vietnam

Absolutely nothing to do with knitting, but a few more snapshots of Vietnam... 

Whistles for sale! I bought one for my sister and she can't figure out how to make noise with it. Suggestions welcome. 

Lanterns and cyclos abound in Hoi An. 

Hoi An, be prettier! 

It felt beyond amazing to visit Vietnam again, even if it was only for a few days (three in Hoi An, three in Hanoi) - and extra awesome that I managed to work a little travel into the tail end of 2012! So here's hoping for a little more adventure in 2013 :) 

wips: y e l l o w

Some snapshots of some very early-in-progress works-in-progress and also from last month's whirlwind trip to Vietnam, because, yellow! 

They're not much to look at yet but I have high hopes for these two sweaters, because I love yellow and it goes with everything I own. The first, above, is a cozy Oatmeal Cardigan by Jane Richmond, which I need to finish soon or else it'll be too hot in LA to wear it. 

... and this here will someday be a Cria by Ysolda. 

And, more pictures of Vietnam to come - remember when this blog used to be about knitting AND traveling? Me too! That was awesome! 

home!

Sunset on Lake Titicaca

We're home, after an insanely fast journey around Peru > Bolivia > Chile > back to Peru. It was an awesome three weeks, and we saw some of the most extreme and beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life: 

Salt flats in Bolivia

A red lake! 

Also we stood on top of a semi-active volcano, for slightly longer than I am comfortable with.

Though I don't have any photos to show for it yet, there was also much knitting, thanks to the insane amount of time we spent on very long bus-rides. I also taught myself how to do nupps on the plane ride back, which was harrowing. In any case, photos of FOs and WIPs to come - for now, I'm just happy to be wearing more than the same pair of jeans and dirty sneakers for the first time in three months, and am eating way too much exciting food. 

Hello from Peru!

Hello from Peru! For the next few months, my boyfriend and I will be volunteering with an NGO up in the Andes that works with local weavers; I'll know more about what we're actually doing once arrive, but in general, details about our travels can be found over here, at my non-knitting centered blog, which has served to reassure my many non-knitting relatives that I've been keeping warm and eating properly for the last few years. 

We've only been here two days, but I'm really liking Peru so far, even if it it's freezing. We've already encountered a number of alpaca, real and otherwise:

... and also seen lots of women knitting things, including some truly awesome Batman finger puppets that I'll try to post photos of later. 

Though I'm not totally sure what the internet situation will be like once we reach our town, I have enough yarn in my suitcase to last me way more than the three months we'll be here, including a few skeins of Bay Area yarn to remind me of home; I started a Swallowtail shawl on the plane, using the Thornill Lace I bought at Piedmont Yarn and Apparel back in Oakland, and have not yet decided what to do with this crazy gorgeous yarn from Pigeonroof Studios: 

Hopefully something good! Anyway, hello from Peru, and talk to you soon from the Andes :) 

ishbel in the sky

Before coming home to Oakland, Iain and I stopped for the weekend in London so I could fly out of Heathrow. Since Iain is staying in Scotland for the summer, I've been fairly bad about rationalizing all the yarn I've bought recently as a much needed distraction - I can't miss my boyfriend if I'm too busy knitting obsessively, right?

Anyway, while in London, we stopped at the gorgeous Loop yarn shop in Islington, where I picked up a skein of Juno Fiber Arts Alice Sock. All of the colorways were gorgeous, but I eventually settled on a ($32!) skein of canopy, a sort of bright robin's egg blue with a bit of green in it. I'd been planning to make a pair of socks, but once I got back to hotel and wound this into a ball, I decided it was far too beautiful to put on your feet. The only other pattern I had printed out was Ishbel (from the earlier, failed, and now frogged Ishbel that kept me company throughout Vietnam, India and Scotland), so I figured that was as good a use as any.

Fortunately, it turns out knitting on an airplane with no real distractions is an ideal lace-knitting environment. I blazed through the stockinette body, and then the entire A chart. I also figured out where I'd gone wrong in my first attempt: in trying to stay on top of the pattern, I'd put markers between each 8 stitches, not realizing that the borders eat into those stitches and that if you just trust the pattern as it's written without trying to overthink, you'll do fine  - at the time, I couldn't figure out why I kept coming up wrong on both ends of the row, and it was maddening. This time, I just read the pattern super carefully, paid close attention to where the S1, k2tog, PSSOs lined up, and though I'm sure there's still a bit of weirdness, it definitely looks much better this time around - I can't believe I was in such denial about my first attempt being totally hopeless. The slightly heavier cashmere sock yarn looks much nicer than the initial skein of madtosh praire, too - I am completely won over by this yarn and how soft it is.

So anyway, that was my goodbye to the UK - having Ishbel to focus on during the long flight back did keep me from getting too sad about having to say goodbye to Iain for the next two months. If you are ever in London, I do highly recommend Loop. I've been to a few yarn stores since heading back from Asia, and they have by far the biggest selection of yarn (and the widest color range) that I've seen so far. I love also that they have a nice selection of books from some of my favorite independent designers like Stephen West, Ysolda Teague and Gundrun Johnston; and also, a good range of luxury and more affordable yarns.   

Definitely recommended! 

yet more wayfaring (a little bit of knitting)

The last month or so has been lots more living out of a backpack - great fun, but not always conducive to knitting. While I wasn't getting much knitting done, I was riding a moped over roads of various quality in Northern Vietnam:

And then visiting India for the first time! After dreaming of visiting for most of my life, I stumbled across some cheap Air Asia tickets and decided to go for it despite the time constraints, because who knows when I'll be in Asia again. I only had a few days, but I saw a little bit of Kerala...

... and also Mysore in Karnataka, where I became obsessed with all the insanely gorgeous colors: 

I wish I'd had more time in India, but I had to hurry to Scotland in time for a friend's wedding: 

Throughout all of this, I did have an increasingly crinkled WIP in my backpack - a very slow-going Ishbel shawl, knit in madtosh prairie in Oxblood, which looks far more luminous in this photo than it does in real life. 

To be fair, living in a crumpled up Citimart shopping bag for six weeks is probably not the ideal condition for any yarn. I finally made it to the lace section in India, and since then it has started to move a lot faster. It was hard to work up enthusiasm for knitting in Asia's 40 degree early summer weather, but Scotland - with it's cold, rainy June - is much better knitting weather, so here's hoping I can finish it before I head back to the States (and to all the yarn I sent home from Japan months ago).

more wayfaring, less knitting

Eek. I had not intended to go nearly two months without a post - since the last time I posted, we saw lots of early blooming cherry blossoms, entertained out of town guests, finished our contracts, said goodbye to all our friends and students, and packed up and moved out of Japan two weeks ago. Though we felt the earthquake on March 11 - and many of the aftershocks - we were very far removed from the all the hard hit areas, with no more than the occasional rolling blackout to contend with, and so were just glued to the news with everyone else.

 From Japan, we flew back to Vietnam, where first we stopped here to relax a bit:

... before heading back to our old onetime home Hanoi:

Hanoi hasn't changed much since we left two years ago, and it feels awesome to be here - I am as happy to be back in Vietnam as I am sad to be out of Japan. It also feels awesome to *finally* have free time again - all of March was so disgustingly busy, I didn't even have time to think about knitting. Unfortunately, because there's so much traveling ahead, I have a very limited amount of yarn with me to last until I get to Iain's house in Scotland in early June (where I managed to tuck a ridiculous amount of yarn into a box of books he was already sending back): just two skeins of madtosh prairie and a ball of malabrigo silky merino, to be specific. I started with much, much more, but my backpacker pack couldn't handle it, and so I had to reluctantly mail most of the stuff I wanted to work on back to my mother's house. It feels a bit ridiculous to have little stockpiles of yarn waiting all over the world, but in the meantime I was finally able to shake off the awesome food - lazy beaches - motorbikes everywhere! stupor that has been our two weeks back in VN and wind half a ball of prairie to get started on an Ishbel shawl. So hopefully there'll be more knitting soon...