Spitting Yarn

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Dearie me, it’s been an age since my last post. Apologies for that. I have various excuses: work, being a little under the weather, work, sunny evenings, work…

I have regained my knitting vibe in a serious way. If I’m not knitting (which is regrettably quite often), I’m thinking about knitting, or reading about it, or studying the masses of crochet on the high street – and on people’s backs. I shuffle through my pattern book, paw over my knitting “library”, rifle through my stash. I want to knit!

Unfortunately, all the usual knitter’s crises are getting in the way of me being a knitting whirlwind, churning out FOs left, right and centre.

Problem no. 1
The second Giotto sock is still incomplete. I have a mental block about how to arrange the stitches for the gusset. I have set it to one side until I either have an expert along side me, or I am struck with inspiration. This is immensely frustrating, as it took me about 10 minutes to work it out on sock # 1.

Problem no. 2
Something has gone wrong with the front of Maggie. The pattern is telling me to do something which just does not work with the arrangement I have in front of me. I need to seek Kim Hargreaves’ advice, but this requires time which I do not have at the moment. So, Maggie is being temporarily sidelined too.

Problem no. 2.5
This problem indicates to me that I am the source of my knitting woe and not some sort of negative knitting karma. It’s clearly all down to lack of concentration.

Do you see this weird loop thing?:

I dropped a stitch to correct some ooky error on Maggie and encountered it. It’s not the loop of a stitch, it was extra, in the middle of the knit. I have no idea how it came to be there, or what to do with it, so there was nothing for it but to frog 20 or so rows. Anyway, this was only half a knitting problem, as frogging obviously sorted it.

Problem no. 3
Major stash guilt. I need say no more.

Problem no. 4
Despite having enough yarn to create garments for a small African nation (who admittedly may have limited woollen garmen requirements), I cannot match my yarn up to the stuff I want to knit. This means I need more yarn, which is not going to help with Problem no. 3.

So, despite my current zeal for the woolly stuff, all is not well.

I further exacerbated one of my knitting problems with my recent trip to Boston. Despite spending less than 24 hours in the city, I hit yarn. I almost didn’t, as I arrived after all the shops had shut, and my meeting went on for longer than expected the next day. However, I poured over my list of yarn stores and my map of Boston and found one that was more or less on route to the airport. So on my way home, I made my cab wait at the kerb of the unpromisingly-named Windsor Button. There may well be better yarn stores in Boston, but I made the most of it. Look what I got!

That’s four skeins of Lamb’s Pride, two in Orchard Thistle and two in Brite Blue. There’s also two skeins of Berrocco Ultra Alpaca in 6233 which is lovely mix of 50% alpaca and 50% wool. It has a good twist to it, so it’s destined for a cable-orientated project. Finally, 2 skeins of The Holy Grail aka Manos Del Uruguay in 203 (I should have got more).

In fact, considering I spent so little time in Boston, I formed a great impression of the city. On my arrival I walked all the way from Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay area down to Little Italy in the North End. I walked the length of Newbury Street and across Boston Common. My goal was a restaurant I had spotted in Time Out called Sage. It was quite a walk, but the crispy rabbit, saffron risotto and roast artichokes made it all worth while.

The next morning, my meeting didn’t start until 10.30am so I had time to seek out some breakfast. I stumbled across a place called Trident Booksellers & Cafe, and independent bookstore and cafe. I had the most delicious maple syrup granola and fresh fruit and a decent latte. Not only did I get great breakfast, I also picked up this:

Trident is on Newbury Street and definitely worth checking out.

Finally, a story for UK readers! A couple of weekends back we went to the wedding of our good friends Terence and Helen. It was a beautiful affair deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside. The wedding itself took place in an 18 century lodge on the banks of the River Test. Idyllic. We were staying nearby in Winchester at the Hotel du Vin. On checking in, our room wasn’t ready but as we needed to get changed immediately they lent us a suite which hadn’t been cleaned yet. We were informed that the previous tenant was a celebrity! How exciting! And the evidence was there when we entered the room – their barely eaten breakfast…

See, there’s the name badge…

*Click pic for a larger view*

Maureen Lipman. Well, I never.