Travel

Getting Organized

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

In the run-up to Spring knitting events I went through all my yarn, notions and needles. The purpose was to remind me what I have, so that I wouldn’t double (and sometimes triple or quadruple) my supplies.

The most challenging thing was being a “weekender” on Orcas Island is that my knitting goodies were not in one place. Fixing that took some coordination, but to reduce extra spending, it was well worth the effort.

Nick enjoying the sunset at West Beach in his “Island Sweater” knit with local wool from island sheep.

I’d like to have my yarn and supplies on Orcas Island since I knit more there or on my commute to and from. However, I do more project planning on the mainland. So, when I had to decide where to take inventory, it made sense to move to the smaller concentration to the higher.

It’s no surprise that I have a terrifying amount of yarn (it actually was… a bit), as most of my stash had been logged in Ravelry. What surprised me most was the quantity of needles and notions. Partly this is because I pick them up as I travel and partly it is because I inherited loads from my grandmother along with her stash. Some of these notions are antiques—which I will not part with—but an equal amount went into the donate pile along with some my own purchases.

Old plastic needles–handy for travel

Probably the best thing to come out of sorting all of my bibs and bobs was the creation of small organized packets of notion kits—four in total—so that I have virtually everything I need to hand, whether it is in the car, island or mainland, or for traveling with individual projects. Some well-chosen Tom Bihn knitting organizers really helped.

Tom Bihn is a local bag maker in SeaTac, who in addition to luggage, makes specialized knitting bags and accessories. And if the luggage at Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat is any indication, both types of bags are very popular among the knitting community.

  • Small Tom Bihn Knitting Organizers
  • Tom Bihn luggage and knitting bags

Anyone else doing Spring notions cleaning? Any interesting organizational ideas?

Sock-a-Rama

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

Though started before the Blacktop Ferry Socks, the Ultra-fitted socks took considerably longer. Thinner yarn, smaller needles, more stitches to the inch; it all adds up longer time on the needles.

  • Blacktop Ferry Socks
  • Ultra-fitted Socks

I’m headed back out on my international travels so I swung by my LYS and picked up more (not needed) wool and another set of size 0 wood needles (since I broke my last pair). Not sure which ones I’ll take for the trip, but I think I’ll stick with my new ultra-fitted pattern.

Which would you choose?

  • Schachenmayr Regia–the BOLD
  • Lang Jawoll Twin–the subtle
  • Lang Jawoll Color Jaquard–the varied

And yes, I am on a German sock yarn kick. It’s because I’m feeling too lazy to cake the locally made and dyed sock yarn hanks. 🙂

Wooly Skye

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment

In Broadford on Skye, is The Handknitter Having Fun shop. I often find astounding deals of wool there. This year, since socks were my travel project, as if often the case, socks yarn was top of mind. And for another reason as well—I lost a just finished sock on an Edinburgh tram.

Wooly clouds on the Black Cuillins from the Sligachan Hotel

We time our visits to Skye to coincide with the climbing season. This year we were a week later than usual. I expected it to be warmer than it was two years ago when I brought long-johns and wished for t-shirts. This year the opposite was true. It was cold, rainy and blustery. I on one hike I was wearing almost everything I owned, soaked through and got blown off my feet by a gust of wind.

Reverse view from Loch Scaivaig on a sunnier day

Not to say the trip was a bust—not so! I was there for rest and the weather gave me time for knitting and a bit of shopping. I picked up three beautiful sock skeins and started another pair of socks, having brought two projects for the trip. Here are the three skeins which seem to be color inspired by the location.

  • Cream to blue variegated (color of the sea)
  • Shades of gray (color of the sky)

Can’t wait to see how the socks turn out. Too bad they take so long to knit!

NOTE TO SELF: hand dyed—don’t use different skeins and expect them to look like the belong together. This said, in spite of cutting the skein in half and caking it in reverse, the Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball® socks I started are variegating in the most peculiar fashion. Even if I make that mistake, it won’t be *this* different.

Even with taking a ball in the middle and caking it opposite, these socks look VERY different from one another

And Then There Was One

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment

I love travel. It’s a good thing, given I travel 33-50% for my work. This means I also like being at home when I have time off.

My husband has a love of Scotland that comes from his youth in the South of England. His father took him to the Isle of Skye when he was fifteen and every year or so, we go back. And for me, it’s all about the hiking and the wool.

The project I brought was a pair of socks using Knitpicks Felici in Stormy Sky (fitting for Scotland). It was a special striped run I’d picked some up at Stitches West last year. And I was so excited to finally use it and hopeful my husband would have a spare pair of socks for hiking.

We used Edinburgh as our basecamp for the trip. We only passed through the city—several times as we came and went from visiting friends and family in Southern England before we headed to Skye. I was just reinforcing a heel when our stop came and I thought I’d safely tucked the sock away, but when we got to the hotel, I was one sock short.

Yes. I did cry. But then I immediately picked up my needles and cast-on another pair.

You gotta get back on that horse and ride it! Am I right?

UFO Sister- and Brotherhood

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

Aliens? No. Not that kind of UFO. There is, sadly, no abduction involved. Though sometimes I feel like my ever increasing stash of wool might carry me off.

Last time I talked about giving myself permission to have more than one project going at the same time. And I’ve done it—gotten over my head in projects. And as I look around at these works in progress (WIPs), I feel a little weighed down. It is as if they are all staring down at me saying, “Do you really think you’ll get back to me?”

If it isn’t obvious, I’m a perfectionist. Everyone that knows me, knows this is true. Whether I’m preparing a lecture or I’m knitting a pair of socks, I can literarily give myself an ulcer worrying if it isn’t just so. And this is, by and large, the only source of unhappiness for me, given my life is busy, full, and downright good!

Body image, learning new skills, investment for retirement, these are all sources of my endless frustration of coming up short of an unrealistic ideal—heaven forbid I read the news! And Nick, my dearest love, even posted a photo of me and my parents (the Joneses) with the tagline “Are you keeping up?” for most people that wouldn’t be an accusation. For me…? Hmm.

Unless it is a competition to have more WIPs than anyone else, I’m just keeping my head above water. And you know? I like it that way. That jolt of tension? It’s a good thing.

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My little surprise of joy today was finding that I’m just a couple of inches of easy knitting away from Nick having another pair of socks. The trip to Santa Fe with my parents, well, I must have gotten in more knitting time than I remember. If all goes well, he’ll be taking two pairs of my “lurid” hand knit hoof covers on his UK trip to “inspect” Margaret and Peter (his parents).

And with a glass of house Chardonnay from the Lower Tavern—I raise my glass in a toast to all of you with UFOs (unfinished objects) of all crafts and kinds.

Bring on the Spring!

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been off on work travels for 2 1/2 weeks in India and I fell love (all over again) with the clothes, colors and food. Since getting back, I’ve been missing the sun and heat of Bengaluru and Chennai.  With all the dark, cool, and rainy PNW, I’ve never struggled so much to get over my jetlag.

The taste of sunshine and bright colors has made me impatient for Spring. Needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled with Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of a long winter.

To counteract this unfortunate prediction, I went yarn shopping for spring colors–many of which were on close out (yay!). To chase away the pacific northwest gray days, I arranged them as a spring flower and a Japanese maple.

 

Now if only I could find time to knit!

How are you planning to get through the long winter?

Fabulous, Fully-Fashioned, Fitted, Fuchsia Funnelneck

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

Let’s face it, the original is hard to improve on. Stefanie Japel’s Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest is an awesome pattern. And I’ve made it before and received compliments. So why mess with perfection? Because I’m not perfect and neither is my shape!

I’m a bit crane-necked, small breasted and a bit hippy (or as the lady at the Eddie Bauer store selling jeans says, “Your style is ‘Curvy’”). I also feel that while the Bernat Panama yarn is true to gauge in the stockinette, the ribbing always felt a bit looser than I’d hoped in some places on the previous garment.

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I cast on 96 stitches (extra small is 108 sts) to narrow the neck and only bound off 3 sts each side for the start of the armholes. They I increased following the directions until I was following the pattern for a medium size in the bust (I just kept doing increases until I hit 192 sts). From there I followed the direction (excepting some reductions I hid in the back shaping as I narrowed towards the waist (12 sts) to get it back to size small for the waist (180 sts).

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Pre-blocked, but still looking great!

From there the shaping was done more subtlety—with needle decreases and increases. I knit as directed with the “smaller” needles and then dropped a needle size in the garment just above my natural waist and knit for 1 inch. I switched to the needle requested for 2 inches then increased needle size every two inches after to widen the bottom of the garment it.

And voila! Pleased with self.

The Commute from Heaven?

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 2 Comments

I have my challenges working a more than fulltime job in the city and living on an island. I don’t commute every day (which would be about 3-4 hours each way), I mainly just go home for three days and stay in the city for four days. If the internet was decent (a gripe for a different day) I would probably only go to the mainland for 24-to-48 hours at most and probably not every week. But it’s terrible—and that’s being generous.

This summer one of the Washington State Ferries, our newest, the Samish, had one of the two engines fail (they have for each direction). As a result, more than once, I got left high and dry with my reservation cancelled making everyone a standby passenger. 2560px-mv_samish_arriving_in_anacortes

And after watching my favorite airline, Kenmore Air, ferry the rich and famous off the island while I roasted in the standby lane at the ferry terminal for the second unexpected time in a month, this week I opted in for a treat—that’s right—to fly rather than drive. It’s about a 45-minute flight from South Lake Union in Seattle, though I used to travel via their headquarters in Kenmore. But since Kenmore Air always flies to Seattle to pick up passengers, there just isn’t a reason to drive 30 miles before getting on the plane. Besides, this week the hubby was already implanted, so he could pick me up at West Sound.

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Kenmore Air landing at West Sound on Orcas Island

It was a foggy day, and unlike usual, I didn’t get to ride shotgun (a benefit of starting in Kenmore) so I didn’t get much of a view, but I did get some knitting done on my latest lurid pink version of Stefanie Japel’s Perfect Periwinkle Turtleneck Tube Vest

Knitting while flying to the San Juan’s
The cider on arrival at West Beach Resort

More on that to come…

A Day Without a Night – A Night Without a Day

~ Kristin Tolle ~ Leave a comment

Most people will not get the reference the title makes to the movie Ladyhawke where a solar eclipse breaks the curse of two lovers, played by Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer, locked apart from one another unless they see each other during this celestial event.

My husband and I, like so many others seeking the path of totality for the eclipse, converged on various, mostly remote places to view the sun overtake the moon in the day and enter twilight. And while total eclipses happen every single year, I’ve been anticipating this one because it was so close and would be my first viewing of a total eclipse.

It was an amazing couple of hours—starting just after 9:05AM and lasting until after 11:15AM. Totality lasting ~1:38 minutes and in that short time birds cried, newts surfaced on the pond, and there was a general sense of trepidation.

I’ll admit that before this week I did not know there was a Willamina, Oregon or a Huddleston Pond Park, but I must say I’ll never be able to forget the place. Such nice people, mostly locals. “Park over here.” “Get ready everyone!” Cheering at the totality. They were half the fun! Luckily, we had extra ISO certified glasses so we handed them out to those without so we felt like we gave back a bit of their generosity.

But rather than talk, let me show you, …

Looks like a spider… Gold Filter
Sun overtaking the moon
Getting close to complete
The last flash before totality

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Total eclipse with 6X Filter

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The corona with a 2X filter

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Shadows cast by the leaves after the sun emerged from the other side of the moon

 

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A newt!

 

I Love Your Sweater!

~ Kristin Tolle ~ 1 Comment

Ah….

Music to a knitter’s ears.

Especially when you can come back with “I made it!”

Perhaps now is NOT the time to knit that ski sweater I’ve got my eye on. I’ve even knitted the swatch for a Slopes Pullover from the cover of KnitScene Winter 2016. But now, after hearing this sweater compliment when I checked into my hotel in DC, I’m thinking, ‘Why am I knitting a ski sweater and more woolen socks?’ and ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to work on a nice cotton yarn?’

Slopes Pullover from KnitScene’s Winter 2016 Issue

I’d reknit this “Perfect Periwinkle” sweater  by Stefanie Japel in a heartbeat now! Maybe even using a purple yarn like the fuchsia Bernat Panama Worsted Weight cotton I have in my stash.

The Sweater in Question
Bernat Panama in fuchsia — I’ve got over 1800 yards of the stuff

And maybe I’ll make up my own cardigan pattern to go with it or modify her Off-Rib Cardigan to make it match. 😊

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Stefanie Japel’s Off-Rib Cardigan