Rhinebeck Report

With my two co-bloggers gone from the East Coast, I was finally free to go to Rhinebeck by myself! Freedom! Who wants to shop for yarn with other people anyway, amirite?

Err, okay, so actually I was kind of bummed and wasn't sure if I would go or not, so I didn't make any advance plans for lodging. But my husband, who is a very nice man, agreed to go with me, so we drove the three hours from Princeton to enjoy Rhinebeck as a last-minute day-trip. We were greeted by the beautiful golden trees that line the main entrance. This is how you know you're really there!

One of my favorite things at Rhinebeck is always the skein and garment competition. Unfortunately, this year they had the whole display cordoned off behind ropes, so you couldn't get a close look at anything. Perhaps they've had trouble with too many people touching things? Nonetheless, there were some nice items on display.

I also saw the Sheep-to-Shawl teams hard at work, which was exciting. Somehow I usually miss this, so it was great to see.

Of course, there were also the usual adorable sheeps and handsome camelids.

And, of course, I bought some stuff: Mountain Colors Targhee, Fiber Optic wool/silk top in the most incredible ultramarine blue, 8 oz of Finn wool, and 1 oz of super-luxurious sharlea merino from Stash Enhancement. I also got two ounces of cashgora top and a magnetic pattern-holder thingie. Considering I was only at the fair for about five hours, I think I was pretty efficient.

Going as a day-trip worked surprisingly well, actually. Sort of a condensed experience. It wasn't as much fun as poring over every last skein with my fellow yarnies, but we saw the sights and did the deeds, nonetheless.

Different cultures are different

Although living in Europe is a lot of fun, because of all the adventure, travel, and just the experience of being in another culture, there are some challenges, the language barrier being the biggest. I can get along in all my day-to-day stuff just fine, especially because the vast majority of people speak at least some English (though not the lovable ferry boat captain!), and I've picked up some of the essentials, like how to say "no mayonnaise." Still, I've been too shy to try and make friends here. Mostly because I feel like if I showed up at a local knitting group, I imagine I'd be forcing people into their second (or third, or fourth) language, and I wouldn't want to make the regulars feel uncomfortable while my presence is just fleeting. Maybe I'm being overly anxious? In any case, that's where things stand.

The combination of missing the social aspect of knitting plus having fewer entertainment options (no TV, extremely limited internet, etc) has gotten me into watching/listening to a lot of podcasts. I've been listening to some knitting podcasts for at least five years, but I've discovered a whole bunch of new ones lately. Many thanks to Starbucks for having free unlimited wifi that allows me to download this stuff.

So one podcast, The KnitGirllls, has an expand your horizons spinalong going on their Ravelry board. October is for spinning cheviot, which is certainly a new-to-me fiber. Behold!



The fiber is from Dyeabolical, and it was spun on a Bosworth spindle and plied on my True Creations kick spindle. I got about 300 yds of a 3-ply. Originally I was hoping it'd be good sock yarn, but the yardage is a bit too little for the size of socks I like to make, and the colors blended and became a little duller than I had envisioned for socks-- that was my fault in how I spun the yarn, by the way.

Then comes the Knitabulls podcast, who have an October monster spinalong/knitalong focusing on Halloween colors. By golly, that fiber is Halloween colored. I'm not much of a toy knitter, but I do enjoy crocheting them, and behold!



A marsupial momster and baby. So cute. Easy and fun to make, no sewing involved, and done in a few hours. I decided to jump on board with this knitalong when I discovered the "big box craft store" here in Bonn. It's not that big or boxy, but it did have polyfill, stuffing, and eyes.

The thing about this project that I think will remind me of Germany in particular is that the eyes are not safety eyes; they are just shank buttons that look like eyes (Wouldn't that make the creepiest cardigan?!). It surprised me exactly 0% that I couldn't find safety eyes here. From being around German strangers, their parenting style doesn't seem to involve being concerned about toy eyes being a safety hazard. Half the time when I see a kid toddling along on the street I can't even tell which adult(s) they belong to. After all, this is the country that brings us the Kinder Egg, choking hazard extraordinaire.

In completely other news, Rhinebeck is upon us and I am not going. WOE. I'm hoping somebody is; can I get a report?

Handarbeiten and not so Handarbeiten

Travels! I've been to two places in the past couple of weeks that had some interesting textile displays. The first was at the Heimatmuseum here in my neighborhood of Beuel (pronounced like "boil"). It's the local history museum, largely dedicated to the history of doing laundry. You read that right.



Beuel was historically the place where laundry went sent upriver from Köln (Cologne). They had lots of old washing machines and linens, etc., and my big realization there was that the spin cycle is a HUGE improvement over the wringer.

There were also many displays on what life was like back in the day, which in Germany includes handarbeiten, which is the word for needlework. My favorite was the display of sock anatomy in the school:




So many toe options!

Right after this trip across the street to the Heimatmuseum, I took a longer trip with an old friend of mine. We visited Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich. Until Munich, there was basically nothing fiber-related at all, if you can believe it. The schedule was pretty jam packed with the usual sort of sight seeing. We drank lots of fresh, fizzy wine that's only halfway fermented. Its nickname in Austria is sturm, because it comes up on you like a storm. After that warm up, we got to Munich, where this was going on:




But there's only so much of this that one can do:



(Emily and Jenny Jo will both recognize this dear friend of mine, who is also a knitter!)

So we checked out the Deutsches Musem, which is perhaps the biggest museum I've ever been to, all dedicated to technology. This museum has 10 MILES of exhibits, so we had to narrow down what kinds of technology we wanted to look at. This resulted in seafaring and textiles. The textile section was enormous (so was the seafaring--a whole submarine!) and had huge looms and knitting machines:



They had antique tools, many of which were flax-related:


and my favorite, the circular knitting machine you could crank:



If you're ever in Munich, I'd definitely recommend checking this out. For that matter, if you're in Bonn, come to the Heimatmuseum as well!

The other amazing textile discoveries were the Oktoberfest costumes. Turns out dirdls and lederhosen are serious business. I didn't get any good pictures, but people are not wearing cheap Halloween costumes; these are beautiful garments with lots of amazing touches. There were lots of knit vests and sweaters, predominantly in garter stitch with maybe some cable details. Also amazing wool socks with Bavarian traveling cables on them. Good stuff. Here's a nice lederhosened leg for you, actually taken in Salzburg where they were also out in full force:


I've got some more travels coming up before year's end, so I will definitely report on what I find! Also, I have been spinning and knitting....

One last note: sheep and cows in Bavaria chilling on the hillsides really wear bells around their necks, and it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

The spice of life

So here I am in Bonn! The apartment my husband and I share is small, as you might expect in Europe, though not our smallest ever apartment. That would be the first place we lived in New York, which came in at a whopping 200 square feet. This place, while bigger, has some features that make it pretty different compared to other places I've lived.





In the lower right, you can see that the bed is lofted. In the upper right, you'll notice that there are two electric burners but no oven. Underneath the burners is the fridge, which one could call mini. On the left you can kind of see that instead of having a tub or stall for a shower, you just shower right there in the bathroom. That's the toilet on the left and there's a drain in the floor. You just squeegee the whole place down when you're through. I find it tremendously amusing.

Perhaps some of you who are reading are accustomed to such a situation, but it's really different for me. The biggest challenge is the kitchen/fridge combo, as well as the limitation on kinds of ingredients available here, the result of which is the revival of my college student menu. Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup forever!

But what about yarn? I am happy to let you know that I packed a lot of yarn and fiber coming here. Behold:



Have you ever gone on a trip and only brought one book to read, so that you'd finally read it after all these years passing it over in favor of other books? I did that once, with Anna Karenina, and I'm doing it a little bit here with yarn, in particular the kitchen cotton on the right and the marled wool on the left. Those are projects for which I want the finished product, but I'm not particularly excited about the actual knitting.

In a moment of "Why not?" I decided to cast on a whole bunch of things, because I had the needles for them and without home internet access (yet) or television or even English language radio, it's good to feel like I have a lot of options for my entertainment at home.




More on these projects as I work on them more. I have to say, I'm really enjoying having this many choices, especially considering I also have my on-the-go socks and a couple of spinning projects.



Variety, it's the spice of life! So is curry ketchup, incidentally, which I may be mailing back to myself when I move back to the US...

Thrilling tales of the Belgian countryside

Here I am, living in Germany, though the move here started off with a week-long trip to Belgium.




It was silly of me not to stop on the bike and take pictures of the farms in Belgium, because not only do they have the cutest fuzzy dairy cows with little horns, but there are also TONS of sheep. We were mostly pretty focused on the beer, though.




The other thing I was excited about was lace! Brugge (Bruges in French) is the quaintest little city you'll ever see--it's that first photo up there, and it has been a center for lacemaking going on 400 years. We visited the Lace Centre there, where there was a room full of women working on their stunning lace projects. Their totally insane stunning lace projects. It's pretty rare for a fiber art to scare me off, but seriously, bobbin lace is out of control scary.







Now, speaking of scary, something really dramatic happened during this trip. On our longest day of biking, we biked about 50km (30 miles) with all of our stuff, to get from Brugge to Ieper (Ypres), with a couple of stops for beer and WWI history. (I'm not sure if that sounds like a lot to you or not, but I barely know how to ride a bike, so it was a lot to me.) We stopped for a minute so Noah could look at the map, and in a sickening moment, I realized the pannier had fallen off the side of his bike. It was holding my bag, the one with my wallet, my phone, my passport, my knitting, my eyeglasses, etc. You get the picture.

In a flash Noah said, "I'm going to go back and find it," and sped away on his bike. There I was, alone on a tiny country road, between a farmhouse and a corn field, completely dazed. I sat on a stone post and though about what I'd just lost. It was just stuff, right? But how easy would it be to replace? I didn't know how long Noah would be gone, I had no way of contacting him or anyone else, and I had to do something before I went crazy with thoughts of how idiotic I'd look wearing my prescription sunglasses full time until I could get new glasses, and where the closest consulate was. Luckily I still had my backpack, and in there was my little spinning project.




So I sat, and I spun, and before too long, Noah returned with my bag miraculously intact. During our joyful reunion he said to me, "You're so zen about this. This is totally a situation in which I'd be crying." I pointed to my little spinning project on the ground and he laughed knowingly.

Thank you, little spinning project, for keeping me company in that harrowing time.

Two great tastes that taste great together

The best thing about easy knitting projects is that you can multitask while knitting them. Namely, I can prop up ye olde kindle and read and knit at the same time.



That's my Color Affection shawl; it's nearly done; it has taken me all summer to make it. I've been making lots of progress lately during epic Trivial Pursuit battles with the in-laws, as we are docked here for the next few days before shipping off to Europe for the rest of the year. I promise I know that the sun is the closest star to Earth, but last night I totally answered Alpha Centauri. Whoops! Is somebody going to come and take away my BA in Astronomy? Anyway, stay tuned for tales of German yarn and tales of me gesticulating wildly as I try to purchase laundry soap in my truly nonexistent German.

Also, do check out this guest post I wrote on Forever Young Adult, my very favorite book blog, where I also combine my love of reading and craft. And if you clicked over here from there, welcome! Let's be friends and talk about books and knitting!

Knitting is front page news...

...here in York, PA!




(just who are these experts?)