Yes, I'm still here

Sorry, my pets, I have not gotten back to this since I came back from my vacation.  I know from the statistics that are available that hardly anybody ever checks this, so I don't feel that badly about depriving you, since you seem not to exist, but I will try to keep this up for anybody who is interested.

What have I been doing since May?  Much knitting and crocheting, and by late October or early November I hit 60 items finished for the Warm and Fuzzy Fundraiser, so I let myself stop that and work on a few things for my kids and myself.  In addition to the stuff I made and that some of the Yarnworks clan donated, other people at my work brought in another 60ish handmade items for the fundraiser, which was held on Dec. 7, 2016.  All of that, plus the bake sale, plus random donations, added up to $4183 for Mercer Street Friends.  Higher than last year, but not by as much as I would have hoped.

Maybe you can help me decide where to put my yarn energies for next year.  I put the items I made into categories, like "hat" and "blanket", leaving out a few random things, then counted up the number of bids and the number of dollars by category, then found the average per item to see what brought in the most.  Here's how it broke down:

average bids per item:
Toy 4.84
Mitts 3.75
Cowl 2.33
Scarf 2.17
Hat 2.1
Blanket 6.5
Bag 2.8
Shawl 1.3

average dollars per item:
Toy 32.36
Mitts 26.25
Cowl 21.67
Scarf 21.67
Hat 11.70
Blanket 167.50
Bag 32.40
Shawl 35.00

So blankets obviously brought in the most in terms of both bids and dollars, with toys also high in both.  After that it's more complicated.  Shawls, I have noticed, attract few bids but those who want them, want them.  Bags brought in decent amounts, but are usually a booger to make if they need felting and lining and handles.  Mitts (mostly fingerless, but some full mittens) did well enough.  Neckwear (cowls and scarves) were lukewarm, no pun intended.  And hats didn't bring in much money each.  One guy bid on all of the baby and child hats, but adult hats weren't going.

So toys, blankets, and bags seem to bring in the most, but also take much time, yarn, and effort.  Scarves, cowls, and shawls can be fun, but don't get as much interest.  Maybe stick to children's hats?  More fingerless mitts, some fair isle scandinavian style mittens?  I have already completed a lap blanket and a cowl for 2017, currently working on a baby blanket and scarf.  I have yarn and patterns bought for these bunnies, these mittens,  this shawl,  this shawl, and this blanket, among others.  What else would you suggest?

Iceland

Iceland is a grim looking place this time of year, unless you know where to look.  I'm enjoying the differences between what I'm used to seeing in my life and what I have been seeing.  Iceland has ugly architecture, beautiful mountains, streams and rivers everywhere, horses and sheep, steam bursting from the ground, tasty fish.  We arrived yesterday and immediately did some touring with our 22-year-old guide on his second tour ever, stopping at the Saga Museum and touring Reykjavik before we ever got to the hotel.  The Saga Museum has some perfectly made dioramas of the history of Viking settlement in Iceland, but the recorded narration goes on much too long for non-Icelandic ears.  The human figures were almost too lifelike to approach.

This hotel (the Grand) is different from all of the others - less European, more Scandinavian.  Simple, IKEA-like furniture, no rugs, geometric patterns for decoration.  In fact, there's a very idiosyncratic design style here - lots of abstract figures.  And a lot of spray-painted street graffiti along with a few well-done murals.  But the buildings are mostly hideous - concrete boxes with corrugated metal roofs.  Right now the grass is mostly brown (except for golf courses), and there are few trees, so everything is winter-looking.  But Skyr is abundant - good stuff, like yogurt but with a richer, smoother texture.

Last night's dinner was excellent - the best lamb I've ever had, but it took over 2 hours to serve 3 courses.  When you've been eating every meal with the same people for 2 weeks, there's only so much conversation to be had.

Today was a great day, although it started out rainy.  We did the "golden circle" and looked at lots of geology - mountains, glaciers, geysers, waterfalls.

Graylag geese who completely ignored us.

Geyser!  This one is unpredictable - every few minutes, give or take, it erupts.

Beautiful, clear, boiling hot water.

Big honkin' waterfall fed by a glacier.

The day was consumed by stops for scenery, walking around scenery, bathroom breaks, gift shops, lunch (smorgasbord and all the pickled herring I could eat!), more scenery to walk around.  Boulders and ground (which is old lava) are covered by all kinds of mosses and small ground cover which is beginning to bud, as are the small shrubs and trees.  I caught sight of golden plovers, the Icelandic harbinger of spring.  My birds of Europe book has lots of dogeared pages from everything I've spotted, including a raven today. And after we got back to Reykjavik, still more sightseeing.

Dinner was a little faster, with lovely salt cod in a sauce with figs, lemons, and almonds, preceeded by cauliflower soup and grilled gf bread.  I took my knitting this time to keep me occupied between courses.  I'm looking forward to the breakfast buffet at the hotel - good food, and when I'm done I can get up and leave.

Tomorrow is a free day until dinner, and my plan is to take the free shuttle into town, visit the National Museum of Iceland (because I love archaeology), the Phallus Museum (just because how could I not?), and the shopping street which may or may not have yarn for sale.  We have seen a lot of beautiful hand-knitted things at gift shops, which are pretty much all itchy, but no yarn, and the stores that sell it might not be open Sunday, but so it goes.  If I find it, I find it, if not, I'll survive.  Some people are planning to visit one of the geothermal pools about 10 minutes away, but my kind melt when wet.  Then walk back to the hotel (they only offer the shuttle one way), have dinner with the group, and pack for an early departure so we can ride by the Blue Lagoon before heading to the airport.  It has been a great trip, but I'm ready to go home and do some laundry.

Scones!

Today we toured yet another lovely garden, but I was distracted by finding out they had a museum of toys, featuring a big dollhouse (actually several).  Without hesitating I paid the 5 euros to enter and spent a blissful half hour.

I even bought the book so I could have the pictures, only later realizing it would have to be part of the excess weight I'll probably have to pay for tomorrow.  This is at Powerscourt House.

Second stop was Glendalough Monastery, where we didn't have much time, but walked around enough to see stone ruins, a round tower (which is exactly where Rapunzel would hang out), and an old cemetary, along with the usual beautiful Irish scenery and sheep.

Then lunch, where I think there was an audible collective groan when it turned out to be roast beef and mashed potatoes for the third meal in a row (excluding breakfast).  That's when I decided to skip dinner, which was going to be dinner and a show - I don't need another typical Irish meal and step dancing, thank you.

Finally we went to Ballyknocken Farmhouse where we were given a lesson in making scones, and they were gluten-free!  We donned aprons and used our hands to mix the ingredients, then consumed them with butter, ginger-rhubarb jelly, and tea.  Even though we had just finished eating lunch a short time ago.  That's when I definitely decided to skip dinner.  

Now it's time to play luggage tetris, getting as close to but not exceeding 5 kilos as I can in my backpack and crossing my fingers that the rest won't add up to too much excess poundage.

And last night I finished a hat, so I blocked it this morning (needing three changes of water because it leaked dye) and it's drying now.  That's two projects finished.

Dublin

Yesterday was spent between Sligo and Dublin.  The Sligo hotel was the most mundane so far, but had beautiful landscaping (you know, I'm not sure how much of it is landscaping and how much is just plain interesting stuff growing everywhere in the UK and Ireland).  Much of the bus rides are through countryside.  Both Irelands have more cows than Scotland (hence the excellent butter and cheese), and few stone fences but many hedges.  Farms appear more prosperous than those in Scotland, and I see a lot more new, what I would call "American style" houses.

We stopped at Mullingar House to see the house (built as a summer house for the "wicked earl") and gardens.  The best part of the house interior was a couple of gorgeous plaster ceilings that had obviously been extremely skillfully done by hand in wet plaster, like playing with cake icing but upside down.  This does not do it justice:

In the center, the four winds blow in all directions.  Somewhere along the garlands is a fire-breathing dragon.  Outside the house the highlight was a folly: the earl (who accused his wife of adultery and locked her up for 31 years, possibly inspiring the story of Jane Eyre) didn't like his brother, whose house he could see, so he spent 10,000 pounds in the 1700s to build something that looks like the ruin of an abbey, but is basically a spite fence:

You can see it in the distance.  The walls are full of holes that have been adopted as nexting boxes by crows and rooks.

We arrived in Dublin, where thankfully we will spend 3 nights, after 3 moves in 3 days.  Some of us realized that we might have a luggage problem because we were allowed 2 checked bags plus a carry-on and personal item on Iceland Air, but on Wow Air between Dublin and Reykjavik we can only have one checked bag and one carry-on (no personal item) and there are weight limits.  You can pay to have extra bags or to have more weight, paying less ahead of time online and more at the airport, but it turns out that we can't do it individually, only through the tour company that booked the tickets, and they have stopped responding to e-mails.  So we are making plans to weigh bags, wear multiple layers of clothing, leave things behind, stuff out jacket pockets, etc, to get around this.

This morning we had a bus tour of Dublin, rearranging our schedule to not get caught in the lines due to cruise ships docking and taking their passengers on bus tours.  We roamed St. Patrick's cathedral, Phoenix Park, and Trinity College/Book of Kells exhibit.  Now, anybody can take pictures of stained glass and marble sculptures of old white men, but my interests are a little more eclectic, to wit:

The floor tiles.

Medieval wall, door with modern security pushbuttons.

Handmade needlepoint cushions hanging from the back of every chair, and piled up in randome places along the walls.

Flags so old and rotted they are held together with netting (hard to see).

Long-haired ladies.

After the tour we went out to the middle of nowhere to a pub called the Merry Plowboy and had a good lunch, then were dropped off in town or back at the hotel.  I stayed in town and hunted down a yarn store called This is Knit, where I paid more than I intended for some locally made yarn and picked up some double-pointed needles to finish a hat.

Left: Irish.  Right: Scottish.

Yesterday I finished another project I started on the way from Scotland to Ireland:

A cowl in some Noro.  This is fancy-looking somewhat expensive yarn (which I got on sale), and everybody thinks it's so cool, but I had to keep stopping to untwist it, which doesn't normally happen, and I think of it as garbage yarn because it looks like somebody had a big bowl of scraps and just twisted them together to see what happened.  Feh.  Not using this again.

Now resting my weary feet after walking back to the hotel before hopping on the bus for dinner.  I think I need to skip dessert.

Giant steps

Today we started off in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and headed for Sligo, Republic of Ireland.  No passport check, no discernable border, but I had to switch my wifi device to one with an Ireland chip, which seems to work just fine.  I'm glad I have it, I just wish it could have been a little cheaper, but that's my inner miser.

We have eaten really well - most of our meals are overly abundant, most have been really good, only a few have been mundane.  If you want vegetables and salads, go somewhere else.  If you want lamb and beef and pork, here is good.  Breakfast has been eggs, baked beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, and several kinds of cooked meats including sausages (bangers), black pudding (labeled a "superfood" at one hotel), their version of bacon, and sometimes haggis.  In addition there are cereals both hot and cold, fruit both fresh and preserves, pastries, cold meats and cheeses - pretty much everything you could think of.  This morning we had excellent gluten-free rolls, and bread with a brand new toaster.  The cheddar cheese in Ireland has been spectacular and butter is abundant.  At one breakfast, next to the honeycomb, was a bottle of whiskey with a pouring top.  None of us could decide what part of breakfast you were supposed to add it to, although it was next to the oatmeal.

Lunches and dinners have been equally overloaded, and always come with dessert.  We will all roll off the plane at home.  I have had to consciously stop myself part way through, no matter how good, and limit dessert to just a few bites, but I am already planning many salads when I get home.  We also spend a lot of time on the bus, so when we get a chance to walk we take it.  I think today I might have actually balanced out some of those calories at the Giant's Causeway.  This is a spectacular thing to see, and I actually forgot to keep track of time and had to be hunted down by our guide.  Pictures can't do it justice, but here they are.  Enlarge them as much as you can to get a better sense of it.  The paths are narrow, sometimes steep, rocky, right at the edge of a sheer drop, and there are often no guard rails.  You know in the US that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

See the "organ pipes" formation?  I walked up there and beyond.

See those insanely steep steps?  Didn't go up there.

This is the view from the organ pipes.

This is looking up at the organ pipes.

 Looking down from where I stood in the next picture.

 Looking down from just past the doorway in the picture above.

Looked, but didn't go.

The science nerd in me really enjoyed the geology and the birds and plants.  I know there are legends and stories, but they're not as interesting as the real history.

After all that walking up and down hills for an hour, we went to Londonderry and spent an hour walking around the town.  I tried to walk the one mile wall that has circled the inner city for 400 years, but my knee and feet were protesting after the Giant's Causeway.  And yet I still walked for the rest of the time, just not up and down the wall.  This is for you, Yarnworkers - I found a building covered in a giant crocheted yarnbomb:

My room last night was elegant but tiny.

Tonight's room is fine, but it's on the ground floor and I just realized that anyone can look in if the curtains aren't shut.  The trees outside are full of rook's nests and loud with rooks, who are like uglier crows, and very noisy.  Tonight's dinner was at the Clarion Hotel in Sligo, which has an unexpected Victorian facade.  On the way home we looked it up and found that it used to be an insane asylum.

Tomorrow we head for Dublin for 3 days.  Then we take Wow Air to Iceland, but it looks like they have much lower luggage and weight limits than Iceland Air, which does our other flights, so our tour guide is looking into that to see if we can get out of paying extra.  I haven't used any local currency so far, just putting my few small purchases on a card, but I might get some Euros now.  I would have had to use English pounds, Irish pounds, Euros, and Kroner by the end of the trip.

Two ships

One afloat, one sunk.  This morning we drove 2 hours to catch the ferry to Belfast.  On the way we stopped at a place with a small food stand, and more importantly, bathrooms.  It was about as ridiculously photogenic as you could wish for.  On one side of the road, green hills dotted with sheep:

On the other, the ocean and shore, with a distant island shrouded in fog:

Everything but sunshine.  

A rook came to investigate.

Back in the bus, got to the ferry.  This is a much bigger vessel than you might expect - almost a junior cruise ship.  Tour buses and 18-wheelers were driving on board.  Inside was also similar to a cruise ship, with shopping, restaurants, game rooms, movies, a spa, etc.  Two hours to Belfast.  Hard to see, but this was the best picture of her I could get.

It was already after 2 pm when we got in, so we went right to the hotel for lunch (where I confirmed that "gammon" is ham), then hopped back on the bus to get to the Titanic exhibit while our bags were taken to our rooms.  The Titanic and her sister the Olympic were built in the Belfast shipyards, and they have made the most of it.  The building is a sparkly monstrosity:

But they do a good job of explaining the lives of the shipbuilders.  Oddly, no Titanic artifacts from the wreck.  One more shot from the shipyard, of the immense crane Goliath (or maybe it's Samson?   I don't know which):

My room tonight is stylish, but tiny.  At least the shower stall has a full door - two so far have had glass walls that only cover half of the shower stall area - what is that about?  Recharging all electronics, then dinner at 8.  Last night: minestrone, penne Bolognese, and cheesecake with a regrettable quinoa crust.  Note to all restaurants and home cooks: yes, quinoa is gluten-free, but no, it is never to be used for pie crust.  

Tomorrow, on to Sligo, so not much unpacking tonight.

Och, another loch

And another castle.  And I just realized there was a Yarnworks today and I forgot to send a reminder e-mail, so I hope people remembered!  In fact, as I type this, I think it has not yet occurred, if I have the time difference right.  Hope it was/will be fun.

Yes, another cruise on a loch, Loch Lomond of song fame, and another castle, Stirling Castle, which features in the William Wallace story.  Nothing new to report from the Loch cruise - it was less windy, so at least there were no whitecaps on the lake until near the end.  Then a rather mundane lunch, then to Stirling Castle.  Some of us were disappointed that we repeated similar experiences rather than having free time to explore the city, so we asked for at least a bus tour, and got one on the way back.

Stirling Castle had been an army barracks, and only recently has started to be restored.  One of the things they have done is to have artist hand weavers recreate the famous Unicorn Tapestries that hang in the Cloisters in NY, so a few of us were excited to see the tapestries and the exhibit about how they were made.  We were only given an hour and a half, so we skipped the guided tour and raced around to see these things.  The tapestries themselves are good, but a little off due to the brightness of their colors and slight artistic differences from the originals, but those of us who do fiber arts were deeply appreciative of the skill that went into them.  At the exhibit we saw the history of the project and were, at last, able to touch the wool that had gone into them.  I have had a book about these tapestries since high school and had read it many times, so I was very familiar with the originals and have several embroidered items with the Unicorn in Captivity scene that I have made.  Overall, the castle seemed off - the repainting of the rooms too brightly colored, too amateur in style, too new.  The kitchen exhibit was also not as I expected, but interesting in its own way.  Last castle, at least last Scottish one.

Before we got back to the hotel we got a tour of Glasgow by bus, but by 5 pm Saturday, nothing was open to see.

Pedestrian bridge over the Clyde.

Another bridge over the Clyde.

This building is nicknamed "the armadillo".

And I'm getting pretty good at knitting by feel.  I realized that I couldn't finish this hat - I originally packed a very long circular needle so I could do it by magic loop (which I have never done and need to practice), but changed my mind and my needle to a 16" circular which is all well and good except that I can't decrease at the top.  So unless I buy DPNs here, this hat will return home unfinished.