Life's a Stitch

As if Wollmesie wasn't enough.

 

I'll fess up. I first saw this merino/slk in Denmark, however the price was too high even for souvenir yarn, about $32 for 100 gms. Regretting my decision, after returning home I found it online for half the price. Hmmmm, I thought, must be the difference without the VAT. It arrived eight days later. Notice the label – 540 m. The other side says 100 gms. 

Happily knitting, this yarn is like a laceweight version of Silky Wool. Working on Chart B of the Flared Lace Smoke Ring:

Something is not right. I hate that feeling, well into a project. I weigh the blue skein in its entirety. 50 gms! A knitting oh s**t moment. Consulted the website, did I miss the fine print? Yes I did, the price stated is for 50 gms. I honestly don't remember seeing that bit of information.  And why does the label say 100 gms? Lost in translation?

The good news, farther into the project, with the aid of a scale, as it's a lacey pattern I'll have enough to finish. The bad news is that I'll have to change my pattern plans for the blue skein. Not so bad.

 

Ahhhh Venice. I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. Not the traditional tourist spots, suffocatingly crowded, where even the pigeons posed for pictures.

I preferred streets less travelled. The hidden piazzas and the glimpses of daily life:

  

…in an unusual city where everything is boat dependent. Order some yarn and UPS delivers:

Click on that picture, it's a UPS boat. Where life relies on boats: police, taxis, ambulances, getting the dogs to the vet:

Even a body's last ride. Look carefully at the background in this one:

A beautiful city.

Someday I hope to return.

 

It's not often you get to continue a good dream. Once you awaken, it's back to the cold hard slap of reality. Let me take you back to dreaming about the feast of colour and comfort.

Driving south from northern Germany we discuss the meaning of the name Wollmeise. The literal translation is wool bird, as in small bird with a name that means something else, as in a titmouse. After all there is a bird on the Wollmeise's label. Our host explains that Wollmeise sounds suspiciously like a German word that means seriously mentally ill and maybe it's a euphemism for "crazy about wool." Who knows? I seriously doubt, as I've heard on occasion, a meaning related to the words pronounced "wool meister."

My travelling companions, non-knitters, generously permitted me an hour an a half of drool time. I, a knitter, permitted myself a generous 150 euro of freedom. Easily overwhelmed with indecision in such a candy shop I made some quick decisions. I wasn't leaving without a skein of laceweight plus their popular sockweight in a denim blue and a skein of two that were different from my usual suspects. 1.5 hours + 150 euro = 8 skeins of sockweight yarn plus one of laceweight.

The review: what is it about this stuff that overtakes people to the point of spending $38 and up on ebay? I've seen skeins go for $100. That is serious wool craziness. My, as they say, humble opinion:

• The skeins of sockweight contain a generous amount of yarn. Forget those brands that say you can knit a pair of socks from under 350 yards. These have 575. The laceweight has a whopping 1140 yards.
• The sockweight appears to be so tightly wound that you'd think you are knitting with string. The finished product, however, comes out softer than expected.
• Many of the laceweight skeins, all seconds, looked like they had pilling potential. The one I bought didn't, but had a label that said there were "rote punkte," intermittent red dots of dye throughout. Haven't found one but haven't looked closely:
• All their seconds clearly define the flaws on their label. Numbers of knots, red dots etc… I've seen reviews that state yarn bought on e-bay at exorbitant prices contain an unreasonable amount of knots. I view these as the possibility of someone selling seconds to over-trusting buyers. 

What's the verdict? If you can get Wollmeise directly from the source, definitely more reasonable than e-bay pricing, despite the unreasonable process of timing scheduled inventory releases and constant screen refreshing to beat others to the goods, go in with a friend, split the shipping and treat yourself to a skein or two. It seems to me that some sort of lottery system would work better than their current procedure. 

And what did my travelling companions do while I was otherwise engaged? The town had plenty to keep them occupied:

This one's long enough. I promise to post about my first Wollmeise FO in the near future. 

Not just the yarn, the store itself, many a knitter's dream. Mine came true. After planning a roadtrip with friends from Bremen, Germany to Venice, I asked if Paffenhofen, home of Rohrspatz & Wollmeise, was within reasonable distance of our planned trip. It was meant to be, five minutes off our route on the autobahn, and on a day the shop was open. Come with me on a knitting adventure.

What was it like?

A feast of colour. An hour and a half of woolen bliss.

The store is small, three walls and the front lined with windows with a shelf below. Enter the door. The wall to the left is for yarn called "We are not perfect," seconds with slight flaws, each explained on the label. The wall to the right holds current perfect sockweight stock. The middle of the shop has couches surrounded by baskets of laceweight yarn, all seconds. Under the windowed wall are the clearance skeins. 

There were 29 people, 25 knitters (24 women, 1 man), 2 lost men and 2 employees. It appeared there was a scheduled knitting group in progress. Imagine knitting plus a coffee table filled with German baking. I almost had to pinch myself. Am I really here?

Next post: What I bought and a review of the goods.  

Pattern: Willow by Amelia Lyon

Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks Stripe, 2 skeins Colour: Cyan

Needles: US Size 5

Thoughts: Great pattern! Being a woman of a certain age, with a tendency toward overheating, I've avoided knitting cowls, thinking their close fit might inhibit my ability to pull one off quickly in hot desperation. Au contrare. This one is light in weight and half of the stitches are a lace patten, making it very comfortable. 

This particular Willow only had four repeats of the lace pattern due to the skimpy yardage in each skein. Cast on 150 stitches and ended with 90. It works fine as the yarn has body which gives it some spine. While you knit Willow the thought occurs that you are knitting a cowl for a giraffe, however, it accordions nicely onto itself. 

Made for my sister from yarn my mother gave me this past summer. 

 

Once again, and in consideration of the this year's blue Christmas, we are going for minimalism. I'm liking it. The best part for me is the cleanup. The ceramic Christmas tree and Nativity take about five minutes of work to dismantle. The essence of the holiday without the stress.

We're still hosting our annual Danish Julefrokost for 16. In preparation, and in recognition of our mixed heritages, we hit our favourite Polish deli:

Two kinds of sausage - double and triple smoked, rye bread, pickled beets, red cabbage, ginger bread cookies, marzipan and poppy seed cake. All that's left are the fish, cheese and the akvavit. Skoal!

Location: Bremen, Germany. Sweet little Nativity sheep in the Schnoor. I believe next door to the place I found the hat from my last post. Bremen is special to us, not just for the location, but for the family we have become close to as the result of the German exchange program in which our daughters were involved 13 years ago.

Location: Willersdorf, Germany. Pottery sheep in the Offnungszeiten Restaurant at the Hotel Rittmayer, that's been run by the same family since the 1700's. Besides their brewery, their pond full of carp is their dining room specialty, strange as it sounds it was the best meal of our trip.

Location: Rome, Italy. We probably walked ten miles that day determined to show Chuck what he missed when his detached retina kept him from accompanying us in 2008. These were located between the Vatican and the Piazza Navona. Following this picture we hit the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Roman Forum, Colosseum, and the Circus Maximus. Thank goodness for gel insoled shoes.

Location: Monterosse, Cinque Terre, Italy, the day before the floods. It started raining while we were there.

Location: Barcelona, Spain in the window of an optical store. Must have been a knitter involved.

Once, after a trip to Connecticut, I regretted not buying some particularly sweet sheep. This time I bought a pair to remember our trip.  What did I buy?

Location: Murano, Italy. Sweet tiny blown glass sheep. 

Here's the story of the 10,000 mile hat. While strolling Bremen's Schnoor with my friend, Ingrid, she showed me a hat, knitted from Noro Silk Garden, with a price tag of 79 Euro. She told me she's contemplated buying it for two years now. What's a knitter to do? Offer to knit it, of course. 

Blogless Marsha kindly poses for the model shot:

The hat was my travel companion, knit in eight countries, sailing across the Atlantic, accompanying me home to Vancouver, then back to the east coast, finally sent by post back to Germany, hopefully to arrive soon. 

My 10,000 mile hat

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden, 2 skeins Needles: US size 6 

Thoughts: Lots of fun, like a knitting sampler in a hat. Not enough nupps or cables to be exasperating. I'm on my second with so many modifications that I'm sure it qualifies as a new pattern. Photos to follow when finished.  

One last view, with the addition of glass beads from Murano:

 

 

In the Pacific Northwest, when prolonged rain stops, within 15 minutes you'll observe cabin fevered people leaving their houses; modern ark passengers after the flood. Walking, washing cars, raking lawns of fallen cedar fronds. 

On Sunday I followed the pack and headed for  the trails of the North Shore mountains. I found, that although sunny, it's a false sense of dryness as the water laden branches still shed their moisture like a wet dog shaking after a bath. I came home fairly soaked. It was still a relief to get back to my trails after the trials of life these past weeks. Thanks again to all, for your comments and messages of comfort.

I've been knitting up a storm and will post about it soon.

….or what I've learned from my mother's death, including, excuse the expression, some cold hard facts:

1. That expression in post title really happens.

2. The cost of medical treatment is high, the orthopedic surgeon's bill alone was $50,000.

3. Some cemeteries close for the winter, not based on temperature or the ability to prepare a grave, but on an arbitrary date, leaving families whose loved one rejected cremation, with no options other than arrangements for "storage." This was very upsetting.

4. My mother didn't have much but stuff in her one bedroom apartment seemed to multiply as we packed it up.

5. What on earth? Why did Mom keep a rotten wisdom tooth in a box of my father's military items? I wonder if she ever opened that box? My friend found pieces of toast in her mother's dresser.

6. The judgement of Solomon, otherwise known as "splitting the baby." When dividing my mother's belongings my husband accused my sister and I of such a crime when we agreed to split Mom's set of castanets. Neither of us will use castanets for their intended purpose, and they were a strong childhood memory – the last remnant of my mother's dancing career,  we took one each.

7. Division of property can be easy. It helps that my mother was fair and equal will-wise, not that she had much, but all that stuff in her apartment, some worthless but sentimental. We played a mixture of Mmm and Uck, a game we used to play as kids looking at food in McCall's magazines. Many of my sister's Mmmm's were my Ucks and vice versa. Most furniture, housewares and clothing were given away. Living 3000 miles away, what could I take? No liquids, 50 lbs of luggage allowed. Couldn't exactly stuff a wooden dresser into a 25" suitcase. Anybody in the New England area want to buy a Hoveround type scooter, used once?

8. Things mysteriously disappear or get misplaced, probably in the confusion of circumstances. How did I throw out the airline ziploc from my purse with all my meds, gels and liquids for my trip? How many times did we search for the keys in my mother's apartment?

9. People are very kind. Despite having to pay an exorbitant bereavement airfare to fly within 24 hours, Delta Airlines must be commended for their cooperation and sensitivity. When one connection was cancelled due to equipment mechanical difficulties, while others were having to wait a day, Delta, knowing my mother was dying, flew us to Boston and arranged for a limo and driver to take us to our destination. Same goes for Enterprise car rentals and Comfort Inn.

10. You can make it easy on your family. My sister and her husband, Chuck and I are talking of prearranging our funerals as our Christmas gifts to each other.

Thank you, thank you everyone, for your kind words. It all happened so quickly I'm still numb. I've joined the sad club of boomer aged women losing their mothers. Our father died in 1972, so long ago, I had forgotten what it was like.