an irish knitty evening

I had last Friday off so I decided to go to Ireland for the weekend. Coz I can. ^^ After I arrived and checked in to my hotel I wandered down through the streets (with a little tourist shopping on the way) to Trinity College. There I met Sinéad, an irish knitter whose blog I read. She took me to a cute little knitting shop called This Is Knit. It was a very inviting store with shelves clearly displaying a variety of delicious yarn.

Sinéad showed me around pointing out different yarns that she liked and some irish crafted ones. Some of her other knitter friends met us there and they chatted while I looked around and chose what to spend some unexpected early received birthday money from family on.

I decided on two skeins of Malabrigo in Atardecer (about sport weight/5ply) which is 51% Silk and 49% Merino Wool. Warm and so soft. I quite like the colours and I'm currently thinking of making some kind of cowl. I also bought two balls of Studio Donegal Aran Tweed in yellow and grey. This 100% wool was spun in Ireland partly using irish wool. Aparently irish wool isn't great for knitting on it's own and is mostly used in making carpets.

Once my shopping was done, we went to Cafe Manila for some Filipino food. It was nice food, once I decided what to have, and we chatted for ages about all sorts and had a good laugh too. And of course we all pulled out our yarn works after the food was gone. :) Knitters.

I had a most lovely evening with these ladies, one of whom is a friend of Ysolda Teague too! (I plan to buy her new knitty pattern book Little Red in the City.) They were great fun and it was interesting to meet up with them.

Most of us went out to a pub afterwards where I tried a Guinness. I drank my half pint. It's a done thing. And it won't be done again. Ha ha. Gross stuff but I'm not a beer drinker anyway. It was fantastic to hang out with some irish people and get a regular irish experience. If I'm ever that way again, I'm happy to go for another round.

The rest of my weekend can be read about here and here.

pixie fix

The lovely idea of my pixie beanie in the gorgeous colette has been put aside for quite a while as I'd got to the point where I was unhappy with the progress. I'd started declining too soon and it was getting tight on my head. I'd also found a mistake in the tricky to read leaf pattern part right at the beginning before I figured out how to interpret the pattern. I wasn't sure to which extent to frog it.

When I went on a holiday with my work family to the Cotswolds the other week. I decided to grab my pixie beanie to take along. I decided to frog back to the start of the decreases and keep the mishap at the beginning for that handmade touch. :P So I threaded my circular needle through the stitches where I wanted to frog to and then ... rip it, rip it. Then I got to work again. This time I added another two or three straight rounds before decreasing again. And I happily worked away with no internet to distract me. It really was quite lovely.
I'm now attempting to round off the leaves to enter into a straight knit as I decrease to my pixie point. I must be into the pixie idea at the moment because I finally found these shoes for the wedding I'm a part of next month. They even had 'pixie' in the title.

Now that I'm in a job where I work 40hrs a week I have to readjust my free time. All in all it's pretty good for full time work (and work is going well) but after I play on the internet a bit or walk to the shops I realise I haven't got as much time for crafting as I've had in the past few years. I am managing to work some in. I have a couple of secret projects on the go which I obviously can't show you just yet. I've also been busy booking a Europe week (including the wedding at it's end).

One crafty thing I thoroughly miss is a big craft store with all sorts in the one place. Where I am now there is a little thread shop, a little wool shop, a little art shop and a little scrapbooking shop. Limited supplies. *sigh* As for people to sit around a knit with...sadly there's no ravelry groups near by but I have found some local groups (you have to pay to go to!). I'm going to a craft group tomorrow night though that is a 'bring your project and we'll sit around crafting' type of gathering so there'll probably be various crafts. I'm looking forward to that. Other than that I'll just keep up my own crafting coz that's what I do.

:) Happy Mother's Day to my Mum! xo