I don't have much writing in my this evening, so I'll let the pictures do the talking . . .
First, the fabulous Park Slope Halloween parade. Halloween is when our little neighborhood feels the most like a small town.
On the way to the parade, David enjoyed some of the local jack o lanterns:
As always, the parade was a fantastic mix of kids & dogs (all though it was light on the dogs this year)
Last week I finally finished the Flame Stitch Cardi. I had set it aside for most of the early part of the fall while I worked on other things. Here it is blocking, pre finishing
I gave myself less finishing to do by picking up stitches for the collar instead of what the pattern called for (knitting it separate and then sewing it on . . . bah humbug).
Fall is harvest time at the Lyons / Frutkoff rooftop garden.
The eggplants and peppers did well, but the brussell sprouts are still kind of pathetic. Fall is the world's greatest season. Hot cider, pumpkins, the changing leaves, and the yarn. The last few weeks have been an insanely busy time at work, but David and I managed to escape to Connecticut a few weeks ago. We stayed in a really great old inn called the Wake Robin Inn.
It's in that great area near the Conn/Mass/New York border. We stopped at Stockbridge on the way, and they were having an outdoor sculpture exhibit. This art piece had a sign that said "Please sit", who am I to say no.
It also had my favorite door
I've been doing a lot of socks lately (they are great on road trips), but I also took my Mohair top along, so I could finish it off. I still have to add the white crochet trim, but at least I got one thing off my needles. Here it is blocking:
The next weekend was RHINEBECK!!!! Will and Michelle had never been, so I had my fingers crossed for decent weather. They were predicting snow and rain for Saturday, but when I woke up the sun was shinning, and although it did get overcast later, it was a pretty nice day.
We started out at the sock machine demo. SOOO cool. If someone made these machines for under $300 I would so get one. Check out Will's face, he's in love
After a brief wander, it was time for a snack. We decided to line up early for the famous Rhinebeck, Chicken Pot Pie. So delish. Since we were waiting online, we might as well pull out our knitting. Here's Michelle working a gift for her mom (shush, don't tell) in the LB Collection Organic Wool, and Will and I are rocking out some socks in our Sock-Ease.
Next we went to visit the stars of Rhinebeck, the animals. Look at the gorgeous color of this little darling.
This guy was David's favorite of the whole fair. David said it was the portrait of pure contentment. His eyes were closed and he was chewing away on something that made him very happy!
Fab pumpkin carvings
Michelle had just finished her Owl Sweater in Alpine Wool, and she was TOTALLY the star of Rhinebeck. Every 10 minutes, someone was stopping her to tell her "great sweater". I spotted someone wearing the same sweater and thought it would make a cute picture. I didn't notice until after I took the pic that it was fab designer, Ysolda. How cute are they? Speaking of cute . . .
Will said I suffered from "Bunny Turrets". We would be walking around having a normal conversation, and I would burst out "BUNNY" everytime I spotted these guys David and I made a weekend of it, and had dinner at the fabulous CIA and Terrapin (that has always been booked up in previous years)
Here's our utterly bizarre little room.
And the view out our window
I didn't buy much this year. I just picked up one little skein of Briar Rose Sock yarn, that somehow jumped in my bag when I wasn't looking!
I did make some major progress on the stalled Flame Stitch Cardigan. I finished all the pieces and now it's just time for the shawl collar. The pattern calls for it to be knit separately and sewn on later, but I hate sewing slightly more then picking up stitches . . . so I just decided to pick up stitches and go for it.
In other knitting chores, I've decided to make Wool-Ease Thick and Quick slipper socks for the entire Studio staff. All ELEVEN of us. Yikes. I want to get them all finished by the holidays. Think I'll make it?
I have a three day weekend, fall is in the air, there are still some veggie's hanging on in our garden. Life is pretty good.
David and I said goodbye to summer in the perfect way . . . a Labor Day Weekend Trip to the fabulous Cape May, NJ. It's a sleepy little Victorian town on the Jersey Shore. We sat on the beach,
we walked around the town and looked at all the wonderfully ornate houses (or horribly purple houses)
We went to the State Park and walked on the cute little nature trails
We even found a big band playing in a local park gazebo in the evening. Couldn't be cuter!
I had plenty of knitting time, sitting on the porch, sipping wine in the afternoon. I finally finished the tank top that would not die. It's my own fault, why I felt the need to reknit something from 2006 is beyond me. It does look better now.
(Not the greatest shot, but David wasn't home, so I did the best I could!)
In more knitting do overs, I decided to redo my little tank top w/matching cowl from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting. I had made it years ago out of some kind of junky acrylic "mohair", so now that there is the soft, lofty and beautiful LB Collection Silk Mohair . . . do over!!
There is a crispness in the air that knitter's love. It means fall, sweaters, hot cider, fireplaces, coziness. The fall veggie crop is hanging on. The squash is a no go. We can't seem to grow squash and not have it be completely overtaken by powdery mildew. Ah well. However we do have . . .
Eggplants
Brussel Spouts
Peppers
The return of fall has also meant the return of the Flame Stitch Cardigan. It went into hibernation for the summer, while I tried to get my summer tops done.
So it's been nearly a month since we got back from Ireland, and I keep meaning to blog about it, but the entire month as been gobbled up by the work / life monster. We have had a bit of fun along the way. Thursday night we FINALLY visited the fantastic High Line park, and yesterday we had our first beach day of the whole summer (now that summer's almost over)
Back to Ireland . . . After we said goodbye to Dublin it was time to head into the West. We headed out on our wrong side of the road adventure, driving to Galway. David did a great job driving on the left. Here's a snap out our window.
After dumping our bags at the B & B we decided to head off to Leenane to the Sheep and Wool Museum. It wasn't long before we had our first, sheep in the middle of the road sighting. Sheep graze everywhere, so they are spray painted (my first clue that these animals are not being raised for fleece!)
At the museum we met the woman doing the spinning demos, who is a local sheep farmer. She told us that they only get 90 euros a fleece and it's not even worth the expense of sheering. They raise sheep for meat and the great Irish tradition of spinning, dyeing and knitting is all but dead. When I asked her why she explained that in the mind of the Irish people, spinning and knitting reminds folks of hard times. It would not be something people do for pleasure.
Here's a great little homemade contraption from reused bicycle parts, made for putting yarn on bobbins
In addition to all the wheels, they also had some great looms
Here I am with the little sheepys
Later that evening, we headed into Galway for a night time parade. It was the Arts Festival, and they have an annual parade to usher in Pan. It was really fun.
Days were really long, so this is what it looks like at 9:45 pm
It didn't really get dark until after 10:00 pm
We loved Galway. It's a great little town full of winding streets, great shops and adorable pubs
and, of course, great pub music. We went out three or four times in the evening to listen to music, but the night in galway was our favorite. It wasn't a stage, just some musicians sitting at tables drinking beer and playing music.
The next day we drove to the Spiddal Craft Center. It was pretty small, but it had a nice little weaving store.
Although it rained a bit everyday, our first day of pouring rain came the day we went to the Aran Islands. We took a ferry to Inishmore and it was a rainy, dark day, but we drank hot chocolate and looked at some sweater shops.
By the time we arrived by bus, to the fort, the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. Here I am standing on the huge cliff at the fort. . . no railings, just common sense stands between you and death!
Here's a few of the wonderful thatched roof cottages on the island.
David loved the yellow and red of this building
The next day we left Connomera to head into the strange, rocky beautiful Burren.
On our way we saw what looked like a white waterfall coming down the hill. As we got closer we saw it was a sheep dog herding a flock of sheep down the hill. I caught the tail end of the group on video.
Here's one of the many unmarked "broken bits" (as David and I called them) scattered all over Ireland.
Another roadside animal sighting.
I loved their little faces poking over the wall
The Burren looked like another planet. Somebody said, of the famous rocky land "enough rope to hang a man, but not enough ground to bury him in"
Here I am at the pretty impressive Cliffs of Moher
Next stop is the charming Villiage of Adare. Your first sight is Adare Castle, followed by a street full of adorable thatched roof cottages.
We had a wonderful dinner and a stroll down by the river, we woke up and headed down to the Dingle Penninsula. This area was one of our favorites on the whole trip.
A pub in Dingle Town (a name that kept making David chuckle)
The next few days in the Dingle Penninsula and the Ring of Kerry were filled with too many hundreds of beautiful pictures to post here. A few . . .
I only started to take pictures of the Guinness signs in the last few days of the trip. I wish I had started sooner. Ah well, here are just a few great ones
Here's the Kilo of yarn I got in the Aran Islands for 47 euro!!!! It's pretty scratchy, so I'll make an outer garment with it.
With all that driving / flying I did get a lot of knitting done. I made some decent progress on my do over tank top
and I almost finished Rachel's tank top
Here's a close up showing how unbelievably different my tension is when I pick v.s. throwing. For the strip I was throwing one color and picking (knitting continental) with the other. I then switched every row. You can see that the tension difference make this weird, curvy stripe.
Here it is all finished on my goofy niece who refuses to not make faces when you take her picture (so I cut off her head . . . so there!)
Our garden has not been doing that great, but we have had a few good garden meals. We didn't have much food in the fridge when we came home. Michelle (my friend who was house sitting), left some mozzarella in the fridge, so we picked some tiny carrots, some tomatoes, basil & zucchino and we had a nice garden dinner.
Now that the eggplants and peppers are coming in, we have some more to snack on, but it's not been a great food crop year.
Now that I've caught up on blogging what happened in July, maybe I'll get around to writing about Aug by October!
I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last blog post. I feel like this summer is being washed away. David and I did take a fab vacation (more on this later), but we’re really not doing any summer NY fun stuff at all. We still have yet to see an outdoor movie or go to a Cyclones Game
Our garden is hanging on, but the rain is killing a lot. We are growing baby carrots this year from seeds.
Here’s David and our carrot crop. . . small but adorable (and the carrot is nice too)
I had another fit of “do over” with the short and chic cardi. The bottom ribbing was just too stretched out, so I cut, ripped, put it back on the needle and reknit the ribbing on a US 9.
Since we were getting ready to head off to Ireland and they don’t allow metal needles. (I was in the middle of doing a pair of socks -on metal, and redoing the bottom of the short & chic cardi -also on metal), I had to cast on a couple of travel projects.
I cast on my other “do over” the xback tank. And the Cotton-Ease tank top I was doing for my niece Rachel.
I left the gang to hold down the fort at work, Michelle to take care of the garden & David and I took off to Ireland.
We started our trip in Dublin, a great town.
We traveled all around the city, listened to some great music, ate pub food, and (of course) drank Guinness. David’s favorite part of Dublin was the Guinness Tour.
He was chosen to start the brew, which was pretty cool.
On the river by the Custom House we saw the amazingFamine Monument & the cool new bridge.
Here are just a couple of the famous Dublin doors.
Also in Dublin began my (semi) fruitless search for yarn. Most of the “yarn stores” in Ireland are mixed stores with a small yarn section. This store had the most hilariously large balls of yarn I’d ever seen. Big, but OH so scratchy.
I did have a tiny bit of success in an out door market in Dublin. Here’s the little Merino Silk hand spun beauty I found.
Shockingly, in all of Dublin, I only one real yarn store, This is Knit.
More on our travels into the West on the next post. (There are a LOT of sheep out west!)
We got a new camera for the Studio, and I have no idea how to use it. So, I took it and the book home on the three day weekend to learn the difference between the 8000 different settings. Here are some pics I took in the garden (I must have been hungry when I took these, since most of them are of food)
I finished one of my toe up socks. It's SOOOO comfortable
The Flame Stitch Cardigan is coming along. Almost up to dividing for the arm holes.
I can't bring either one of these to Ireland, since they are both on metal needles. I have to start a few projects on my Denise plastic needles. I decided to redo the Ribbon Xback top, since I've never been happy with it. I ripped it out along with my one skein shrug. With the extra yarn I should have enough to remake it longer and in a tigher gauge. I want to rewrite the pattern with side shaping and increase stitches around the chest & go to a tighter needle so I won't look slutty wearing it.
Where did June go? Oh I remember, it got washed away
I can't believe the first month of summer is almost gone. It's rained about every day of June, so here in NY we still feel like we're waiting for summer to begin.
I spend most of the middle of the month on a plane. First I was off to TNNA, in Columbus. The best thing about flying to beautiful Columbus was my old Stage Manager pal Michele driving TWO hours just to have dinner with me. Now that's a friend!
We had a lovely dinner and then took a stroll around downtown Columbus
I took some great classes while I was there. Here's my tiny little sock from my toe up sock class:
For me I wanted a slip stitch heel, so I started a toe up for myself using this great little calculator for slip stitch heel I found from Knot Another Hat. It was a pretty fast knit on the plane. By the time I got home I had:
I couldn't resist a side by side a few days later
I really like the heel. It's feels exactly the same as a cuff down gusset with picked up stitches (without the annoying picking up stitches)
and the following weekend I flew to Chicago to visit my family. My mom wanted to know why I never blog about them. I told her when she knitted something I'd blog about her . . . just kidding, hi mom (we'll see if she finds this).
It was great seeing everyone, even though I had just gotten off a plane 4 days earlier. My brother and sister and I have never give presents just because it's an occasion. Instead we buy a gift when we see one that looks good. My brother gave me this cool book. He found it at a resale shop.
