Langeville to Dublin

It all seems so long ago...well I guess that's because it's been well over six months now since I met up with my guy at Dublin Airport. There he was in the arrivals area, having made his way from home to Heathrow then to Dublin to our B & B in Dun Laoghaire and back to the airport on the shuttle to be waiting the moment I stepped into the terminal. What a guy! In the interests of catching up to present day, the rest of the travelogue won't be a timeline so much as an expanded highlights spread over several posts with a section on up-to-the-moment stuff. It has been pretty daunting to think about having to write my way from last June to now, to the point I avoided writing at all. Ahh, the excuses we make to procrastinate...

My first impression of Dublin was how modern it felt for such an old city. The curvy futuristic looking airport terminal was still under construction, many old buildings have been repurposed for flats and concert halls and public spaces and there are plenty of brand new glass and steel office buildings. We were to learn from the locals that many of the new places were standing empty as a result of the downturn in the economy and the banking crisis. There was even talk of pulling down the miles of new or stalled-out construction around the airport as it didn't look as though it would ever be occupied or even finished.

River Liffey in downtown Dublin

One of our favourite activities during our stay in Dublin was a bus tour out to Newgrange, part of the complex of Neolithic passage tombs or celestial clocks or ceremonial mounds in the Boyne Valley...opinions are mixed as to their purpose. That they remain somewhat of an enigma is not surprising considering they were built over 5,000 years ago (predating the Pyramids by 2,000 years!) and extensive exploration and protection only started in the 1960's. It is a very impressive place when one catches sight of it from the road leading in, very large and gleaming white on its emerald green hilltop. If its creators meant it to impress, they are still pulling it off.

Ian, our wonderful tour guide who regaled us with history, sang to us and told us storyteller style of Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) and the Magic Salmon

Newgrange

All visitors must pass through the Brú na Bóine visitor's centre and in groups limited to 50, take a shuttle bus up to the site for a one hour visit, one group leaving as another arrives. The passage and chamber can only be accessed in groups of 25 at a time, accompanied by a guide. Inside, the passage runs uphill and is so low and narrow that I was obliged to duck beneath the roof stones and turn sideways at one point to allow my shoulders to pass through. Those with claustrophobia issues are well advised to skip this part. The centre chamber, domed with concentric circles of rock, held all 25 of us, but very cosily. There is artificial lighting but at one point it was extinguished leaving us in velvet blackness with not a glimmer from outside, invited by the guide to imagine ourselves notables of an ancient cult, awaiting the arrival of the light on winter solstice. On that day, provided the sun is shining, a rectangular opening over the exterior door lines up perfectly with the sun's position, the passage and the central chamber, allowing light to run up the path and, for a few minutes, illuminate a polished stone bowl which stood at the centre of the chamber.

Curving entry area with roof box over exterior door to let in the solstice sun

It is thought that these moments were used for some special yearly ceremony but it's anybody's guess. One theory involves the bowl holding the ashes of the deceased so that the touch of the sun's rays at the moment when the days begin to get longer sends their spirits to join the ancestors. Another holds that fertility rites were enacted for the coming year's harvest. Should you wish to experience this moment for yourself, you must enter a lottery and if you are chosen, pray that the Winter Solstice isn't clouded over....bit of a long shot given Ireland's reputation for rainy weather.

Standing stone overlooking the Boyne River Valley

The outside of the mound is decorated with white stone and the base is lined with huge stones laid on their sides and decorated with triskells (three joined spirals) and other runic symbols. The slope down from the mound had several standing stones and a sort of chapel built entirely of stone. As you can see in the photos, the countryside is lushly green and dotted everywhere with sheep. County Meath is an exceptionally productive agricultural area and we were surprised to learn that dairy and other farm products are one of their biggest exports. I had the best butter I've ever eaten while we were there and I should probably devote an entire post to the phenomenon that is the full Irish breakfast.

Stone chapel at Newgrange

Newgrange detail: white facing stone and monolithic lintel slabs

I was surprised to learn how new archeological inquiry is in Ireland, especially given the rich historical and mythic tradition that continues to this day. It was not unusual to hear ordinary people talk about fairies and ghosts, and about bad luck coming from disturbing the "faerie forts". Perhaps it's due to centuries of domination and persecution or perhaps with such a profusion, ruins are taken more for granted than they would be in North America where similar sites would be roped off. There are ruins everywhere, tumbledown castles, famine houses, ring forts and tombs and very few have been documented or excavated to any extent. It was wonderful having such open access to these ancient sites, able to scramble over the same stones where 5,000 years ago, people took shelter, to look out at the same view from the vantage of a fort wall.

Lintel Stone with triskell and other designs

Paris to Langeville

On my last morning in Paris, I packed up, crammed myself onto the tiny Tiquetonne elevator and departed for Gare Montparnasse, arriving ridiculously early as is usual for me and rather frantic for a washroom. The place was packed and my train not yet on the board so I got a fabulous coffee and watched the scene as I waited. Twice I got into longish conversations with people asking me questions about the trains...French people, in French! Guess I have succeeded in not looking too much like a tourist. The train was finally posted - about 20 minutes before departure - and I headed down the platform. The 2nd class cars are always the farthest from the main station so I no longer panic when it seems like I might have to walk all the way to my destination. It was a quiet trip except for an incident just past Le Mans when a suitcase fell from the overhead rack a couple of seats ahead of mine and clobbered the poor woman sitting below. The French despite their celebrated reserve, flocked to help her and she was well fussed over for the rest of the journey. Yet another reason to pick the window seat...

My friend Françoise was waiting faithfully for me on the platform at Les Sables d'Olonne, a minor miracle in my view since we hadn't been in touch for weeks....nothing since "my train arrives at 2:30 on Sunday, the 7th". This is the third time we have met in France like this so I'm less nervous now about it actually coming to pass although I had the "de rigueur" thought, what would be my next step if she doesn't show? We did a little vehicle tour of Les Sables d'Olonne, a beach town with some interesting buildings from the 30's and many seashell mosaics along the walls of the narrow streets, kitschy but old enough to be cool too. There was a parade being marshalled at the waterfront with some modest floats and a flock of local girls wearing clogs, colourful folk costumes and lace coifs on their heads. Local boys were also dressed up in folk costume and were practising their music on the Breton style bagpipes and horns, quite thrilling to hear in that context but not what everyone would call tuneful, a harsh, compelling sound. The beach was spectacular, a long curve of white sand around the bay bordered with low rise hotels and apartments, some art deco but most newer and pretty cheesy up close. The beach is obviously the main attraction here as the town doesn't have a whole lot of character. It was a gorgeous sunny day but the wind was strong and blowing sand made it less than pleasant near the water so we didn't wait around for the parade to begin and headed off to Langeville where Françoise's family owns a summer home.

Beach near Langeville

As I would learn, Langeville looks pretty much the same as most of the towns in the area: tidy, white stucco houses with blue shutters, red tile roofs, all in the low lying flat landscape of the Vendée shoreline. There didn't seem to be much to do or see in walking distance aside from the beach which was again, spectacular: miles of white sand backed by dunes backed in turn by deciduous forest. Here and there, crumbling blockhouses from World War II poke up out of the dunes. Although sunny the weather was a bit on the cool side so most houses remained shuttered and it was very quiet. The house was lovely and comfortable, full of antique French country furniture, beautiful linens on the beds and the accumulations of a much-loved and long-used family retreat. Françoise has been summering here since she was a teenager so it is pretty much in her blood.

White stucco, blue shutters and red tile roofs at La Tranche-sur-Mer

We spent the week walking, reading, napping, eating, lying on the beach, drinking wine and in my case, knitting while listening to audiobooks on my iPod. Each evening there was the almost ritual closing of the shutters once we were ready to go to bed, often before sunset. With no daylight saving and it being almost the solstice, it was daylight until almost 11PM. Between the tranquility, the gentle rhythm of the days, the comfortable bed and the darkness that only shutters on the windows can provide, I slept like a child, wakening to bird song. The second day of our stay, there was a huge windstorm and we actually lit a fire in the fireplace and hunkered down under blankets, quite content. When we walked through the forest the next day there were branches on the path and the beach was covered in fluffy white foam from the pounding waves of the day before.

Foamy beach at Jard-sur-Mer

The week slid by, serene, quietly delightful, laid-back. On the last day, Françoise drove me to La Rochelle where I was to fly to Dublin to meet my guy. It was a very hot day and it was farther than anticipated - partly because of poor navigation on my part. La Rochelle is a lovely city, reminding me of St. Malo but built of white stone rather than grey, giving it a sunny southern aspect. Much of the new world exploration in the age of discovery left from here and the city was celebrating its links with Quebec this summer...I was pleasantly surprised to see the Quebec flag flying at the harbour.

Exposition at La Rochelle on the expeditions to New France

Quebec flag flies over the harbour at La Rochelle

After a nice lunch outside the cathedral, we wandered the back streets of the old city, climbed the ramparts at the mouth of the harbour and enjoyed the cool shady arcades until it was time for my flight.

Harbour gate, La Rochelle

Inner harbour, La Rochelle

Ramparts of La Rochelle

The La Rochelle-Ile de Ré airport was tiny with nowhere to sit, packed full of people with questions and no staff to provide answers, everyone overheated and anxious. People in Ryanair uniforms sailed busily about the room, unresponsive to pleas for assistance. Guess that's how Ryanair is able to offer those low fares, not that my fare was particularly a bargain. I had dutifully checked in online the day before using my iPhone and was assured on the website that I could print my boarding pass at the airport. At the airport there appeared to be no facility for printing and as for staff to clarify my next step, see above. Nothing for it but to wait with growing apprehension then make sure I was at the front of the line when the flight was called. I couldn't even settle down enough to knit, which is really saying something for me, in spite of it being World Wide Knitting in Public Day.

The agent barely listened to my story, sending me with a form to a different desk to "pay for printing my boarding pass" (30 euros!!!) and to "have my visa checked" (what visa!??)! By the time the stone faced woman at the counter deigned to serve me, my patience had quite evaporated. Speaking French was beyond me and while I didn't raise my voice, I was very firm. I laid out the sorry tale ending with "now it seems I have to pay another 30 euros and I am not happy". She met my eye, assessing my outrage, I glared back, she kind of hitched one shoulder in that French way, rolled her eyes, pounded a "Paid" stamp on my form, and shooed me away, all without uttering a word. For a minute, I couldn't quite believe I'd managed to get my way. The lesson? Have your say, don't yell, don't back down and to hell with polite and accommodating.

Too bad my France sojourn had to end on this sour note. It will be a long time before I put myself in the hands of Ryanair again. Mostly I've had exceptionally good experiences with the budget airlines in Europe. They fly between smaller cities without routing through the large airport hubs and while the fares are not all that small once all the extras are added on, they make it up in convenience. At least I got in my knitting, finishing up the first of what I'm calling my Langeville Sunset Socks in the mercifully cool departure lounge and during the flight to Dublin.

...and next, Ireland...

Paris Encore

London to Paris:

Off to St. Pancras early in the morning after a rerun of previous day's breakfast - I really don't like canned baked beans...I don't even like looking at them first thing! And I would have killed for a real coffee. Fortunately, they have lots of nice coffee establishments in St. Pancras Station so with a nice hefty cappuccino in hand, I went off to check in, where I was immediately headed off by the nice security men - no drinks in the lounge. I was ridiculously early as usual, so I found a nice bench along the beautiful open concourse and finished drinking my coffee in relative peace.

Passed through French customs without incident, into the overcrowded lounge (did they not know how many people fit on one of those trains when they built the place? And while St. Pancras is very old on the outside, it is brand spanking new inside!) then onto the train. A young Asian woman sat beside me with her parents sitting across the aisle and they conversed in their language for the first part of the trip...turned out they were Malaysian, she had been educated in the U.S. and was a physician and nowhere near as young as she appeared. They were visiting Paris for the first time and were using the French edition of "The Book of Steves" as we have taken to referring to Rick Steves guide books (more on that later) and were staying near Rue Cler near the Eiffel Tower as he recommends.

The Eurostar was nothing exceptional as European fast trains go...comfortable, fast, on time. As for the Chunnel, I had expected an extraordinary experience but after the requisite time speeding through the English countryside, it gets dark outside the train for a half hour or so then one is speeding through the French countryside. The greater pleasure is that the Eurostar takes less time than flying and it is pretty much downtown to downtown. When I arrived in Paris, I was able to walk downhill from Gare du Nord to my hotel near Les Halles without any trouble and without recourse to other transportation.

My room in the Hotel Tiquetonne for this stay was on the top floor, the 7th, reached by a teeny slow jerky little elevator or an interminable winding staircase. Over the rooftops, I could see the Eiffel Tower, hazy in the distance. The room was under the angle of the roof and set back from the eaves with casement windows that opened wide for air (no AC) and the sounds of the unseen street below wafted up to me. Rue Montorgueil with its shops and restaurants was just around the corner but sadly, the quartier has become very touristy since my last stay in 2004. The feel of a residential area has pretty much gone with some of the fine old restaurants replaced by fast food joints and tourist claptrap outlets. Bands of older teenagers roam the streets at night and the drunken clamour goes on until daybreak. That said, the Tiquetonne is ideally placed for walking the city and I went out every day with my deck of walking cards from City Walks Paris to discover parts of the city hitherto unknown to me. Best of the few I had time to undertake was the Butte aux Cailles area, with its neighbourhood feel and the charming Villa Daviel, a whole row of adorable rose-adorned single family cottages on a dead end lane. On a different expedition, the card for the Trocadéro directed me to the Allee des Cygnes, a walkway that runs the length of a very long narrow island in the Seine. James Joyce used to go there for strolls to clear his head and these days, young families and people walking dogs take the air. Near the Jardin des Plantes I visited a Roman arena, the Arènes de Lutèce, and beneath the stone tiers of seats in the centre ring where gladiators and chariot races once entertained the Roman occupiers, neighbourhood children now play informal soccer matches and men gossip over their petanque.

View from the Tiquetonne - can you find the Eiffel Tower? Hint: it's in the right third of the photo.

Les Arènes de Lutèce

Allee des Cygnes

Villa Daviel

Besides these more obscure pleasures, I window shopped along the very tony Rue du Passy, hung out for awhile by the Eiffel Tower, eyed the stratospherically priced designer offerings along the Boulevard Haussmann, walked by the Elysée Palace, home to France's presidents, like a fortress with the small army of security personnel choking the surrounding streets. I couldn't help but wonder if Carla Bruni is at all dismayed by the way she must live now, cloistered inside, in absolute luxury and comfort but always fenced in, enveloped, never able to slip out the back door for a quick walk up the Champs Elysée.

I browsed through the divinely presented food offerings at Fauchon on the Place de la Madeleine - these people have the tortured food thing down to a science. This is where I picked up a box of their miniature pastel meringues as a hostess gift for Françoise, knowing how much the French appreciate these little luxuries, and pretty certain I would have the opportunity to try a few myself. Sharing food is almost the main point of eating for the French - huge generalization, I realize, but it is something I have noted on many occasions in France. Rituals surrounding food and its preparation are of equal importance to food-as-nourishment to a much greater degree than in North America although that is something that is changing for the better in North America and unfortunately, for the worse in France.

And that's what was missing from my explorations of Paris - a bit of company, someone to break bread with. As much as I love the city and as happy as I am to follow none but my own agenda, I was lonely at times, a bit triste. Daytime was too full for much reflection but it would have been nice to have a companion for the evening meal. As it was, I took to buying a few supplies and picnicking in my room or in a park rather than sit alone at a table in a restaurant.

Carrousel in the Jardin du Ranelagh

to be continued...

European Interlude

Back at last...what a busy few months it's been since I last posted. There have been some travels, most notably to England, France and Ireland for the month of June. The plans for this trip came together somewhat piecemeal. I had a large credit with Air Canada that had to be used by June 7th, left over from a trip to Quebec last August that had to be cancelled due to our dog Daisy's first big health crisis. Usually I go to France in April or May to have a French immersion experience with students and former students from the French Diploma Program at the University of Victoria, led by my teacher and friend Françoise. A group of us stay in a gîte in the French countryside, speak nothing but French to each other while shopping and participating in activities intended to put us in contact with local people and have the opportunity to practice French as it is really spoken (3 entries from the 2007 trip to Brittany at my Aventure En France blog). It is most effective in improving conversational skills as it is pretty much impossible to sustain that careful translation in your head before speaking...one must listen hard then jump in if one is to have any kind of a conversation, even if it's just to buy the day's bread at the local boulangerie, and be prepared to be laughed at or not understood.

This year, there weren't enough people to make up a group and I had resigned myself to not going when Françoise, bless her heart, invited me to come and stay with her at her family's vacation home in Langeville on France's Atlantic coast. She goes to visit family in Angers every year and then winds down at the seashore from her busy teaching year. I happily accepted and went on to plan the rest of the trip since the roughly two weeks involved was, to my mind, not enough to justify the agony of jet lag...three weeks is my minimum. I had hoped that my partner, who was tied up with work until mid-June, would come and meet me in France but he suggested that we recoup the trip we had intended to make to Ireland in 2001, cancelled when the foot and mouth epidemic struck and the "ways" across Ireland were closed. We went to Greece instead, had a wonderful time but still dreamt of walking in Ireland.

On June 1st, I left for London having long ago given up on flying directly to Paris with Air Canada. They insist on routing west coast passengers through Toronto - a four or five hour flight from Victoria followed by a five hour wait in the unlovely and crowded Pearson International succeeded by a roughly nine hour flight, and a befuddled arrival into a foreign language and people not celebrated for their patience. My preference is to fly direct from Vancouver or Calgary to London, spend a couple of nights there to adjust the mental clock and gear up for speaking French, and maybe do a bit of tourism between naps.

This strategy puts me into Europe around midday and I try to stay awake until the sun goes down - quite a struggle as the days are very long in Europe in June - they're on the same parallel as Edmonton, hard as that is to believe and the sun sets around 10 PM! My hotel was near Kings Cross station, chosen because St. Pancras next door would be the departure point for the Eurostar a couple of days hence. I got quite turned around coming out of Kings Cross so I had an inadvertent tour of the Bloomsbury neighbourhood before I located the hotel not half a block from one of the many station exits. In my meanderings, I had seen the new British Library (well, new to me) and decided to go back there since it was only a block or two down the Euston Road. It was a splendidly sunny day so I got a bite to eat and sat in the sun in the peaceful courtyard (did I mention how crowded and intense the streets of London are?) before going inside to see what there was to see. And I saw actual pages of the Gutenburg Bible, Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and the Magna Carta, quite astonishing in my sleep-deprived state.

Day 2:

This was my day to explore about London and I hadn't made any definite plans as I wasn't sure I'd be good for anything if my sleep pattern hadn't resolved. The day started with a "full English" breakfast...eggs, sausages, beans (the bland canned pork-and-beans type of my youth), toast, delivered in a subterranean breakfast room by a young woman with an impenetrable eastern European accent. When it came down to it, I didn't feel up to braving the teeming streets so I got on an open-topped boat headed up the Thames to Hampton Court. The trip lasted about 3 1/2 hours and was made more entertaining by our guide who delivered a rather smartass running commentary about the sights along the river. I had my knitting with me and between that and the surprisingly pastoral riverbanks once we got out of London proper and the lovely day, I was very happy.

Open tour boat on the Thames

The defunct Battersea power station - awaiting yet another developer to turn it into fashionable condos without changing the historic exterior

Beautifully painted narrow boat passing Kew Gardens

Once at Hampton Court, I confined my explorations to the gardens as I usually find palace interiors excruciatingly over-decorated and claustrophobic and besides, my time was limited. The rose garden announced itself with the most exquisite scent, long before I laid eyes on it. The timing was perfect as all the roses were at their height of bloom and the place was practically deserted. The rest of the gardens were the expected parterres, a greenhouse entirely filled by "the great vine", a grapevine that produces 500 to 700 pounds of fruit per year and is over 200 years old, an orangerie, a forest of huge pyramid shaped yew trees set out in lines in front of the Baroque wing, fountains and artificial lakes and streams with, best of all, swans with babies.

Rose garden with Tudor wing in background

The Great Vine - 230 years old

Foxgloves against the wall of the Tudor wing

I skipped the famous maze, seductive though it seemed from the outside as it was getting late and they wanted yet more money to go in...the UK seemed very pricey to me with extra this and supplemental that at every turn. Happily, the hotel had free WiFi so I was able to use my iPhone for e-mail.

The train zipped me back to London and I tumbled into bed in my decidedly spartan but quite adequate hotel room, ready to hop on the Eurostar the next morning.

...to be continued...

Peace Mural

A few weeks ago, I volunteered to work on the Peace Mural being put together out at View Royal Elementary.  This is a project of the Creative Peace Mural Society and is one of many they have facilitated in communities all over the world.  I felt very fortunate to be able to participate locally and hope to eventually join the team on one of their overseas projects. 

A large percentage of children who attend View Royal are First Nations and the school is located on traditional Coast Salish territory. Accordingly, First Nations artists Butch Dick and Darlene Gait were commissioned to design the main elements of the piece.  The school children and members of the Songhees nation had the opportunity to add elements to the mural which was then assembled and sewn together by volunteers and the core members of the society.  The "unveiling" is to take place at the end of the month and I can't wait to see the whole piece hanging in all its glory.  

The mural was cut, assembled and sewn together in under a month, an amazing feat considering nobody gets paid.  The international murals are completed on a three week schedule and given this narrow window, the method of construction had to be simple enough for speed without compromising aesthetic values.  Local textile artist Carole Sabiston came up with an ingenious technique which involves layering up all the elements of the design, covering them with a layer of tulle netting and quilting through all layers with lines of zigzag machine stitch.  The tulle has the added benefit of blending out the starker contrasts and marrying disparate materials into a pleasing composition.  

The murals are made up of several panels which hang side by side which means that each panel can be rolled and the entire mural packed into a smallish box for transport...very practical for travelling exhibitions.  The plan is to have representative murals from each continent shown together at the 2012 Olympics in London.  

Spinning Dust Bunnies

Last Friday (one week ago) I attended the Fibres West Festival at the Abbotsford Fairgrounds and came away with, among other things - many other things -  a bag of quiviut.  I spotted it at the Birkeland Brothers booth when I stopped to say hi to the nice women with whom I've spoken at the shop on other mainland fibre hunting expeditions.  

Now I have a history with quiviut, the proverbial skeleton in the old memory vault.  I once owned...wait for it...an ENTIRE GARBAGE BAG OF QUIVIUT, pounds of the stuff.  It was given to me to spin by a guy who worked up north in the oil exploration business whom I had encountered at some craft event where I was selling the natural-dyed fat singles I was churning out at that time.  He had picked it up off the tundra where it was lying around in heaps after the spring moult, or whatever you call it when muskox shed their winter undercoat.   The deal was that I would spin up the fibre in exchange for a share of it and perhaps some of his very beautiful hand carved antler buckles or buttons.   

I tried spinning the stuff on my Indian spinner and needless to say, had a lot of trouble.  I put it away in our tiny attic, resolving to delay the R and D until the long winter months when every hour of the day wasn't taken up with tending gardens and preserving the fruits thereof.  In the typical "back to the land" (i.e. hippies in the backwoods) style, my then husband and I lived in a cobbled together house (and I use the term "house" loosely) in the bush that was heated with two wood stoves. To make a long story short, the house burned to the ground one freezing cold December day, and the quiviut was one of the things that didn't get saved.  A few weeks later during the cleanup, buddy who worked up north arrived in his pickup and stared at the place where the house had been, not needing to be told that his quiviut had gone up in smoke.  He was pretty philosophical about it, saying "Oh well, easy come, easy go," or words to that effect.  

Ever since the fire, my feelings about quiviut have been ambivalent:  intrigue mixed with the memory of  that gut-wrenching day.  The scarcity and astronomical prices have been a sufficient deterrent up until now but the temptation was always there and I longed to give it a try, to master it - the fibre and maybe the negative feelings along with it.  Last Friday I took the plunge and shelled out for 20 grams of the stuff, a pouffe of roving the size of a loaf of bread in a ziplock bag and after it sat for a week, calling to me from the spinning corner, I plunged in yesterday, still full of those ambivalent feelings.

It was very difficult at first.  The roving is ephemeral, smoke between my fingers, like drafting a cloud of nothing, spinning dust bunnies.  It has to be a very fine yarn in order to get some decent yardage out of it so I cast about for a method that wouldn't waste a shred of fibre. Not yet in possession of a diz, I tried pulling the roving through a small funnel but it was still too dense and nowhere near small enough.  It was a semi-transparent pencil roving I was after. Then I tried pre-drafting the chunks of roving and when they threatened to drift apart, I dampened my hands and rolled the predrafts on my thigh to firm them up.  This really worked and now I'm well into the first spool, although I have very little spun fibre to show for two hours of spinning.  

My intention is to ply two singles and knit a very open lacey short narrow scarf...after all, the muskox survive -60C wearing this stuff so anything more dense is going to be too hot even on the coldest Victoria day. And of course I only have 20 grams so my choices are limited.   The singles are spun quite firmly so that they stay together so the plying should also help them to bloom a little.  My only quandary is how to estimate when to change spools so I have equal amounts to ply from.  At the moment I'm going by weight but if anyone has a better idea, lay it on me.  

As for the negative feelings and regrets?  Still there but less strident as a result of confronting a tiny corner of them. One of these posts, I'll tell the story of the fire and perhaps get a little more of it off my shoulders.  For now, I'll just say that it was a long time ago, no one died, and it opened some doors that needed opening.

 

 

  

Blankie

Took a little ramble with the camera in the garden today.  It may be chilly still but the garden thinks it's spring.  The photo to the left is of the hellebores or Lenten Roses out in front of the house that are one of the earliest things to bloom. It helps that they are against a south facing wall and have the benefit of a micro-climate.   

Down below I've posted all the various skeins that I spun for what seems to be destined for a blankie project.  The dark brown skeins in the middle will be the anchor/main colour for the mitered squares and they are a two-ply  of a merino, alpaca and soy silk roving from Anna Runnings at Qualicum Bay Fibre Works.  The soy silk is pink and chartreuse and while the roving looked like chocolate pistachio ice cream, the finished yarn is mostly brown with pink and chartreuse tweedie bits.

Once I had a good whack of the main yarn, I experimented plying a single of the dark brown first with a single of chartreuse kid mohair and then with a single of pink merino to emphasize the pink in the blend.  I still had a skein of the dark brown left so I plied it with some commercial alpaca leftovers from stash to get a bit more variety for the mitered squares.  The result was a small skein of brown and gold and another of brown and purple.  Since they all have at least one strand of the dark brown, I think the variations should all look like siblings...let's hope so.    

Merino/alpaca/soy silk plied with chartreuse  kid mohair

Merino/alpaca/soy silk plied with pink merino

The happy family

I'm quite thrilled with how the skeins look against the dark brown leather of the couch.  I think the blankie is going to look very nice thrown over the back of the couch when it's not in use. The inspiration for this project is the Mitered Square Afghan by Chris Delongpré on Ravelry but I plan on winging it.  I'm craving something straightforward that I can knit without charts or fuss and just make it up as I go along.  Yep - meditation knitting.