Twisted Threads

This post has also been written for a while, but was postponed for the same reason as the previous one.

I actually got to go to a fibre show!

Unfortunately I felt like shit, having come down with something deeply phlegmy which has made me lose my voice. I was determined to go, since I'd booked myself a day of annual leave, so I dragged myself out of the house and down to Ealing Common to sit on the Picadilly line for 45 minutes. When I reached Wood Green, there were friendly people in fluorescent green vests showing us where to catch either the W3 or the free shuttle bus. Now, there were enormous queues of elderly ladies at both bus stops, and I couldn't see myself determinedly taking my seat on a bus and preventing one of them from sitting down. I walked, which would have been fine if the phlegm hadn't been in residence. Fortunately the walk up the hill is rewarded by a view of London (hard to get. London is amazingly flat) and only one shuttle-bus passed me, so it was almost certainly quicker than waiting.

The show itself was mad and lovely and crawling with every type of fibre fanatic you can imagine. I bought some small leaflets and a little kit from some braiding people. I stared longingly at batik and shibori. I resisted Shilasdair yarn in both organic cotton and silk, and then went back and resisted them again at the end of the day when I still had money left. I did buy some insane knitted silk fabric (in the gum) from Texere, and I intend to play with it and dye it because I have Kool Aid and I can.

I also bought some yarn from Habu. I first heard of Habu in the context of stainless steel yarn, but I have never made it to New York. They have serious, proper, mad yarn and I love them. I bought some silk out of which to make a bag, I think, and a sample bag to play with. I love that they had sample bags, and I can imagine that I'm going to be sending them an envelope at some point with a letter which says: what is this? and can I please have some more? Although using their website I have figured out three of my 4 mystery yarns:

Clockwise from top left:
A-130 alpaca knitted yarn in 04 - Charcoal
A-110 tsumugi silk combination in 19 - pink/yellow/black
Unknown laceweight, smells as if it has wool in it
A-22 Silk Gima in 03 - Charcoal

The 4 balls of silk are
A-111 tsumigi silk combination in 7 - Navy, 10 - Camel

I was very systematic, and I'm pretty sure I went to each stall at least once. There were so many ideas, so many beatiful things to look at and so many lovely textures to touch. It's probably a good thing that I don't get to go to many of these, as I think the number of WIPs might grow exponentially if they were available more often.

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.

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!

Shopping madly in Copenhagen

Saturday was exhausting. First, I got up at 6:30 because I needed to tidy up the apartment, do a bit of cleaining and pack before 9:00. My suitcase was already over the limit on the way over, so it's not light. I packed it and packed all my food etc in plastic bags. Dragged the suitcase over cobbles to the new place, dragged it up 3 flights of stairs. Emptied it, catching my finger between the suitcase and the bed as I did so. Took emptied suitcase back to old apartment, filled it with plastic bags full of stuff, repeated exercise, this time swearing about the olive oil and bottle of red wine.
Put fridge stuff in fridge, ran out of the apartment because I had shopping to do and most of the little shops only open from 10:00 or 11:00 to 14:00.
On Friday night I had managed to get to Sommerfuglen before it shut at 18:00: a shop selling knitting, embroidery and patchwork supplies. I ended up buying a few balls of wool for the idea that's been wandering around in my head, and some needles. I've been knitting Clapotis on what I thought were 4.5mm steel needles. I bought some Suzanna rosewood to replace them and a pair of ebony for my new project. On getting them home I realised that I was actually knitting Clapotis on 4mm, so back I had to go to exchange on Saturday. It's going to take me a while to get used to the rosewood as they're more grabby than I expected, but they'll wear with use anyway.
I went to Ulstedet again and seriously contemplated some 4-ply cotton in purple and in a yellow/brown marble (Cotton Baby from Gepard), but really couldn't think of anything I would do with it and actually wear. Then I went to Strikkeboden, fully intending to look at their home-brand alpaca in different colours again to see what I could make of it. What I got instead was six 100g skeins of black dk-weight alpaca, an unplied single (I think). I'm having thoughts of a jumper, possibly a shapely tank or tee with the neck and sleeves then finished off in a different colour (I'm thinking bright green, for some reason) for a long-sleeved garment: a bit like wearing a long-sleeved top underneath a t-shirt.
And then I went back and bought two more skeins, one in a brown, the other in a grey-brown because they remind me of a jumper my father used to wear, and he might get a scarf knit for him. I'm worried that I might need more skeins of the black... maybe I'll have to go back there. There weren't many left, though, so I may just have to improvise when the time comes.
So since I'd done my indulgent shopping, I then went looking for presents for people. Brother and sister-in-law's birthday were solved at Illums Bolighus, and extraordinary shop with an enormous collection of designer crockery, cutlery, cooking implements and homewares.
The first thing I gravitated towards was Piet Hein's Great Bear Candelabra. Then I looked at the price and ran away. I did end up buying this for them instead. Nice.
And then there were toys and children's clothes. Denmark must be a lovely place to be a child. danefae makes me laugh.
I came home and had an afternoon nap. Dragging that suitcase around broke me.
Now I have to work for the rest of the day. Grumble.