (with the extremely knowledgeable and helpful Joan Schrouder). I was exhausted, but I learned a TON. 

       

 I  had one afternoon to shop and I used it wisely: buying a Jenkins Turkish drop spindle, a set of new hand cards(I forget the maker--John Day area), some practice wool from Bellwether, a new drive band for my wheel, and a silly book.

I managed to get my rear end back to my classroom for one day on Monday and got things pretty well cleaned up, but I had the summer fiber bug pretty bad by then. I spent the next few days at my friend Dominique's house playing with some white fleeces and dyes. 

We did about 9 batches altogether. Mine are intended to supplement my Hunting Jacket yarn supply because the Ewes (my local spinning group) convinced me that I didn't have enough fiber for a whole jacket. Doe's are basically just her going crazy because she loves to dye.

I also managed to finish a second Noro 2 row scarf and my handspun cardigan that I have been working on for about a year!

I was excited that the one set of buttons 

I had in my button drawer went more than perfectly with it. 

The yarn is a blend of 50%  dyed silk and 50% Lorane (the long dead prize sheep's name from which my mother-in-law gave me her last pound of fleece). I carded it on my old gnarly hand cards and spun it rather unevenly I must admit. I chain plied it to keep the colors from mixing. The plied yarns ranged from a rather decent worsted weight sort of thing to pretty durned bulky. I had to alternate balls every other row to get a half consistent fabric! It was fun though, and I used big #11 needles. I designed it using Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top. I love how it fits and feels warm, but not too heavy. Next to Elizabeth Zimmermann, Barbara Walker is among my next most cherished knitting authors. Someone told me she's a feminist writer as well! AND she's going to be on the Luminary Panel at the Sock Summit which I will be attending next week.  Like I said, Summer Time Flies.

Catching Up

Once again I am not getting nearly as much done over the summer as one (i.e. I) might hope. One of my goals for the summer was to not be upset with myself when I didn't get things done that I wanted to. So, I am learning Something as the years pass. Since one of the things I wanted to do was start a Blog, I guess I managed that, but it won't be much good if all I do is Start it, then never write anything. SO, where were we?



Ah, yes, Port Townsend. It was really cute. Do NOT eat at the Lighthouse Cafe. It was the worst service and, can you believe it, Horrible [if you know Helen, say it like her "It was Ho(a)rrible!] French toast. There are other good restaurants though such as the Fountain Cafe, as well as a brew pub with great calamari, an artisanal bakery (Pane D'Amore) and good coffee (Tyler St. Cafe). Be sure to go Uptown and see the only 19th century wooden fire bell tower known in the U.S. and the beautiful old houses. Of course I had to visit the two little yarn shops. At the Twisted Ewe I bought a Della Q silk project bag for 50% off and 50g of "jarbo garn" (did she say it's Swedish?) merino roving in bright reds and oranges for a "hunting season" sweater concept I have in mind. At Diva Yarn and Trim I bought some short lengths of blues and peaches for a kumihimo cord I want to make for a fancy lampshade. Why didn't I photograph these?

Believe it or not, the real reason we were there had nothing to do with fiber! South of PT there's a family run business called the Wood Well which sells wood for instruments. It's mostly for electric guitars (!?), but they had a few bass "billets" as they're called (there, you learned something). We loaded up the truck with enough for about 3 more basses. Thanks Matthew, Sarah, et al!


On July 30th we headed for Seattle. We made it about 2 miles before I made seth stop at a The Swiss Lavender farm. It was lovely. The little shop even had a green (i.e. living) roof.































We dawdled on down to Bainbridge Island and took the ferry to Seattle. This is one of our favorite ferries becasue my sister Jean used to live on Bainbridge, so it's familiar and nostalgic. There was some wierd navy battle ship/Coast Guard endeavor to waste gas as several big Navy ships and little CG boats went around in circles in the harbor. After some yummy fried clams at Ivar's Acres of Clams we drove to Hammond Ashley Violins in Issaquah, where they gave Seth really good reviews on his new bass and agreed to sell it on consignment!





After a fun night eating fancy Tex-Mex in Redmond (I can't remember the name of the restaurant) and watching Batman Begins on my brother-in-law Jason's new home theater style TV set-up, we headed south again.

We only drove to Portland, and we spent a quiet anniversary night in the Ace Hotel which used to be the Clyde Hotel. It's a lot more expensive now, but still fun with a photo booth in the lobby, painted murals in the rooms, and great crazy nouveau food and stellar cocktails in the restaurant (Clyde Commons). Although it's much spiffier (more spiffy?) now, the hotel retains all of its historic charm, including the Cuban mahogany paneling in the lobby. We went to Powell's Books (larger than a block, independently owned, new and used books) saw a fun Audrey Tatou movie at the Living Room Theaters (small theaters with big comfy couch-like seats and tables for your cocktails or coffee/tea) across the street, & took our photos in the booth.



These are the pictures on the wall of our room.

I'll give it a rest now.

I did finish the sweater for the wedding though! If you're a Raveler you can see it from the link to my prjects.