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Amazing Trieste

Where my trip started. 

Remains of a Roman arch

A street of very old paving stones

Remains of the Roman am

Cattedrale di San Giusto rose window

Theater

Piazza Nuova

Display in the window of an optometrist's office

Boat on the Grand Canal

The Grand Canal

A working fountain

A typical form of transportation

In case you need a bar

It's been too long

I didn't realize that almost a year has gone by since my last post. I'm still knitting and designing sock patterns. I just need to write up my notes about these patterns so that they will make sense to everyone else. I also need to get pictures and then marry the photo to the written pattern. And then post them in my Ravelry shop. In other words, I have a lot to do and I'm better at the knitting part than at the writing up the pattern part.

I've spent the spring and summer riding my bike a lot. My bike has taken me places I won't have gone had I not taken up cycling again last year. I have taken my bike all over northern and central California. I've rode my first half century in Solvang in March. A few weeks later, I rode the Cinderella Classic, which is a metric century (65 miles) around the base of Mt. Diablo. In May, I rode the Wine Country metric century. In August, the Tour of the Napa Valley metric century called my name. However, the highlight of the summer was the trip I took in July.

I went on a cycling trip through northeast Italy and Slovenia. It was an amazing eight day tour that started in Trieste, Italy and ended in Bled, Slovenia. I did all of this with a wonderful tour company called Ciclismo Classico. After the tour ended, I returned to Trieste for a few days and then joined my boyfriend in Verona for a few days of cycling there. Then we spent a few days in Venice being tourists since it's impossible to ride a bike in Venice. We have both been to Venice before so we spent time in museums and neighborhoods we hadn't explored on previous trips.

We traveled with our bikes. There is nothing like riding your own bike in a foreign country. We attracted a lot of attention in Trieste when we were putting our bikes together. Northern Italy is bike crazy. I ride a Bianchi named after the velodrome in Milan. I was asked a few times if I knew that my bike was named after a famous velodrome. Fortunately, I'd done my homework and could honestly say that I knew where the name came from. I attracted even more attention taking my bike apart in the same alley nine days later so I could pack it. I gathered it was a bit unusual for a woman to be taking a bike apart on her own.

After my bike was packed, I took a walk around Trieste. Trieste is James Joyce crazy in addition to being cycling crazy. There is a bronze statute of JJ on a bridge crossing the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal isn't at all like the Grand Canal of Venice, which is what I picture when I think of the Grand Canal. There are bars and hotels named after JJ. I even stayed at the James Joyce Hotel. You can walk around the city following a James Joyce itinerary. Of course, there are the well known spots he frequented while he lived, taught English and wrote in Trieste. I've never seen greater JJ love outside of a university English Department!

Time Flies

Earlier this spring I bought a new road bike. I've been riding an average of five days a week. This has meant less time for knitting and spinning. At first, I was concerned about this. As I got more time on my bike, I realized that I had been needing a serious break from writing sock patterns, knitting and spinning. I had become seriously burnt out and that was a bigger threat to my continued interest in these things than giving myself a much needed break to recharge.

I rode my bike a lot as a teen. I'm one of those rare Californians who didn't get a driver's license the minute I turned 16. My bike was my transportation. I loved the freedom it gave me. I gave up my bike when I moved to San Francisco in the 70s because I'd had too many close calls with cars. San Francisco wasn't remotely bike friendly then. I love the way I feel on my bike; I'm using my own power to explore my surroundings. Cycling requires a set of skills in the same way that knitting and spinning require. The more I practice the better I become at it. I've also come up with some ideas for new sock patterns while I've been out on the road. I wouldn't have come up with these if I wasn't out on my bike.

Now when I knit or spin, I enjoy it more. I'm no longer feeling that I have to produce constantly in order to be a "real" knitter or spinner. I know that I am those things and I feel good about that.

Sunday photo

Not socks

I love the images I've seen of Sufi whirling. The cable in these mitts remind me of this movement. These started life as an idea for a sock that just didn't work. I couldn't let go of wanting to use this specific cable. I just couldn't figure out where else I could use it. So the unwearable socks languished hidden in a drawer for about six months. (And, I do mean socks; I had to knit a pair to prove to myself the design really didn't work.) I moved on and worked on other designs. One night while doing mental inventory of my designs, the idea of using the cable in fingerless mitts hit me.

I knit these out of A Verb For Keeping Warm Creating in Supernova on US #1/2.25 mm needles. They use less than a 100 gram skein of yarn and are fast to knit.

The only tricky bit is the cable. It is a ribbed cable over 11 stitches. An 11 stitch cable is a bit tight to work on the cross simply because of the number of stitches crossing one another. Because it is worked over an odd number of stitches some of the knit stitches become purls and some purls become knits. If you follow the directions, it works--you just need to forget what your brain tells is logical and trust that it works as written.

Dervish was test knit by members of the Free Pattern Testers Ravelry group. Michael Del Vicchio provided the technical editing. The pattern is available in my Ravelry shop.

Knitting from the stash

I went stash diving a month or so ago and re-discovered this Socks That Rock medium weight yarn in Mesa that I bought at Stitches West 2006. Socks That Rock was the buzz of the knitting blogosphere that year. This small company out of Oregon seemed to have come out of nowhere, was represented by The Fold at Rhinebeck 2005, and was suddenly the most sought after yarn in the world. And I had to have some.

I got to Stitches early Saturday morning and immediately headed for the Blue Moon booth. It was nearly empty--in that, there was very little yarn to be had. All of the light weight STR was sold out. There were a few skeins of medium and heavy weight STR left. There were plenty, relatvely speaking, of skeins of Seduction, a merino/tencel blend that wasn't named after types of rocks. I walked away with the Mesa STR and two skeins of Seduction--Prove It All Night, which became a Swallowtail shoulder shawl and Lucy in the Sky. Lucy in the Sky is still in my stash waiting to become something fabulous.


This yarn tried to be many things. In the end, it worked best as a variation on my Basic Shaped Arch Sock pattern. I used US #2 needles and cast on 56 stitches. The ribbing is a 1x1 twisted stitch rib. I mixed up the heel a bit by using eye of the partridge instead of a standard heel stitch. I love the way eye of the partridge looks with hand painted yarns that have a lot going on color-wise.


I also love the way the triangle that is formed by the gusset and the arch shaping really highlights the angles the yarn is going in. This was a fast sock to knit compared to the socks I usually knit on US #1 or #0. I really like the way they turned out. I think this will be my fall back pattern for all of the really colorful hand painted yarn in my stash.