Black water

Today we set sail for Loch Ness.  On the way we passed a skate park and ice rink (curling!) and stopped to walk in the woods by a canal along the River Ness, which runs too swiftly to be useful for transport, ergo the canal.  A mallard duck, apparently familiar with humans carrying bread, landed and waddled right up to us, but we left her disappointed.  The trees sport fuzzy fringes of lichen, which one woman said will only grow in clean air.  Yesterday by the distillery they pointed out that all of the trees were black due to a fungus that loves the alcohol-covered bark.  The water in the canal and the Ness is very clear, but brown as tea, due to the peat it runs through to get there.  There are yellow flowering gorse bushes everywhere, and we got close enough to know why you don't want to fall into one.  Covered with thorns.

After parking at the wrong dock, we got to the right one for a one-way trip to Urquhart Castle and headed down the canal that crosses the entire country, joining several lochs.  The wind was ferocious, and Loch Ness was full of whitecaps and what looked like 6 foot waves.  The water is black and opaque - as opaque as black coffee, but darker.  Like liquid onyx.  Among the offerings in the little onboard food stall was hot chocolate with whiskey, because Scotland.

We docked at the castle and rambled around the ruins, but the wind was even more fierce, knocking me down at one point, and most of us retreated to the gift shop to reattach our hair.  Our gluten-free lunch at an Italian restaurant was good - flatbread with olives, proscuitto, salami, and shaved Parmesan to start, some kind of pasta with no discernable sauce, but with bacon, mushrooms, and various unknown chunks, and very good gelato.  I even had a bottle of Scotland's second favorite drink, Irn Bru, a soda with a taste something like bubble gum but not quite describable.  No working bathrooms, but otherwise great, with a view of the Ness.  The afternoon consisted of a trip to Culloden battlefield, which most of us were not that interested in, and a brief stop at a Tesco grocery store to look at their selection of gluten-free stuff.  They must have thought we were insane, the squealing that went on.  I resisted the urge to buy crunchy things.  I found this at the battlefield but did not buy it:

Och aye, I could knit my ain wee William Wallace, or a sheep, or a pint of Guinness.

Not many pictures today because the internet is slow.  Back on the bus for dinner in a little while, but I might take a walk to burn off all of this food.  We have been collectively looking for birds to identify, but we see only a few types other than sea birds, and can hear but not see many others.  Tomorrow we check out and head to Glasgow and I think a visit to a woolen mill.  I wonder if I can find local (and affordable) cashmere?

From Edinburgh to Inverness

Today we checked out of our Edinburgh hotel and hit the road for Inverness, with some stops on the way.  On the way out I snapped James Maxwell, who is known in science for Maxwell's Demon:

And from yesterday, another view of the castle.

And some grit.  And Mayo Chicken for only 99p from McDonald's.

I saw quite a few beggars and people sleeping in the streets.

Lovely scenery on the way, including a bridge being built over what might be the Tay river.

We stopped to tour St. Andrews golf course, the ancient home of the sport of wasting time.  Most of us were not really interested, but we had a nice walk while being blasted with cold wind.  And I enjoyed a street sign: "Butts Wynd", and a sign that said "Danger: Golf in Progress".  Lunch was incredible: Caesar salad with deep-fried croutons, shaved parmesan, and little fishies (not salty canned sardines); huge portions of fish and chips with peas (mostly ignored in favor of the perfect fish); warm sticky toffee pudding with ice cream.

Back on the bus, and we stopped at a small distillery that makes single-malt whiskey, most of which is sold to makers of blended whiskeys.  We toured, we tasted whiskey, we resisted urging to buy, we used the bathrooms, and we moved on.  The water used by this distillery is pure, except for whatever the otters upstream add to it.  Mmmm.  12 year old otter juice.

Some of us are attempting to identify birds.  Lots of sea birds, lots of wood doves, magpies, rooks, feral pigeons, and not much else.  Sometimes I hear them, but can't find them.  A few people have binoculars, I have a European bird book, we share.

I knitted by feel while watching out the window.  Beautiful scenery, lots and lots of sheep and many new lambs which seemed to mostly come in pairs.  Scotland is one of the places with more sheep than people, and I believe it after today.  We saw highland cattle, deer, heavy horses with foals, yellow fields of canola, and miles of stone fences, all scattered over hills and valleys.  Hardly a flat, horizontal field in the whole country.  Rushing streams with people fishing for trout and salmon.  I have gotten through 2" of ribbing and can now just do plain stockinette until it's long enough to decrease at the top.  The way the weather has been I may have people asking to buy it when it's done.  I found a yarn shop and bought 3 small skeins of local wool, so there's another hat.

Our dinner restaurant in Inverness apparently didn't know they needed gluten-free for us, in spite of the evidence of correspondence with our hosts, but they managed to pull together an appetizer of open-faced mushroom and arugula sandwiches with a garlicky sauce, tender lamb, some casserole of soft cheesy potato slices with a crispy top, kale (mostly ignored), and chocolate mousse.  And wine to keep us from whining while waiting.  Pretty good.  We are eating much too much.

Tomorrow: a cruise on Loch Ness, tour of Urquhart Castle and a visit to a battlefield.  And a stop at Tesco to see what kind of gluten-free groceries they have here.

Edinburgh

According to our guide, Scotland's big products are whiskey and wool.  Indeed, on the way in from the airport (and from the air) we saw many green fields dotted with sheep, including many, many lambs (in fact I ate one today :-)).  Near our hotel is Edinburgh castle, and the streets leading up to it (and I do mean UP - this whole place is up and down hills) are lined with sellers of all things wool or whiskey.  I mean to visit some of those places today, although it looks mostly like finished wool goods rather than yarn.  As the afternoon is free, I'll also look up yarn stores and see what I find.  We had a private tour of the castle today before the hordes showed up.

Built on a formidable hill.

The view looking into "New" Edinburgh from the castle.

More "New" Edinburgh.

A cemetery for military dogs.  The castle is still a working military installation.

Many years of coal smoke have turned much of the city's stones black.

Lovely little park.

Cannon big enough to crawl into (but they politely request that you don't)

So many cobblestones.  I think about how many hours of work went into the streets of the city.

Our guide Tom wears his kilt and bares his knees every day, although the wind and chill are fierce.

Fancy drainpipe.

Can't get this rotated, but the top ones are William Wallace and Robert the Bruce.

Sword as tall as me.

We have had some really good gluten-free meals.  Our hosts Bob and Ruth (or the travel agency) have taken care of everything and checked ahead of time.  They had the hotel rearrange the breakfast buffet to make sure the gluten and gluten-free foods were not touching or sharing utensils.  They tell us what's not safe.  They arranged menus ahead of time at each restaurant, and I am having to severely restrain myself from finishing everything to ensure that I can still wear the pants I brought.  I will go walk after this to try to work some of it off.

I rented a wifi device to stay connected, but I'm having trouble keeping the battery charged, so I may have to complain and get a replacement or refund.  It took me about 5 minutes in the hotel room to figure out how to turn on the lights - you have to put your door key card in a slot or nothing turns on, including outlets.  So I can't leave it charging while I go out unless I get a second room card.  That took some getting used to, and figuring out where the flush button for each toilet is.  Tomorrow we move onward to Glasgow, after dinner and a show tonight.  We never did get an agenda, so we don't know much ahead of time - just get on the bus and off we go.

There are at least two crocheters in the group (who are all middle-aged or older except one who is too perky), one of whom brought yarn and makes baby blankets for Project Linus.  I have been knitting whenever I have to wait for something - Cassiope at night in the hotel when I can focus on the pattern, and a plain stockinette cap with sock-weight yarn when I don't want to deal with a pattern.  There's a backup project, but I don't think I'll get to it.  The flight over was too dark - it was a brand new plane, and when I hit the button on the screen in front of me, my neighbor's light came on instead of mine, so somebody got some wiring wrong.  And that didn't make me at all anxious about how well the rest of the wiring was...

More from Glasgow.  For now, I have to look up Edinburgh yarn shops and go look at woolens.

The magic of blocking

I finished a big green project: the wavy lace shawl from a Vogue pattern book in the library (alas, I don't know it's title - I copied the pages to keep the pattern).  It turns out to have interesting rippled edges.  Here's how it looks right off the needles:

You can see the rippled edges, but the lace pattern is squashed together and the edges roll under when you aren't looking at them.  I have a zillion other things to do, but I really felt the need to block this bad boy and get it done.  I cleared floor space and put together a 2 x 3 grid of 2' square foam pads to hold it, and hoped it would be long enough, because that's pretty much all the floor space I could find.  I filled a bowl with water, dunked it in and squeezed out the air and left it to soak while I went to pick up pills for my weird nervous kitty.  Squeezing out the water from something this big was a challenge, so it's wetter than I usually leave blocked things, but it should dry before it gets moldy.  I pinned it out, using blocking wires to capture the outermost stitches of each edge curve and to hold the straight edges at the end.  And voila:

When it's dry, it will spring back some, but for the most part it will keep its shape and not curl under.  Then I'll weave in the ends and fold it and put it away for the fundraiser.  It was fun, although a little tricky doing the first end section - if you lose stitches, it doesn't look anything like it does in that picture just above.  That was cause for some ripping back and some swearing, and I can still see a one-row difference, but I'm not going to point it out.

I still have more than 2 skeins left.  Time to hunt for a new pattern.

Mistakes were made

I'm sure I have urged you to read the directions all the way through before starting a project.  Now I'm going to urge you to read them through again when you get to the end if there is finishing work involved.  I finished the granny squares for the felted bag, felted them, pinned them out to equal size, and sat back, feeling the glow of a job well done.  Except that it wasn't well done.  Had I paid more attention I would have known to SEW THEM TOGETHER BEFORE FELTING, which I only checked once I tried to figure out how to sew the felted pieces together.  Well, now I feel stupid.  I not only missed that, I missed the instructions to do a row of single crochet around the edges after sewing the pieces together.  All hope is not lost, but it's going to be tougher to make a bag of these than it would have been.  There are decorative openwork embroidery stitches that can be used to join hemmed edges that would work here, so I will choose a color that doesn't try at all to be unobtrusive and get to joining.  Still, now I'm doing it the hard way because I didn't reread the instructions.

I bought yarn today, even though I have absolutely no need to, but I was in Lahaska, PA, for brunch with people I worked with a long time ago, and there was a yarn store so I had to go take a look.  Twist in Lahaska has a very nice selection, and if you're interested in spinning they can help you with that.  I settled for two skeins of Avalon Multis cotton/acrylic for a baby sweater, on sale.  Once I pick a pattern that can join all of the others bagged up and waiting for my attention.

I'm close to the end of two shawl projects.  One, in worsted weight, will go much faster than the one in laceweight that has over 400 stitches per row, but the end is in sight for both, yeehaw!  Then I can let myself start something new.  Something larger, like a baby blanket, or something quick for some instant gratification?

I picked out 3 projects to take on my vacation, during which I anticipate waits in airports, on planes, in hotels, etc during which yarn work should take place.  Projects that don't require multiple colors, or stitch holders, or cutting and reattaching.  One is Sockhead Hat in a brightly stripey sock yarn - nothing exciting to do, just miles of small-gauge stockinette for when I might have to pay attention to something other than my hands.  Two is the Cassiope shawl/scarf in a yarn made of what looks like 4 strands of separately variegated purple and white yarns twisted together.  More of a pay-attention-to-me lace pattern for quiet times.  Third is the Autopilot Cowl, which claims to be a simple pattern that lets the yarn be the star, so a skein of Noro Kibou will go into that.  I have less yardage than the pattern calls for, but I'll just make it shorter.  I think that's enough to hold me for my free time during 16 days of travel.  I'll be in Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland, all good places to find yarn, so I may come home with a sweater's worth of Aran or a hat's worth of Lopi.

And just for so, here's a good link on the difference between knitters when it comes to gauge.  The scientist in me likes how she graphed the results.  And if you follow to the end of the page she has a link to an experiment in which she subjects identical swatches to different kinds of blocking to see whether a stretched block will retain its new size.  Short answer, no - if your gauge is off, there's not a lot of permanent change you can effect by blocking.  So fight the urge to dive into a project, and check your gauge before you do.

Finally!

The Hue Shift, she is done.  Here's how it looked before the black edging went on.  It was supposed to be picked up and knit, one side at a time, but I decided to crochet it.  I was going to do 10 rounds, but gave up after 6, about an inch of black.  Of course, that was after waiting for the yarn for square 96, only to run out of yarn for square 99.

I have seen other people post their pictures of the finished blanket, and it's much bigger than mine.  They must have had to get more of every color.  Keep that in mind if you do this, especially if you buy the kit: if you knit loosely you will need more.  Even if you don't, you might need more than one skein of each.

I also finished the Spatterdash mitts and ordered 30 buttons for them (they need 28).  Obviously they still need to be blocked and have ends woven in, but they were fun.

I'm still working on the Gwendolyn shawl, but this winter my hands have been so dry that the lace-weight alpaca sticks to my fingers, catching on the dry skin, and now I have over 300 stitches on the needle so each row takes a long time, 20 minutes or more.  For TV watching it's this scarf in $20 worth of cashmere, a simple feather and fan pattern.

  But over the weekend I started the granny squares for a felted bag, and that has been fun due to all the color changes and the satisfaction of checking off each one as it was done.  Not so fun has been sewing them all together and weaving in the ends, but one side is complete:

Which I expect will end up a lot smaller after felting.  It gets a fabric lining and purchased handles.  And then I can do something else with all of the leftover wool, like this pattern I finally bought.

So what is keeping you busy?

95 down

I know, I haven't updated in a while, but the projects at this time of year are repetitive because they are large, so not many fun pictures to post.  Mostly it's the Hue Shift afghan, which is nearing the end of the 100 squares.  95 are now done, only 5 to go, but square 96 might stop me in my tracks if I run out of yarn.  The pattern calls for one skein of each of 10 yarns, but I had only 1 yard of red left when I finished with it, and I'm not sure the blue will hold out for its one last square.  I will be really annoyed if that is the case and I have to buy another skein for just a few yards.  I'm a tight knitter, so it's not like I was wanton with the yarn, but I'm going to have to leave a comment on the website about being careful with it.  Seems unfair for people who buy the kit to have to buy extra.  Here's how the first two quarters looked:

I have managed to fit in a few other projects, but mostly it's a race with myself to get that afghan done so I can move on.  I made some Star Wars figures, then gave the pattern book back to its owner so I could truthfully say that I didn't have the patterns any more.  Amigurumi can be a booger to make because of the finishing work - embroidery, felt, sewing pieces together.  I made a red panda and didn't ask for any payment, so the requestor's wife made me some origami boxes.  That's a nice trade - handmade for handmade.

I also used some leftover Ultra Pima cotton to make a "lovey" for my anticipated nephew, using a standard pattern for the square and a teddy bear head with the last 10 stitches.  The head turned out smaller than I would like, but it is done and survived the washer and dryer with embroidery intact, so it's ready to give.

I hope they don't find it weird - I think it looks a little odd, but it's done and they can do with it what they like, even if they bury it in the garden so it doesn't frighten the kids.

Once I clean the litter boxes and finish packing I'm off to Florida to visit my parents.  I packed 3 small-scale projects for the trip - plain socks with self-patterning yarn, some knitted mitts, and crocheted mitts.

Where do I find patterns?  Ravelry, of course, but if you're on Facebook you can find pages for Cascade Yarns or Knit Picks or other vendors, "like" the page, and posts will show up in your Pages feed.  A lot of the posts are links to free patterns.  You can also just go to their websites and browse free patterns.  If you make an account with a yarn website like www.yarn.com you can sign up for e-mails that tell you about yarn sales and sometimes have pattern links.  I have also gotten patterns out of calendars and library books, but I find they are prone to errors.  Patterns on the web have often been done by many people before you find them, and the kinks have been worked out, no fiber pun intended.

Time to finish packing and reconsider my project choices.