In honour of Wovember - and Wool

Kate Davies and Felicity Ford have started a campaign to honour the wonder of pure wool - and to try to prevent advertizers from naming things which have NO WOOL at all - or a very little bit (like 5%) as wool. Repeat the mantra: Only wool is wool, and wool comes from sheep.
I have two stories to contribute. I grew up in a knitting home. My mum was a knitter, and so was her mom. They knit very fast - I know that they held their knitting differently than I do, and I know that, had I learned this properly, I would knit more quickly. Be that as it may. It's too late now.
We had (still have) a local woollen mill - MacAuslands - where materials for home knitting were sourced. They also produced (and still produce) the 100% wool blankets we slept under, and under which we - and our children - sleep every night.

In addition to knitting for our family, my mum would knit mittens and socks for her lobster-fisher brothers. They knew the value of the warm-when-wet properties of wool. I remember, as a child, being amazed at the huge size of the mittens she produced for the fishers - and commenting on it. She explained that she was allowing for shrinkage. In a very short time these mittens would be fulled by water - and warm hands, and work - to a windproof, warm, individually fitting, enclosure for hands.

When I was older, I used to go out on the boat - once each spring - to watch the process, and I saw these mittens in action. They would be drenched in salt water - dripping - but would keep hands warm and flexible as they hauled traps, opened doors and pulled lobsters out of the "parlour", and then added pieces of the bait - usually rotten-looking salt herring - to the bait spike. Then the door would be closed, the trap would be lined up with its fellows on the washboard, and, when all was ready, be pushed off again by mittened hands, to lie in wait for the next lot of lobsters. Amazing that all these jobs could be done by hands encased in mittens! And I'll bet that their hands were warmer than they are in the stiff waterproof gloves they use now. 
Mittens were even worn for the more dainty jobs - like "sizing", or measuring the lobsters - the "markets" for the restaurant trade, the "canners" for the factory, and the "Michauds" (named for the Fisheries Minister who brought in minimum lobster size regulations) to be flung back into the ocean for further growth. I don't think the mittens were thick enough to prevent hands from being "nipped" by the lobster's claws. My uncles treated the lobsters with respect for the danger, and held them carefully.
Wool from MacAuslands came in natural colours - off white and light, medium and dark grey. But mittens and socks for fishers had to be white. Grey was bad luck - and when you make your living on the sea, you need all the luck you can get.

My other wool story comes from 2010, on a trip to Ireland in April. We saw sheep everywhere - wild on the hills and roads in Connemara, in fields in Galway, Clare and Cork - with their tiny, beautiful, lively lambs. I wanted so much to photograph them, but discovered that, in Ireland, scenic lookoffs or even places to pull over are few and far between - and rarely do they take account of people wanting to photograph sheep. So I have quite a few blurry photos taken from the moving Mac Dubh (our rental car) and a few shots from when we were walking past a sheep pasture. Then, on our very last day with the car, en route from Galway to Dublin, we saw a pasture with a stopping spot, and I finally got a chance to take my photos. Voila: the sheep and lambs of Ballinasloe.
I did manage to buy some real knitting wool, Donegal tweed, from Ireland, in a shop in Clifden. The ultimate souvenir.
Happy Wovember. Happy knitting with wool.

Winter still

So, today we are having wet snow flurries and quite a bit of wind - Fred thinks we can walk outdoors but I am not so certain. I'll have to bundle up *very* well.
Our Mac is back from the shop, with a less-than-ringing endorsement from the fixer. He's not too pleased about how slowly the hard drive is responding - but he re-loaded the OS and the programs, and we'll see how well we do. Fingers crossed. He said to back up daily, so the Time Machine is grinding away as I type.
My Sock Madness team, Minnow, still hasn't reached the cutoff number of 37, so no new pattern until they do. I'm getting lots of other knitting done in the meantime. Finished another pair of Stretch Socks, this time a pattern called Take Five, and now I'm making progress on the Zetor shawl I'm making out of Fleece Artist mohair called "Angel Hair". It *is* a lot like knitting with hair, I suppose - at least, there are plenty of fluffy bits and you can easily knit one of those, rather than the actual teeny tiny core yarn. I've managed to catch all slips so far, but constant vigilance is the watchword. I didn't weigh the ball before I started, but Ravelry seems to indicate that it was 50 grams to begin with. It's down to 30 now, so I'm less than halfway - though of course as with all shawls, it gets bigger and bigger as it goes along, so I'm keeping my scale handy and checking the weight after every chart repeat.
I bought seeds for ground cherries at Vesey's, and I checked today and they are up! And I will have a great crop of cilantro if all goes according to plan. It's almost time to start some tomato plants, I'm thinking. I may have to prick out the cilantro in order to have a flat to start them in. My F1 hybrid strawberries continue very tiny, but they are at least now putting out some true strawberry leaves - so cute!
So, it's officially a year since we arrived in Ireland for our visit. Now that the Mac is back I want to get out the photos and look at them - and re-live the trip!

We're Back! And it was wonderful.

We were staying in Glengarriff in County Cork the second week, and one day we did some of the walks in the neighbourhood. There are many of these, and they are well-utilized. The above photo is of the waterfall walk in the local forest reserve. There was a high school group on a field trip there as well.



This is the view out our bedroom window in Glengarriff. The island you can see isn't Ilnacullen (the one with the public gardens - it's off to the right) - but it was a lovely, lovely way to start the day, looking at this. (Ilnacullen was wonderful too.)


One day two of our happy band decided to do a walk on the Beara Way, from Ardgroom to Eyeries. We dropped them off at Ardgroom, and went to Kenmare to shop. The yarn shop I was seeking had closed, unfortunately, though we were able to indulge in bread-and-butter pudding and cappuccino at jam, a very nice cafe there.
When we got back to Eyeries to pick them up, there was no sign of them. Our plan was to meet in one of the two pubs in town, and we visited both of them. Everyone we asked agreed that they should have returned - we had given them three hours, and most thought that was plenty - we were envisioning sprained ankles at the very least - when they showed up, an hour late. Apparently neither of them had a watch!
We waited in the pub with this view out the back window. Glorious! Apparently Eyeries was a film location a few years ago for a film called "Falling for a Dancer" and there were stills on the walls - believe me, Eyeries is a lot more colourful now.


Bantry was our local big town, where we went for groceries and other supplies. I even found a tiny yarn shop there, and bought some Happy sock yarn and a celtic cross cross-stitch kit for 'way too much money. We also were able to find free wifi on the street, as the wifi at our cottage wasn't very reliable. One day, we visited Bantry House and Gardens. This is the view from the front rooms.

More to come!

Ireland and Scotland, here we come

We booked two places to stay on the weekend, so we are now in Galway from Easter for a week, and then, after a day or two in Dublin, in Glengariff, Co. Cork, from the 11th to the 17th, or thereabouts. Another couple of days in Dublin, then back to Glasgow for a day or so before flying home.

Turns out renting a car is more expensive than accommodations. Perhaps we should just rent a camper and have done with it? It's almost time to start getting excited, thinking about what to pack (and in what?). Travel from and to Glasgow is by Ryanair, so no checking baggage means that we're limited. It's all OK, though, as our palatial self-catering includes laundry facilities as well as wi-fi. I'm prepared to throw out clothing if I need packing room for things acquired on the trip. I can leave heavier, Canada -type clothes in Glasgow and get them when we get back there. I'm actually wondering about voltage - I will need to recharge my iPod and, while I have a plug-in that will give me the correct charge, I'll need to be able to plug the thing into something in order to plug it in to the wall. Hmmm.

I hear that Euros are slightly less expensive at the moment, so I should go buy me some, real or in travellers' cheques form.

There's hardly time to knit, I'm spending so much time on the internet looking up stuff. Not strictly true - I should be able to finish the Olympic Multnomah in a day or so (no more patterned rows, just a couple of garter rows and then bind off! And the arrowhead is coming along too - I have 4 rows of pattern for the edge left (and four rows of purl).

I plan to take a break from shawls after that!

Winterish

We had another storm day on Wednesday - schools, uni, college closed, no mail, etc. Great day for staying home and knitting! I have two shawls on the needles. One is JUST for Olympics watching, so I keep it upstairs where the TV is. It is Multnomah and I'm making it in a hand-dyed yarn which I won a long time ago in a sock-a-month competition on Ravelry. The colours are, shall I say, not ME, being orangey-red, purply-pink and brown. However this pattern seems to look good in the wild variegated yarns so I'm giving it a go. It's garter-stitch with a feather-and-fan border, and the colours do look better together when you get to the border part.

Travel plans are coming along. It looks like we'll stay in Galway City for the first week (with J. and E. and maybe Steve!) and Dungarvan, Co. Waterford, is looking good for the second week. We've been emailing about a gorgeous 3-storey townhouse with 5 bedrooms!! The place in Galway is an apartment.

Two years after finishing a Luna Moth shawl in Pixie Floss from VV, I dyed it (it was a hateful pale yellow). I used butternut husks we gathered last October. The colour is a beige more than a brown. I do like it better than the yellow. It's blocking now, so I'll see how it looks unpinned. I just have SOO much beige yarn! Why do I do it?

Travel Planning

We've purchased tickets for Glasgow and Ireland in April. Still have many details to work out, but fixed points on the itinerary are spending a week or so with Emily and Jeremy, first in Glasgow and then travelling to Ireland for Easter Week. (They are actually in Ireland now, having travelled over by train and ferry and are staying with Jeremy's school friend in Dublin.)
So, we may not spend much time in Dublin when we are with them, but somewhere south of Dublin - Waterford, Kilkenny, or Cork for my preference. Looking for a cottage (self-catering, they call it) in those areas. I'm looking for free broadband. Fred wants free heat and electricity. Priorities!
Then, on the 16th and 17th there's a dance workshop weekend with Pat Murphy in Ballinasloe - by all reports a bit of a hole - so we want to get a cottage for a week somewhere not TOO far away but more interesting, music- and dance-wise. Friends are joining us there for the week, and attending the dance workshop too.
On the knitting front, I've joined the "10 shawls in 2010" group on Ravelry - and am already bogged down, as I am knitting "Bitterroot" from the Winter 09 edition of Knitty - the large size - in Knit Picks Gloss Lace. It's lovely, and the pattern is easy (which, for me, means that I end up at the middle or the end of the row with the correct number of stitches, so I haven't messed up anywhere on the row.) It's a bit dull, though, as the pattern alternates between segments of "ssk k1 k2tog" and "yo k1 yo" all over (although the lace edge is more interesting). I'm going to start adding beads soon, so that should perk up the interest level quite a bit.
Ironically, just before I joined this group I started a "Traveling Woman" shawl, but as it was begun before January 1st, it couldn't count as one of the 10. So, 11 shawls finished in 2010. Two of the shawls have to be big ones (500 m. or more) and the rest should be 250 m. or more. This lets out any one-skein Kidsilk ones for sure, and many of the mini or shawlette patterns I've collected. I have also decided to knit all 10 from stash, and I have a chart with 17 patterns and 17+ yarns - haven't made any definite matches yet (besides Bitterroot).
I am also considering junking my "Meandering Vines" shawl, because I just discovered (almost at the end of the second half) that I have been doing eight repeats...but I did nine on the first half, AND I HAVE TO GRAFT THEM TOGETHER. Even a poor mathematician could see that this is not going to work. The alternative to total junking is to work the second half again. This would not count as one of my 10 shawls in 2010 either. Curses.