travel – Knit one, read two

Playing tourist, part II (with knitting and sewing content)

August 28, 2012August 28, 2012 SusanLeave a comment

We’ve been doing sort of the reverse of our Cutty Sark tourism this weekend. We’ve been up in Scotland, exploring the area that we are moving to. We are going to be living near Stirling, which is a beautiful, old Scottish city that mostly looks like the picture below:

I spotted both a yarn shop and a fabric shop in Stirling but they were closed when we were there on Sunday so I didn’t get to look around. However, I did find a whole selection of cheap knitting and sewing books in one of the discount bookshops in the city centre. I managed to restrain myself and only bought two.

First was Fitted Knits by Stephanie Japel. I bought this mainly for inspiration and the section with hints and tips on customising patterns since few of the patterns would actually suit me, particularly in the heavier yarns that most of the patterns call for. It’s a beautiful book though and easily worth the £3.99 that I paid just for the photography!

I’m hoping to get more use out of the second book which was Sew U Home Stretch by Wendy Mullin. I’ve heard really good things about the Sew U books and I’ve been wanting to have a go at sewing knit fabrics for a while since I’d love to be able to sew my t-shirts and tops for work. The patterns included with the book don’t go big enough for my bust size but there is plenty of discussion about how to apply the principles in the book to ordinary commercial patterns. There is even a section on making your own patterns from existing items that you love.

If we weren’t moving I would love to have taken the class on sewing knits that The Make Lounge are introducing but the first class isn’t until October so I’ll just have to make do with the book and the internet for now. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Playing tourist (with bonus knitting content)

August 13, 2012August 11, 2012 SusanLeave a comment

My sister and her boyfriend came to visit last weekend since they had tickets for the event that shall not be named and we took the opportunity to play tourist with a visit to Greenwich Market and the newly refurbished Cutty Sark.

The restoration of the ship has been going on pretty much since we moved to Blackheath and only finished in April of this year so it was great to actually go and have a look around before we move away.

The ship is beautiful and there is a wealth of information and interactive exhibits on its history. It’s well worth a visit if you’re at all interested in sailing ships.

Imagine my surprise however when I opened a drawer in one of the exhibits to discover this:

Apparently, although she is famous for being a tea clipper, one of other cargoes that Cutty Sark carried was merino wool from Australia.

I didn’t spot any yarn for sale in the gift shop though!

This post is brought to you by the letter “B”

May 19, 2012 SusanLeave a comment

While uploading some recent photographs to Flickr today, I came to the inescapable conclusion that visiting places beginning with B makes me happy, which is just as well since I’ve been doing such a lot of it recently! (See also: Brighton.)

The Borders (April)

Scott’s view

Melrose Abbey

Bagpipe-playing pig (at Melrose Abbey)

Broadstairs (May)

Beach

Beach huts

Where next, I wonder? Bath, Bristol, Bermuda?

Recharging the batteries

February 10, 2012 SusanLeave a comment

Just spent a couple of days in Brighton, getting away from it all.

There was sun (and some snow), sea, shopping …

… and swatching:

Sleeping was done at The Neo and eating at Due South and I highly recommend both!

Knitting in public

February 2, 2011February 3, 2011 SusanLeave a comment

Thanks to train cancellations and a general inability on my part to leave the house on time, I ended up catching the DLR to work yesterday morning rather than my usual train. I was also travelling slightly later than usual (see above comment about not being able to leave on time) so it was quiet enough that I could even get a seat. All of which meant that I managed to squeeze in some knitting time on my way to work.

There are very strict unwritten rules of etiquette in place on the London transport system. For example: you will not make eye contact with fellow passengers; you will not attempt to converse with fellow passengers (unless you are travelling together, at which point everyone else will pretend that they can’t hear you); in fact, you will attempt at all times to pretend that your fellow passengers do not exist and that you are alone in the carriage (while also not making it difficult for your fellow passengers to pretend that you don’t exist). Exceptions are made for reading other people’s newspapers over their shoulders and glaring at people whose earphones are leaking noise into the carriage.

The fun part about knitting on public transport in London (other than the fun of the knitting itself, obviously) is that it also seems to be an exception to the rules. For instance, when I travelled regularly by Tube, I often looked up from my knitting to realise that the whole carriage was staring at my hands, apparently hypnotised by the movement of my needles. Very occasionally, I even got into a conversation with someone about what I was knitting. However, the best bit (for me) is the (guilty) pleasure that I get from the terribly British embarrassment that some people suffer when they suddenly realise that they have been staring fixedly at a stranger’s lap for the past five minutes.

Snapshots from Devon

November 23, 2010 SusanLeave a comment

My returning to posting would have been more effective had I waited until after Steven and I got back from a week’s holiday in Devon staying in a cottage with no internet access or even phone reception!

The cottage was the Priest’s House — the same Landmark Trust property that we spent a week in after our wedding and you can see lots more pictures of it on my gallery page.

It was lovely going back. We had so many happy memories from last time that just walking in through the front door made us happy.

I knitted a sock while we were there — the lichen ribbed sock from Knitting Vintage Socks in good old Regia 4-ply. I discovered whilst packing to go away that, while Steven has a vast pile of woolly socks (some hand-knit, some not), I have almost none. The lesson, of course, is that if you want woolly socks to wear in Devon in November you have to start knitting them before you get there. Since London is currently feeling even colder than Devon did, I’m sure I’ll cast on for the second one very soon.

One of our favourite things to do in Exeter is to walk down to the quayside to browse the antique, craft and gift shops. This time I spotted this pretty vintage knitting needle gauge. The text says that it is THE “PEACOCK” KNITTING PIN GAUGE but I haven’t been able to find anything else out about it yet. I might have been heard to claim that this would be a useful tool and not just a pretty thing to own but, since the sizes on the gauge are all imperial and I haven’t yet memorised the conversions from imperial to metric, that might not have been strictly true. I must at least clean the fingerprints off it!

We had planned to re-visit the Eden Project on this trip but unfortunately it was closed due to flooding. We did take a trip into Cornwall however and spent part of the afternoon exploring Tintagel, legendary birthplace of King Arthur. The medieval ruins were interesting but the real highlights of the day were the rainbows. If you look closely at the picture below (or click through to Flickr for the full-size version) you can even see the secondary bow.

Now that we’re home, posting should resume on a more regular schedule!

Wishing I was in San Francisco

July 7, 2010 Susan1 Comment

Mainly so that I could visit the Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Art and see the Geometric Threads — Artisanal Takes on Pattern, Dimension, and Topology exhibit. From the website:

Explore tessellation through patterns found in quilts, Hawai’ian kapa cloth design, and Moroccan mosaic tiles. Untangle the intricacies of topology looped inside maritime knots and Korean maedeup. Move between dimensions with basket weavers, clothing designers, and upholsterers, and learn how origami artists transform flat shapes into fully realized 3D forms. Discover how similar shapes can give rise to a diversity of artistic expression, from Japanese temari to European lace and crochet.

Through master presentations, skilled artisans illuminate the mathematics inherent in mosaics, origami, and textile arts practiced across the globe.

A combination of mathematics and crafts … sounds like just my kind of thing.

What I did on my holidays – Part 4 – Hawaiian Quilting

September 16, 2009September 12, 2009 Susan1 Comment

So I didn’t actually do any quilting on holiday but I certainly learned a lot about how it’s done in Hawaii. As you might expect, quilting is a not a native craft in Hawaii but was imported by missionaries.

Despite huge amounts of temptation, I managed to restrain myself and came back with only two books on the subject. Unfortunately, I also managed to resist the urge to go into any of the many fabric shops we saw so I don’t have any beautiful Hawaiian fabrics to show you.

The first book is Hawaiian Quilts: Tradition and Transition. A bilingual (English and Japanese) book that was written to accompany a touring exhibition of vintage and modern Hawaiian quilts. It has a good description of the history and progression of quilting in Hawaii right up to the modern day but my favourite section is the beautiful pictures of the quilts that formed the exhibition. Some of the vintage quilts can be seen online at the Bishop Museum website or there’s a glimpse of two of the modern ones below.

The second book is The Pillows to Patch Quilt Collection: The Hawaiian Way. It is a beautifully illustrated quilt pattern book full of quilt squares and applique patterns based on Hawaiian motifs. Other reviews say that the instructions are clear and easy to follow, even for beginners, but I will report back after my exams when I actually have time to try them.

The picture shows a section of the table of contents. I’m already enjoying planning a quilt with this book; I just hope making one is as much fun!

What I did on my holidays – Part 3 – Almost everything else

September 11, 2009 SusanLeave a comment

Where everything else covers hiking, eating, volcanoes and surfing.

These posts have turned out to be much harder to write than I thought they would so this is going to be a summary of the highlights or I’ll be here until next year!

Hiking

We managed quite a lot of hiking in our two weeks (even on days that had previously been planned as sitting on the beach days).

One of the highlights was hiking on Kauai from Ke’e Beach to Hanakapi’ai Beach and then inland to Hanakapi’ai Falls. It started with scenery like this:

and ended with an amazing swim under the falls themselves. This was our first full day on Kauai, our first ‘proper’ day of honeymoon and we spent the next two weeks saying “Can you believe we swam under a waterfall?”

Eating

We were mainly too busy/tired to worry about going anywhere particular fancy for eating but there are a couple of places that stood out.

Eggs ‘n Things in Honolulu: Brilliant American breakfasts, pancakes, waffles, omelettes and plenty of other stuff. Perfect either before or after a surf lesson at Waikiki beach.

3660 On The Rise in Honolulu: Hawaiian fusion of Western and Oriental cooking at its finest. We had a taster menu complete with accompanying wines and it was the best meal of the holiday, if not the year.

I should also mention Ken’s House of Pancakes and the Garden Snack Club in Hilo. Both were brilliant, in very different ways!

Volcanoes and lava

We spent a couple of days exploring the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and could have spent much longer if we had had the time.

There was more hiking, this time down, across and back up a volcanic crater. The crater in the photo below is 2 miles across. To really appreciate the scale on this picture, take a look at the largest size that I uploaded to Flickr and see if you can spot the tiny little people.

We also did some volcano exploring outside of the park, including a lava tube cave (Steven included in picture for scale)

and a visit to see hot lava entering the ocean. This was fairly impressive even during daylight hours…

…but magical after sunset.

Surfing

There are deliberately no photographs of Steven and I surfing, despite the desperate efforts of the company we booked our lesson with to take some decent ones. We had our first (but definitely not last) lesson on our last full day in Hawaii and it was even more fun than we thought it was going to be. We weren’t brilliant but both managed to catch a couple of waves to the point of actually standing on the board. Now we just need to go back for long enough to learn to do it properly!

What I did on my holidays – Part 2 – Astronomy

August 1, 2009 Susan1 Comment

I’ve been fascinated by the stars and space since a school project that I did at about age 7. The fascination stayed with me, even surviving my astronomy degree, to the extent that our wedding present from my sister was a telescope. Fortunately, Steven shares my fascination (especially considering the wedding present!) so we took some time to indulge it while we were on Hawai’i.

Mauna Kea on the island of Hawai’i is quite possibly the best place on Earth for making astronomical observations and since the 1960’s several of the world’s most advanced land-based telescopes have been built on its summit. The summit itself is at around 14,000 feet meaning that, while it’s possible to take a day-trip up there, it’s not really convenient or comfortable thanks to low temperatures and thinner air.

Fortunately, there is an alternative in the form of the snappily-named Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station. The station is situated on the slopes of Mauna Kea at around 9300 feet and provides all the information you could possibly need on the mountain, the telescopes, weather and road conditions. Every evening, their volunteers provide a free star-gazing session including guidance on the best place to watch the sunset, a tour of the constellations and other objects that are visible with the naked eye and several high-quality telescopes that they will set up to view the most interesting things visible that night (or anything else that you ask them to).

Steven and I enjoyed our first evening up there so much that we went back a second night while we were there, even though it was a 3.5 hour round-trip from the town that we were staying in. The sunsets were amazing (there are a couple of pictures below, some more in my Flickr set and even more that I haven’t uploaded yet), the volunteers were friendly and knowledgeable and the night skies were like nothing I’ve ever seen. The combination of being above the cloud level, as seen in the picture below, no light pollution and the thinner air creates the ideal viewing conditions. Also, because Hawai’i is much further south than London, we got to see constellations and objects that it is just not possible to see from home. We saw Saturn and some of its moons, the Jewel Box open cluster (not visible from the UK) and many, many other things, including the best views of the Milky Way I’ve ever seen.

If you have any interest in star-gazing at all and you get the opportunity to visit Mauna Kea then you absolutely must. Don’t take one of the tours however. They’re very expensive, especially compared to the cost of petrol to drive yourself to the information centre, and the observing from the summit isn’t actually as good as the observing from the information centre thanks to the fact that your brain is much less good at processing information at 14,000 feet than it is as 9,000 feet and to the fact that the information center have better telescopes than most of the tours carry.

Another must-do if you’re interested in astronomy is the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawai’i in Hilo. They try to combine Hawai’ian cultural traditions with modern-day astronomy. The mixture doesn’t always quite work but they have an excellent planetarium, some interesting information on Polynesian celestial navigation and great exhibits. Their hands-on exhibits are fantastic and had Steven and I running round like kids to see what we could play with next. Our guidebook described it as being so good that you shouldn’t necessarily wait for a rainy day to go, which was absolutely true. However, since statistically it rains in Hilo two days out of three, you probably wouldn’t have a long wait anyway.