Finis

No, I'm afraid there are no FOs in this post.



This is my last post for 2007, and probably my last post from the UK. I'm flying home to Australia in 4 days (and due to the flight length and vagaries of timezones, will arrive in 6). My partner and I have spent the last week trying to clean out the house and get rid of various goods in a responsible manner.



I'm not quite sure why, but there seems to be far more a culture of the new in the UK than I'm used to in Australia. Maybe it's just the area we live in over here. It's quite difficult to get rid of second-hand but perfectly reasonable goods. We had to throw out more than we were comfortable with, but what can you do? We did manage to sell or give away most of our larger encumbrances and found a recycling centre for much of the rest.



Most of the stash left in boxes to sail the high seas just before Christmas. I had to inventory it and price it for insurance. Given how much I've spent on it, I'd damn well better start doing useful things with it. Hopefully I will see it again some time in March. Two pieces of knitting remain with me: the one row scarf I have been trying to knit for some time now, and a baby jacket for a friend whose baby is due any day now. (I am realistic: the jacket is sized for a 6-month-old.)



Unfortunately my hands and shoulders have been getting a cleaning workout, and knitting is not really on the agenda right now. I have an intermittently pinched nerve in my neck which started bothering me very badly a couple of months ago when I a) slipped on a nameless slippery substance on the footpath and jarred my arm and b) fell up the stairs at a client (I had only had 7 hours sleep in the previous 3 nights) a few weeks later. At the moment the last 3 fingers of right hand ache which isn't too bad: at worst I get numbness, pins and needles, my elbow aches and my shoulder aches. It gets worse when I get cold, so I'm trying to apply heat packs to it on a regular basis.



One more night in this house, and everything has to be out including us. We are staying the next two nights with some friends who put us up for the first month we were over here. The last night we are staying at the airport Hilton: I've spent so many nights in hotels of the Hilton family due to work that I've earned a couple of free nights.



I am still very ambivalent about moving back to Sydney. I've spent 2 and a half years living in London. I can't say it's where I'd choose to stay forever: between the insanely busy lifestyle and my allergy to London air it hasn't been the best time. I've learnt a lot over here, and done things I never would have thought myself capable of. I've overcome my fear of flying and can stand up in front of a client for 5 days on end either training or facilitating and enjoy it. I didn't get to explore London the way I wanted to: too much travel has meant that if I'm actually home on a weekend, that's where I want to stay.



I'll miss the cooler weather terribly. So far the weather forecast for the next week in Sydney isn't awful from my point of view, but it isn't great, either. I'm not sure what possessed us to return at this time of year.



Trying to pack up and go home has been a real pain in the arse, but one of the advantages of this is that it makes me view the long flight home and the fact of being home with more pleasure: we're so tired of packing and cleaning and making decisions that we just want it to be over.

Norwegian Fibre Adventures

I wrote this post a while ago, but I hadn't taken any relvant pictures, and work has been more than usually ridiculous. 60 hour weeks. That sort of thing.

So, fibre adventures in Norway.
I didn't get to do as much as I would have liked, but I did get to do more than I'd planned, so I can't complain.

The first fibre related thing I did was to buy some gloves. We took the ferry over from Tørvikbygd to Jondal in order to go and visit the glacier. Just outside the ferry car park there was a little charity shop (I think) full of hand-knitted and crocheted things. My hands were cold, and the fingerless gloves fit my silly little hands. Plus, they're sort of sweet, and like absolutely nothing I would ever knit.

Exhibit A

At the nearest town of reasonable size (Norheimsund) there was a lovely yarn shop which I spent some time in. I eventually bought this Ego Tweed yarn because it was just so lovely. I have no idea what to do with it, but that's what stash is for, isn't it? They had lots of other lovely yarns, but I have come to the realisation that moving back to Australia really means that I should be looking for cotton and silk yarns, or thinking about making bags. For all practical purposes, the number of scarves I need in Australia is zero. (Well, maybe one if I plan on taking a winter holiday in New Zealand.)

I did visit a couple of yarn shops in Bergen, but although they did have lovely yarn, there wasn't anything I needed. Plus, since we spent rather longer than intended at the place of interest mentioned below, we were rather strapped for time.

My partner pointed out to me that there was a advert for the Norwegian Knitting Industry Museum on our tourist map, and that it was just north of Bergen. I have no idea what possessed her to mention this, but I'm grateful that she did. We went there. They seemed rather surprised to see us, but gave us a tour anyway (I suspect they mainly cater to school groups). The flat knitting machines were cool. The circular knitting machines were cool. The drum carders were not only cool, but seriously pretty. The spinning, winding and plying machines also had a certain cool quality. There was a film about the factory's history, which indicated that they mainly manufactured men's underwear from a cotton/wool mix until they started being unable to compete with the Asia. They were saved briefly in the 70s by a fashion obsession with 'icelandic' sweaters, which they were able to make easily and fairly cheaply, but eventually had to close down. There was fine-gague knitting goodness and a lot of 19th century machinery. What more could a girl want? This girl, anyway.

Norway

I love Norway. I don't know what it is about Scandinavia, but I love it and would dearly like to live here. I'm sure there are things which would annoy me if I did live here, but this is my fantasy, so I can ignore them.

Getting here was pretty awful. When I got home from India I felt like hell. The M4 eastbound was closed, so it took me over an hour from the airport to home, and I then had to sprint off to the doctor. I rang them when the plane landed, explaining that I was landing from India and had to fly to Norway early the next morning, and needed an urgent appointment. The triage nurse rang me back and agreed that having a sinus infection would make being an air hostess miserable. I had a good laugh at that: clearly the only occupation the doctors' staff could think of when faced with my itinerary was cabin crew. I put on washing, took it to the laundromat for drying and dragged myself up our stairs to pack my bag. I felt ghastly at this point, and everything was taking me at least 3 times as long as it should have.

Somewhere around this time I realised that I had no idea where the information for our accommodation was, and it had only been sent to me in paper format. I found the telephone number of the agency, but the first website I went to gave their hours as 09:00 - 20:00 Monday to Friday. No use at 22:00 in London on a Friday night. I looked up the owner in the Norwegian phone book online, but they weren't listed. At this point I had a small meltdown. Thankfully my partner wasn't home to see me wandering around crying and being loopy. Eventually I got over this, and made a plan. I still had the address of the owner, who I knew didn't live far from the house, and there was a hotel nearby where someone might know who they were. I found another website, which gave the agency's hours as 09:00 - 20:00, 7 days a week. I rang the agency number, but the answering machine was in Norwegian or Danish, and I didn't understand. Plan A was to email the agency and then ring them from the airport to get the details. If that failed, then plan B was to drive to Strandebarm and try to find the owner. Plan C was to sleep in the local hotel overnight and try again in the morning.

Having worked out that, I collapsed on the couch for an hour and took antibiotics and Neurofen Plus. Things started to look a little better.

The taxi was booked for 5:45, which meant getting up at 4:45. I got to sleep some time after 4, after I had packed everything (including copious amounts of knitting) and printed out information for our stay. The prospect of being cut off from the internet for a week makes me a little frantic, as I usually just keep everthing online and don't worry. I actually got asked for my ticket in Hyderabad airport, and I didn't have a printout or know my flight number. Too much flying means that the desk is lucky if I turn up with my passport and know what city I'm flying to. Occasionally I get the wrong country on the first try.

The taxi arrived on time and then drove like a demon. We shut our eyes and tried not to think about it. Stanstead was surprisingly OK as we weren't in the first rush around 7, so there were no queues. The agency answered the phone and my email, and I bought some wireless time to download the details of our accommodation. Our plane wasn't at all full. Once on it, I slid into a dead sleep until we started descent into Bergen.

Once we got our car we had the challenge of driving into Bergen to find the tourist information office. We couldn't get a map of southern Norway at the airport, and Hertz gave us a spectacularly useless one. Now remember that I had had 40 mins sleep the night before and just over an hour on the plane, was suffering from a sinus infection, and was navigating from a tourist map. My partner had had two hours' sleep and was driving a manual car on the right side of the road for the first time. We got very, very stressed in Bergen. There were emergency vehicles at some point. We finally managed to park somewhere after much swearing and explosiveness. We found the tourist info. We found a place that sold very expensive knives (the other half wanted to get a Norwegian knife for her father). We found a supermarket, we found a public toilet. We tottered back to the car and tried to get out of Bergen. It wasn't easy. We went the wrong way a couple of times. Part of this was due to the fact that the detailed map of the city didn't have North pointing to the top of the page, whereas the map of the surroundings did. We then went exactly the opposite way to the direction in which I had been trying to go, and I realised that this would actually work. Two-and-a-half hours later we arrived at the house we had rented.

The house was superb. There was a combustion stove with firewood in the cellar. We drove around and looked at fjords and mirror lakes and windy roads and apple orchards. We drove up to a glacier and watched people ski down it. We fruitlessly tried to get tourist information (we were here after that magic date, 1st October, when tourist activities cease to exist). We drove into Bergen and out again without too much swearing. There was knitting (but not enough), relaxing (definitely not enough) and cooking (probably too much). We bought apples and pears from the roadside, so there was apple crumble and pear crumble. There were roasted vegetables, egg and lemon soup, sausage jumbalaya, more roasted vegetables and hot chocolate. There was a rotisserie chicken which had been soaken in brine, I think, and was the most delicious chicken I have eaten in Europe. One of my partner's colleagues heard that I was having trouble finding tapioca flour and got some for us, which was very sweet of her. I brought it on holiday and made these little cheesy buns. I made them with Jarlsberg, and as long as you knead them until the motor on the little hand-held mixer tries to give up, they are lovely and not too slimy at all. The house had a dishwasher. Lots of cooking did not require lots of arduous washing up. I think a dishwasher may be our first investment once we return to Australia. Life was good.

We sat on the verandah and looked at the fjord. We watched Battlestar Galactica on the laptop of an evening. We had some long overdue deep and meaningful conversations. Can I have a month here? Please?

View from the verandah... more Norway photos here

In the next exciting installment I will detail the fibre and craft activities we partook of in Norway. There were two yarn shops, a bead shop and a knitting industry museum. My partner willingly watched a 20 minute video on the history of a knitting factory which primarily made underwear. Admittedly she was coming down with the flu, but it's still a noteworthy event.

India

India was exhausting. I had firmly decided to just go with the flow, but nothing particularly disturbing happened. Things just took a long time. One morning it took 1 and 1/4 hours to drive to work because the traffic was so awful: the same journey took 20 minutes the previous day. I had to leave work at 13:00 one day because 30,000 people were coming to the lake next to my hotel to throw statues in it that evening, and I would have had trouble getting to the hotel at the normal time.

The hotel was beautiful: five star Marriott with several restaurants, a pool I didn't get around to swimming in and a beautiful garden.

I found the line of people saying 'Good morning madam' and 'Good evening madam' out the front a little daunting, and the fact that they checked every car that came in the gates for bombs was a little disturbing. I don't cope well with servility - it doesn't sit well with my world view. The food was lovely, and I have picked up a new habit: hot chocolate with hot milk in a jug, demerara sugar and chopped dark chocolate. Put your chocolate in your tea-cup, add a little sugar, pour hot milk over it, wait a little and stir... My excuse is that the room was airconditioned to 20 degrees as a fixed temperature, which when you are not very well can seem rather cold. In general, the food was very good, and I got to eat dishes I miss, like Malai Kofta and Paneer, and discovered Dosa, which will probably be my undoing. I have to learn how to make them. Have to.

I may be the only western person from my company to go to India and, instead of getting an upset stomach, come down with a cold and a sinus infection. I felt pretty awful most evenings. Work was OK: the class were very polite and hard-working, so I was pretty happy with that, and Sudafed Max (bless the British for still stocking pseudoephedrine in pharmacies) got me through most days.

I did have some trouble sleeping, and the last day was bad. I woke up at 04:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. I then worked a little, went to the office for a full day, came back to the hotel to finish packing and have a client teleconference, then slept from around 22:00 to 00:30. Got up, went to the airport, slept around 1 hour on the plane to Dubai and then 3 or 4 hours on the plane to London. I then had to go to a doctor, pick up some antibiotics, and pack my bags for Norway... after which I got about 40 minutes sleep before the taxi to the airport arrived...

Emirates was lovely, and on the Dubai - London leg I got a new plane with almost-flatbed seats. I asked them not to disturb me and slept like the dead for a few hours, after which I picked up a swatch I started about 5 times before getting it right. All I was trying to do was get the correct number of stitches in the correct configuration to have a pretty edge on seed stitch on both edges. The end result is below, but too little sleep made this difficult for me to figure out, clearly. Two of the crew came to talk to me about the knitting and told me how clever I was. Given my inability to achieve a pretty basic task, I felt like a fraudulent 5-year-old.

To have a nice bobbly edge on seed stitch:
Cast on an odd (divisible by 2 +1) number of stitches:
R1 *K P* ...K
R2 Sl P *K P* ...K
Repeat Row 2

One of my colleagues who has been seconded over to the company in which I was training has all her family in Hyderabad, which was why she took the opportunity when it came up. She took me fabric shopping with her mother and mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law was from a weaving family, and was able to tell me not to buy a couple of fabrics because of flaws. There were so many beautiful silks and cottons. I wish I had more time and more energy, but I got a good haul, much of which will be for presents in the future, some of which will be for me and for me alone...

India is so brightly coloured, and a large proportion of the colour comes from its women. The saris and salwar kameez come in colours I'd never consider wearing, but which look so normal in India. The way women ride side-saddle on the back of motorcyles, holding onto the shoulder of the driver, saris floating in the breeze: this still amazes me.

The tiny little yellow taxis and flatbed trucks amused me. I'm not sure what the taxis are, but the trucks seem to be Piaggio Ape. They are crammed with people and goods, and do seem like strange little bees, buzzing around a slightly altered universe.

India was hot, dusty, noisy, humid, tasty and very polite.

I got a very little bit of knitting done: two swatches, one in RYC Cotton Jeans for a Baby Yoda and another in Jaeger Aqua, for either another Baby Yoda or a Baby Kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting. Babies are afoot.

In transit

As I suspected, life has been a little insane in the last couple of weeks. I've had an average of about 5 hours' sleep a night and I'm desperate for a holiday. One more week, and I'm going to Norway to sit on the edge of a fjord (actually, I suspect I'll spend the first 3 days sleeping, waking up occasionally to murmur 'mmmm, pretty' before dropping off again).

I had a particularly stressful client engagement in Brussels, which involved 6 hours' sleep in 48 hours and falling up a set of stairs, then went to Barcelona for 5 days, three of them work. Unfortunately I caught a bad cold in Brussels, so even though I saw quite a lot of Barcelona (my poor partner joined me for the weekend and had the joy of dragging me around) all I wanted to do was sleep. However, the food was divine and... the Catalans understand coffee. Real short blacks with not a trace of bitterness and jugs of hot milk. Wheeee!

I spent the last week preparing for this week's trip to Hyderabad, India, again for work, which included getting various vaccinations, a last-minute visa application for which I hand-delivered the documents and organising some groceries for a colleage who has been seconded to the Indian office. His children miss weetabix minis and pasta, apparently.

I'm writing this from Dubai airport's Business lounge, as BA WTP cost more than Emirates Business class and Emirates doesn't involve any internal flights in India. My plane is running an hour late, but I can live with that, it just means I'll get to Hyderabad at 4 am instead of 3 am.
So far, the Emirates flight was well worth losing out on the BA miles. Seats aren't flatbeds, but you can stretch out and my gluten-free mean consisted of actual food. One of the male crew took one look at my very short bleached hair, said "Hello, friend" and flirted with me gently the entire flight (much to the confusion of the poor man next to me). I do love gay men.

Emirates Business Lounge Dubai at 11pm

Unfortunately I spoiled all this by getting a migraine a couple of hours into the flight, which I could really do without. I still feel shaky and the pain is dulled but still very present.

I am determined to do some baby knitting during our week in Norway, so, in a rather scattered way I ordered some yarns: Patons 100% cotton DK in Kiwi and Orchard, RYC Cotton Jeans in Hessian and Blue Jeans and Jaeger Aqua in Indigo, all from MCA Direct. I knitted a swatch of the Patons to play around with the pattern, ripped it out because it proved that I really can't do intarsia and knit plain one to get gauge. I then washed it and put it through the dryer: it has to survive this, as I don't believe in making mothers of small children hand wash or line dry their clothes.

I got gauge for Cristina Shiffman's baby kimono from Mason-Dixon Knitting perfectly before I subjected it to the dryer, but I'll have to adjust the pattern to cope with the inevitable shrinkage. I have the yarn, the needles, the swatch and the pattern with me, but between the migraine and getting 7 hours sleep in the last 48 hours, I think casting on might be beyond me right now. Pity.

Good intentions

I did manage to find a perfume I sort of like in duty free (Azzaro Visit), but I'll be coming back through here at the end of the week, so I'll see how I feel about wearing it for a few hours before buying it. The perfume I really liked has been discontinued (Body Shop Beleaf) and I'm looking for a replacement. Visit seems to be developing a sweeter scent with wear that isn't what I'm looking for.

Erratic Blogging Expected

I'm not home very much until mid-October, so I don't expect I'll get to blog much, nor to do much knitting or sewing. Next week I go to Switzerland on Sunday and Barcelona on Tuesday, returning late Sunday night. Then 5 days in the office and off to India on Saturday. Return on Friday evening, then off to Norway on Saturday, returning on Saturday night. I think Sunday 7^th is the first day I get at home. Madness. At least the weekend in Barcelona and the week in Norway are for pleasure, not work.

A sunset from our Scottish holiday. Photos are in the travel collection on Flickr.

Sunny Scotland

The week before last was insane: return from Tokyo on Saturday afternoon, spend Sunday washing clothes and dazedly trying to adjust to UK time, Monday off-site at a client, Tuesday and Wednesday desperately trying to recover from being out of office for a week and prepare for being out of office for another week, Thursday leave the house at 4:30 am to fly to Belguim for another off-site client visit, Friday leave the house at 4:30 am to go to Scotland.

Scotland was lovely. It rained for one day of the seven we were there, just enough to make us feel that we really were in Scotland, but not enough to inconvenience us. We flew into Edinburgh and lined up to pick up the car we had hired. We asked for a Ford Mondeo, and got a diesel VW Passat. No complaints there. We could quite happily own one of these cars. We called ours Viktor. It seemed solid, competent and slightly smug. It also purred.

We drove to Oban the first day, seeing a Hairy Coo on the way and managed to arrive at the Falls of Lora at exactly the right time to see the tide going out, purely by accident. Oban is a very busy little fishing village with a distillery and a 19th century folly commissioned by a philanthropist banker to keep local stonemasons in work over winter. It is also the jumping-off-point for the western islands, but we decided to drive up to Kyle of Localsh the next day instead. On the way we stopped off at the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary to amuse ourselves with seals: they have a couple of permanent residents who cannot be released back into the wild, and a couple of baby orphans which they are rearing to be released.

The drive to Kyle of Localsh is lovely: lochs and mountains abound. We were staying in a little hotel just north of Kyle of Localsh which had a pretty setting and was very comfortable, but the food didn't live up to the standard it was aiming for. What's the point of having venison if you cook it until it's fibrous? The duck came off slightly better, but only because there was plenty of fat in it.

We were going to go to Loch Ness the next day and then drive back to Skye, but on realising that the weather was sunny we went to Skye immediately on the grounds that it is often overcast and we should go while the going was good. Skye is wonderful. I could live on Skye quite happily. It has craggy mountains, it has waterfalls, it has majestic headlands, it has lochs, it has sweeping vistas and it has many, many sheep. Disconcerting sheep which wander all over the road and amble off slowly if you approach them in a car, but which run like hell if you point a camera at them.

We stayed in a self-catering caravan on the edge of a loch. We spent our evenings eating dinner and drinking wine and/or whisky while watching sunset over the loch. Even the midges were controllable. And when we scrambled down to the edge of the loch, falling over on slippery seaweed a couple of times, we found an abundance of mussels. I found them too gritty, but my other half feasted on them with great pleasure.

After a couple of days on Skye and a brief visit to Talisker we drove off to Loch Ness and Inverness via Eilean Donan. I have to say I prefer the west coast: the scenery is more spectacular and because it is more spartan, you can actually see it. The country around Loch Ness is far more lush, which means that you get glimpses rather than vistas. We then drove down to Blair Altholl where we visited Edradour distillery and stayed in a lovely B&B which had a decent mattress. This was a great thing, believe me. Good mattresses are rare.

We wandered into the town of Blair Atholl to get some dinner and some milk. On the way we saw some incredibly sweet ducklings: six of them, all skittering around after insects. I never realised how fast they can move on land when they're small. There were also six adolescent ducks which seemed to be quite suicidally stupid and insisted on sitting in the middle of the road. Presumably it was warm. Cars didn't bother them, nor did horns. People had to get out of their cars and shoo them off the road, whereupon they waddled off, grudgingly.

The next day we had a look at Pitlochry, which was far too touristy for its own good, and stopped in at Blair Athol (yes, the town has two 'l's and the distillery has one) and Aberfeldy distilleries before driving down to Edinburgh. It's a very pretty city, but in August it is also a very busy city. We did wander around the town for a while, but we decided to leave the castle as it was a) crawling with people and b) had the enormous and ugly Edinburgh tattoo scaffolding up.

Our plane home was badly delayed, and I was extremely grateful for my frequent flyer privileges with BA, which meant we could use the lounge. Lounges aren't particularly exciting except when you put them in the context of an overcrowded airport (five planes were delayed). The seats are comfortable, there's wine to drink and you can read your book in peace (Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid, a pleasantly mindless account of growing up in Des Moines in the 1950s).

We were fairly restrained with purchases on this holiday due to luggage restrictions - only one full bottle of whisky! - but I did find some yarn.

The first is two 98g skeins of purple and one 48g skein of green-blue cashmere dyed with natural dyes from Shilasdair. Do not fail to visit if you happen to find yourself on Skye. The yarn is superb (including baby camel!), they will show you their dye-pots and the setting itself is worth the trip.

We also dropped in at The Handspinner Having Fun in Broadford. While they did have some beatiful yarns and I coveted their handdyed mulberry silk, I ended up buying a 100g ball of a brown mystery yarn from the bargain bin. I think it's probably synthetic (it doesn't feel or smell like wool) but it feels pleasant and one of the strands is shiny so I think it will knit up well. Into what, I don't know, but I have a hankering for seed stitch.

I have to do a great deal of washing this weekend, but this is offset by the pleasant task of reading a week's worth of knitting blog entries and catching up on what everyone else has been up to!

Tokyo

Tokyo was interesting. Very hot and humid, I wish I had been sent there in any other season than summer. Winter would have been lovely. Minimum temp was around 27 degrees, max up to 37.

The group I went to teach were lovely, and I got to spend some time with some Australian colleagues, one of whom I've known for years. There were issues: when do I ever get to do something that goes smoothly? but they weren't insumountable. The Japanese had trouble installing their server in the first place. While they did manage to install by the time I arrived, by the second day the performance issues were so bad that I ended up distributing a VMware image to everyone. I had been prepared for some issues, but nothing as bad as we actually saw: the specs of this server were infinitely better than the one on which I trained a similar number of people in June. We had performance issues then, but nothing like we saw this week. I wish we'd had time to reinstall: maybe it was something to do with the changes they had to make after the initial install.

The Japanese in the group managed to overcome their cultural tendency not to ask questions pretty well (the Australians had no reservations to lose). I was worried that they wouldn't ask anything, but I spent a 2-hour session with them on Wednesday evening. I always feel terrible that I don't speak any Japanese: I know how hard it must be to overcome one's fear of asking questions in a language you don't speak very well. They generally get their point across, though.

Between the server issues, prep for the course and the timezone change I didn't get much sleep. I usually adjust within about a week, but my body steadfastly refused to believe that it was in Tokyo, and I woke up at 3:30 most mornings and couldn't get back to sleep. Why it thought it was on the west coast of the USA, I'm not quite sure, since I never went to bed before 10 pm. I also woke up with a migraine on Tuesday morning: thankfully I did wake up at 3:30 and the drugs took effect by the time I left for work.

I did manage to do a tiny bit of shopping... On Wednesday evening the three Aussies and I went into Shinjuku and had a look around. We found a 100 Yen store: the equivalent of a dollar shop or a pound shop, so I bought some random things including some sweet little buttons.

Must knit baby clothes...

I went back in on Friday evening because I wanted to explore a shop which sold kimono fabric. I decided that most of that was too expensive, although I think the price might have included making up into a kimono: I couldn't really tell.

I then ventured out of the station and found a little fabric shop. I aquired some quilted fabric and some embroidery templates, all packaged in this lovely if slightly inexplicable bag:

How could anyone resist taste of best selection especially for you? I couldn't. I'm not sure what I'll do with them just yet...

The only yarn they had was a terrifyingly lurid range of acrylic: clearly not a knitting shop...

I then ventured somewhat further, and found a bead shop. It occured to me when I got back to the hotel and read the writing on the bag they gave me that if I had used the lift, I might have found more fabric and yarn, but I don't really mind. I got quite a decent haul anyway including a present for my MIL, who beads.

My most exciting purchase was this:

it can be used to sew beads to fabric, so I will have to have a try. The instructions are in Japanese and pictures. Thankfully I understand the latter.

I even have some beads to try with...

The city was humming: a bit too much for me in the heat. It was still 31 degrees at 8pm.

I went for a walk at 4:45 this morning: still opressively hot, but I wanted to see a shrine one of my colleagues had described, and said it had been open when she had turned up one morninig at 5am. Unfortunately it obviously didn't open early on Saturday, so I could only walk around the outside. My camera chose to run out of battery at this point, so I didn't get many photographs, and I should have remembered that just because my eyes adjusted to the light-levels, it didn't mean that the camera could. Humans are more adaptable than I give them credit for.

I then packed and got ready, leaving at 7:30. I'm not quite sure why, but I thought that there were 4.5 hours between 7:30 and 11:00, not 3.5. By the time the taxi arrived at the TCAT to catch the bus it was already 8:00 and I should have been at the airport... There was an accident on the motorway, so I didn't get to the check-in line until 9:30... a little nerve-wracking. I am getting better these days: I've finally convinced myself that worrying and getting agitated doesn't get me anywhere any quicker, so after the initial shock of realisation I was OK and slept most of the bus trip. The worst thing that happens is that the company has to buy me another airline ticket, which they wouldn't have to do if they were less cheap and bought me fully flexible return ticket in the first place.

I'm writing this on the plane, and I've got about 5 hours of a 12-hour flight to go. I got some more sleep at about the right time UK-wise, so I'll see how this timezone change goes. Hopefully better than the last.

The main issue with Tokyo was trying not to offend people. The culture is different enough that this was a constant worry to me. I blew my nose in the classroom, and realised my mistake as soon as I heard giggling. Thankfully my respiratory allergies were absolutely fine and I didn't need to blow my nose after the first day: proving to me again that living in London is not good for me.

My skin allergies went slightly beserk, but I think this is a combination of the heat and humidity, and whatever the hotel washed the sheets with.

This time next week I will be on holiday in Scotland! Yay! Unfortunately I have to do a day trip to Brussels the day before I go on holiday - work rang me up and insisted that I do it, even though I don't know enough about what they want me to talk about. The joys...

Mmmmmm... Cherries

I've been in Boston for another week and a half, and I've got most of another week to go. I'm homesick and miss my partner. Too many weeks in this hotel in the past year, too many weeks not at home.
It's been a difficult couple of weeks, working too much overtime and worrying about things. I'm working today, on a Sunday, and went into the office only to find that my access card doesn't work on the weekend. So I'm trying to work from the hotel, where the connection is slower and the VPN keeps on dropping out.
I did get out of the hotel yesterday and went to Cambridge - I found out that there is a bus which goes directly from downtown Waltham to Cabridge and runs 3 or 4 times an hour. If only I'd known that a year ago. Not that I mind the commuter train, but services aren't exactly frequent.
I went to Urban Outfitters, which I love but can never buy anything I want to because I can't justify taking cushions and homewares home, and went to Woolcott and Company, which I am very fond of, but I didn't find anything I wanted. Well, I did, but again nothing I could actually justify buying.
I love Malabrigo, I really do, but I don't like most of the colours that seem to be available in stores at the moment. They had a sample of the chunky version in the most beautiful green... but of course they didn't have any left!
I did manage to find the most beautiful cherries in Whole Foods. Cherries are my favourite food, surpassing even chocolate. So I bought lots of them. Maybe they will make me feel better.
I haven't managed to get any knitting done at all since last weekend... maybe I can get Clapotis onto the plane home and knit if I can't sleep.

Wilting in the heat

I'm back in Boston for 15 days, hopefully the last time I'll need to do this for a while. Not that I dislike Boston, but I'd really like to spend some time and home with my other half.
Yesterday was muggy and revolting: I don't like heat and I don't like humidity. Anyone with any sense would have stayed inside in the airconditioning. Not me, no, I had to go on a yarn shop hunt.
I've been wanting to visit Circles for some time, but have never made it out there. A commuter train and a T ride and there I was. Stunning collection of yarn and patterns, extremely friendly staff and a place to knit. I knitted and talked to the staff member on duty for over an hour - so nice to be able to take refuge from the heat in such serene surroundings.
I bought Elsebeth Lavold's The Embraceable You Collection here. Now that is a lovely, lovely book. I may never knit anything from it directly, but it's certainly given me some ideas. Mmmmm. Welting...
A colleague and good fried of mine is here with me until Tuesday, so I met up with her for dinner at Prezza. We'd been there once before and were craving the flourless chocolate cake. I also had the tomato, mozarella and basil plate, plus the figs in proscuitto. Superb...
Clapotis decreases slowly.

Six weeks of nothing

I spent 3 of the last 6 weeks on the road, one week in Wales for holiday, then two weeks in Boston for work again. None of these weeks really gave me a lot of knitting time.
I did manage to go whale watching with the New England Aquarium and see lots of whales on the weekend in Boston (Minke, Fin-backed, Humpback and Northern Right (wow)), so that was a good non-knitting weekend. For once I decided not to spend a day staring at the walls of my hotel room and managed to get into Boston via hotel shuttle, commuter train and subway both weekend days. It's not easy to get anywhere from Waltham if you don't have a car...
I did manage to scuttle into Windsor Button at some point intent on buying a 3.5 mm Clover bamboo circular (which I did) and I also picked up some Lion Brand Micro Spun in Ebony and Mango. I've been looking for something to knit EZ's garter surprise baby jacket with, and this seems like a pretty good choice: soft and machine washable and dryable. The pattern originator might shudder, but I'm not sure about the combination of wool and babies, and machine washable at least is a must.

I'm not happy about the edges, particularly the side I'm changing the yarn on. I think I'll be ripping back this swatch and trying the method recommended on Nona Knits:
"On every row, knit into the back of the first stitch and then slip the last stitch purlwise with yarn in front. Tersely for your enjoyment. First stitch -> ktbl. Last stitch -> sl wyif."
Hopefully I can find some way to anchor the yarn I'm carrying as well. I hate messy edges.
While in the US I ordered a couple of books from Amazon: Fiona Cooper's Rotary Spokes, a novel I read years ago and have always wanted a copy of, and Debbie New's Unexpected Knitting, which I've had my eye on for some time, and would cost me approximately double the price to buy in Britain.
Unexpected Knitting, not surprisingly, contains a lot of unexpected knitting. It is also unexpectedly practical in tone, and also unexpectedly large: we're talking a quarto hardback (in public-librarian terms). I do want to knit EZ's baby surprise jacket, but now I also want to knit the baby tam jacket. Stocking stitch in the round! In a cardigan! With no steeks! The coolness is deep, yes?*

Meanwhile, I have continued to struggle along with Clapotis. I am now up to 15 repeats. Yes, I know you're only supposed to do 13, but I'm knitting on 4 mm needles, not 5 mm, and with a yarn which is, on average, finer than suggested. I may be able to block the hell out of it, but I don't want to be too vicious, as parts of this thick-and-thin yarn are (I think) laceweight cotton. At 15 repeats it is only just over 5 feet long, and I like my scarves/wraps at least 6 feet.
The first ball did the increase rows plus 5 repeats, so I think I will try for 4 repeats and the decrease rows on the last ball (so I don't get my knickers in a knot about running out of yarn - can't stand anxious knitting). I'm nearly finished the second ball now.

* If you are familiar with the game I-Ninja, this should be said in the same tone as "The blade is cold, yes?"

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.