Day 5 of the Hadrian's wall walk

Today was Day 5 of our Coast to Coast walk.

We started on Lemington Road, where we left off last week.

An impressive abandoned building (this is just a small portion of it).

All of a sudden we found ourselves out of the city with a nice view of the river Tyne.

Here I am enjoying my first Cadbury Egg of the season by one of the Mileposts. I had resisted them up until today, but Jessamy and I made up for it by splitting three during the course of the day. I'm thinking of stockpiling them so we can have a steady supply for the rest of the year.

The first gate!

Continuing along the path.

The cottage where George Stephenson, a pioneer of the steam-powered locomotive, was born and raised. Although there is a top floor, his family (mom, dad, and 4 siblings) lived on the bottom floor, in a single a room. It is open to the public, and for a small fee of 2 pounds a woman in period costume will tell you how crappy it must have been to live there.

Hagg Bank Bridge the first wrought iron single span arch suspension bridge built for a rail crossing in the UK.

The first time on this walk where a horse hasn't been on the other side of a fence from us.

Caught the train at the Prudhoe "rail station" back home to Newcastle.

Day 4 of the Hadrian's wall walk

Today was Day 4 of our Coast to Coast walk.

It was raining during the morning and early afternoon, so we were afraid there would be no walk today. Then around three a bit of sun started to peek through the clouds and we decided to chance it.

We walked to the quay side, where we left off last week.

It quickly turned into a busy street with warehouses by the road, and stayed rather unscenic for a while. There was no rain, but also no sun, and a biting cold. All of a sudden this path:

And this menacing building which surprisingly isn't actually abandoned.

At one point we had to make a decision. Continue along the cycling route, which is the route we have the directions for. Or, take the Hadrian's Walkway, which looked nice and green. We took the walk way. The path eventually ended, which left us with only a vague clue where we were. We knew the cycleway continued West. So West we went, hopeing we would eventually find it again. I'm glad we did get a bit lost, or we wouldn't have known that we had wandered into the community of Dumpling Hall.

Around mile 4 we started to get tired. Fortunately we saw a bus go by that would take us to Newcastle, so we walked to the next stop. On the way we saw a sign for the cycle path! So now we know where to start again tomorrow. We got on the bus across the street from the Lemington Glass works. Which I've since found out is one of the most important industrial monuments in the North East. Who knew, I just took a picture because I thought it looked interesting.

So many cookies

A few days ago I had decided to make cookies.

In my search for recipes I stumbled upon a New York Times article which said that cookies tasted better after 36 hours after refrigeration. I decided to give it a try, so I made cookie dough on Monday night. I cooked the first batch immediately, then Tuesday morning, Tuesday night, and Wednesday morning. They aren't the most photogenic of cookies unfortunately. They looked fine in the oven and sometimes fine when I took them out, but then they flattened.

We didn't notice any difference between each batch, but maybe our tasting memory just isn't very good. Though it was a nice excuse to eat a whole lot of cookies.


Day 1:
Day 2 am (I took them out too soon, and had to pop them in):

Day 2pm:
I think we were well into eating them by the time I took this picture.


Day 3 am:
Ended up cooking these a little longer.

What I did notice though was that the consistency of the dough changed after 24 hours, and then again after 36. The dough became a little more crumbly and hard, but that made it easier to form into balls.

So it was quite fun making all these cookies, but unfortunately I've already noticed that my trousers are a little tighter than normal. Oh well, such is life.

Day 3 of the Hadrian's wall walk

Well, didn't get much walking done today. We were still a little tired in the morning, so Jessamy worked on homework until noon while I cleaned and did a little knitting.

Our excursion into the outside world started with buying buttons at John Lewis, then a necklace and headband at Accessorize (I think the last time I bought a necklace for myself was about five years ago!).

Then we backtracked a little from where we left the Coast to Coast walk yesterday, so that we could buy warm donuts from the Sunday Market.

We continued a little on the trail and walked along the river Quay (pronounced Key).

Do you know what this bird is? We don't.

Our feet were already getting tired again by this point, so then it was back home again. So really, only about one mile of the trail done today, but no regrets.

Sunday knitters meets tomorrow

This week's Sunday Knitters will meet tomorrow, which is Sunday!

The Sunday Knitters will meet 3/22/09 from 2pm-5pm (when the library closes) at the Glendale Main Library, 222 E. Harvard, at the corner of Louise and Harvard in downtown Glendale. We will be upstairs: head all the way into the library, past the circulation desk, and take the big staircase on the left. The room is the first one on the left at the top. Alternatively, you can take the elevator, on the left as you walk in the main doors, up to the second floor, and head toward the last room on the left.

The library has small parking lots in front and side, with lots of handicapped spots, though. There is also a large, covered parking structure on Harvard right across from the library. Parking is free (up to 3 hours) with library validation.

The cost for the room is $8, so please bring a dollar to offset the expense. The room was reserved this week by Maureen Reagan.

We are welcome to bring dry snacks. Beverages in closed, covered containers or bottles with screw tops are okay; cups and opened cans are not.
Although the library has been working out nicely, we are still looking for more permanent space.

Day 2 of the Hadrian's wall walk

Today we went on our second day of our Coast to Coast walk. It started off at the same scary roundabout where we left off last week.

Then there this multi-lingual sign.

Took a bathroom break at Segedunum, but didn't go into the museum as we'd been there before.

Which way do we go? We opted for "Hadrian's Way".

A walk along the river.

I think we had walked about 7 miles so far and we were already a little tired at this point, so we sat down along the river, rested and ate a sandwich.

A nice view of our hometown. Jessamy is holding "fish and chips" flavoured potato chips (or crisps as they say here).

Thought we needed a treat for having walked about ten miles that day.



Then we left the walkway and went into the city, and then to home. 11 miles down, 163 to go!

I hope you had a nice St. Patrick's Day. We celebrated by sharing a can of Guinness.

No one at work was wearing green. Jessamy had warned me that that might be the case, so I also went in non-green attire. But, starting around noon I could hear (I work in a university campus) celebrators egging each other on. And when I left work there were tons of students in the quad area with similar, if not matching, green shirts, and the same hat (possibly a sponsor?).

I haven't gotten any further on Jessamy's sock because I'm working on a secret project. I can't tell you what it is, or show you a picture of it, yet, but here's a picture of the yarn.


Oooh. It's fine milk cotton by Rowan. 70% Cotton, 30% milk protein. When I had gone shopping for the yarn I had wanted something washable. I was looking mainly at cottons, and thinking about the organic cotton, but then I saw this and the nice colors and, well, forgot about the washable thing. This yarn is so not washable that it even says do not soak or leave wet. It's very soft though, and I've had no problems knitting with it, but the spin is very loose which can get annoying. It is a Rowan yarn, so David is about to special order it if you're interested in it.If you're on ravelry it's in my project page.

Coast to Coast walk begins

Jessamy and I started our incremental coast to coast walk today. We started at Tynemouth, walking over barnacle encrusted rocks to dip our finger in the North Sea.

There's the North Sea, in the background is a pier with a lighthouse at the end.

Then we found the start of the C2C route (right behind Collingwood's Monument in case you were wondering). The route started with a pleasant path along the sea, then the trail went into a business area, a residential neighborhood, and an industrial area.

But the route was well marked, and we only had to look at a map once (at the end of the pleasant path along the sea, if you must know). Parts of the walk seemed new, like this (that's a really bright looking industrial ship in the background).
And then there was the strange waterfall.
We ended up walking 3 miles of the route 174 mile route, and took the metro to home at the Percy Main stop. I think, what with the walking to and from the transportation, we walked 5 miles today. Not bad. My legs/feet don't hurt so I think we're aiming for a longer walk next week.

See food

My knitting was put aside for a few days to make this:
A lunch box. Well, technically a lunch plastic bag. It's my 4th sewing project, if I include hemming some PJ pants. We recently replaced the shower curtain, and this was the bit we cut off because it was too long. I hadn't quite realized when I sewed it together that there was a shiny part and the flip side was matte, hmmmm. I had also envisioned it with the seam on the inside, but the finished product didn't stand up correctly like that. I'm planning on sewing velcro onto it, for the closure, and had actually bought some for this purpose a few weeks ago, but I've looked everywhere I'd expect to have put it and the velcro is nowhere to be found. I finished the bag this morning, in time for a test run for today's lunch, and the bag was functional, as I had hoped.

The future is getting nearer

Jessamy had her first interview for post-graduate work yesterday, for a museum in Massachusetts. She also received yesterday an invitation to another telephone interview for later this month, I believe that one is in Philadelphia. And I think both are for one year. Meanwhile she sent off another application earlier this week.

The future is getting nearer.

I'll keep you posted.

Pomatomus socks continued

Managed to finish the leg on Jessamy's socks, and you can see I've started the heel flap. The pattern is pretty easy, except for some confusion around the 12/13/14 rows of chart A where the k2togs start slanting the other way. But mainly that confusion was down to me not having the yos in the right place.

It's looking so far like it will turn out nice.

aeipathy for aeipathy

Ok, so this isn't knitting related, but I just adopted the word aeipathy from http://www.savethewords.org/

It means a continued passion; an unyielding disease.

Lets see how often I can sneak it into a blog post.

Special order page

I've been working on making it easier to placespecial orders through us.

http://thatyarnstore.com/store/

It's in its very early stages. I'll be adding more yarn on a weekly basis. But feel free to email us (that.yarnstore !at! gmail.com) if you want to order something that isn't listed.

And if you have any suggestions, send them along, they will be appreciated.

Sunset socks

Working on socks for Jessamy. The yarn I'm working with is Araucania, kettle dyed, I got it from the LYS in York.

I usually only make things for myself in shades of blue or grey, and I probably wouldn't have chosen this color myself, but I am warming up to it.
The pattern is Pomatomus, a classic pattern from Knitty.

Hyperbolic Reef is in town

The hyperbolic reef by Institute for Figuring is going to be at
The Track 16 Gallery at
Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica.
http://www.track16.com/
until this Saturday.
It’s very cool, and when I saw the exhibit in London dad was listed as one of the contributors!

Grand day out

We had a lovely day at the York Viking Festival yesterday.

We arrived in York at 10:30. The first thing we did was have tea, hot chocolate, a fat rascal (big scone), and an egg benedict at Betty's, a York institution. Jessamy and I shared these things of course. I can eat a lot, but not that much.


Then on to York Minster. We decided to fork over a lot of money to do the do everything tour, starting off with the free tour which was very informational, then saw the undercroft, treasury, and crypt.

And climbed the 275 steps to the top of the tower.
Then back into the Minster.
We bought yarn for my next project - socks for Jessamy - at York's LYS, Sheepish. Bought pork pies and a Turkish wrap from the continental market.

Then on to the Evening Battle: Light and Sound Spectacular where the entertainment included the amusing Horn Dancers (4 guys carrying elk horns, one guy with a bow, and another with a wooden deer head dancing and doing little formations). It would have been more exciting had the horns been on fire, but really this picture is of the firedancers who were pretty good.
The battle was entertaining, but strange. There was maybe 50 guys, dressed in chain mails and with wooden shields. Occasionally chaos ensued, chips of wood went flying, and it did seem at times like they were actually trying to hurt each other. But half of the time the sides were just staring at each other trying to figure out who to attack.


The show ended with dramatic and well timed fireworks set to Flight of the Valkyries.

Then it was back to Betty's, which was the only place we could find that served coffee after 7. I had a yummy Wensleydale soup, a very chocolaty hot chocolate (felt a bit sugar overdosed after drinking it) and cheesecake. Jessamy had a latte latino (the actual name) and a yummy ginger sponge cake.

We managed to hop on the train back home with less than 10 seconds to spare.

I can see you clearly

New glasses! I lost my old pair : ( But I paid way too much for these and got a second pair for free. So now I can plan on loosing one.

Now I also know how to make Jessamy laugh so hard her stomach hurts- have her to take my picture for the blog. I'm that unphotogenic. I'm also started to look my age, which is freaking me out a bit.

I like this picture. It's blurry, even though I have glasses on : )

Cabled socks anyone?

Gauge:
26 stitches over 4 inches
40 rows over 4 inches.

Yarn:
Happy Feet by Plymouth (2 skeins)

Cuff
Cast on 68 stitches with size 1 needles
Add stitch marker, join in round

*k2, p2* repeat until end.
Repeat the 2X2 ribbing for 10 more rows

Leg
Change to size 2 needles
Decrease rounds:
Round 1: k3, k2tog, p3, k4, p2, k4 *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 2 more times, p2, k4, p3, ssk, k3 = 66 stiches
Round 2: k4, p1, p2tog, k4, p2, k4, *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 2 more times, p2, k4, p1, p2tog, k4 = 64 sts

Setting up the cables:
Round 1: k4, *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 3 more times, p2, k4, p2, k4
Start cables:
Round 2: k4, *p2, c2f, p2, k4*, repeat 3 more times, p2, c2f, p2, k4

Regular rounds:
Round 1: k4, *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 3 more times, p2, k4, p2, k4
Round 2: Repeat round 1
Round 3: Repeat round 1
Start cables:
Round 4: k4, *p2, c2f, p2, k4*, repeat 3 more times, p2, c2f, p2, k4

Repeat rows 1-4 until desired length of leg (minus half an inch). End with a round 4. My sock leg is a total of 5.5 inches, and there was plenty of yarn left over.

Decrease rounds:
Round 1: k2, k2tog, *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 3 more times, p2, k4, p2, ssk, k2 = 62 sts

Round 2: k1, k2tog, p2tog, k4, p2, k4, *p2, k4 * repeat 4 more times, p2, k4, p2, k4, p2tog, ssk, k1 = 58

Round 3: k2tog, p1, k4, p2, k2, k2tog, *p2, k4 * repeat 4 more times, p2, k2, k2tog, p2, k4, p1, ssk= 54

Round 4: k1, p1, c2f, p2, k1, k2tog, *p2, c2f, p2, k4* repeat 1 more time, p2, c2f, p2, k2tog, k1, p2, c2f, p1, k1 = 52 stitches

Round 5: k1, p1, k4, p2, k2tog, *p2, k4, p2, k4* repeat 1 more time, p2, k4, p2, k2tog, p2, k4, p1, k1=50 sts


Heel flap
Row1: Knit 9, turn
With a new needle: Row 2: purl 18, turn
Row 3: *slip 1, knit 1* repeat until end (18 stitches)
Row 4: Slip 1, purl to end
Repeat rows 3 and 4 13 more times for a total of 26 rows

FYI, you should have 18sts in your heel flap, and 32 in instep = 50 stitches

Turn Heel
Row 1: Knit 11, k2tog, k1, turn
Row 2: sl1, p5, p2tog, p1, turn
Row 3: sl1, knit to stitch before gap, k2tog, k1, turn
Row 4: sl1, p to stitch before gap, p2tog, p1

Pick up 14 stitches along each side of the heel flap with new needles.
Divide the heel as you normally do.

Needle 1: Knit to last three stitches, k2tog, k1
Needle 2: Knit even (working cable pattern throughout)
Needle 3: K1, ssk, knit to end of needle

Work until you have 17 stitches on needles 1 and 3.

Work straight until you are 2 inches away from desired length

I used a slightly rounder toe than normal, taken from knitty.
1 decrease round, 3 even.
1 decrease round, 2 even – twice.
1 decrease round, 1 even – three times.
Decrease every round until you have 16 stitches.
Kitchener it up, and viola.


Notes:
1. If you only have a size 2 needle with you, you could instead cast on 60 stitches. The majority of the leg would be knit in k2, *p2, k4, p2, k4*, repeat 4 times, p2, k4, p2, k2

2. You can also do one sock with a left twist cable, the other with a right twist cable (hold the cable needle in back).

3. Yes, There are a lot less stitches in the heel than expected, but it fits me.

c2f = Slip 2 stitches p-wise onto a cable needle, keep cable needle in the front, knit two stitches, knit the two stitches from the cable needle.

Another dimension?

Work made everyone leave 3 hours early because of possible transportation issues due to the snow! What dimension am I living in?

It was a clear day when I walked to work this morning, but it started snowing almost immediately after I arrived. On my way back though, from the bus stop to home, it was lovely. There was a layer of white on the ground, on cars, on houses, very light snow falling, and the comforting sound of freshly fallen snow under my feet.

What shall I do with my now 2 hours of extra leisure time?!
Finish the socks, for one. Then who knows!
Really, all I have to do with the socks is redo one toe. As you can see in this poorly taken photograph (it looked ok in the viewfinder, really), the right sock is done in the usual decrease every other row toe. Usually I'm fine with it, but it just wasn't cutting it this time, so I went online to search for pictures, and decided on the simple round toe from knitty. I'm much happier with the whole project now. I'm hoping to have the whole pattern on the blog in the next 2 days...

Robin's Egg Red Hat

Jessamy's hat is finished. Here she is wearing it at a jaunty slant. It took us at least 15 minutes to find the right button.
I used the crown shaping found at The Knitting Fiend.

It is a bit exaggerated for the photo. Too bad I was never able to figure out what I did with that cat/devil hat. Now that was a nice crown.

I had quite a few modifications. I thought the seed stitch border looked a bit big in the original picture, so I started on a row 2 (1 row less than called for). I m1, k1 instead of k1, kf/b and did ssk instead of k2tog because I tried to memorize the pattern instead of just printing it out …
I've figured out a good solution to this though, save the pattern onto the "portable reader system" which was Jessamy's mom gave to us because she had received it as a gift and but never used because prefered to read actual books instead of digital words.
And I BO 4 instead of the 12 (purposefully) for the flap.
And that's about it.

Not snowed in yet

It's been the coldest week in 18 years here in the UK. Newcastle survived relatively unsnowed. We did get enough on Monday to warrant a slight panic about buses, and another little flurry Friday and today. But in the end it was nothing compared to the rest of England, or really to the rest of the county, with several people at work who live outside the city limits calling in to work on Monday saying they were snowed in.

A little closer now

Jessamy has been invited to her first post-graduate interview. The museum is in Massachusetts. Brrrr.

Looking ahead

Hi.

I know this is a sad day, but instead of dwelling on it I thought I should look to the future and show my next project on the list, it should be a quick one at that, http://racheliufer.blogspot.com/2007/10/robins-egg-blue-hat.html

Closing this month

I'm assuming most of you get our newsletter and have already heard, but we're closing our doors in just a few days, word on the street is that the last day is January 31st.

It's sad, I know, but we've been holding out too long, and I've said my goodbyes too many times, and now it's time to give up and move on.

We will however be selling yarn online starting in March, I've been figuring out the logistics for weeks now, and I'm excited about it.

I'm going to keep our ravelry (my name is fibrous, we also have a group), twitter (thatyarnstore), myspace http://www.myspace.com/thatyarnstore, and facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Los-Angeles-CA/That-Yarn-Store/25781369442
accounts up, and will be posting with updates on the online store.

Thought it would be simple

Always do (think it would be simple, that is).
Basic cable socks, no pattern of course, but who needs one, they're socks.
Only problem is that I need to get from 38 stitches around the leg to 19 for the heel flap. One sock is done (a bit too long, but it won't take that long to reknit that part) because I figured I should stop being a perfectionist, leaving the funky bunching alone and just be happy content with a much nicer looking second sock. Except, the second sock is definately not looking nicer.
Each time I've ripped out I've ripped a little higher and started the decreases a little sooner.
Assuming I get it to look okay and finish it (unlike the 2nd generation of pirate socks which I don't even want to look at) I'll post the pattern. Other than the grumble grumble decreases I like the look of the sock, itty cables are cute after all.

tack-oes

I've been trying to not post anything about work for reasons you probably know, and I don't want to embarrass anyone or anything like that. But ... yesterday someone was telling me about his trip to Florida. We had been talking about food and alcohol and the differences between the two countries. He had been disappointing in the size of steaks as they seem to be huge whenever cowboys eat steak in the movies, I commented that at least cheap meat here in the UK is much better than in America. I've gone to some cheap Chinese food places here, and generally in America if I go to a cheap Chinese place I'll get vegies, maybe sometimes a sweet and sour pork or chicken, but when I order it it's with the full expectation that the meat will be rubbery and gross. But the meat cheap Chinese food here has been surprisingly decent, the beef isn't all gristle, nothing wrong with the chicken, or at least nothing that I can tell with my unsophisticated meat palate. Anyway, the guy from work said how he ate, and liked, the Mexican food there in Florida (they consider tapas to be Mexican food here, and when you can find a burrito, which is really hard to find, it's like 9 pounds, so like $15). He had fajitas, some other dish, and tacos, pronounced as tack-oes. He said, almost a direct quote, he got the tacos with chili, as he could choose whether he could get ones with or without, so he got the tack-oes with chili, in fact, the restaurant was named Chili's. Yes, Chili's. And yes, I was picturing a small, non-chain, "real" Mexican restaurant. Jessamy laughed a long, long time when I relayed this to her, but I managed to just smile, and stopped myself from ruining his memories. And then Jessamy and I ate at a cheap Chinese

Not much going on

Jessamy has four papers due next week, so she has been frantically doing that. I've been reading mostly, The Concise Pepys. I have two socks in the works, one needs to be ripped out and started again, and another I'm not sure what I'm doing with.

I was finally was able to get to the computer for an extended period yesterday, as in two hours, and found some hat patterns for Jessamy to choose from, so I might start that tonight, assuming I don't delete the internet (a favorite saying of mine) before Jessamy can actually choose one.

I've also spent the last few evenings looking up cities I want to visit in England, there's a long list. Haven't yet attepted a list of places in the continent. Jessamy has a break the weekend after next, and then spring break, otherwise known as easter break here, then I think we might try to stay and travel after she graduates.