FO: More hats! A shawl! And another thing!

Three hats, in fact.

Even though I don't celebrate Xmas, I feel swept up in the spirit of the cold dank weather and whip out gifts to my non-knitter friends.  My stack of hats is slowly diminishing as I send them to the four corners of the earth in time for the Winter Solstice.  Which is still a month away!  I don't even know how the days are going to get any shorter, but apparently they will.  This is the furthest north I've spent a winter.  I feel like I'm atoning for enjoying summertime so much.  I'm actually having a really hard time waking up in the mornings, and one recent weekend, I managed to sleep until 10:30.  Seriously!  That's half my day, gone.  It just wasn't light enough outside for my body to convince itself that it was indeed morning, and nearly afternoon.

I made a Whale Watch Hat from New England Knits.

It's all scraps- mostly Knit Picks Pallet.  For the price, it's a really nice yarn, similar to Jaimison's spindrift in weight and hand.  I was thinking of making the Whales a bit darker, but I kind of like them in the lighter shade of blue- they look kind of abstract, and probably more acceptable that a grown-ass adult might pull this off.

Speaking of which...the trend of grown-ass people wearing spirit-animal hats...why?  Kitten ears and giant false eyes are cute on toddlers, a bit weird on adults who aren't on their way to support a sports team.  Enlighten me.

Last fall when I was in Dublin, I visited a cute knitting shop and nabbed a couple skeins of Studio Donegal Tweed merino.  They knit up perfectly into a set of hats- kind of a his-and-hers affair.  The same, but different enough to not nauseate casual observers if they happen to leave the house together wearing them:

A masculine cable hat called One Bourbon, whose recipient has a smaller head size than my beau:

The brim will actually fold up when it fits properly.

And a lovely lace hat called Magnolia:

Oh!  And here's a shawl:

I usually do a better job of photographing these beastly shawls, but it's been raining like crazy every morning this week, and I needed to get this in the mail.  So you get to see my interior windows.

It's the Cladonia Shawl by Kristen Kapur.  It's written to have stripes and a looped bind-off, which looks fantastic, but I thought it gave it a much different appearance to make it plain and solid.  The yarn I used is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, and it used every last inch of yarn.  In fact, I ran out the very last bit- I needed about 10 inches more.  Panic!  Freak out!  I tinked back a few more stitches and then, gasp, SPLIT THE PLIES.  So there's one edge that has slightly thinner yarn in the bind off, and it survived blocking like a champion.  Honestly though, I couldn't think of anything else to do in that situation.  

The yarn is not my favorite.  The stitch definition is a bit muddled, which can be used to nice effect here with just the small bit of lace.  The one thing that does irk me is that if you tink back at all, the yarn will sometimes just un-spin itself and you are left with a broken strand.  It's lofty and loosely spun, making it great for warmth and texture, but it doesn't hold up to multiple mistakes.  Not that I ever make them.

Finally:

One of my favorite blends to spin and knit would be Blue Face Leicester sheep wool blended with silk.  The BFL is a long, silky soft wool that has beautiful drape and lustre.  Add some silk with that and, oh, I become enraptured.  It begs you to hold it close.

While I loved the colors in this skein of Codex- gold and near-black- they pooled up terribly.  I tried and I tried to do anything with this- spirals, garter stitch, lace, broken rib- and I just couldn't get it to stop with the ugly pooling.  Disappointed, I was.  

Ah, wait.  I know how to crochet.  A quick search and I found something well within my abilities- the Chi-town Cowl.

That's not so bad, is it?

I made a moebius cowl.  Easy as pie, it used up almost the entire skein and only took a few hours.  It's soft and silky and if you have a small-ish head, you can loop it around twice comfortably.

 Now, to bring back the sun...I understand why the 21st December is such a celebratory affair.

Poppies

Ah, the poppies.  

 2014 marked the 100 year anniversary of the first World War.  To remember the somber occasion, the moat of the Tower of London slowly became a field of ceramic poppies.  The installation, called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Blood,  almost 900,000 flowers were "planted" leading up to the 11 November.  Staggeringly, each poppy represents a British fatality in the war.

 Starting in August with the "waterfall", the art installation grew and grew to encompass the entire moat.  Soon, this became a huge attraction, with people standing in lines for hours and congesting central London and some of the busiest tube stations in town.  All the tube stations had signs asking people to use alternate routes to get to the Tower as millions made their way to see it in the final weeks.  This made me nervous- I get agitated in the friendliest of crowds and waiting for hours in such crowds is bound to ensure that by the time I got to the front of the line, I would be a sweaty clammy mess of angry angst and cease to be impressed by anything.  

I chose a rainy night to make my pilgrimage.  It was crowded, but do-able.  It also happened to be the last night before they started uninstalling after Armistice Day, so I really waited until the 11th hour on this.  

It's just....incredible and moving and somber.  However, I did openly mock a man who was front and center on Skype on an Ipad and having a loud conversation about how his day was with the tinny speakers turned up.  Was he a New Yorker?  That was my best guess.  It's a war memorial, have some humility and respect.  Save the laugh with your blokes for later.    

It was hard to grasp the scale of it, but the entire moat was filled and you would need a drone to capture the entire thing on flim.  Ah, but that is where the BBC steps in.  Now that the installation is being deconstructed, you can buy a poppy!  All the proceeds go to charity.  

You can still see it- I heard that the cascade will be left indefinitely, and there is an exhibit in the Tower itself about the military history that it played during the war.  I haven't bought a ticket for the tower in years- maybe the first trip I took over to London ages ago- but I remember it being well worth the price of admission.  There's so much creepy dark history here, it really made for an appropriate and dramatic backdrop.      

Light Days?

A bit of movie magic in Angel....

I don't think there are too many theaters out there that haven't switched to an electronic stock-ticker movie marquis.  I feel like I caught someone in some secret ritual.

NDW Day 4: Merstham to Oxted

Now for the boring bit of the trail.

I was kind of dreading this part of the hike that closely follows the M25, the enormous ribbon of motorway that encircles the city of London.  I guess having a trail with such easy access to the city means these small inconveniences are bound to happen.  

I couldn't have picked a better day for it- late October and I'm still putting on SPF.

However, the one wrench in my plan was that I didn't get an earlier start.  I was planning on knocking 20 lonely miles out, but I reached the halfway point a little after 1pm....meaning I would have walked the last miles in the dark.  I quit after a mere 9 miles of walking rather then deal with that.  The clocks were set back last weekend and I just haven't adjusted yet, but the sun is dead and gone by 5pm now.

The trail was a little boggy in places but it climbed and stayed on the ridge for most of the walk, and I did enjoy myself.  You couldn't as much see the motorway as much as you could hear the constant drone of it at the foot of the hill.  Visions I had of walking right next to the road ended up being false, and it was a pretty countryside walk, if not a little noisy.

And looky there!  You can see London, sprawled out in front of you from the top of your first hill.

 Rather foolishly, I did not bring my camera, so these are all from the phone as I thought I would just end up with a lot of pictures of semi trucks.   So, pictures aren't the best today.

I had the trail to myself, too.  I saw a handful of people on horseback at one point, and bumped into one other through hiker doing day trips from London.

It was just so pleasant out,  I thought I was being rather pokey, but I ended up doing a respectable 2.6 mph.  If I kept that up without stopping to rest the dogs, I would have made it to Otford just after sunset.  Instead, I turned off to Oxted and took the train back to London.   Despite the beautiful late-October weather, the trail had turned off Oxted downs and was in site of the M25 for a long stretch, and I just wasn't inspired to keep going.

Not the most amazing day of walking, but any day walking in the countryside beats anything else I could think of doing, so it was all around a winning sort of day.  Plus, those half-hour train rides are adding up to be a rather spectacular lace shawl.

FO: Stellaria Shawl

I never tire of knitting intricate lace shawls.

It doesn't matter that I will never wear this thing, but it was just so lovely to make, I don't feel like I've wasted any time at all.

It's the Stellaria Shawl from Twist Collective, a beautiful crescent shaped shawl with lacy broad leafs.

I used a bit over 1 skein of Rowan Fine Lace in Revival- a delicate light purplely pink.  It's about 550 yards, and it's a delicate suri alpaca and merino blend.  It's so gossamer and light.  This isn't really for warmth, but for decorating your decolletage.  It was kind of a pain in the ass to knit with- it was grabby, so if I wasn't paying attention, it would knot up upon itself and make a huge bird's nest that would take some deep breaths before I attempted to untangle.

Blocking was a bit of a chore- There's not enough pins in the world to pin out that many points- I think I did a decent job and got it fairly symmetrical.

The first half of this was really easy- it's all short rows back and forth and back and forth.  I had cast on during the train ride up to Glasgow and worked on it here and there during the West Highland Way hike.  By time time I was on the bus back to Glasgow, I had finished the short rows and was ready to move on to the lace, but that was exactly when the flu struck, and I spent the train ride back to London a shivering achy mess and couldn't stand the site of it.

A few weeks later, I picked it back up and finished the lace bit, and finished up in record time.  Sometimes, I just need a break.

The best part?  I found the yarn on sale at Liberty for  £4. 

It will be gifted, but I enjoyed flouncing around with it for a few minutes while planning my next lace creation.

NDW Day 3: Box Hill to Mersham

Another beautiful autumn day for a walk...back up my old friend/nemesis, Box Hill.  

I left the Westhumble Station and picked the trail back up at the Box Hill car park, which had about 200 school kids getting ready to trek it up the hill, teachers in tow.  I practically ran up the Hill just to get ahead of the squacking mass of giggles and screeches, my feet barely touching the stepping stones.  

Box Hill was just as steep as the last time I climbed it, but starting at the Stepping Stones side proved a little easier since they just had a giant staircase the entire way up.

And the views, ah the views!  What a perfectly brilliant day to be out!

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Once I got past Box Hill, the crowds thinned and I once again had the trail to myself for most of the day, aside from an occasional dog walker.

The walk was rather nice- it went past a ghost of a Lime Works and quarry, then up a steep beswitchbacked trailed up Colley Hill, then it stayed up high and went through a few National Trust meadows the rest of the day.

The only downside being that the M25, the main ring road that circles London, was roaring down at the bottom of the hill.

I stopped for lunch under a tree with amazing views stretching all the way to the South Downs, and put a few rows in on a pair of socks I've been chipping away at on my train rides out to the trail:

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And hey, I'm only 66 miles away from Dover!  That's probably how the crow flies, but it's not too far off the walking distance.  The North Downs is unique in the fact that it has a loop at the end- you can go North to Canterbury (as any good pilgrim should) or South and walk along the chalk cliffs to Dover, or just do the whole loop if it pleases you.  It's like a choose your own adventure book.

I did stumble upon the Millennium Stones, a set of standing "stones" in a field for the ages to wonder about.  Although...the fact that the artists' mission statement is on the internet means that it probably won't be a future place of pagan worship.

I stopped to pick berries and to give an old longears a good scratch:

....then ended my hike in the town of Merstham, a busy town of intersecting roads right on the M25.  It suddenly became a point of stress that I had to cross several busy roads to get to the train station, and I seemed to be the only stinking hippie coming off the trail this town had seen in a while.  It was warm enough on this day to really get my fragrance up after two hill climbs, and the tube ride back into London was lovely as everyone gave me plenty of elbow room/armpit wafting room.

So, the next stretch of trail I've been dreading: it near 20 miles (but not terribly hilly) from Mertsham to Otford.  It's not the distance, it is the fact that the M25 does not leave your site the entire time.  I want to have the personal satisfaction of having walked the entire trail, but I don't want to really spend 20 miles shadowing one of the busiest roads in England.

What to do?

Procrastinate.

After that?

Charge up the Ipod.  Put on the game face, get it over with.

I'll get to it one of these days.    

NDW Day 2: Guildford to Westhumble

My quest to walk across England continues....

I returned to Guildford early one morning and took off down the River Wye and rejoined the North Downs, dodging Orb weaver spiders the whole way.

The trail was a bit wilder once out of Guildford, and I soon climbed up to St Martha's church.  I had been here before- we had taken a jaunt up here on one of countryside walks last spring.

The trail was devoid of people- aside from the bit by Newland's Corner, where there is a huge car park.  This ended up being a really nice bit of trail that I would be happy to go back and re-hike, with views across the hazy valley to the South Downs.

Oh!  And has anyone ever seen this before?

It is two trees, CONNECTED!  That bottom branch is growing from both trees!  They were both quite large trees.  I've just never seen anything like this.

There were lots of beautiful old woodlands to walk through: West Hanger, Shere Woodlands, Netly Park.  I saw a golden Hazel Dormouse scurry by, and some science types were out studying the flora.  What a lovely bit of lonely trail!

The National Trust keeps up a good bit of what I walked through, and they maintained the chalk grassland, and I was soon blissfully hoofing it forward across the tops of the Downs.

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There were also quite a lot of pillboxes tucked into the hillsides...a defense against the perceived threat of the French.

Soon, Denby's came into view, with views of Box Hill.  I didn't stop for wine, but headed straight for the train station, where I had some lovely stuff from France sitting at home.

Tucked into the picked-over grapes, a roe deer fawn, patiently waiting for its mother:

Well, that was perfectly pleasant!  I would go back and hike that bit again- it was peaceful and the views were lovely.  Altogether, it was a rather lengthy 15 miles, so it was no small walk, but I was pretty knackered in the end.