Back from Travels

I have returned from my trip up to the Seattle area, where I had a great time visiting my friend, knitting, long walks, exploring and going to my favorite restaurant in the city, Elliott's -- one of the best oyster bars I've ever seen.  My friend, Mel, and I drove over to Tacoma one day to enjoy the Madrona Winter Fiber Retreat -- the marketplace to be exact.  Lots of wonderful booths:  Habu, Carolina Homespun, Opulent Fibers, Toots Le Blanc, Chameleon Colorworks, Dicentra, and Woolgatherings, among the many great vendors. It's not a huge marketplace, but all of the vendors are the ones I love.  I bought quite a few merino/silk balls of roving from Opulent Fibers for felting projects -- she's got such beautiful colors.   

I also bought a cowl pattern from The Fiber Gallery booth, a local yarn store.  The pattern is the "Arctic Circle" from The Fibre Company.  It called for a chunkier yarn and was knit of size US 10.5 needles, but I altered the pattern for my handspun fingering weight yarn and used US 5 needles and cast on more stitches.  I knit most of it up in Seattle and then finished it on the plane ride home.  The yarn was spun using an Inglenook Fibers batt called "Wild Turkey" that I plied with my merino/bombyx silk roving called "Bedazzled".  

I also worked on a pair of "Waving Lace Socks" while up in Seattle.  I started them at the airport in Orange County and almost finished the pair on my trip, but finished the second sock last night.  I used my merino/cashmere handspun yarn spun from "Magic Carpet" and "Indian Paintbrush", a skein I showed in my last post.  I've knit this sock pattern many times from the "25 Favorite Socks" book by Interweave Press.  

Yesterday, I drove up to Marina del Rey to have lunch with my son and his girlfriend and used that opportunity to stop by the Twist Yarn Store in Manhattan Beach.  This is such a lovely shop and has so many beautiful, colorful yarns -- one of my favorite shops in Southern California.  I had a gift certificate from my birthday last summer and splurged a bit to buy some Madeline Tosh laceweight silk.  This is very similar to the 20/2 spun silk I use for weaving projects, so I am planning on weaving something with this yarn.  If you haven't been to Twist, it is well worth a trip 

And since it's Sunday, I'm off to take a nice long walk at the San Clemente beach trails and then I plan on meeting up with a few of my friends for an afternoon knit group.