Tag Archives: Tobermory

10:40 am - July 2, 2014 - AngelaH

Hello, summer

Summer is finally here. I know it’s technically been summer for a few weeks now, and it has certainly felt like summer for the last month, but I can’t quite escape the grade-school sense that summer starts with Canada Day. Add to that the adult reality that summer seems to be the season when every weekend is planned months in advance and, yeah, we’re officially there.

This year we kicked off the summer with a last-minute camping trip. L’s sister and her husband recently moved to Toronto, and since they don’t start work until today we decided to take advantage of their freedom to get out of town. It has been a few years since we were in Tobermory, but Georgian Bay was as gorgeous as ever, and I’m so glad we went. It was a quick trip, since I had to work on Sunday, but we took our one full day and made the most of it, spending the morning clambering over rocks at Halfway Log Dump/walking through the woods on the Bruce Trail, and the afternoon swimming in Cypress Lake. I even managed a few rows of knitting (plus a fair bit of knitting in the car to and from).

The water may look tropical, but let me assure you it was freezing. So cold it actually hurt. (Also, the colours in this photo aren’t edited at all.)

This bunny spent a lot of time hanging out in our campsite.

I was originally hoping to get these socks finished up in time to get some pretty pictures in the wild, but it was a bit too dark by the end of the drive up (I was getting very close to the toe decreases) and once we were there we didn’t do too much sitting around. I finished the second sock on the way home and then ended up ripping out the first toe and re-knitting it (for a better match/fit) anyway, so it was just as well I didn’t try to rush things.

Details
Pattern: Basic 64 stitch socks
Yarn: Turtlepurl Yarns Striped Turtle Toes in Gatineau Fall
Needles: 2.5mm
Notes: There’s not much to say about these really. I thought about doing a contrast heel, but in the end decided just to knit from the other end of the ball, which worked out perfectly colour-wise and also meant I didn’t disrupt the stripe sequence at all. Ravelled here.

The colours in this photo are a little weird (both too dark and washed out) but it shows off the striping quite nicely.

Categories: finished, Knitting, Out and about Tags: camping, socks, Tobermory

9:32 am - August 31, 2012 - AngelaH

August? Paging August.

I don’t know how it is where you are, but over here I’m a little disoriented. I mean, it was just July wasn’t it? What the heck happened to the last month? This was how I felt about November and March when I was at university – two months that were so jam-packed that they sucked up your life and didn’t spit it out again until you were already on the other side.

That’s when I realized where August went: work. All month, I’ve been working two jobs. I’ve been in the shop or doing shop stuff in the morning, and then come early afternoon I get ready and head off to the Post, where I stay until it’s too late to do anything but go to sleep when I get home. My weekends, while mostly work-free, have also been full. It has been a month of fun and learning and newness, but definitely not a month I would describe as restful. Clearly, this calls for a holiday, and lucky me, tomorrow L and I are getting on a plane and heading east: Nine days in Nova Scotia. Oh heck yes.

We’re going to spend the first four days in Cape Breton, hiking and camping and (hopefully) visiting Baadeck Yarns (I’ve already planted this seed in L’s ear, so he’s prepared). After that, it’s back to the Annapolis Valley for five days of hanging out at my parents’, visiting friends, and being relaxed. There will be sight-seeing, there will be friend-visiting and shopping and all that, but there will also be free time, and unscheduled hours, and oh my gosh, I cannot wait! (Yes, yes, there will be blogging too.)

Because of the camping portion of the trip, packing is a little trickier this time than it was the last time I went. Nonetheless, there will be room to bring some knitting with me, and also to bring some wool home with (we all know what happened last time I went home, after all).

This is a very accurate depiction of the colours in these socks. I love them. I wouldn’t even rip this back (despite my Jaywalker desire) if I wasn’t already feeling they were going to be to big. Sort of serendipitous really.

I am bringing my Fleece Artist Spruce Socks – which I cast on as regular socks and, despite being three inches in, have ripped back so they can become the Jaywalkers they want to be – and something else as-yet undecided. I can’t bring the Christmas socks, because my sister will be visiting home at the same time we’re there. I was planning to bring the wedding mitts, but the yarn still looks like this and I’m not sure I’ll have time to wind to before we leave.

This will be mittens. It will. I’ll wind it just as soon as I’m home.

I feel fairly confident that the Spruce Socks will take more than a week, but there’s a lot of driving and flying built into this trip (L and I will split the driving though) and I don’t want to run out. Considering my yarn-buying plans, this seems like a silly worry, but still, I think I’ll pack an emergency skein just in case. The only question is, where to put it?

One thing I will definitely find room for (and, let’s be honest, I will definitely fit in that extra wool) is my finished Georgian Bay shawl. I cast on in the car on the way to Tobermory the first time we went this summer, knit on it for four days, got home, and promptly got distracted (we talked about busyness, yes?). The weekend of the baby shower, though, I was so filled with productive glee (read: caffeine) that I stayed up and finished it. That was two weeks ago, but since we were going back to Tobermory, it seemed only right to take pictures in the place it was meant for.

This is kind of a little shawl, I admit, but under a light sweater or jacket it’s perfect. I already want to make another one (though maybe slightly larger).

While it’s slightly smaller than I’d choose (dear self: go up a needle size; just figure it out already), I love it. I love the colour, I love how soft the wool is, I love the eyelets, I love it. I was convinced I wasn’t a triangle-shawl person, but I take it back.

Details
Pattern: Doublish, by Alex Tinsley
Yarn: Madeline Tosh Merino Light in Nebula
Needles: 3.25 mm Addi lace circulars
Modifications: None! I can hardly believe it either. It’s ravelled here if you’re into that sort of thing.

I bought two skeins of Nebula because I was worried about yardage (I am always worried about yardage, but the pattern was pretty specific on this point) and have an entire unwound skein leftover. I was thinking about exchanging it for another colour – unless you have a better idea?

Categories: finished, Knitting, Out and about Tags: Doublish, Fleece Artist, Madeline Tosh, Nova Scotia, shawl, socks, Tobermory, travel

2:23 pm - August 29, 2012 - AngelaH

The perils of the best laid plans

Sometimes I guess it’s possible to both plan too well and not quite well enough. This was the case of the Leftover Socks, which were originally intended (as the name suggests) to use up some of the leftovers from my Colour Affection shawl. That was the original plan. I weighed a pair of socks I had recently knit and then weighed the wool I had left, and happily discovered that I had enough to knit proper socks (that is, not short socks, which I don’t like to wear).

I then weighed the two colours of wool separately and found that I had a bit more of the green than the grey, so I decided to knit green socks with grey cuffs, heels, and toes. Very cute, I thought. And the first one was, see:

Leftover sock 1 all finished and nice looking, and leftover sock 2 just before the heel with a deceptive amount of yarn still in the ball.

The thing is, I should have actually thought about the math a little. The amounts of yarn I had in green and grey were only different by about 20 grams, and together equaled a pair of socks. If I had thought about what this meant, I might have been able to foresee what would happen if I tried to actually knit socks that were almost entirely in one colour. You can see where this is going can’t you?

Sigh.

I got just past the heel in sock number 2 (not even entirely through the gusset! but I will say that knitting on a dock in Tobermory made me feel a little better) when I realized I was in trouble. I switched to grey, hoping to save enough of the green to the toe. I figured that this way, at least, the tops would match when I was wearing shoes/boots, and the feet would just look reversed if I was wearing pants and sock feet. Sadly, it just wasn’t meant to be.

These are perhaps the most ridiculous socks I have ever knit. What was I thinking? Why didn’t I stripe them? Clearly I knit with the philosophy that if I don’t acknowledge the yarn is running out, it won’t run out. That belief was dashed this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, these are warm socks knit in lovely wool, and they will keep my feet warm even if they are unforgivingly fraternal and clearly knit on the fly. I know this, but would it have been too much to ask for a little symmetry? It’s the stupid toe that really kills me.

Leftovers of the leftovers.

To take the edge off the disappointment I’m sure you’re all feeling on my behalf, enjoy some Tobermory photos. It was a glorious weekend with good friends, nonsense socks (which are ravelled here, if you’re interested) notwithstanding.

We stayed in a different cottage this time around. Here’s the view from the deck (I spent some lovely time knitting on that dock.)

It was overcast and grey on the second night, but as you can see, the first night more than made up for it. Spectacular, it was.

The rocks at Half-Way Log Dump (in the Bruce Peninsula National Park) are pretty fantastic.

You can’t quite tell, but the water is tropical to look at. Even though it was cold, because you can jump in I did a lot swimming. I love swimming.

Categories: Knitting, Out and about Tags: Madeline Tosh, photos, socks, Tanis Fiber Arts, Tobermory, travel

1:39 pm - July 30, 2012 - AngelaH

Tobermory weekend

Last Thursday, L and I took off for a four-day weekend in Tobermory, on Ontario’s Georgian Bay (which is itself a bay on Lake Huron). Our good friend has a cottage there, and we consider ourselves very lucky to have been invited – trust me when I say it was very hard to make ourselves return to the city last night. We swam (it was cold!), kayaked, ate great food, hiked, played lots of games, and of course, I knit.

As often happens when you take a holiday, I now have a million things to catch up on, so here’s the weekend (more or less) in photos. I’ll write a proper post later this week.