Sad Trombone

A couple weeks ago, I was dutifully scooping up clothes off the floor and throwing everything in the wash.  A 50 minute 30c cycle later, I hauled everything out and started hanging it out on the clothes line outside, when I came across something balled up in the middle of the laundry bolus that puzzled me greatly.

What on earth was it?  It looks like flat bread or a nacho or something.

Oh.  I somehow managed to not notice my Damask lace shawl had been wrapped around the shirt I had been wearing the day before, and in my overzealous laundry-doing it ended up in there with the unwashed masses.

This had become a wardrobe favorite.  While I normally don't like really lacy frilly things, this shawl was manageable, and I would draped it around my neck a couple times and it was so soft and warm and elegant, and the YARN!  Sundara silk merino, with a beautiful peachy blush.  It was my favorite and I wore it quite a bit.

  

It was a bit of work, but I loved every second of it.  It also brings back memories of living in Paris- I sat in the Tulleries in the late afternoon sun and plugged away at this, and blocked it on my futon before donning it until it got too cold to have holey-lace around your neck.  

And now, it's about a 18" across and a solid, unbendable mass.  But look, you can still see the perfect nupps!  It's like a archaeological dig to find ruins and then piecing it together and theorizing what it looked like back in its glory days now.

Rather interestingly, because the silk didn't felt, it kind of looks like boucle yarn.

I'm a bit sad about it, but somewhat amused.  In all my years as a knitter, this is the first such accident to take place.  I know from rumors and secondhand information that many of the gifts I had sent on have ended up in this state, but I've never self-sabotaged.  This is an epic fail.

Lesson learned.  I was going to give it to a friend with cats for bedding, but someone else at the pub chimed in and grabbed it.  Novelty fabric perhaps?

Well, I loved it enough to want to make another one, perhaps in blue.

The Butcher of Sheepy things

Like I said in a previous post, I somewhat lost my knitting mojo after then holidays.  Once I got all the gifties sent out to the four corners of the globe, I sat down and looked around and just couldn't find the inspiration to do diddly.

I dislike unfinished projects in general, which is why I was disgusted with myself for having a hat brim sitting on the shelf for more than a month.

A long stretch of simple knitting in the round was abandoned in favor of just not wanting to deal with it for 14 inches.  

I did chip away at a crochet blanket for a while:

The Babette, the best way I could think of to use up all the scraps of sock yarn that I've accumulated the past few years.  A memory of socks and shawls and sweaters, slowly being pieced together in a colorful spread of clown barf.  However...I now need to create more scraps as I'm running out of yarn for it.  

Part of this big stall was the fault of this jumper:

An incredibly warm men's Icelandic lopi sweater called Riddari, knit in the natural colors of sheep of the Birtish Isles: Black Wesh, moorit Shetland, white BFL, and steel gray Suffolk.  It was lovely to knit- the wool was rustic and had a lovely sheepy smell, and it was comforting and joyful to make.

Once I was done and blocked, I decided I didn't want it to be a pullover- a zipper install to let it be worn open would be a good idea since it was extraordinarily warm. So I crocheted steeks, slicked it from nave to throat, and basted in a lovely vintage brass zipper.

Hours later, I was in a mass of ripped seems and bits of thread.

No matter how carefully I install a zipper, no matter how many tutorials I read and follow step-by step, I can not get the stupid giant bulge out.

 Really?

I'm at a loss as to what to do- after picking it out and re-sewing it, trying to keep the fabric loose and the tension even, the bulges would not go away.

Should I try again, send it off to a pro to pic, or try to sew it back up and call it a pullover?

Monteverde

Hello!

Where to begin?  There has been many adventures as of late, some interesting new developments, lots of stress and paperwork, and more late nights than I might possibly care to admit.

So, in keeping with my rather free spirited year, and a tradition to keep things weird over the holidays, we headed for Costa Rica for a bit.


Oh, it's lovely there. I had been once before, ages ago, and I was pleasantly surprised that it had changed very little since then. It's an amazing place, filled with rainforest and jungle creatures, volcanoes, and lovely beaches. Ecotourism is the number one industry here, and they take super the environment super seriously.

It was an adventure getting there. While most people elect to fly into central San Jose, we found really cheap direct flights into tiny Liberia in the North West and built a trip around that. I booked whatever hotels I could find last minute, rented a car and grabbed somehow managed to pack a bag for warm weather with most of my earthly belongings in boxes on a ship.

The first hiccup came when we got shuttled to the Alamo kiosk for a rental car only to find they were all out of cars. In fact, all of the car rental places were completely out of cars- nothing but empty lots as far as eye can see. They were apologetic but basically shrugged and seemed mystified that this might happen. We were nice and didn't pitch a fit (which, some of the other people who were on our flight were giving themselves medical issues over the ordeal). People in Costa Rica are nice and generally helpful, but they aren't trained to deal with stressed out angry demanding New Yorkers. Our rep, despite not being completely confident in the solution he created, offered to pay for the cab to our first hotel, where in a day or perhaps two, another car rental place will deliver a car to us, but couldn't offer us any real proof that this would happen. What to do?

A leap of faith was made, a cab was called. A jovial young man in an old beater of a taxi showed up, and in our limited Spanish we thanked him profusely and we began the long trip to Monteverde, with a nervous wave adios to the Alamo guy as we realized might be stuck in Monteverde for quite some time.

Despite a short distance kilometer-wise, it takes at least three hours to get to Monteverde from Liberia. It's a mountain-top village founded by American Quakers in the rainforest, and the roads to get there are unpaved and unmaintained. The fact we were in a tiny car was a bit nerve-wracking, but a local would have done this before, right?

It was not comfortable, I'll tell you that much. Alas, when my teeth were clacking together like those wind-up dentures, when I could get a glimpse outside it was predictably amazing.  Most of the steep roads looked as though a river had run down them very recently. We ended up getting to the top of the mountain just as the sun was setting, found our little rustic cabin of a hotel in the rainforest, and thanked the cabbie a million times for getting us there in one piece.


So, the other hiccup. This one could have been bad.

I realized pretty quickly that I had a raging UTI. I get these from time to time- I'm just kind of prone to urinary tract infections. Sometimes, I don't get the initial uncomfortable need-to-pee symptoms and the infection ends up in my kidney and it makes me really sick and bed-ridden for a few days. I've been good about catching them early and preventative measures, but I had been lax about it apparently. Having two long flight days in a weekend and much moving around and general craziness meant I wasn't drinking the amount of water that I need, which usually triggers these miserable events for me.

I had left NYC thinking/ignoring that I had to pee a lot, and after the 5 hour flight and the 3 hour cab ride was done, I knew I was in big trouble and finally announced I was going to see a doctor pronto.

Happily, there was a medical clinic right down the rutted drive from the cabin. I explained the situation to a lovely doctor who had been cooking a side of beef on a hotplate when I stumbled in. She gave me a script for antibiotics, and sent me off to the one pharmacy in town in Santa Elena, and even offered to feed me. It was...amazing. Medical care in developing countries is just so easy and efficient.


So with that, our adventure begins.

Cinque Terre

I know this isn't typical, but I had an infuriating Cinque Terre experience.

 

Maybe it was expectation. A series of five villages dotting the cliffsides in Liguaria, with houses hanging over the Mediterranean. You can't drive here- you either are on foot or on a train that runs from La Spezia and stops at each of the five villages. We were staying in the first of the five, Riomaggiore.

 

Oh, also, there is a ferry connecting the towns but the seas were rough and it was cancelled.

 

 All the cliffside beach trails were closed- we had bad thunderstorms and rough seas that made them too dangerous and they close it off. So we bought train tickets to get to Manarola, the next town over.

 
 


 So, from the train platform, I realize that you can look down the tunnel and see Manarola. In fact, all the villages were just minutes apart by train, and you could see them down the line...and yet. The train. Never came. Or rather, we dealt with constant cancellations and every single time we were on the platform, it was 10-20 minutes late. So instead of there being frequent, useful train service, we'd be stuck at each village and then the train station for hours without being able to escape. I was about to run down the train tunnel 500 yards to get to my destination, as I could see it but the train just wouldn't come.

 


Hilarity ensued, as it does when you are traveling with family, and the family is all as frustrated as you are.





It was really unique and charming, with an old-world fishing village feel, and we did get pretty decent seafood while there. If I would have been in a better mood, I think things would have been overall sunnier for me.



So anyway...don't let my stories of mushy pasta and infuriating train delays deter you. I'm sure this is perfectly awesome in summertime, or when the 5 hour cliffside hiking trails are actually open and you get to the other villages without being held hostage by the rail.



Ah,  but leaving was a pain in the ass as well, as we had a cancelled train, followed more than an hour later by a very delayed train, which messed up the rest of our travel day. So much for getting into Florence early!  Or at all, suckers!

In Ruins

After two days in Marrakech, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed.

Not only was it hard to see these poor donkeys everywhere in homemade harnesses, pulling heavy loads on unkept hooves and then sitting in the sun all day without food or water, but the humanity was starting to get to me. The constant badgering and pushy sales tactics was really too much. I got a bit dismayed- was all of Morocco going to be like this? I don't think I could have done two weeks if it had been, but no, it wasn't. It did get better.

But first it had to get worse.

Thinking an hour in a hamman would do me so good, I found a nice one to sweat out the toxins. It's basically a steam room, and then this woman takes a scrubby mit, slathers you with various clays and exfoliants and gives you a good brusque rubdown before dousing you with cold water. Fun, right? Except 20 minutes after my treatment, I started vomiting uncontrollably and my entire body swelled up and broke out in an itchy red rash. Something that got slathered was not doing me good at all.

So I spent the next couple weeks covered in itchy red hives and scabs, which multiple pharmacy visits and Claritin did nothing to help. Really attractive stuff here. There will forever be a lack of pictures of me enjoying myself on this trip. Being ill in the 3rd world is never a good experience. If it's not life threatening, just deal with it.

But I'm tough. Eh, tough-ish. Plus, women are supposed to be covered from head to toe at all times, so it didn't really matter that I looked like a leaper. Huzzah!

Back to Marrakech, where the air was so clean, I felt like I was smoking a couple packs of unfiltered cigarettes every day.

At night especially. As soon as the temperature dropped, the smog set in so thick it was hard to see more than a couple blocks ahead.

The Square at night turns into a series of open-air restaurants, all with the same menu. Lots of Tangine to be had.

There are tons of Mosques in the city, but you are only allowed in if you are Muslim. It kind of limited the amount of cultural sites open to Westerners. Kutubiyya Mosque is the largest, and almost 900 years old. The stonework was really spectacular.

The Saadian tombs are also worth a gander.

Exploring the ruins of Badii Palace. There was nothing really there but stray cats and nesting storks, but the sheer enormity of the site was impressive.

The skyline was made of minarets, satellite dishes, and the Atlas mountains.