Strasbourg and Colmar

First on the tour today is Strasbourg. We went to the Petit France district, the oldest in the city. It was built around the canals, and originally housed tanneries and prostitutes. It's gentrified now. The rest of the city was typically urban architecture and shops. They are very proud of their first large downtown shopping mall.

Next is Colmar, also in Alsace. Yes, the cathedral really is pink - it's sandstone and I took the picture to remember how much I didn't like the color. Most of the public buildings are this pink sandstone. But the housing in the older section is just wonderful - similar to Strasbourg with canals too.

When I look at these pictures again, I'm glad I have this evidence that we were actually there in these fairy tale cities. It was anachronistic that we found the people there in these medieval towns were just as concerned about the economic state of the world as we Americans were (and are). Sixty years ago they were more worried about being bombed out of existence, and fortunately were relatively undamaged.

Not much knitting to report this week - I'm finishing up Christmas presents and the recipients sometimes read this blog, so I can't make any mention of them.

Reunion and Remembrance

I had not seen my two friends (Betsey on the left and Cynthia on the right) for about 15 years. And wouldn’t you know, we still look just the same! Cy and I have written over the years and occasionally emailed – she lives in Nashville. A couple of months ago, I sent her a link to this blog – I thought she’d like to see pictures of my grown-up girl, who went to school with her grown-up girl. She told me she’d be coming up to Connecticut soon and we set a time to get together. Cy also invited Betsey, who is her ex-sister-in-law and really part of her family, and also my old-time friend. We had a fine time catching up on a lot of years, and had the waitress take this photo.

The last time (or maybe the next-to-the-last time) I visited Nashville and stayed with Cy, she took me to a little hole in the wall operated by a family of bluegrass singers – Hubert Davis and the Season Travelers. Hubie was the patriarch of the clan and he didn’t do much singing anymore. It was one of the best musical evenings I’ve ever had – such fun sitting on folding chairs on a cement floor, listening to the family perform lots of old-time favorites and some I’d never heard before too. I think all you could buy to snack on was popcorn and soda. I bought their tee-shirt and their tape cassette. Probably a collector’s item now, as I just went on Amazon and could not find any of their music.

Coming up next - more on the Germany trip. Stay tuned.

Heidelberg, New York, Curves

These are my favorite pictures from the next day of our trip. This is Heidelberg, a beautiful city which was largely undamaged during WW2, fortunately. The large castle on the hill is in ruins, although the part you can see above the town has been restored. They’re still working on it – see scaffolding on the left.

A girlfriend and I went to the New York city 26th Street flea market last week. Most stuff was expensive, but it was fun to go in on the train and walk around the city a bit. I did score a bagfull of Victorian-era baby clothes, including hard-to-find boys garments. This is one of them (I haven’t ironed it yet). The bottom looks like a skirt in my photo, but is really short pants.

I've been going to Curves workout centers for over three years now, and have finally convinced D1 Laura to join up. I bought this tee-shirt for her, which I love. Gee, maybe I should get one for myself! Curves is a great half-hour workout – I’m a big fan. You go around the machines quickly, they work every muscle in your body, and it’s not boring. There’s also usually someone to talk to if you want to, so it can be social too. They’re open all day – you can drop in anytime that’s convenient.

Vacation's Over - Home Again

It’s been almost a month since my last entry. We’ve been on vacation to Germany and France for the better part of 2 weeks, and I’ve been catching up on emails, on-line orders, laundry and (oh yes) sleep, since then.

Although I must admit I got carried away by the fiber fairy, and spent a few hours (well, maybe more than a few) organizing my Ravelry pages and my stash. I’ve gone through my knitting magazines and books, and identified the sweater patterns I might actually want to knit someday, and put them all into my “faves”. I also now have separate file folders and books for scarf, sock and miscellaneous toy/gift/home/etc. patterns.

I was able to do some knitting on the trip, making two lacy scarves. I intentionally left one in our Paris hotel – maybe the maid will like it, as I thought it was too scratchy for me or anyone I know. The other one was donated to the Red Scarf Project, alone with another scarf I had made earlier.

I had hoped to buy yarn for a souvenir in either Germany or France, but we didn’t have much time to shop. I did spot a tiny needlework shop in a small town in Alsace called Ribeauville, and ran inside hoping to find yarn. She had a few shelves of yarn in a dark corner, and I literally grabbed the only pretty balls I saw – a green/violet blend in acrylic/wool.

I took well over 300 pictures on the trip, and narrowed them down to about 200 to have printed. We landed at the Frankfurt airport, and caught the ship at the dock in Mainz. We had a fabulous trip overall, and I thought I’d take one favorite photo from each day and put it on the blog. Of course the first one has to be the ship in which we cruised up and down the Rhine. Our Elderhostel tour group of 29 people had the ship to ourselves. Comfortable cabins, gourmet meals every day – what a treat. The photo on the left shows part of the lounge and bar, and some of our fellow travelers.

This next photo is of the Gutenberg Bible, taken when we visited the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz. We also saw a demonstration of a similar press used to print this.

This is the statue of Martin Luther in the center of Worms (pronounced something like Verms). Birds like this statue. This view is typical of so many small villages along the Rhine north of Frankfurt and Mainz, on the Germany side. Lots of castles, hills, vineyards, churches, narrow streets. It was taken through the window of the lounge on a cloudy day.

To be continued. . . . . .

Too Busy to Blog

I've been "coerced" into being the newsletter editor for the Rhode Island Knitting Guild. Actually, I'm enjoying it, and getting to know some of the members a lot better. This first issue is taking quite some time, but I'm learning about clip art and copying photos into Word programs and enhancing text. I have a deadline of next week to get this out to the membership, because Hubster and I are leaving for Germany on the 3rd of October.

I'm planning to take several skeins of lace-weight yarn and circular needles on the trip, for knitting on the plane and on the boat (yes, a cruise down the Rhine). The ratio of knitting time to size of skein is perfect for vacation trips when you're only allotted a certain amount of luggage.

Still working on Christmas presents. Here's the latest. I made another one in dark red as well.

The shrug intended to GD5 has been designated as a birthday gift instead of a Christmas gift. This will give me a little more time to do it just right.

And now for a rant: A girlfriend and I went to Newport for brunch Sunday. Beautiful restaurant, great location by the shore, watching boats and surfers, lovely sunny weather, and the food was good too. She had warned me that it would be expensive, but Wow - the cheapest item on the brunch menu was $44.00. However, we did have three courses and as I said, the food was very good and well presented. So it would have been worth it, except when we got the bill, we noticed that they had charged us an additional $7.00 each for coffee. Wouldn't you think you'd get coffee included in a $44.00 plus brunch! I thought that was just a little tacky.

Two Ribbons and Lots of Other Stuff

I've finished the two sets of slipper socks which will be Christmas gifts. I used the yarn I won at the Guild meeting raffle - it's some kind of singles cotton which was very easy to tear. I think the slippers will wear well though (I hope). The colors were fun.

I've started a child's shrug which will be another Christmas present. This was a download from Knitty magazine. I looked at lots of shrugs on Ravelry and this one seemed to be exactly what I wanted. It's going along nicely, but I will have to make it a little shorter than the pattern calls for as I think I may run out of yarn. I also want to make a second one but haven't quite decided on the yarn yet - hoping to use more stash yarn.

And to do a little bit of bragging - I won two blue ribbons at the Woodstock Fair for the two knits I entered - the Cobblestone sweater for Hubster and the Rowan Kidsilk scarf I made for myself.

D1 Laura was here for the weekend - all the way from New Jersey! - and we went to the Woodstock Fair on Saturday and Gillette Castle on Sunday. I took some pictures of the Castle with my camera phone but I can't seem to load them into the computer. Anyway, Laura won't let me take any pictures of her and you probably all know what the castle looks like - standard tourist shots.

My friend Janice and I went to the Brimfield Flea Market on Wednesday and I bought this pair of hand-knit (I think) lace gloves. They look very small but they do stretch to fit over my hand. Very pretty at $8.00. The fields didn't seem to be as crowded as in other years. Janice and I have been setting up selling antiques in the J&J field for the last 4 years, but decided not to do it this year. This is a Friday/Saturday market, and from what I hear from the weather forecasts, it's like to be hurricaned-out on Saturday, so just as well we're not there.

The Henley Perfected is slogging along. I've got the front and back done except for the placket, and it seems to fit me, which is what I was concerned about. I'll be taking my time on the sleeves - after all, I've got all winter!

I love the internet! It's brought me new friends and is keeping me in touch with old friends too. I sent the link to my blog to a girlfriend who I haven't talked with (grammar?) in a long time (she lives in Nashville), and she passed it along to her daughter who was a good friend of my daughter in their high-school days, and now all of a sudden we are all communicating cross-country.

Even superheroes knit! In case you can't read the caption, it's "What? A shawl is a kind of cape."

Ravelympics Finish Line Crossed

I finished the two felted totes with a day to spare to the end of the Beijing Olympics. Needless the say, the Ravelympics was not quite as exciting (but it was better than endless hours of beach volleyball almost every evening). I really prefer the individual sports - diving, racing, gymnastics - some amazing performances. I think they could have cut out about an hour of the woman's marathon - the last 1/2 mile would have been enough for me. And the interviews at the end of the races were just funny - watching the winner pant and try to catch his/her breath while answering stupid questions about how it felt to win. I wish I'd watched more during the day - I just saw the women's canoe race at 3:00 PM while I'm writing this. Now I'm watching girls doing amazing things with hoops (how do they think of these things!).

Anyway, enough of this rant - here's my winning entry. The Northampton Vermont tote bags with felted flowers. I think I'll be making more felted bags - this was really fun.

Two of my kids (plus families) have been in the East for the past three weeks, unfortunaly their visits overlapped and they didn't get to visit with each other. They each spent a couple of days with me, and here they are.

First are the California girls, D2 Diane and GD5 Maisie. SIL Greg couldn't get away for this trip.

We went down to Mystic last weekend for a craft/art show, and I found some hand-dyed alpaca yarn to buy from Cold Spring Alpaca Farm.

The following weekend the Minnesota group showed up - S3 Randy, DIL Lynda and the girls, GD3 Allyson and GD4 Emma. This picture was taken at Roger Williams Park in Providence - of course we got lost both going and coming, as usual in Providence.

Next weekend D1 Laura will be coming here from New Jersey for the Woodstock Fair. My favorites are the bunnies and the pony pull. Hubster worked for the Church's Chicken barbeque for the past 30 years, about half of them as "Head Chicken", but he gave notice last year and is happy to let others take over. It's really good chicken though, we always buy extras to freeze.

Ravelympics Totes

These two totes are really a challenge, but not because of the pattern or the felting. I knitted and felted the first tote, then knitted the second one to be a little larger. But I didn’t have enough yarn left for longer straps, so I had to take the straps off the first tote (which were longer) and use them for the larger tote, then make two smaller straps for the first tote because that was all the yarn I had (are you following me so far?). But of course trying to take felted straps off a felted bag made a big mess and I ended up cutting some yarn that wasn’t supposed to be cut, so then I had to patch that up. Then I sewed the straps backwards on the first tote and had to cut them off again. So the picture below shows a felted bag with unfelted straps, and vice versa.

I made a flower decoration for the first tote (that seems to be OK, thank goodness). Tonight I’m going to knit a flower for the second tote, and felt everything again and hope it comes out right. Oh, and I have to sew on buttons.

The Olympics have begun today, and so have the Ravelympics. I've started my Ravelympics project - see cast-on below. In case you don't know what the Ravelympics are (is anyone reading this?), it's a contest which was the brainchild of Ravelry. The idea is to pick a challenging knitting project (depending on your own individual skill level), and then begin it during or after the opening ceremonies and finish it before the Olympics torch is extinguished. My project is two knitted and felted totes (the felting will be the challenging part). I've entered in the "Bagntotebackstroke" category.

This is what it will look like when completed, except for the different color and also I hope to put a large knitted and felted flower on each tote. (Sorry this picture is so small.)

It's just stockinette and garter stitch, but there are about 120 rows per tote, plus the handles, plus the sewing, felting and flowers.

Henley Not So Perfected

I've gotten quite far on the Henley Perfected using very delicious Debbie Bliss Alpaca/Silk. I did most of the stockinette portion of the front and back on a circular needle, then switched to DPs at the underarm. Knitting lace while decreasing for the armholes was tricky, and I had to frog several times before I got it right (the fact that I couldn't keep the lace pattern straight compounded my errors!). But as you can see from the photo, I'm well on my way to the shoulders - this is the back you're seeing. The front will be even more complicated because of the button placket.

I've been dealing with a person trying to pull a scam on me about a necklace she bought from my online Ruby Lane shop. I sold her a beautiful necklace - see below - and she claimed it was damaged when received. It was insured and I told her she could file a claim with the postal service if it had been damaged in the mail, but she said she was returning it and wanted her money back. What she sent me was in my original packaging (undamaged in the mail), and it was the worst disaster of a necklace you could imagine. Broken cord, missing rhinestones, broken clasp, etc. Obviously not my necklace, but a similar substitute she was claiming was mine. I told her this was not my necklace, and I had the photos to prove it. I told her I would not refund her money, and I sent her broken necklace back to her. That started her on an email campaign, ending with calling me a thief. She then complained to Ruby Lane, and I had to explain the situation to them, ending up with Ruby Lane refusing to take her side. I've now blocked her from my email and from my Ruby Lane shop, because it don't want to take any more of her abuse. If she had just returned my own necklace, I would have refunded her money instantly, but right now the situation stands that she has my necklace (and also her own damaged one), and I have her money - and that's the way it's going to stay. I've had almost 2000 online transactions in the past 6 years, and this is the first time someone has been so dishonest with me. I hate this kind of conflict, so I guess I should be grateful the percentage is so low.