National Knitting Centre

We visited Donegal for a couple of days and while perusing my handy hotel guide to nearby attractions, I was delighted to find the National Knitting Center was just down the road.

National! Knitting! Center!

It promised a light-hearted look at knitting through the ages, the story of wool from sheep to shawl and a shop full of Irish yarn. What we found was slightly different. First, there was a shop with lots of Irish knit sweaters and caps. I sifted through the wares and talked to the shop assistant about why they had to close the knitting center and move to a smaller location (lack of visitors and support). I asked if they had any yarn for sale and she took me back to the....um....warehouse, storage facility, largest stash I've seen in my life.

They had shelves built from floor to 30-thirty foot ceilings. All stuffed with raw wool, coloured wool, rough wool, soft wool, thin wool, but mostly aran-weight wool and not a label to be found for miles. Not categories, names, wool-types, dates of shearing. recommended needle-size, dye-lot. Nada....
Just me and wool. So I searched out as much as I could carry (literally) and when the nice lady went further back into the shop to weigh it, she invited me along.
The next room offered the needed scale for weighing, the owner of the shop, a floor covered with bagged and tagged Aran sweaters and two ladies sitting and knitting saidsweaters. Turns out they sell sweaters (not sure where or how). And the knitters were totally excited to have their picture taken :)
So maybe it wasn't what the hotel had advertised, but it was certainly the most knitting I've seen in Ireland to date. And I made off with 1.5 kilos of wool.

Cute story about the red lace-weight in the middle. I asked if anyone knew the content because it was sooooo soft and squishy. The owner jumped into her office for a little Steiff bear wearing an Irish knit sweater made from a similar colour. But the bear wasn't wearing the same content of the squishy in my hand, he had a cashmere Irish knit sweater (or Aran Jumper, as the locals say). The shop had been consigned to knit cashmere sweaters for Steiff bears to be sold at Harrod's and she had their sample leftover. It's a good thing I had just dumped the contents of my wallet into their cash register, because I would have searched the car and Dave's pockets for enough money to tempt that bear away from her. I can't even imagine how much they retail for!
So, now to dream up project for my new yarn :)

Photo Tour of Ireland

Finally back home and still getting back to normal life. Just popping online for a quick photo essay. I've got so much to tell and don't know where to begin. So, for now.....

Our whirlwind tour of Ireland included a visit to the Dublin Zoo

and Giant's Causeway,

a great view from the hotel room in Donegal,

the National Knitting Center in Buncrana

and hanging out with friends.

Lots more details to come.

And....the Yarn!

That's what you're all here for, isn't it? You little woolly vultures, you! First, I will torture you with more pictures from the trip. But it's okay, they're really interesting.....

Like a Portrait of an Irishman standing at the top of the Arena in Verona.
I like this one better, when he's giving me the Come Hither, hehe. An artsy fartsy shot of our hosts. Really, I didn't do this on purpose, it turns out my cell phone cam has some artistic talent of its own.
And one final Portrait of an Irishman on a Bridge in Verona.
Next an update on plumbing advancements in Italy. I'm sure everyone has heard of hole-in-the-floor toilets in Italy. A tourist's nightmare from decades past. You will be glad to know that I found normal toilets nearly everywhere I went. All restaurants, even gas stations and tourist attractions. When we scaled the mountain on Saturday for a 7 course dinner (can you imagine a first and second pasta course?) at a little hut on the peak, I expected the worse. I was a tad wary after I collected the key and wandered outside, down the hill to do my business in an outside dug-into-the-mountain loo. But low and behold, they were newly renovated, squeaky clean and had shiny new porcelain. Take a look at the shiny new porcelain and the integrated foot holds on Italy's new hole-in-the-floor toilets. I laughed so hard, I nearly peed my pants - good thing I was close to a hole in the floor. :)
Now that this post has gotten to photo heavy, I've got to push the yarn into another entry. God, I've turned a little appetizer into a sl*ty yarn-tease.

Seriously...the Yarn!

The town we visited, Rovereto, doesn't so much have yarn shops as Haberdasheries. A general handy-work shop, heavy with fabric, buttons, stitching arts like cross-stitch and that stuff they do with silk thread that looks so cool on pillows and wall hangings. The first yarn we found in a fabric shop. There was a small bookcase with wool and alpaca-wool skeins. Believe it or not, the 100% wool was softer than the alpaca mixes. I was delighted and bought some skeins for a hat, possibly baby jacket.

The next shop we found was button-heavy and had a lot of mohair (by a lot I mean 3 different kinds) and one color-way from Regia. And the counter top had a huge basket of mixed colorways of this stuff. 100% wool, 200g skeins for 8Euro, super soft and screaming to come home with me. Who could say no? I think it wants to be a fiery, sassy sweater with a big, comfy (and totally squashy) turtle-neck.

The last store, we saw on our way to dinner one night and I pretended to go for a healthy little walk the next afternoon so I could check it out. First task was wading through the store's other wares (gorgeous leather purses, handbags and fabulous little hats and scarves, poor me!) to find fthe largest wool stash in Rovereto. Seriously, he must have had like 2 whole bookcases of yarn!
First, the sock yarn, I had seen the evening before and immediately grabbed a couple for the obligatory stash enhancement (50% wool, 50% meraklon(??) 100g and 300meters - am thinking boot socks) :

The next caught my eye and wouldn't let me go. I think it's the first lace-weight I've seen in my life (that wasn't mohair). It is possibly the softest, squishiest, most delicate wool I've ever seen. 1500 meters, baby (and for some random, reason, matching lace-weight mohair)! That means I should be knitting something lacey with it, no?
But I'm not exactly laden down with lace experience or books. This is where you, my dear friends, collective experience, knowledge and wisdom of many, come in.

If you were to recommend only one lace book to someone going for a 2 year stint on the International Space Station, which would you recommend???

Bella Italia!

This is the time in Sprockets : where we gloat about our recent weekend in Italy, gorgeous Italian yarn and contemplate moving house to the Italian Alps!

The Irishman's bestest college bud moved to the Italian Alps last fall with his sweetheart. We've been trying to get down to visit ever since but stupid vacations and holidays (like Christmas) kept getting in the way. This past weekend, we finally made it. First, we picked up Niamh, the Irishman's bestest high school buddy, at Munich airport and high-tailed it down the German, Austrian and finally Italian highways to Rovereto. It was a long drive and we were dog-tired when we arrived Thursday night, but the view on Friday morning made up for any exhaustion we were feeling. Here are the 3 views from their balcony.

Friday we went walking/shopping through the older district of Rovereto. I found great yarn, but no yarn shops (explanation to follow). This is the gang sucking down red wine, eagerly awaiting arrival of our pizzas.

Saturday, we visited Lake Garda. It was in the high 50's, so we had a long stroll through the town, sat on a terrace with a lake view and ate ice cream.

Then we drove up the side of a mountain, ate lunch in a hut at the top, celebrating our perilous ascent. I thought I had gotten used to narrow roads, living in Germany and all, but the roads on our mountain drive were eeensy weeeeensy, partially paved, all next to plunging cliffs and, at one point, blocked by tractors. Niamh and I were sitting in the back and spent most of the ride either looking up (rather than down) or covering our eyes and giggling to hide our fear.

Tomorrow: Verona and Yarn!!

View Out The Back Window

Here's the last view out of Mum's house until this summer. I flew home this past Saturday/Sunday and am very busy catching up on my Christmas decorating.

A Lobster Party

My step-dad, David, gets up every morning before 6 to have his coffee, boy-gossip and business transactions down at Tim Horton's. Earlier this week, he ordered 26 pounds of lobster during such a visit (I suspect it was before the coffee properly kicked in) and we had us a lobster party.

Preparations.....
Here's a photo of what I like to call the Little Yummies (is it weird to name your dinner?)Here's their new home in a propane-powered cook pot
And their remains will be worshiped and devoured in Mum's rompus room. It cracks me up to see all newspaper, paper towels, hand-wipeys, Chinet plates and then wine glasses in the middle of it all.

The Feast!
The blonde on the left is Patsy and sitting to her right is Chester and they'll teach you all you need to know about cracking claws (wrap the claws with two paper towels so as not to hurt your hands) sucking meat out of the legs and eating the tamale (a brown gooey delicacy from the body cavity - but I think it looks like mud) before it gets cold. Chester was finished with his third lobster before I was half-way through the tail of my first. And Elaine (back left) wore her special lobster-cracking-apron. This was not a dinner for lightweights.
I'd say "Wish You Were Here" but I was having enough trouble with the competition that did show up ;)

Cool Moon Rising

Got a cool picture of the moon rising over the lake.
I had to take about 10 pictures before I was happy with the result, God bless digital cameras!

A Saturday At The Fish Camp

My sister Louise came from Bar Habor, Maine to visit on the weekend and we spent Saturday afternoon out at the Fish Camp.

Mum's getting the fire started. Note the new tradition of building fires in drum from an old washing machine. It's a great way to recycle, it keeps the fire contained and the holes let air in to feed the flames (AND you can fit a grate from an old barbeque across the top). Dem Maritimers can be crazy at times, but oh-so-clever ;)

Roasting hot dogs and beans (oh how I've missed baked beans in molasses with pork!)

Toasting Dessert (I feel no guilt whatsoever for stuffing myself full of S'mores, since I know I probably won't see them again for a while - who am I kidding?! I never feel guilty when stuffing my face with roasted marshmallows, melted chocolate and graham crackers. The graham crackers are kind of healthy, aren't they?)

Mum and Louise went for a walk and Dave and I took a little nap on the mattresses inside. There was s'more S'more roasting as it started to get dark.

And then we played some Mexican Rummy before heading out to dinner at The Bavaria Restaurant, where a big surprise was waiting for Mum. More on that later...

Wakin' Up

Step-father had me up at 6 this morning to go to Tim's (Tim Horton's Doughnut shop) to get coffee and make eyes at the fisherman. I would have made eyes (coquettish and all) if my eyes had been open. But the coffee kicked in once we got home and I did manage a picture of the sun coming up over the lake.

Eye Candy

Y'all can all stick your Saturday Skies and Sundays skies where the sun don't......um, well, what I mean to say, is this is the sky that rocks my world. It's from the porch on Mum's barn-converted-house I've never slept as well anywhere in the world as when the fog has rolled into Yarmouth. And this is only slighty-misty-fog, not the real stuff where you can't see the hand in front of your face. This is the aesthetic, romantic fog and I'm all loved-up in it.

Dumping Day

Monday was the first day that the lobster fisherman "dump"ed their lobster traps. Mom woke me up nice and early because everyone runs down to the Yarmouth Light at 6am and watches the boats go out. They also line up their cars and flash the headlights.

It's pretty dark here at 6am, so my picture came out a bit dim. But you can see a little bit of the view; there're so many lights from the boats, it looks like another city out on the water.

I got a better picture of a boat coming back in.
He looks a bit small, so I don't think it was a lobsterman coming back in for more traps. They drop them all in the morning, some come back for another load and more bait, and then they sit out on the water for the day and wait until 12-midnight when it's legal to check the traps for the first time.

Even the radio station was set up inside the lighthouse and broadcasting the news of Dumping Day.