Knitty Gritty Thoughts

New Knitalong! Come Join!

I love me a good knitalong, just like Tiennie of course, and out of nowhere I decided I wanted to start a knitalong this fall, it's called Fingerless Mitts for Fall.  Can't you almost just feel fall in the air?  That nice cool breeze, that twinge of change?  Well we all know how much I love my fingerless mitts, right?  Every year like clockwork I make a new pair, and I wear them everywhere, outside working in the yard, walking my dogs on those brisk evenings, and especially working on the computer everyday.  They keep my hands so cozy!

Well I decided to spread the fingerless mitt love by starting a knitalong for it!  It will run from the 1st of Sept to the end of November and is for fingerless mitts of anykind (knit, crocheted, sewn, whatever floats your boat!)

Head on over to the blog here and sign-up!  (Sorry it's still so blah, just started it today and am still working on getting pics and links up, does anyone feel inspired to make a button?? =))

Have a great day, and spread the word!

This was my pair from last year,
this year I've already gotten the pattern and yarn picked out, but it's a surprise! =)

The Trip Part 3: Italy - Venice

So, where was I now?  I feel like I've completely lost my train of thought.  Oh yes, Italy.  Venice to be exact.

Everyone I talk to about my trip always gets really excited when I mention Italy, for some reason it's one of those places that everyone dreams about visiting.  And I have to say, it was pretty, but it was also quite crowded.  We had our first rest-stop in Italy and it was eye-opening, there people don't wait in lines.  There is no line.  There's just whomever is pushier/louder gets helped first which is quite weird to this "dyed in the wool American."  Pushing??  Not in my vocabulary, however luckily I learn quite fast. ;) 

I arrived in Venice (Venezia) and immediately jumped onto a gondola for our ride, while sipping Italian champagne (it was quite good) and the views were amazing.

There was a storm brewing so we were quite lucky that the ride ended when it did, as it was quite choppy and we almost capsized. (I tell ya - never a dull moment when you're with me!) =)

We then walked to St. Mark's square which was amazing and had very expensive cappuccino's on the square at al Todaro just so we could sit down!  (Do you know about service in Italy?  There is "self-serve" and "full-serve."  You can only sit in their chairs if you choose full serve.  If you were to choose self-serve or takeaway and then attempt to sit in their chairs/tables they would force you to leave and they are quite active in this.  In Italy the waiter/waitressing profession is something they do for their entire life, and they are quite proud of their job.)

We then cruised up the Grand Canal by private water taxi and it was a site to be seen.  The architecture here is amazing.

And crossed under the rialto bridge.

There are no cars or bikes allowed on the majority of Venice (Aside from 1 island) so boats are the only way to get around.  See that white barge looking thing on the above picture?  That's the public bus system!

The next day we went to the Venetian Glass Factory (Venetians are known for their beautiful glass.)  I got to see a demo (they take their job *quite* seriously!) =) and purchased a lovely vase as a collector's item/keepsake.  Quite beautiful but quite expensive, alas.

Do you see the bridge down there?  That is the famed bridge of sighs, where prisoners were led to their doom across the water from the main part of the doges palace to the prison.  It is said you could hear them sighing as they walked across.

We then went and visited the doges palace, and I got to walk across the bridge of sighs, you could feel the sadness in those rooms.

We then took a day trip to the beautiful island of Burano - Venice off the beaten track, not a place normally tourists would think to go.  It was wonderful, it was my absolute favorite part of Venice.  If you ever can go, I recommend it, highly.

Burano has two main industries, fishing and lace-making.  Each home on burano is painted a unique color (and the color is not repeated) so that the fisherman could see their home from the water.  If a home is painted two colors it means two families live there.  If 1 color then 1 family lives there.

We had a wonderful lunch in that little restaurant on the top right picture, with the yellow umbrellas.  It was a wonderful Italian meal - dish after dish of pastas, risotto, fish, more than you can imagine.  There were also jugs of wine and mineral water.  The one thing I found funny in Europe is that wine and beer is more prevalent over there than soda, and usually cheaper.  It was quite odd to me.

I got to visit a lacemaking factory - it was amazing.  Many of us have knit lace, or admired pictures of it online, so to get to visit and understand this wonderful tradition meant so much to me.

Their lace is made with a needle and thread, the pattern is first basted onto paper, and then filled in.  Each woman has a specialty in 1 stitch, and after she does her part, she passes it on to another woman who specializes in another stitch and continues work on the piece.

There was this amazing wedding gown which took two years to make (yes it was worn) and beautiful runners and samplers.  So inspiring.  I picked up a table cloth set and table runner to bring home.

And with that we had to leave this lovely island and make our way back to the bus.  I could have spent all day here.

Next stop - Florence - and the David!

Smoke Ring

I inadvertently went off the blog/email radar this week.  Last minute I found myself traveling to spend the week in Virginia, staying at my company's condo while I get some training for my new job I started a few weeks ago.

So, I will finish my trip next week with more pictures but because I only had 5 minutes to sit down and say, Hi! and I wanted to show you what I started this week.

This is the smoke ring pattern by Susan (she's having a half-price sale on her patterns this week, BTW), distributed as a kit with hand-dyed zephyr from Willy Wonka Fibers.  I like the way it's knitting up but I foolishly thought I could start and finish it one week, I only have one word to say to that, NUPPAGE!  This is my first time doing nupps, and the knit 5 TBL is killing me!  Finally after about 50 of the darn things I've managed to create a system that works for me but it's still a slow process, I'm only 1/3 of the way done but I hope to power through and finish quickly.  (Famous last words right?  That's what I kept saying about rona!) =)  And I guess I should answer the question that quickly springs to mind - well what needles are you using for these nupps?  I ordered a set of the new range of knitpicks needles in the smaller sizes, it's a US5 - 16" needle and the tips are quite pointy, not as pointy as addi lace, but pointy.  How about you, do you have any tips for nupps??

Have a great weekend!

The Trip Part 2: Germany, and Austria

The next day we headed back to Frankfurt to meet up with the travel group.    We spent the rest of the afternoon in Frankfurt, taking in the town and eating good german food.  Did you know Frankfurt was severely destroyed in WWII?  More than 70% of the town was decimated so much of the architecture is quite modern, almost surprisingly so after seeing the rest of Europe.

Central square in Frankfurt and a picture of the Mein which is a major waterway running through the city.

These pictures are from Kaiserdom, a church in Frankfurt.  The pipe organ was stunning, there was actually someone there playing it and the sound was magnificent.

I don't know quite what I was expecting from the tour but I had no idea how fast paced it was going to be.  Our first wake up time was 5:30am! I am so not a morning person combined with a serious case of jetlag, well the first few days were painful.

We got lucky, normally a tour with have 48 people on it, every bus seat full, which seems like too many.  Our tour director said we were the smallest group she's ever had in 25 years of directing tours, only 18 people.  It was wonderful!  We all got to spread out, put our feet up and make ourselves comfortable as we spent hour after hour on the bus.

Our first stop of the morning was Rothenburg, Germany and let me tell you I fell in love with this place!  It's a beautiful "hansel and gretel" type town, and was formerly a castle, many of the walls were still standing.  We only had 1 hour to explore so we quickly walked as fast and as far as we could.


We found a yarn store, it was closed unfortunately because it was Sunday and I was so disappointed!
There was also a beautiful garden and I got to see the edges of the castle walls.

Rothenburg is known for it's selection of Christmas items, they have one of the largest stores I've ever seen chock full.  There are many famous local artists that make many of the items. (I can't tell you what they were since I seem to have forgotten the names!)

After that we were back on the road again, now to Munich (Munchen) Germany.  They are the headquarters for BMW and I thought their building was pretty cool.  They also were the site of the infamous 1972 olympics in the past, and I took a picture of the olympic tower.  I thought it was kinda ugly. ;)

Here's some shots in downtown Munich, please don't ask me what they are, I can't remember! ;)  We only had about an hour here too!

Below is a pic of the gorgeous government building in the main square, it was so large I couldn't get the whole thing, but it also had a large tower on the left.

And without further ado we were whisked away again and back on the bus, headed out of country and on our way to Innsbruck, Austria.  The countryside was gorgeous as we headed into the Bavarian Alps.

As we arrived we got to do a walking tour of the city.  The architecture is amazing and we got to see the famed golden roof.

Are you tired yet???  We're still on our first day of the tour!

We also got to see the castle at night, this was Marie Antoinette's mother, the queen of Austrias', home.

OK so finally I got to get some rest, and we sure lucked out in our hotel room.  Somehow we ended up with a suite, it was amazing, we had a balcony overlooking the mountains and the town, it was gorgeous!

This was really funny, I had to share it with you - when we got there, tired and exhausted we both needed to use the restroom badly but none of the lights would turn on!  We were so afraid of them telling us the lights were broken and didn't want to give up our lovely suite that we didn't want to call the front desk! =)  Imagine our surprise when they asked us if we had stuck the card in the slot by the door- apparently this powers the lights and AC, and turns it off when you leave.  HAHA!  I would NEVER have figured that out, but it's quite common throughout Europe.  You learn something new everyday!

Anyhow so the next morning we woke up to this...

...it was beautiful seeing the fog on the mountains.

And we were off again, back on the bus!

The countryside in Austria is just breathtaking, it was such a treat to just knit on my colinette jitterbug plain vanilla traveling socks and stare out the window.  Occasionally I remembered to take a picture. ;)

Ok, next stop on the tour, Venice ITALY!  Hey you - no falling asleep! =)

Also any of the pictures can be clicked to make them bigger so you can see the details.  Especially those Austria countryside pictures, click those. =)  Have a great weekend!

The Trip Part 1: Germany, Meeting up

Hi Everyone - thank you so much for your supportive comments, they mean the world to me!  And thank you also for your comments on Rona as well, don't think that's the last you've seen of her, once I finish talking about my trip I'll post an official FO post with modeling shots, stats on the project and some of my project notes.  That shawl took me 9 months to finish so don't think I'm just going to gloss over the details! ;)

Anyhow, Sooo - THE TRIP!  I don't think I mentioned it here, but at the last minute my MIL tagged along on the trip so we went together?  Before you groan, my MIL and I actually get along rather well and we have a lot of fun together, so it worked out fine. =)

I started off by flying from NC to London/Gatwick then took a bus from Gatwick to Heathrow.  Heathrow security is an absolute m-e-s-s-!  The chaos is absurd, there are no "lines" directing you anywhere.  We stood in line for one and a half hours only to be told that we were 15 minutes early for checking our bags, they wouldn't take them.  We asked if we could come back in 15 minutes to the front of the line and check them but the airline rep said that she wouldn't be there but we would be welcome to "try."  Yea right, like anyone is just going to let us cut right in front of them! 

We grabbed lunch then stood in line again another 1.5 hours later our bags were checked...now to get through security.  Security was a nightmare, that took another hour or two.  When we finally got through we waited for our plane...and waited and waited.  Finally it was boarding but then there was something wrong with the plane, the intercom wouldn't work so it was unflyable.  They locked us on the darn thing for two hours!  Many many hours later we finally made it to frankfurt, germany.  We tried to figure out how to call for our rental car but it was difficult, nobody spoke english at the airport (or wouldn't admit to it!  This was a common theme throughout our trip!)  Finally finally we got the tram and picked up the car. 

By this time it's about midnight Germany time, I've been traveling for 24 hours and we still have a 2-3 hour drive to our hotel.  To boot - all the car's in europe are manuals - I haven't driven a manual in years and I just had to jump into it and get on the autobahn!  It's a good thing I learned how to drive in LA let me tell you because it took some seriously aggressive driving to grind through those gears and get up to speed.  It was crazy driving on the autobahn because there is no real official speedlimit, so people blow by you like you're standing still.  And you're constantly watching out of your rearview mirror trying to jump over to pass people but you don't want to be sitting in the fast lane when someone blows up on you doing a hundred and something miles per hour!

So - I drove through the night with very little idea where I was actually going - but I was going to get there fast! =)  MIL fell asleep of course and here I am in a strange country, can't even read the signs with no navigator, it was crazy.  We finally made it to Kaiserslauten, the town with our hotel, and after getting lost in the bermuda triangle of downtown and driving on a dirt road, through the trees and over the dale we managed to find the darn place. ;)  By this time it's 2:30 in the morning - everything is closed.  It's pitch black.  We pound on the hotel door for 20 minutes but no one answers.  We don't know what to do so we drive back to town to find a phone so we can call the hotel and ask them to let us in.  Well all the phones were BROKEN or we didn't know how to work them, I don't know which. ;)  We tried to borrow a phone in a gas station and pay the man to use it, but everything was "broken" or "closed."  We found many of the people in Germany not very helpful, to be quite honest.

We drove around for another hour looking for a hotel that might be open but no luck.  So we got back on the freeway and drove to a rest stop area and parked there.  Guess where I spent my first night in Germany?  Sleeping in the rental car on the side of the road! =)  By this time I was so exhausted I couldn't drive anymore, we slept there for a few hours until it was light out and then drove back to the hotel when it was open and checked in.

What an adventure, I have never been so happy to see a shower!

I got to sleep for a few hours, and then one of the best part of my trips came!  I finally got to meet Erica and Rachel in person!  They brought their kids and we got to have a nice long leisurely lunch in the hotel beirgarten.  Then Rachel took me to the local yarn stores (yes there was yarn buying involved!).  And then Rachel hosted us at her house (thank you Rachel!).  Erica brought presents, fibery ones!  Some of her yummy, hand blended sock batts in colors picked especially for us!  Rachel has already spun hers up, I'm working on my spinning skills before I take a turn at them.  Thank you so much Erica!

1)  Biergarten where we had lunch/view from my hotel window (isn't it lovely?!)
2)  One of the churches in downtown Kaiserslauten, isn't the architecture stunning?
3)  One of my favorite things about europe - the mix of old and new architecture!
4)  Lovely sock batts from Erica.

I had such a wonderful time hanging out and spending time with these two lovely ladies!  It was such a special treat for me, I had "known" them for years online, but to finally get to meet them in person was wonderful.  We talked and talked until all hours of the night/morning and I could have stayed there forever chatting and knitting my sock if I didn't need to head back and get some sleep.  I also got to see some of Rachel's yummy sock yarn, see some of her luscious spinning in person, and get to see Sahara in progress too!

So I took a picture of our socks in progress as proof that we were there!  Sorry for the bad picture, the flash just washes everything out and it doesn't pay homage to the lovely yarn.  Rachel was working on her wollmeise knee sock that she just posted finished pictures of (that yarn is SO lovely in person!), Erica ripped out what she had started (Erica what was that yarn again?).  And I started my Colinette Jitterbug travel socks.

Thank you both for such a lovely time, hope I didn't seem too out of it, since I was so jetlagged! =)

Next stop - The rest of Germany, and Austria - Stay tuned!

Rona...released.

Hey all, just wanted to stop by quickly and let you know that my grandfather passed away very suddenly the day I returned from my trip.  He had not been sick at all, and one second he was fine, the next he collapsed and he died on the way to the hospital.

I wasn't particularly close to him, by no lack of effort on my part however I am trying to be there for my mom, to support her when she needs me.

I haven't forgotten about the contest, or telling you all about my trip but I have to put that on hold right now to be there for my mom.

Here's a little ray of light to hold you over in the meantime - I'll be back in a few days.

Rona...off the needles and blocking!  I never thought I would see the day!

I'm Baaack! + A Contest!

Hi Everyone - I just made it back from Europe, oooh it was sooo lovely!  I had a fantastic time!  I'll talk more about it in a bit but for right now I'm so jet lagged I can't see straight. ;)

While I recuperate a bit I thought I would run a short contest - it's easy!

Just guess either the number of pictures I took on the trip...

OR

The number of blogs I had waiting in my bloglines to read when I got back (*Hint* - it's a lot!!) =)

Or, heck, put in a guess for both!  The person closest on each number will win a small prize- a few souvenirs from my trip, and a couple of knitting or spinning things thrown in as well, as your preference may fit.

-Picture in Venezia (Venice), Italy just after we had gotten off our gondola ride, gorgeous, no?

Happy Guessing - I'm off to sleep! Ciao! =)