Now The Serious Stash Hunting Starts

It was rather nice to leave the stifling heat of the desert (getting up over 100 in Borrego Springs) and head for the cooler hills, although the stark beauty of that dry landscape will remain in the memory. How do birds survive with so little?

This house finch obviously had good colour sense, choosing blossoms which toned well with his waistcoat.

And even in the driest sandy areas by a roadway full of fast-moving trucks, wildlife was thriving.

As we climbed into the hills, the sheer unrelenting pitilessness of the badlands was frightening in its beauty, and DH kept stopping to try and capture it.

Here, for the first time, the very first time, a snatched shot of the elusive Photographer Photographed! It isn't something he is too keen on, preferring to be the one who does the stalking, so make the most of it, there isn't likely to be another!

Julian, up at 4,000 feet, is a cool and lovely place, and we stayed a quiet night there, delaying in the morning to pay our respects at Mom's Pie Shop where Michelle was in full St. Patrick's Day regalia.

This is one great lady; she lives here in Julian with her two daughters, bakes for all the fundraising local events and still finds time to laugh while running Mom's Bakery. She has a great fund of family history anecdotes: her great grandmother came across from South Dakota in the 1920s when almost everyone there had died of the flu epidemic. Great Gran just lit out and trekked across to California, where she determinedly opened a beauty salon in San Diego. Go it, great-gran! I told Michelle she should write all this down without delay - are you listening, Michelle?

Here she is again with her hardworking team. You can't see it in this picture but the lad in the middle has even painted his shoes green in honour of the day.

Just outside town we found Mountain Beadworks

which was doing good business this fine St. Patrick's morning

and where smiling owner Patty Strong showed me the most fascinating things you could do with knitting needles, wire and beads.

You probably know plenty already about this particular branch of knitting, but I haven't got round to trying it yet. She had all the supplies, all the beads - oh Lord, did she have the beads, too many kinds for keeping a sane head - and was demonstrating to a customer a great idea with the old spool technique - although she did warn me that it was a beast to do and you needed a spool with a really wide central hole (found a good plastic one with the required dimensions later on in a branch of Michaels).

What I loved about Mountain Beadworks (apart from the lovely old-fashioned atmosphere and friendly welcome from both owners and dog) was that they gave their opening hours as '10-ish to 5-ish' but also had an Emergency Bead number for after hours! I'll be back.

Across country through Escondido and on to the coast at Encinitas, to visit Black Sheep a LYS highly recommended by Pacalaga (thanks Carrie!) Now this was a real treasurehouse -

That glamorous lady on her knees is owner Karen Henderson, and Christy McCartney is trying to decide on which skein of Prism to bankrupt herself for. Yes, they have all the stunning Prism yarns and colours, plus all the other gorgeous brands.

Karen had some great stories too - one she had heard about her grandmother's time, during one of the World Wars, in England, when all the women knitting at the cinema were told to move to the back because the noise their metal needles were making was drowning out the sound of the film! Isn't that a great bit of folk history? More, more, Karen, please! Publish a little book to sell at the shop. I loved the idea that it was OK for women to knit in public then, because of the war effort - you'd get a few looks in the UK now if you knitted at the cinema I can tell you.

Huh? Oh yes, perhaps a few skeins were bought. One or two unconsidered balls of yarn. Hardly anything, honest. Well - oh look, I'll photograph the loot later when it brightens up (a bit cool and cloudy this morning in San D) and let you see it. Didn't spend that much really. Well it's holiday time, isn't it? Been working very hard. Entitled. And DH was elsewhere, happily browsing computer shops, so I had to do something, didn't I?

Today we go look at places around San D, some for DH to feed his birding addiction and some for me too (Bonita Knitting anyone? Open on a Sunday, love a shop that does that). And this afternoon, to Balboa Park to meet Vicki, a friendly commenter on this blog, who will be spinning in House of Ireland there. Yay, reality meeting another friend from cyberspace!

Quick! Where Can I Get Transparent Footwear?

This is just a quick note, gang, sent from Mom's Pie House in Julian, while tucking away some apple pie with ice cream to fortify us for the trip back to San D (via the coast, can't miss Black Sheep in Encinitas and maybe the knit-in in Del Mar this afternoon).

Does anyone know where I might find see-through wellies or some kind of transparent footwear? I know they exist for kids, but surely someone does them for sock fiends too?

Answers before Tuesday PLEASE because that's when we head back to the damp greenness of Ireland.

Will post tonight again.

Now I Can't Stop Knitting Socks!

Mad Cow was the right title for the famous first round of Sock Madness - that first pair may be finished, but I simply can’t stop knitting. Now on the second pair, this time in shades of hot pink, very suitable for the sweltering weather out here in the deserts of So Cal.
The intensity of marathons like this does tend to take us novices by surprise. You might say loud and clear that you’re in it just for the fun, for meeting others, for getting unique and one-off new patterns, but once the thing gets under way, you find yourself knitting frantically as if nothing else in the world counted (and it doesn’t right then, believe me, it doesn’t). I knitted on the hoof -


I knitted while watching baby seal pups on the beach...




I knitted talking to those lovely girls having a SnB in the La Jolla cafe...



And each evening when we arrived at a new motel room, it wasn’t a shower or a rest or even dinner that occupied my mind, but GETTING ON WITH THOSE SOCKS.



In between, we did drive through some absolutely stunning scenery, the total opposite to that which I see around my home in Ireland, which is what travelling is all about, isn’t it? The contrast to lush green dampness was breathtaking.



This is coming through the hills down to Borrego Springs, an oasis in the dry desert where we paused awhile, wandered through wild canyons looking for roadrunners. Richard has a particular quest in mind on all trips, which is getting the perfect picture of this elusive bird. Ok, ok, so for you, if you live in So Cal, it isn’t elusive, it comes round to the back door for breakfast, does little dances on the lawn, even takes the kids to playschool and brings back the groceries when you’re busy for all I know, but for us it has always been maddeningly absent. We didn’t find it at Borrego Springs, although, since I’d finished one sock by then (knitting whilst your DH is driving is quite doable, I found to my surprise, especially on one long circular which lessens the chance of tiny breakable dpns dropped underneath your feet), we were able to photograph it in a really nice National Geographic-type setting.



As Seen On Flickr: first ever captured image of The Desert Sock.

When you’re used to grass growing seven inches every time you turn your back, and having to hack down brambles every day to get at the pond, the sparse vegetation of the desert is something of a shock, but all the more striking in its beauty for that.



We were headed down to Richard’s special destination, a place he has always wanted to visit, The Salton Sea. This amazing freak of nature, formed, as I recall, when the Colorado burst its banks and took a new route for itself back in the 1920s, is a vast salty sea in the desert which naturally attracts millions of birds on the flyway north and south in the migration season. Over the years it also attracted thousands of visitors, flocking to enjoy endless sunshine and sea, and built up quite a tourist industry with marinas, RV parks, the lot.

Only trouble is... industry came too, and with it pollution. Now the Salton Sea is - well, how does one put this nicely - a huge simmering dark brown mass of stinking putrid liquid. Dead fish bob in the wavelets until they decompose enough to sink and add to the thickening layer of goo. And the smell - well, suffice it to say that I can still get a waft of it in the car, from the dust, the sand, whatever got into the vehicle, a full 50 miles away in El Centro on the Mexican border.




It has a strange eerie beauty, and the birds are certainly here in great numbers - white-faced ibises, egrets, herons, gulls, white pelicans, all floating in great skeins (Skeins? Skeins? Should I wind them up? Have I gone five minutes without knitting?) across the glittering sky - but it is difficult to concentrate on holding the binoculars steady when your olafactory senses are being assailed by a 30-megaton strength of hydrogen sulphide.

The Mad Cow socks got finished, finally, down here in El Centro late on Tuesday night, and were duly photographed outside the Best Western, next to a cooling fountain amid pansies (that hadn’t been dead-headed in weeks, poor things, I did as many of them as I could to show I cared).




Nice and calming - but this is what the situation really looked like as I tried to balance on one foot, putting my shoes back on, as we dashed to get the image on to the computer and on to Flickr to qualify for the second round. Whew, this SockMadness is doing incredible things on my computer learning curve, never mind the short-row heels!



We’ve been driving up and down to Salton Sea since then, taking deep breaths of clean air before getting within scenting distance and gasping with relief when we leave again, Richard scanning for that elusive roadrunner while I knit compulsively on Mad Cow Mark II socks. When these are finished I’ll be able to swap them around with the blue ones, wearing one of each colour on each foot which is something I’ve always wanted to do. Show you a picture when they’re further on.

And that pesky bird? Well, eventually -


What a crackeroo. Worth waiting for. This one was so full of testosterone and territory guarding that he was scurrying round his stony boundaries and leaping up on every post to make sure no rivals were within reach.

Today we head back through the Borrego Desert and up towards Palm Springs so Richard can check out the Living Desert Wildlife Park (yeah, more roadrunners!) Then back around on the eve of St. Patrick's Day to a particular favourite place of mine, Julian up in the hills. Julian is cool and full of trees and the temperature drops sharply at night. Plus they are famous for apple pies and have a great secondhand bookshop. AND on Saturday morning my absolute favourite cafe there will be handing out green hats and shamrocks. Onward The Mad Cow Socks Take Two!

Sock-Mad In San Diego!

And greetings to you from the sunny southern shores of California! No more Celtic Vests for the nonce, socks are the subject of the hour and indeed the week, and you wouldn't believe the saga that has gone into them already (yes you would, you've been there, done that, got the scars on your heart, right?)

Discovering that the very first round of SockMadness would require a skein each of solid and variegated fingering was a bit of a hiccup, as somehow we chez Celtic Memory had thought the inaugural round would be a one-colour job and had wound up two neat balls of Cherry Tree Hill in emerald fleck so as to be ready for when the pattern was downloaded on Saturday morning, by which time I would be in California and it would be late Friday night if you get my reasoning. The organisers helpfully suggested that most needs could be assuaged on the Net, but they clearly didn't know too much about postal times and living in the depths of rural Ireland. No, whatever I needed would have to come out of the stash somehow. Desperate trawling brought only one yarn to the fore - that lovely blue silk/cashmere, which is more or less a fingering weight. Thursday afternoon, in between frantic typing bouts on a dozen pieces which had to be written up and filed at the paper before I left Friday morning, I wound up one ball and then skeined up another and overdyed it in a sort-of-variegated slosh of blues before hanging it hopefully to drip dry.

Friday morning at dawn it was still, of course, wet (this being Ireland for heaven's sake, where nothing dries until July and sometimes not even then), so it was draped over the back of the seat in the car on the way to Shannon (DH is really patient at times like this, even with damp silk-cashmere dripping little droplets of blue water down the back of his neck - luckily I'd had the forethought to lay out a blue shirt for him, wasn't it?)

It hung over the back of the seat on the plane too, for eight and a half hours en route to Chicago, and it quite liked that because it could look out. It was damp-dry enough to wear as a chic fashion accessory at O'Hare...

and finally dry enough to wind up just before the flight on to San Diego. The pull handles of the carry-on bags were really useful here.

I crawled out of a jetlagged haze and went hunting for the pattern in my email at about 4 am Californian time. Seized the circular and the yarns and got started.

Oh B----R!

It just didn't work. I needed to go down a needle size for definite, and lovely though the yarn combination was, it was not right for these socks - too thick after all. Nope, new materials were needed and fast. Heck, other people were probably turning the heel by this time! Rushed out as soon as shops opened to hunt for a size 0 needle but none of the haystacks in San Diego had it. And needless to say fingering yarn wasn't in evidence either. It wasn't until we reached the gorgeous old-fashioned seaside town of La Jolla (and yes, I do know you pronounce it La Hoya!), that I discovered Paradise in the shape of Knitting In La Jolla.

This has to be the best yarn store EVER! I'll give links and things later, but it's 3 am now and I need to keep going before the Net connection gives out. You can find it easily online. Not only did the wonderful Suzanne have Addi Turbos in size 0 (she had them down to triple 000 would you believe?) she also had the most incredible range of fingerings. Fell totally in love with Panda bamboo/cotton from Crystal Palace. Bought it. Spent the rest of the breezy sunny day happily knitting away while DH photographed the cutest baby seals on the beach.

Knitting on the go is quite easy if you have a bag to hang over your arm, and this being California nobody thought it the slightest bit crazy. A lovely young Mexican woman was fascinated with the Magic Loop idea and watched closely for ages before exclaiming in triumph that she'd got it, and heading off to buy a long circular herself. And two glamorous young women were knitting in the cafe where we took a break - well DH did, I kept right on knitting. I had some catching up to do.

This is as far as I got this evening before crashing out (last night? A week ago? What day is it?)

Working with this bamboo/cotton is like knitting with cream. It's pure pleasure. I even broke off my knitting stroll along the seafront to dash back in and buy some two more sets, in a hot pink and a vivid green combination . Will show pictures of those later. Oh and a good back issue of Interweave Knits - the one with incredible cables - and the new Rebecca. That shop is good! And being able to get the right materials with which to work makes all the difference. (But it did take an eighteen-hour flying marathon, a hotel, a car, and a fairly energetic morning's searching to get them!)

Sock Hysteria Is Mounting!

NOTE: Since it's not like me to write twice in the same night, this is to alert you to the fact that there is another new posting above this one - a review of that Irish weaving book, filed earlier. OK?

Now back to the ranting...

I knew I shouldn't have agreed. I should have turned right round and told Angeluna where to put her suggestion that I should sign up to Sock Madness. But insanity won the day and now there is only a week to go to Lift Off. On Saturday March 10, the 128 contestants will be emailed a completely strange and hitherto unknown pattern which they will then have to knit up as quickly as possible. We're all in different groups, depending on whether we are novices (less than 6 pairs to date) or Big Experienced Sockies. Half get knocked out in the first round, and then it's bare knuckles and dpns at dawn or something. Am I mad or what? Are we ALL mad or what?

I'm in a group called Wendy's Toe-Up Sock Division and I tell you if that pattern turns out to be toe-up, then this lady will be turning her own toes up and her membership in! I have never tried that method - well, I did, but after seventeen goes at the devilish invention known as Figure of 8 Cast On, I gave up and went back to the tried and tested cuff-down. Nobody but nobody could work that thing out and stay sane.

Jeri (who is in Stephanie's Travelling Sock Division) very kindly suggested that I should do a bit of practising with toe-up over the next few days just in case, and very helpfully gave me a few websites to try. The first one was Figure of 8 (I just typed that Figure of * and no wonder!) so got zapped instantly. The second one said, 'Some people swear by Figure of 8 but it can be a bit difficult to get the hang of, so here's an easier method.' She then proceeded to describe Figure of 8 minutely all over again. Exactly the same as before. Only more maddening because I thought I was going to get out of this frustration. The third used a provisional cast on which is at least doable, so I'll go with that one. Maybe.

You'd think rehearsing in advance was daft, but not so. There is a lady in my group (the Novices, naturally, I've only completed two and three-quarter pairs of socks to date, so I'm no expert) who is training seriously for the event. Yes, training. When she signed up, she could manage to finish a pair in a fortnight. Now she's down to a weekend. Yikes, and I'm in against that sort of track commitment?

Enough already. Let's turn to happier matters. This fine Saturday morning was the ideal time to head for the Little Mission in the West, aka Spin a Yarn in Kenmare, armed with a huge stack of Bibles, catechisms and hymn books, courtesy of Sr. Denise at Mission Outreach Services in Our Lady of Perpetual Gauge.

And they were waiting for me! Yes, Jo and Jean had logged on, read the posting, and were eagerly awaiting the Bibles. They had even printed out my posting 'Yo, There's A New Yarn Shop in the West', which was all the more touching for being unexpected (and by the way, Steph, they were thrilled silly that you had actually read about them and had commented in the posting!)

Jo sat down immediately and got stuck into Interweave Knits.






Meanwhile, Jean had latched on to Sock Madness. 'Can we all get in on this?' I explained that unfortunately it was limited to 128 participants worldwide and she was disappointed because she wanted a bit of an incentive to start knitting socks.

'Well why not use that day to start your own sockfest?'


'Yes, why don't we?'

Jo was delighted at the idea, and they immediately hauled out dpns and the most gorgeous yarn they could find to show willing.

They're going to encourage anyone who comes into the shop next Saturday to seize needles and yarn and start socks too. Now I think this is a VERY GOOD THING all round, don't you? You don't have to be one of the lunatics tied into Sock Madness, but if you want to knit a new pair, or have always wanted to try, or just have too much sock stash for comfort (is that possible?), why don't you make next Saturday the day to start as well and tell us all about it? The world would be a better place if everyone wore handmade socks. This is a fact. Make your own Sockfest.

And so inspired am I by this praiseworthy attitude at the Little Mission in the West that I am going to donate a few skeins of sock yarn to the Sock Madness marathon myself. I have some very nice wool/cotton blends which are lighter and cooler than pure wool and therefore more suitable for anyone not living in Canada (are you still freezing up there, Steph, Rachel H, Charity?). I can only find a picture of one of them, a lovely pale sage green:




but the other two are equally gorgeous. I've called them all after herbs that you find in the maquis - the scented scrub that covers the hills in Provence in summer and leaves a lingering scent on your clothes as you push through it. This one, predictably enough, is Provencal Sage.

We had a great sit around and chat at Spin a Yarn, and I got a few rows done on my Blackberry Pie socks (got to get them finished before next week, that's for sure). Jean even went out and got coffee, so it was very cosy. And yes, before you ask, they are signing up for Sunday School too (aka Knitter's Review Forum). The revelation that you could download free hymns (or sock patterns) made them even happier. What a wonderful new world the Net has brought.


A couple of customers came in; and while the lady trawled the yarn shelves, her husband became fascinated with the Colinette colours.




He was a painter, he explained, and had never seen such a blend of varying colours and thicknesses in a yarn. 'We have all Kaffe Fassett's books at home,' he said enthusiastically.

On the way back I took a picture of one of my favourite places, the Black Valley, for you.









This is a very remote place indeed, and you can only see it from the high road above. Can you glimpse the tiny track which runs through it, down there at the bottom? It's the old way to Killarney, in fact, leading to the Upper Lake, from which you would have taken a boat down to the town in olden times. People still do - they come through the Gap of Dunloe by pony and cart - that's the Gap there behind - and then take the boat back to Ross Castle. Definitely going to do that this summer myself. Why should visitors have all the fun?



And to cap it all, a rainbow on the road round by the Lakes.






Can you just see the rainbow? DH would know how to make it stand out more, but I don't want to disturb him - he's busy processing today's photographic jobs.


And finally - the Celtic Vest. I was so excited Thursday and Friday. At last, at last I was getting there. Closer and closer to the neckline. One more damned twisted cable after another. I got so sick of those cables. Never-ending, constantly demanding, always there at neckline and armhole both. But I was almost there. Now binding off for the shoulder. Now just a few more rows of those cursed cables to go round the back of the neck.


I was already composing the speech with which I would greet the roars of applause, the plaudits of the crowd. I was mentally thanking all of you who got me through it, my family, the dogs (although perhaps not Muffy the Yarnslayer). I looked sentimentally at the picture on the pattern and thought it was a pity I couldn't get Celtic buttons like some of you had, but the leather ones on the original would be fine.


Hang on a minute.


Buttons?


BUTTONS?


Like in - BUTTONHOLES?


Oh dear heaven no, please no, no, no. Do NOT tell me I've forgotten buttonholes. I am NOT, repeat NOT going to frog back. Not now. I WON'T.


I was hyperventilating as I bent over the pattern, searching for that catty little side note, that 'at the same time' Catch 22 where they laughingly and offhandedly drop in a tiny hint that you should have thought of THAT earlier, ha ha!


But I didn't find it. No mention of buttonholes.


Only then did I see that at the very end of the page, the point at which I had been aiming for several months, was some tiny lettering.

continued on page 113.

Oh great!


I leafed through the pages with trembling fingers. But maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Looked as though I hadn't missed anything important. After all, what else could there possibly be?


Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!


'Pick up evenly all round the front and neckline seven thousand eight hundred and 'leventy-two stitches and work eight rows, making buttonholes as you go.' Or words to that effect.


Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!


If there is one thing that is IMPOSSIBLE, it is picking up evenly all round ANYTHING. They KNOW that. YOU know that. We ALL know that. It. Just. Isn't. Possible.


The number of WIPs I have abandoned at this stage of an almost-completed mission I don't care to think about. There is a perfectly beautiful Anny Blatt from last summer that was so close, so close...


I CANNOT do this. Inevitably one side has more stitches than the other, one part is puckered, another too loose. I cannot DO this. Pin, mark, glue, curse, measure, re-pin, re-mark, re-curse. It NEVER works out. Quite simply, I can't do it. All the rest of it looks perfect, but this I can't do.


Can I?


Someone come to my aid. Tell me how it can be achieved. Please.


But a word of warning. The first one - the FIRST one - to say, 'Oh but it's easy - you just....' GETS IT. OKAY?

I most emphatically do not want to hear anyone say, 'it's easy, you just...' It isn't easy and I just won't. I want constructive advice with practical guidance.

I know about pins. I know about picking up one for each stitch. That's fine except when you're working round necks and curved bits. You try it Miss Clever Clogs!


Please.


It really is so close this time...


There's time for you to advise, because tomorrow morning the plan is to take a flight to Bradford in Yorkshire for the Open Day at Texere Mill, there to find strange and unusual one-offs in coned yarn to smuggle back to West Cork.


That's the plan; but unfortunately the weather forecast suggests that the only sensible course of action would be to retire to the airing cupboard with a large bar of chocolate and a wicked novel. Screaming gales, drenching downpours, structural damage warnings. Like - really a good day to go flying, yes?


I'll go to the airport. If nothing else, they have good (if expensive) coffee in Departures. The worst scenario would be being delayed so much that there would be no time to do anything other than turn round and come back again. A semi-acceptable scenario would be to get up to the airport, find out that there were no flights, and come back with at least half a day's knitting available.


In the meantime, I rely on you to come up with the goods as you have so often done before, and clear this last barrier between your correspondent and Celtic Vest Completion. You are generous, you are helpful, you are wise.


HELP ME! A moi la legion!

A Beautiful Weaving Book

I promised to tell you about this stunning book published by Cork University Press and this post, therefore, will be all about that. There are other things to talk of, naturally - not least Sock Madness which is almost upon us, but also a trip to the Little Mission in the Far West, aka Spin a Yarn in Kenmare, and the latest spinechilling segment of the Celtic Vest saga. But I'll post again later on this evening with regard to those.

Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland: Taipeis Gael, Donegal, is written by Meghan Nuttall Sayres, with photographs by Laurence Boland. It's a good big coffee-table book with lots of illustrations, both colour and (to my mind even more effective) black and white.

Its main purpose is to chart the setting up of a tapestry weaving industry in Donegal in an area hard hit by the decline of the tweed industry, and it does that very effectively, showing old images of weaving there in better times,

as well as more recently.

There are pictures of quite stunning tapestries which depict legends like the Children of Lir:

and landscapes or buildings. I really liked one where they showed the original inspiration, a Martello tower built at the time of the Napoleonic wars:

and its rendering in tapestry:

I love the way the weaver has enriched the original by putting in a blazing beacon, a watcher, and even a ship at sea - friend or enemy?

The real richness in this book for me, though, lies in the interviews, not only with today's weavers who talk of the ways they work and of the things which inspire their creations, but with so many of the older people of Donegal, those who had at their fingertips the old knowledge and skills which so many of the younger generation lack. The late James Shiels, a master spinning-wheelwright -

or a lady who, though she tends knitting machines, is never to be found without needles in her hands -

There are whole chapters on the raw material - wool, the getting of it, the preparation of it, the sheep themselves - and, best of all, a detailed and well researched section on the natural dyes which have been used in Ireland since records began and probably long before that. Bogbean, madder, weld, lichens, kelp, even iron ore and bog earth are all listed and referenced. There are fascinating glimpses into ancient documents and the Brehon Laws which protected dye plants and had punishments for the wilful damage of these. The story of St. Ciaran is quoted - the one where he is told to keep away from the house while his mother is dyeing the yarn, as men must not be around at dyeing time, and in revenge curses the wool so that it dyes unevenly. Some saint! I wouldn't have canonised him - but I suspect this is one of those cases where the Church with its growing power was trying to outlaw or demonise the ancient power of women's work.

I'd love this book for the dyeing references alone, but as a record of old crafts in Ireland it is beautiful too. There is even a picture of the ancient whorls from drop spindles in the National Museum:

I'll give its full reference here, in case any of you have a birthday coming up.

Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland: Taipeis Gael, Donegal. By Meghan Nuttall Sayres. Published by Cork University Press, Dec. 2006. ISBN - 10: 0-9535353-3-9. Hardback, €29.00, £25.00.

Nice to see books of this quality still being published, isn't it?

The Struggle With The Inner Self

I was laughing the other day over Dez's description of how she behaves when her laptop goes loopy. Mostly because I too tend to disintegrate when high-tech stuff starts to act haywire, and shriek for Richard to come and sort it out. That time I lost the hit counter on my weblog page I was a babbling, flailing fisted wreck. Go and check out what Dez does - it'll make you chuckle too, if only because you recognise yourself!

Unfortunately, not only the juvenile but the downright bloody-minded, badly-behaved child lurks in the best of us as was discovered chez Celtic Memory last night when with heavy sigh the unending tale of the Celtic Vest was yet again being taken up. Heavens above, this thing is longer than the Forsythe Saga. Will it ever be completed?

This is where the second front is up to - nearly to the armhole but not quite. After that you might think it's plain sailing but it most certainly isn't. Decreasing followed by complex motif at the armhole side, combined with a 'decrease third, fifth, ninth, eleventh, fifteenth, oh and whenever it looks like a good idea AT THE SAME TIME not forgetting what you were doing earlier, and did you check those lifted increases, no, thought you didn't...' It was bad enough on the first front, the prospect of the second does not inspire. What? Work them both at the same time? Look, it's bad enough as it is. Why double the stress (and the likelihood of one error after another?)

But to return to the badly-behaved brat. On the way to pick up the CV, it seemed like a good idea to check the Internet for anything interesting. After all, we owe it to ourselves to keep up to date. There had been an email from Elann, so their website seemed a reasonable option. What new patterns are around? (Don't they do great patterns? Remember that lace cropped cardi? Oh no, on second thoughts, don't. The scar is still vivid.)

I saw this.

Even as my own eyes widened, my Inner Child (IC) burst into noisy shrieks.

IC: Want it. WANT IT! WANNIT NOW, NOW, NOW!

Calm Collected Outer Persona (CCOP): Don't be silly. You can't have it and that's that.

IC: But I could MAKE it. I could, I COULD. Lookit those crochet cuffs! I CAN CROCHET TOO!

CCOP: Stop that this instant. You know very well there is a Celtic Vest to finish. (dropping to honeyed tones). Just think how happy we will be when that's all done and lovely. Won't that be nice?

IC: NO! DON'T WANT SILLY CELTIC VEST! (sob) WANT THAT PINWHEEL SHRUG THING. WANT IT NO-O-O-W!

CCOP (dropping honeyed tone for gritted teeth hiss): Will you stop that this instant? What will people think? Be your age.

IC (in hysterics by this time, lying face down on the floor hammering heels and shrieking). DON'T WANNA BE MY AGE. WANT PINWHEEL SHRUG. HATE YOU! YOU'RE NOT MY REAL PERSONA. YOU'RE A WICKED CRUEL STEP-PERSONA AND I HATE YOU!

I'm afraid there was no option. I shut my Inner Child into a dark cupboard (no, not the one with the Noro yarn) and left her to simmer while I went wearily back to the Celtic Vest. Who'd have inner children?

I let her out later. She had a lower lip so stuck out you could have put a vase of daffodils on it, and she sulked all night, but we heard no more of the Elann pinwheel shrug.

(Not for the moment anyway. OK, OK, Steph, I do realise it has crochet on the cuffs. That doesn't necessarily make me a bad person. You have to broaden your outlook. You're being knittist., that's what you are and how mean is that? Have you ever asked your IC if she'd like to crochet? No. Thought not.)

I have a whole row of dancing skeins on the washing line at the moment. I have listed some utterly beautiful linen/cotton yarns on eBay, so that people can start thinking about their summer wardrobe (or indeed cool soothing socks), together with that dangerously seductive denim cotton slub which I am trying to resist, and a real discovery - a cotton sort-of-boucle thicker yarn which looks like it has been pre-knitted (or pre-crocheted) into the most elegant lace effect. This is what it's like:

I would love to make a lacy summer top in this one. It would look beautiful.

Anyway, don't you get a real kick out of giving coned yarns sourced from factories and the back of dusty shelves and remainder bins and places like that a gentle wash to see how they come out? You get the loveliest surprises sometimes, like that rescue Shetland I brought home all dusty and dirty and oily from the Shed in the Woods, which comes up rosy and smiling and happy when it's washed. And I wanted to see how these aristocratic linen/cottons emerged. Of course they took to the water like - well, like ducks to water I suppose - and are even now drying happily (in between the showers, that is. DH asked a while ago if he should bring them in as it was raining. Heck, no, they're linen aren't they? They should be used to rain.)

I must tell you in the next posting about a really beautiful book which I received for review from Cork University Press.

It's called Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland and it is stunning, both pictorially and editorially. It deserves a whole posting to itself. You'll yearn for it!

In the meantime, BIBLE SUPPLIES HAVE ARRIVED FOR THE MISSIONS! Yes, wonderful Sister Denise of the Mission Outreach Services at Our Lady of Perpetual Gauge has sent a whole stack of the Interweave Edition, together with hymn books from the Spinning Sisterhood and a whole lot of catechisms from Vogue and other Sunday School groups. Isn't she marvellous? I can't wait to see their wide eyes and grasping hands down in Kenmare when I go there this weekend. (Or they'll think we're all absolutely mad, there's always that risk, but I'd stake the lure of IK against disbelief any day.) Joy to you all!

What Did We Do Before Blogging?

What started me off on this tack was discovering an old Knitter's magazine among my groaning shelves of craft books. Now and again you hit lucky and find a few of these in thrift stores in the States; this was one I must have bought on Sanibel Island years ago and somehow forgot about. Another one I got there was a great issue with some early Lavold designs in it, to which I refer constantly.





But one thing about this issue from Spring 1995, twelve years ago, struck me as I leafed through it again. Not a single web address. Not a single email. Hundreds of lovely colourful advertisements, dozens of articles, features, suggestions, query letters - but nowhere that wonderful link which enables us to check instantly, send an answer, order some yarn, see the colour better, download a pattern, make a new friend, sign up for a camp or a class, discover a whole new way of trying a pattern or stitch.

In that spring of 1995 I had returned to academia, actually to the hallowed halls of Oxford. A fairly demanding job I'd been doing (getting independence back for an exceptionally small English county which had lost it and been absorbed into a neighbour twenty years earlier) had been successfully completed (cheers outside the House of Lords at midnight). I'd been thanked and paid off. And I decided to have a really really self-indulgent treat and sign up for a Masters in Local History at Oxford. (Yes, it does take quite a lot of the readies to sign up for anything at Oxford, not to mention rather respectable previous references. But it was worth it. Oh boy was it worth it. Wandering down Broad Street dressed in charity shop rejects, with your arms full of books knowing their authors were probably living a few streets away, it was heaven.)

The point however is that at Oxford they were just about getting into the Internet in a big way. The world's best young brains were working things out and then being headhunted to Silicon Valley or New York. But before they left they gave us lectures on how to use this new medium in our studies.

It was all very very new to me and I didn't understand the half of it back then (having a brilliant scientific mind doesn't always mean you can convey your ideas to a class of mature students, as I've discovered), but one thing excited me a lot. 'You'll be able to visit libraries without having to travel,' they said. And downloaded (very slowly, this was 1995) a picture of an incredibly rare medieval text in the Vatican library to prove it. Now this, I thought, is a good idea. Of course I then discovered that you couldn't actually open the books and see spiders scuttling away into the darkness, and was disappointed, but I was hooked all the same.

Now if you've come to the Net fully-fledged so to speak, and have always known you could look up lists or or products in different countries at the click of a mouse, then you mightn't realise just what a leap that was. Heavens above, when I wanted a special text in my earlier student days (always assuming I was able to find out that such a text existed), I had to order it through Inter Library Loan which could take up to a year and usually did. Now - but you know what it's like now. The world is your oyster, but an awful lot easier to open that the said bivalve.


And what goes for academic study goes tenfold for knitting, doesn't it! Sitting here this morning with the sun shining (briefly) outside and the daffodils blowing in West Cork, I can check colourways at Fleece Artist, yarn outlets in San Diego, the weather up in Lapland (Lene, hope you are feeling better, I've had that bug too and it is taking forever to go), top-down sweater patterns at Mary Maxim (well I could if her page wasn't down right now), besides getting advice on toe-up socks and downloading a new shawl design. Later on I'll be listing the spring cotton and linen yarns on eBay and seeing who wants them. With pictures. And I'm telling you all this on my weblog. The friends I've made across the world in the past seven or eight months. Who have all shown me their own pictures and the things they've made.

A whole new world. And it would be a bit hard to go back now, wouldn't it? Can you imagine trying to manage without being able to order, check, see, confirm, get ideas, chat, show? Those of us in Europe probably wouldn't even know about Knitter's, much less IK. I know I've said it before, but we are in the midst of a new technological revolution which will change the world - is changing it - even more than the invention of the steam engine and the Spinning Jenny. And it has made so much difference to the knitting world, hasn't it? I know it has made seismic changes in mine and made so much more creativity possible.

I don't know how long it was after that Spring 1995 issue that Knitter's began to move into the Internet world. It would be fun to check. If you have all yours in date order, you might look it up.

The Celtic Vest moves slowly onward. For some reason the fronts are giving me much more trouble than the back. It has something to do with the patterning in orderly rows and the increasing/decreasing at irregular intervals. I've had to frog back several times (although the gripping Ireland/England rugby match yesterday, played for the first time ever in historic Croke Park, might have had a lot to do with some of those errors) and am sick to death of it by now.






Here it is so far: the back, one front, and about a quarter of the second front. (Hey, Dez, Angeluna, tried your hints of photographing red against charcoal grey, and it worked!)

But just to show that an image only tells half the tale, here is the full picture uncropped:




Muffy was fascinated by the vest and says she wants to make one just like it. In green maybe. Don't know myself if she'll be up to the Lavold motifs, but it would be a mistake to prevent her trying, wouldn't it? You never know what a dog can do when she's really keen.

It gets tiring working on the same project on and on, doesn't it? I know several of you feel exactly the same. If it weren't for Angeluna hounding me on relentlessly - which reminds me -

Oh Ange-l-u-u-n-a, would you be a sweetheart and just nip out and see if it's stopped raining? Thanks pet. I'd go myself, but I'm at a tricky stage on the computer...

Now, QUICK! Gather round the rest of you before she gets back. She won't be long. Look at this.


This is a swatch for the Berroco Tierra in my hand-dyed cashmere/silk. Isn't it gorgeous?

Actually it's half of the front cast on already. I reasoned that since each pattern repeat is 18 sts and you work one pattern before casting on the next 18, I might as well keep going on the swatch and make use of it. It is delectable. You do have to use a cable needle for the twist, though, as it's 5 sts over 5, which is a bit too many to just slip off the needles and twist free. Hate using cable needles. They take up so much time.

Whoops, she's back. Eyes front.

Had a nasty shock the other day - a yarn customer emailed to say that the stuff I'd sent was underweight and under yardage. Horrified and of course sent off more right away, but HOW did that happen? I always wind on a few more grams every time I make up a skein, to make sure they get full weight and then some. Rushed out and bought another scales, digital this time, to double check against my trusty mechanical one, and have done some hard thinking on the yardage question. Now this is another issue I've raised here before, and you've given me some useful hints, but can anyone tell me how to measure the yardage in a skein exactly? I suppose I could leave the yardage off entirely, but I think it's very useful to know it, as otherwise you can't assess how much you need for a particular pattern. I looked out my lovely niddy noddy that I bought on Quadra Island last autumn, and found that one wrap all around measures 2m exactly. I'll try counting as I skein (as long as the dogs don't distract me and I lose count half way through a huge skein of laceweight). Other suggestions very much welcomed. I feel like a guilty criminal, misleading innocent customers!

In fact I'm worried about even listing any on eBay tonight. But I have some lovely cotton/linen blends that are so right for spring that I really want people to have them. Dilemma.


So worried was I about the yarn shortfall that I took Sophie down to Killarney woods yesterday afternoon to relax the brain (mine, not hers - she doesn't have that problem).




It's still pretty brown there, as you can see, but the mossy trees were beautiful



and every rock had its rich coverlet of moss and ivy and tiny plants.



Nature is always a beautiful healer. Came back determined to do better. Now I shall skein up some of those gorgeous linen/cottons and just to show I'm determined, I'll take that seductive denim cotton slub and skein that up for eBay too. That way I can't start a new project in it!

Get Thee Behind Me Cashmere/Silk Tierra!

Gosh, have you seen that stunning multidirectional scarf on Julia's blog? It is absolutely beautiful. Still musing on it, I was browsing back through Denise's posts and found another one, just as stunning. TWO of my friends have made these! And for all I know, the rest of you too! I have to try that technique really really soon. But could I get the colours? Should I rush out right now and buy some more, just in case?


(Who am I kidding? You don't rush out and buy yarn in West Cork. You dream about it. Fantasise about it. Maybe make a major trek to a far distant store for something that vaguely resembles it. But the real Mecca, the Nirvana, the Paradise of shelves and shelves of different colourways in the same fibre, the same weight - forget it. Maybe the next trip Stateside.)


All is merry as a marriage bell chez Celtic Memory, though, because YO!!, the spring Interweave Knits has arrived! Please please tell me I've got it around the same time as the rest of you. I had resigned myself to getting the spring issue in the summer and the fall issue around Christmas, but this does look as though IK at least has got its act together in relation to its hangers-on in misty outposts across the Atlantic. When did yours arrive?

Actually there doesn't seem to be anything in it that I really really started hyperventilating over, but that isn't the point. It's having it at the same time as the rest of you, so that I can know what you're talking about, that's what matters. I did see one rather cute thing - on Page 9, if you have it handy, this issue's Knitted Artifact is a Miser's Purse from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It's delightfully knitted in Italian silk, but what struck me about it was how like a sock it is. A long thin tube, with one small opening in the middle, closed at both ends, and with two rings to slide up and down to control the filthy lucre.


I COULD MAKE ONE OF THESE!


I'm not sure it would be entirely practical for containing a day's mad money - for one thing, we eschewed the hugely practical paper one dollar/Euro/pound whatever you want to call it, long ago in favour of a heavy coin. You in the New World have very sensibly held on to yours and long may you continue so to do. Our pockets on the other hand are laden down with heavy metal. A silk purse couldn't cope too well with that. But it would make a stunning statement as a belt-hung evening bag.


Oh look, I'm sorry, don't go out to Joann's at this hour of the night to find a copy of IK. Wait - I'll Google around and see if I can find an illustration for those of you who don't have it to hand. (Am I being knittist here? Am I unthinkingly discriminating against the IK-less?) WAIT, will you?


Ah, got lucky. Here are two shown on the Morning Glory Antiques page?






Aren't they absolutely sweet? The one in IK is a little more sober, but the idea is still the same. You could start as a toe-up sock, work along, make the necessary gap in the centre for extracting dosh, then work to the other end and finish with toe-shaping and grafting. I must try it out in some bright silky yarns. When there is time. (When is there ever time?)

And a nice package arrived in the post from my friends at Yarn Paradise in Turkey. I am of the firm opinion (in which I am joined by Angie) that YP and others like them are in fact the makers of many of the yarns labelled and passed off by major brand names in the market. I know at least four or five they make which I can see on the shelves in our few Irish yarn shops which claim to be the products of (better not name names, but fill in one of the top six for yourself). ANYWAY, I had ordered something delectably enticing a week or so ago, and it has arrived.








It's a bit difficult to see, isn't it with all the reflections on that cute little plastic tote. But you can see the alpaca picture, can't you, and the name Inca?

That's the clue. This is a glorious blend of 70% alpaca and 30% cashmere, about what I would call double knitting and you would call - whatever the next one up from fingering is - a bit thicker. Here's a close-up of the contents.





This feels so gorgeous you wouldn't believe. I took one ball out of its tight little corset, the better to fondle it, and it burst out with a sigh of relief and relaxed into its warm wide fuller shape with delight. 10 30g balls, about 60m to each ball, which gives me 600 metres of indulgence. What will it make? Haven't the slightest idea. But having it here is pretty nice. We're talking alpaca and cashmere here! What a combination of luxury!


Huh? Oh, I paid £12.99 stg. for the 10 balls in their little totebag, plus another £5 for postage from Turkey. Look up their site. A lot of novelty yarns, but then you find something like this and that's got to be worth it. Wonder if I should have another tote-ful just in case...?


Having yielded to Angeluna's diktat and signed up to Sock Madness, what did I then find in my email box but another message from the said A, this time highlighting the amazing CookieA's sock designs. Does she think I live on triple time? That I somehow have more space in my day than the rest of the world? But look at them all the same. What do you think of Thelonious? And the cabled ones! How can you live without knitting those? And then Angeluna wants to know if the Celtic Vest is finished!! How she has the face...


I have been working on that CV all day. I've been ordered to finish it, I want to finish it, but it is taking a bit of time. Working up the left front, and have just got to that stage where a Lavold motif has to be worked at the armhole side while at the same time a complex series of decreases are carried out inside the cable edging at the other. It's like trying to move one hand in staccato jerks while gracefully waving the other in fairylike gestures. The two series of instructions are pulling me in opposite directions.


I had promised myself that if I finished this left front tonight I could do a teeny tiny swatch for the violet Tierra step-fronted sweater. I want to start on that Tierra so BADLY. It's calling to me.









I even yielded to the urge and wound up two of the newly-dried hand-dyed skeins into one huge ball, so as to be nice and ready. I like using my little nostepinne. It feels good in the hand. (Although I have got nice and handy at winding a centre-pull ball on my thumb by now.)


But then I was going through the stash, hauling out cones for next week's yarn sale on eBay, and came across a particularly dishy slub cotton in a nice denim blue shade. It grabbed my wrist and hissed, 'Crop Aran sweater, divine for summer over white shirt. Go. Now. You know you want to!' (My yarns are always this talkative. I think it has something to do with being stored in the basement.) Here is the chatty fellow:





It would look nice in a casual crop Aran, wouldn't it? But no, no, NO!



(Don't you love that moment in The Devil Wears Prada when Emily glances at her cellphone, sees that Miranda is on her way an hour early and gasps No, No, NO! Got it on DVD now, and have already watched it twice. Love that movie.)


It's bad enough to be so tempted by the violet Tierra, but if the denim is going to get in on the act I'm not sure how long my willpower is going to hold out. Think positive, think Celtic Vest, get back to those damn decreases...