A fortnight in Boston

Well, I didn't get two rows of the SSSS done. It's sitting forlornly in my suitcase as I write, halfway through one of those unspeakably long rows. Never mind. Hopefully by next winter... because we're rapidly getting to the stage where scarves are irrelevant. (Although it looks like Tuesday and Wendesday here will be quite cold enough, I'm not even going to pretend to myself that I have any chance of fininshing it before then.)
This is how the striping is working out. A little more subtle than I'd hoped, but I don't mind it all all.

(Photo taken in hotel bathroom: nowhere else is light enough.)
Clapotis, too, has been neglected. I just pulled her out this morning to manage a couple of rows.
So what have I been doing? I was home in London for two weeks between arriving from Denmark and leaving for the US (Boston). I am allergic to London. I have long suspected this, but it seems that if I leave for more than two weeks I get ill when I return. Sinus infections and/or migraines. The joy. So I didn't get a lot of knitting done. And work was busy, so I was tired.
I've been in Boston a week: my partner came along with me and left on Wednesday, so not much knitting was done, but we had a car, shopped for most of our summer wardrobe in Lane Bryant, explored Cambridge (which I approve of heartily) and generally enjoyed the snow and ice. (That is not sarcasm. We really, really like the cold.) I did fall over on the ice, which terrified my partner, produced small bruise about the size of a thumbprint, and probably contributed to my back giving me hell on Thursday and Friday. I spent most of Thursday kneeling backwards on an office chair, leaning over the back to get to my keyboard. It was the only position I could stay in for any length of time.
I managed to get to Cambridge again this weekend, and dropped into Woolcott & Co. which I had seen the previous week, but didn't really want to drag my other half into for an extended period of time. We have Malabrigo: two skeins of a lovely dark purple, and another skein of bluish green. Plans may be afoot. I also have a skein of Cascade 220 in a beautiful emerald green. I am contemplating making a Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby surprise jacket out of it, as I think I have enough wool. If not, I'm sure it will find another home.
Yes, I also succumbed to a book: EZ's Knitting Workshop. Woolcott and Co. didn't have the individual pattern left... and I have long heard about EZ but done nothing about her. They had a completed baby surprise jacket on the table... how could I resist?
I then walked to the Wholefoods on River Street, bought a whole lot of food (I have a food sensitivity to wheat, corn and soy: living on hotel food in the USA for two weeks is not an option I can face with equanamity) and, after a mix-up with the taxi, got home at nine. And watched two hours of Law and Order: SVU. I very rarely see this show, but it seems to satisfy my need to watch something mindless every now and then. Most comedy makes me cringe, and I've read murder mystery books as a method of relaxing since I was ten, so I suppose it makes sense.
While I was here, I have been receiving packages, one of which was an ultimate sweater machine. Due to BA's skimpy luggage allowances, I may have an interesting time getting it home, but I will see what I can do. At least for the US I'm allowed two checked in bags and two carry-on pieces of luggage.
Which brings me to a small but important rant. I'm a stately girl. Stately in the way that Queen Victoria was: what I lack in height I make up for in width. If you divided women over a US size 14 into three groups of Queens, Empresses and Goddesses, I'd probably be an Empress. Lane Bryant has clothing that's too large for me, but not much. Every now and then people have a go about fat people in my hearing and sometimes to my face. They're not talking about me, they honestly seem oblivious to the fact that I'm one of the people they're talking about. I find this strange and wrong.
Anyway, one of the common areas of complaint is that they (non-fat people) should receive an enhanced luggage allowance because of the extra weight a fat person carries on board a plane. Surely they should be able to make up this difference in body weight with luggage? This is wrong in so many ways that it makes me want to scream.
The main reason, though, is simple arithmetic. If I take the same number and type of pieces of clothing as you do... my suitcase is going to be heavier. My clothing consumes more cloth. It's really quite simple. The same would be true if I were tall... but being tall is obviously involuntary and is socially acceptable.
Let's not even go into the whole debate over whether being overweight is voluntary or not.
Enough ranting. I need to do some work. It's mostly quite interesting work... but it's work. On a weekend.

2 rows a day

SSSS (Sari Silk Sideways Scarf) is slowly growing. I've set myself a goal of two rows a day, which doesn't seem very much, but I'm a slow knitter, I don't have huge swathes of time in which to knit, and they're very long rows. Over 6 feet long, in fact.

I bought 2 skeins each of Sari Silk Solid colours in Spice, Russet and Deep Red. The deep red was so lovely that I bought 6 more skeins and squirrelled all of it away. Spice and Russet together, while pretty, lacked something. So I dyed one skein of the Spice with Grape Kool Aid (plus a little Tropical Punch) and one skein of the Russet with Tropical Punch Kool Aid (Plus a little Grape). The result it better: although the Russet and dyed Russet are very close in colour, I think it's still OK. The Spice dyed well and I'm happy with both colours.

I'm hoping to get it finished in time for my next trip: Boston, leaving Friday 23rd in the evening. And since I'm staying there two weeks I've been working out what to order from Knitpicks. I may not get another opportunity for a while...

Denmark is still pretty...

but not as pretty as last Saturday: no snow. The other half got all excited about the snow and went and frolicked in it at 1 am because it was falling (we're both Australian, all right? We don't get to see much snow), and then when she came in she was so excited that I put on my boots and my coat and went and frolicked with her. There was snow. There was a frozen lake. There were disgruntled ducks and swans. What more could one want? Our (British) guest very sensibly went to bed.
It has turned out that I need to stay here another week now, work got stuffed up a bit. I was originally going to go home Friday and return on Tuesday... but the thought of losing either a full work day (it takes 6 hours door-to-door each way) or 10 - 12 hours of my weekend filled me with dread.
Stupid company reduced its QA resource on a particular product to 1 person, put out a new patch and a) didn't test some fairly basic things and b) accepted the existence of a bug which they should not have released it with. So I'm wandering through the validation scripts for a company, should have been a straightforward exercise and... I'm stuck in Copenhagen for another week. And I feel bad for the client, for whom it should have been a straightforward, no-angst exercise.
Never mind. I have to move apartments on Saturday morning, but the company I'm renting from have very kindly allowed me to move in a 9am instead of 3pm - so that I can do some shopping!
Yes, there may be yarn-related purchases, and if there aren't there will be other purchases.
I am under strict instructions from the other half to do some present shopping for family/friends based on what we saw last weekend... Such lovely things. Not cheap, but lovely. And I've got my eye on a couple of things for presents too. We need to buy things early, it takes so long to send things to Aus. Hey, the way I'm going at the moment I think I could send some of them sea-mail, which isn't a bad idea considering the cost of postage! I'm being unusually organised for me - in the last year or so I've been sending things on people's birthdays (or, memorably, actually after Christmas day) and apologising. I'm trying to do better this year.
I have made a little progress on the SSSS, just 4 rows but I think it will look lovely. I just need to remember to buy a needle with an appropriately large eye this weekend for russian joining: the yarn has quite a few breaks, and I can't stand weaving in ends. Russian joins seem so much tidier and more sensible.
I have an idea in the back of my brain which needs a few different colours of yarn, some circulars and some double-points. These supplies are one of my goals this weekend. Work can pay the baggage fine if it's overweight, damn them.

Denmark is pretty

So. I've spent the last week in Copenhagen, Denmark for work. I'm staying in a rather astonishing place: I decided that since I would be here for nearly two weeks, I would try to find a self-catering apartment rather than a hotel. I wanted to be able to do my own laundry and cooking.
What I did find in the same price-range as the hotel the client would have put me up in was a corporate let. Well. It has two bedrooms, a dining room and a lounge room, all white and light a spacious. It's slightly larger than my flat in Sydney... and I've been enjoying it very much. Not that I've actually spent all that many hours here not working, but it's still nice not to have to live in one room mostly occupied by a bed for two weeks.
My partner came over for a few days and a friend came over for the weekend. All very satisfactory and Copenhagen is a lovely city. I would love to live here. It snowed. Pictures will follow. We are happy little Australians and we frolicked.
Did I do anything textile related? Well, Clapotis comes along slowly but steadily.

I've just cast on for my Sari Silk Sideways Scarf, and I did find a couple of yarn shops:

Uldstedet - Very nice basement shop. Lots of yarn for fair-isle, some very nice felt slippers and buttons. A good range of the usual suspects like Debbie Bliss and Rowan as well.
Strikkeboden - Lovely little shop, has a good general range as well as Noro and its own brand of 100% alpaca. Lovely. I nearly broke and bought some, even though I can't wear it. Maybe someone I know can...

I also came across a couple of unexpected fabric shops, and bought a length of fabric which was probably the most expensive thing in the shop: a wool felt, almost thrummed. Picture to follow, it went home with my other half due to my already too-heavy suitcase. In another shop, which was full of the most beautiful silks, I found some viscose jersey remnants, some in purple, some in black, which I hope to run up into a shirt of some sort. The silk. Mmmmm. The range of wool fabric here is also superb.
In non-textile related news, we went to Georg Jensen. When I was a little girl in Sydney, if we went into town with my mother, one of my treats would be to visit the Georg Jensen shop. We never bought anything, just wandered around and drooled. This time bought ourselves a tree-topper from their christmas range: essentially just a star on a spring, but exactly what I've been looking for and it will add that extra niceness to every Christmas.
Due to the present-like nature of the other things I bought they shall not feature here.
Shopping is not cheap here, but due to the fact that we're earning pounds, it's not horrifyingly expensive, either. Not the way it would be if we were earning Australian dollars...

You like yarnporn, lady? For you, five dollah...

To view, maybe. A little more than that to buy.

I have a mild sensitivity to wool. My skin can cope with wool everywhere but my neck and chest: v-neck jumpers not a problem, trousers not a problem. Woollen coat facings against my chest? Nasty redness and itchiness. Woolen scarf around my neck? Ditto. Woolen hat against my forehead, ditto, although I'm not really a hat wearer, so this bothers me less.
All I have to do it hold a ball of yarn up against my neck and I can tell. Superfine merino doesn't work, alpaca doesn't work. Intense moisturisation of my neck and chest doesn't work either.

I really want to knit a scarf. Yes, I could knit one out of polyamide, but the only non-pastel colour I've been able to find is black; I could make one out of fleece, and indeed I already have one. But... I could also knit one out of silk. It has superb insualting properties and isn't made out of plastic. Plus it's luxurious, and isn't that the point of this hand-knitting thing?

I looked at available pure silk. I wanted at least dk weight, because I'm a slow knitter, so my choice was pretty limited. Debbie Bliss Pure Silk? Feels lovely, but the only colour I like is black. I like my colours on the darker side. And it's expensive to buy and subject to my rudimentary dyeing skills, given that I am limited to Kool Aid due to living in a flat with no outdoor area or laundry (the mad british don't seem to understand laundries), so it's the kitchen or nothing.

I thought well, I could buy cheaper white silk and dye my own with Kool Aid. I decided on black cherry and grape, because I'd used them before, and I thought I'd try Texere's wild silk number 8. It's not very expensive.

Double disaster:

• finding black cherry and grape in sufficient quantities (1 sachet per 25g yarn = 4 sachets per 100g = 16 sachets per 400g) in this country is not easy. After poring over knitty's colour examples, I decided grape and tropical punch might do and ordered some, along with some orange (that's another story). When it arrived... due to stock levels I got 6 tropical punch, 12 grape and oodles of orange. Plus extra orange because they were sorry that they didn't have the colours flavours I wanted.
• yarn arrived. It looks and feels like string. I knit with it a bit. It still looks and feels like string. I returned the remaining 3 cones.

I had been eyeing off the Woolpeddler's recycled silk for some time. I met some recycled silk in the form of scarves at Camden market, and I've been attracted to it ever since but didn't really want to buy it by mailorder because of the colour variations. I may have a mild control issue with colour. Stephanie and her Silk Solids range solved that problem. I've been mooning over it ever since, and after the disaster with the texere silk, decided to order. My sister-in-law gave me a strangely suitable amount of money for my birthday and I hadn't spent it so...

I love the dark red. It's... dark and silky. What did I expect? I don't know, but nothing this divine. I feel perfectly safe putting this on the blog even thought there's a limited supply because a) no-one reads it anyway and b) I went and ordered 6 more skeins of the red alone. I couldn't help it.

Now, what to do with it all? I'm thinking sideways because I like lenthways stripes and I'm way too lazy to do it by intarsia. Knitpicks' Moguls scarf looks like it could work, too, although I do have three colours and the original is knitted in a different yarn weight... My other thought is sideways stocking stitch, changing yarn every row, fringing the end. I am attracted to this due to pure laziness: if I start each row from the same end I can get stocking stitch with nary a purl row. I am not a virtuous knitter.