Alb and I are in Vienna for a few days before I go back to work. It is quite the city. I think if I had to describe it in one word, I would call it ‘gluttonous’.

The city centre is full of buildings such as this:

And this:

Everything is lavishly detailed and every building is different. You have to stop looking after a while.

We’ve seen some ridiculously ornate churches. Although Stephansdom is impressive due to it’s extravagant size, its interior is forgettable. Peterskirche, just down the street, is in another league. Take a look.

This is the main altar. Following is the lectern so covered in gold, it dazzles even the most gold-adjusted eye.

Above the exit were many beautiful murals…

…outdone only by the extraordinary ceiling.

We visited the Imperial Palace and since no photos were allowed inside, you’ll have to believe me when I say that it is the most impressive palace I have ever visited. It was remarkable on a number of counts. Firstly, the guy who ruled predominantly from there, I think it was Franz Josef – his office and bedroom were extremely plain. Not just ‘I’m a king’ plain, I mean 14th century monk plain. It seemed he worked crazy hours to keep things in ship shape. A family tradition was that each child learn a trade and so portraits depict gardeners, musicians and artists, not just princes and princesses. Many of their excellent drawings were incorporated into the decor by the family. In one little room, the walls are decorated with needlepoint done by one family member.

Our ticket covered the palace and grounds, which are extensive and pristine. We did the zoo, too, and barely made it home, our legs were so tired!

The following night, we went to an open air screening of ‘Tosca’, the Puccini opera. It was the final night of the summer-long film festival at the Rathaus (parliament). As you can see, it’s quite the location!

After the screening, they lit the building back up.

There has been a little bit of shopping (souvenir wool and the obligatory fridge magnet) but mostly our stay has consisted of excellent coffee, good food, taking it easy and looking up!

More to follow as we went to Bratislava yesterday…stay tuned!

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I am aware that my home country is covered in horrid, unfair, unseasonal snow so I won’t dwell too much on this… I am away. I am on the sub tropical island of Madeira. There are bananas, rum, the sloshy sounds of Portuguese, a little knitting and crochet, a lot of hills, and most importantly this:

Pics of my project progress to come!

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Definitely time for some ketchup (catch-up… get it?!). I’ve been away! I went back to Switzerland to take the same masterclasses that I took last year. I had a great time! When I got back, I had a day to wash all my clothes and repack because Alb and I set off for Iceland. We had talked about going for a good while, and we didn’t feel like going so far away after all our travelling last year, so it worked out well. We got cheap flights via Edinburgh and we stopped off there on our way back.

Iceland is an extremely interesting country. It is a quarter bigger than Ireland but, with a population of about 300,000, it is very sparsely populated. The highlands dominate the centre of the island and are largely impassable with a regular car. So, they’ve built a ring road that goes around the coast. It’s well maintained and very, very scenic. We rented a car and drove the whole thing. It is something else. The landscape changes constantly, from volcano, glacier, mountains, valleys, fjords, lava fields, black deserts, millions of waterfalls and random holes in the ground puffing out steam. The weather, like here, changes constantly, but was more extreme: very hot in the sun, bitter sub-zero winds, driving rains, blinding fog. We lost about a day and a half to rain but otherwise were very lucky. We took a LOT of photos so, rather than write about it all at once, I think I will post photos as I process them and write a little bit about our experience.

For now, I’ll show you what I picked up. Wool, of course. Sheep were prevalent and wool was available in pretty much every supermarket in every village.

Laceweight Lopi, about 250m per ball. This was about €3-4. I got this in a supermarket in Hofn where the selection of yarn was far superior to that of fresh fruit.

DK Lopi, about 100m per ball. I think this came to about €10. I have no idea why I only got 4 balls of brown. I want to make a circular yoke vest with a pattern on the yoke; I don’t think 4 balls of brown will make it. Maybe if I knit loosely? I didn’t buy any more yarn than that because they only sold Lopi and it is very, very scratchy. I daresay it will be really warm but I only have so much room in my wardrobe for scratchy jumpers!

We had two full days in Edinburgh and it was lovely. We got good weather and had such a good time just wandering around. I found a weavers making proper wool tartan. This is so hard to find and even the polyester sort tends to be quite expensive here. The problem with tartan is that the patterns tend to be completely mental. This is lovely if you’re going the route of making a clan kilt and it’s your family pattern. I, on the other hand, was looking for something suitable for every day wear. After a long time looking, I came up with this.

It is quite dark so the colour did not come out very well. It is dark navy with a dark green, the highlight is bright blue. I think it will match a lot of my other clothes and shoes. At a mere 114cm wide and with such a broad check, I went for 2m out of the fear that I would not have enough to make anything substantial. This cost me the princely sum of £47. I would love dearly to eke a tunic or pinafore out of it but a skirt with an inverted pleat would be good too. I want to pick a garment that I can use a lot because the fabric is really fantastic; light, smooth but hardy. A pinafore with a dark green cardigan would be great, right?

There was a John Lewis right beside where we were staying so I went in for a look. I wish we had John Lewis here! I didn’t see anything in their knitting section that I couldn’t get at home but I spent a long time in their notions department. I came away with a packet of canvas webbing – something I have found impossible to get here – and a variety pack of snaps. Both were something like £1 each. The fabric is cotton from Tanya Whelan. I used another from the same collection for a Wiksten tank and have been so impressed with its quality. It washes and presses marvellously, and is so soft that it has become my go-to summer top this year. The Wiksten tank is quite wide so I bought the same quantity again, 1.5m, with the intention of a top not so wide but with some sort of sleeve. Maybe a neat blouse; I need to peruse my patterns.

Some retail therapy is always fun, of course, but really it was scenes like this that recharged my batteries:

Stay tuned for more!

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This weekend has had a little bit of everything. We’ve spent it in Galway. It was really good to get away for a few days. There has been some practice, some running, lots of tea-drinking, idle chat and a lot of snoozing. Yesterday I made the best of the good weather and had a browse around town.

I stopped by Pippa Blue to see their new space. They have moved across the road from their previous place on Middle Street into the Cathedral Building (directly opposite). They’re up on the first floor now but this has the massive benefit of greatly increased space and wonderful light throughout. Of course, I totally forgot to take any photos but take it from me, it’s lovely. They’re running all manner of classes and workshops now, as well as offering their studio space for hire, along with the use of a sewing machine and serger.

I picked up some Tanya Whelan cotton (the print) and some Klona cotton (the solid) for spring tops…

…and a fat quarter of Japanese Echino. The other stuff is two types of interfacing. I poured my zip-on-the-bias woes out to Eva, who proceeded to furnish me with two samples of their interfacing. One is a medium-weight sew-in interfacing, which I’ve never used before but should definitely do the trick, and the other is of the lighter iron-on sort. I can’t wait to try them out.

My mum has requested a pencil skirt for her birthday so I went to Hickey’s. It’s nearly as good as the one on Henry St but tends to have more things on sale. I dislike shopping in Hickey’s. It is the perfect example of how simply filling a shop full of yarns and materials does not make an inspiring environment. Anyway, after a long time digging around, I found some ivory ‘panama’ (polyester) that fit the specs. The lining is only acetate but the panama is quite light so it should be ok.

In the course of my digging, I found a few different knits. I bought the Renfrew Top back when it first came out because free international shipping was offered if you pre-ordered. It struck me as a most useful pattern, with different sleeve and neck-line options. It’s quite hard to find a decent knit and it’s not something Murphy Sheehy tends to stock a lot of. I stumbled upon this, a wool jersey.

At €15 a metre, I classed it as expensive but when I went to buy it, I found out that it had been marked down to €10. It’s not mega-stretchy so hopefully it will be nice to work with.

I wandered around the town and took a lot of photos (I have a photoblog here and also have been posting to Instagram under ‘knittingneels’ so follow me if you’d like to see more of my other photos).

The highlight of the weekend was definitely the gluten-free! cake brought to Sunday dinner by Alb‘s brother’s girlfriend.

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I meant to say yesterday that the links in the post bring you to the different photo albums for each place! After the trip we took on Tuesday out to Antonio de los Cobres and the Salinas Grandes, we were shattered. So we spent yesterday lounging about the town with a repeat performance today. It’s a funny place. It is completely low rise and very spread out. It has about half a million residents so it’s pretty busy and seems to have a shop for almost everything. Being so far inland, the culinary interest focuses mostly on corn-based pastries and meats. Fruit and vegetables are not common and fish almost non-existent.

Anyway! Being the capital of the province, they have a few museums, one of which is of considerable importance, the MAAM. In the ’90s, three child sacrifices were discovered at the top of a local extinct volcano. Given the low temperatures and low humidity, they are perfectly preserved and are on display in this museum. They are accompanied by samples of the troves they were sacrificed with – small pots, beautiful figurines, combs made from cacti spines. It seems they were buried alive to appease the mountain gods. Pretty gruesome but fascinating at the same time. It is interesting in that it’s not a million miles away from the bog bodies we have at home.

Anyway, today we were feeling pretty groggy from the altitude and the most we managed was to book a trip to Cafayate tomorrow and a restaurant for tonight. Alb went off to take photos so I nipped back to the yarn shop I sourced through Ravelry. I picked up some alpaca.

The skeins are pretty gigantic. I will probably be able to get a cardigan out of them and am already thinking of Paulie. It’d be nice, right? The browsing experience was less than fun, though. Everything is behind the counter and although the staff are helpful and patient with the pointing, I just wanted to leave after five minutes.

I went back to where we were meeting up but Alb wasn’t back yet so I popped into a fabric shop we have been walking past all week. It was very big and was clear that they were the main fabric shop for the province. They had something of everything but since we’re coming into summer here, it was all cottons and voiles and no wools at all. Still, I picked up 1.5m of this cotton batiste (on the top) and 1m of navy lace (on the bottom) for about e12.

I’m thinking about a dress for the cotton and probably using the lace as a layer over satin for a top. Tour tomorrow then that bus trip to Buenos Aires over Saturday/Sunday so talk to you next week! Hope you all have a good weekend and happy knitting!

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