Home Again

Skip and I are home from our wonderful Scandinavian tour and have more or less recovered from the jet lag. We both acquired colds from our tour manager but are almost over those as well.

Before we left, I googled yarn shops in all the cities we'd be visiting. The search window is under the 'Popular New Yarns' on the Yarns page in Ravelry.

I had an opportunity to visit one in Copenhagen but wasn't in the mood to make the extra effort to get there. However, when we were in Stockholm, on our walking tour of Gamla Stan (the old city) I saw the tote bag I wanted in the window of Makeri 14. The red heart is the location of the store.

I was thrilled to have found it as there was no other souvenir that I was looking for. There were lots of items I could have purchased on the tour - sweaters, mittens, gloves, hats, figurines, yarn, etc. but at this point we are trying to get rid of 'stuff' not acquire it so I limited myself to things I'd use regularly.

Our last city was Bergen, Norway. It is very picturesque. Our hotel was in the old part of town just up one block from Bryggen (the old wharf area) which is a UNESCO heritage site.

One of the first stores we saw on our walk along the waterfront was a store called Nilssen which featured knitwear, stitchery and kits, and in the basement yarn and patterns.

I wanted to buy an iconic design and selected this one from Permin. It was pricey - about $50 Canadian but the threads were already separated out on cards.

I decided to not use the Aida fabric included in the kit and when I got home, I popped over to my LSS (Local Stitchery Shop), Hedgehog Stitchery to buy some nice, 28 count white linen fabric for the project.

While there, I picked up some linen fabric to replace the perforated canvas that came with a Buttons and Beads kit I had purchased there before my trip.

The fabric was almost an exact colour match to the perforatedpaper.

On one of our driving days in Norway, we stopped for lunch in a little town called Gol (rhymes with 'cool' or 'fool') where there was a very cute and well-stocked yarn shop called Strikkeglede (Knitting Joy). I purchased two 50g balls of Fabel sock yarn that were very reasonably priced - about $6 Cdn if I recall.

I had brought the Zigzagular pattern with me on the trip so was able to start the first sock. I started with a 2.5mm needle and 72 sts and went down to a 2.25mm needle for the heel and foot.

I finished it the other day and have started the second one.

I used a Fish Lips Kiss (FLK) heel.

Fabel yarn is notorious for being difficult to match for identical twin socks so I didn't even bother trying to match the second sock.

I'm currently trying to edit my photos to get ready to created a digital scrapbook of my trip. It's going slowly but I want to finish before my memories get vague.

Tomorrow several of my spinning buddies and I are heading to the annual Spin In in Campbellford, ON. It's organized by the Warkworth Spinning and Weaving guild and is held on the first Tuesday of October every year.