Knits

Last week was wonderful. We arrived into Belfast to bright blue skies and warmth - we’d left behind grey and wet weather. And the entire week, from Belfast to Dublin and back to the Northern Ireland coast, we had nothing but bright blue sky, sunshine, and rather warm weather. In fact, for us, it was beginning to get too hot territory.

Before we left I did manage to finish up the first sock for my Sockapalooza pal (okay the ends need weaving in, hush). I took plenty of yarn for my trip - enough to do THREE socks. Like that would happen, but you never know. In fact, as we sat in the airport waiting to board the plane, I cast on for Saucy and had knit the cuff by the time we landed (I am a slow knitter). As I sat listening to The Boy give his talk to a user group in Belfast that evening, I continued working on Saucy. One of the coordinators of the user group said that on several occasions when they’ve brought in a guest speaker whose travelled some distance, said speakers wife/girlfriend/partner sat in the back and knit away. Hehe.

On the drive down to Dublin I continued knitting away - Saucy is wonderfully easy to memorise after the first few rounds.

Wednesday evening involved A LOT of wine courtesy of a very rich man who sells a very popular computer operating system - he wasn’t there, but someone w/ a corporate credit card was… Because of all the drink on Wednesday evening, my plans for Thursday essentially went down the toilet. I’d been in Dublin back in September and done a lot of the touristy things then so I had planned on getting the train down the south coast a few miles and walking back up leisurely like with breaks of sitting and knitting along the shore. That did not happen. Instead I visited Windmill Lane (famous for being the location of the studio where U2 first recorded) and The Book of Kells at Trinity College (very disappointing I must say although the Long Room of the old library is very nice). I had naps between those things too, by the way. Late in the afternoon I treated myself to a nice coffee in one of the (very posh) hotel lounges and knit away. I was nearly done with the leg!

The drive back to Northern Ireland I didn’t really knit at all since I was just feeling too tired. Once we got back to The Boy’s parents’ house and settled in, I broke out the knitting. His mum was very impressed. I knit away for quite awhile. It doesn’t actually get proper dark until about 1130pm so it’s very easy to lose track of time! Anyway, I turned the heel and as I started knitting the instep and gusset, one of my needles broke. Boo. That put an end to my knitting and it was only Friday night. I did bring other needles, but 1. they were great big long things instead of the nice 5″ DPNs I was using and 2. I stupidly brought the same size and I clearly needed to go down a needle size anyway. Ah well.

Saturday saw a trip to a folk park where they had a special Wool Day event. It wasn’t exactly what I expected and should it have been held in the US, it would’ve been different and bigger and better (and not just because everything is bigger is the US). It’s all to do with the lack of community in general in these parts, but especially in the knitting / crafting world. I bet they didn’t even know it was International Knit in Public Day… I didn’t knit in public due to the broken needle, but I’ve never had an issue with doing so (I did so in front of at least a hundred geeks on Thursday evening as I waited for The Boy to come out of his talk).

Windmill Lane — Stone house at the Ulster Folk Park — White Rocks beach in N Ireland

Anyway, back to catching up, AGAIN, with all the blog posts, comments, and emails. I had barely caught up when I left and I started catching up last night (got it to under 30 blog posts) and it’s creeped back up to the mid-30s! So yeah, sorry for being so wordy! The full set of my photos is on my Flickr site - Ireland / N Ireland photos. And if you haven’t seen, Felicia of Sweet Georgia has made a post that includes information about photographing textiles which is really very good!

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