Five Days in NYC

Last month, when the glow of the 4th had faded and the month stretched out in front of us, we traveled for five days to New York City.

I really don’t want to be dramatic, but it was pretty much a completely perfect vacation.

Yes - it was completely hot and sweaty the entire week. Yes - we got downpour rained-upon while leaving the MoMA and had to walk home absolutely soaked. Yes - I sprained my ankle on the fourth day walking home after dinner in clogs. Yes - one of my rolling suitcase wheels gave up on me on our last day of travel. Yes - it turns out that decriminalizing marijuana plus the summer heat leads to some STINKY neighborhoods, as it turns out.

But man. It really was perfect. We were absolutely so jazzed to be traveling, to be in a beautiful, big place and feel so safe (thank you, thank you, thank you vaccines), and to be together celebrating my husband’s incredible achievement of finishing his medical training. What a guy. He’s the hardest working person I know. I can only think of one time the entire week where we even got a little miffed with one another, and almost everything we wanted to see or do was open (except for, sadly for me, Purl Soho). I did, however, spend an absolutely wonderful hour making a return visit to the Brooklyn General Store and managed to completely treat myself, so don’t worry.

The last time we were together in NYC was over five years ago (when we were celebrating his match into residency!). This time around we stayed in the East Village in Manhattan, had the world’s best cocktails, bopped around to several museums and art experiences, walked around everywhere, and ate as many carbs as we wanted. I’m still dreaming about the blue crab pasta I ate for lunch in Brooklyn at Frankie’s 457 Spuntino. Life changing, I tell you. We spent an hour sitting and listening to jazz in Central Park, and spent a morning at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where summer was in full swing. We walked around The Battery and saw the Statue of Liberty through a bed of blooming coneflower and drank so much water and iced coffee. We sat and read books and knit in coffee shops and in our tiny studio apartment that we rented and just spent some amazing days together.

In my mind, most of my ideal vacations are to the countryside. My favorite part of our trip to Montreal was the day we drove out of the city and saw all of the tiny ski villages and mountains, and I miss my summers hiking in Colorado so much. But I absolutely loved this trip to New York in all of its stinky, crowded glory. We are already looking forward to the next time we’ll be able to go back (and perhaps this time, in the fall, when we can trade our shorts for peacoats and our sunglasses for scarves). We’ll be riding the high of this amazing vacation for a long time though, that much I can tell you.

I love you, B.

What's Old is New Again

If you are at all familiar with the Enneagram, it would surprise you, I think, very little to know that I am a solid 6. Sometimes I feel as though I have a 7 wing, sometimes a 5. but solidly, solidly a 6. The 6 is all about security, and preparation, and dealing with their anxiety in the best way they know how. I think that as a 6, I also have a quite strong propensity for nostalgia: of remembering former times in my life and, because I can look back on them and know them, feel like they are safe spaces. Who feels nostalgic for the year 2005?! Me, apparently. I have been reading old blog posts from Posie Gets Cozy (again), and thinking about the little boutiques that I would stop in and visit as a teenager, how much I loved monogrammed things. I’ve been going back to the last page of my Ravelry favorites and, in quick succession, finding myself purchasing someone’s stash of discontinued Debbie Bliss Chunky Tweed for a pattern that I have had saved for at least seven years in my queue. I have been listening to a lot of The Shins.

I find myself feeling very poetic about how things used to be which I have come to realize is a really dangerous and inaccurate space to live. We have come so far as a society, and we cannot go back, nor should we want to. We can’t glorify parts of the past without considering the world as a whole, and it is naive to think of the past as “better times” (better for who?). But even my recent yarn purchases have made me feel like it’s ok to remember when online crafts were a little more eclectic, and more things came in the mail, and the fanciest thing I knew to order at a coffee shop was a London Fog.

I think these feelings have also been influenced by our recent trip to Nashville. One of my dearest friends is having a baby any day now and B and I went for a visit for a few days to the place where we met, fell in love, went to college, and started our life together as a couple. You remember things differently, and you remember more, when you are in a place that you used to know so well. Oh, and our friends also introduced us to the Huji app, which makes everything you take a photo of look like it was from 1998. Amazing.

I’m not sure there’s really a point to this post other than just to say what kind of headspace I’ve been in recently, and how interestingly, it has made me so creatively inspired too. Between this mindset and my “lack of internet” breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, I have made incredible progress on two new designs, one of which I am going to be submitting for publication for sure, and the other we’ll see. But I’m really excited about both of them and for the inspiration that they’ve brought to my life, connecting my past and my present and sharing something absolutely cozy with you.

I have not forgotten about the Sunday Morning shawl, which I am hopeful will be on its way to being released in a few weeks. I’m also working out the kinks on my e-reader cover that I shared on IG last week and have had some interest in seeing written up as a pattern (this one will be free).

What happens when you get off the internet for 36 hours

Last Wednesday, we celebrated seven years of marriage, and this weekend we went on our first ever camping trip together. We have historically been huge fans of farm stays, having stayed in a converted Airstream, in cabins, in an 1800s farmhouse in Eastern NC, going to farm-to-table restaurants, but never have we fully committed to the great outdoors until now. (And, to no one’s surprise, this campsite was, you guessed it, on a farm.)

We set up camp after a normal person’s dinner time in the miraculous still-light evening that only comes this time of year during solstice when the world is bright at 8:30 PM and ate buffalo chicken sandwiches looking out over the most incredible pasture. We woke up and made coffee on a crooked little campfire and burned bagel sandwiches. We hammocked basically all day with a short break in town for lunch and texting our cat sitter. We napped. I slept terribly. We read, I knit. Our phones didn’t work at all - the entire weekend - except for our brief stop in town. We had downloaded music, and that was pretty much it. I knit and re-knit a sock using some hand-dyed yarn from Posie Gets Cozy that unfortunately for me and you is now sold out. I would absolutely love to make a sweater in this yarn.

I think that this may legitimately have been the first time in I don’t even know how long - five years? Ten years? Where I truly have not been on the internet at all for over 36 hours. Realizing this fact was extremely depressing and anxiety-provoking, but I think it’s true. I’ve never deleted Instagram off of my phone or taken a true, intentional break there, either since I downloaded it in 2012. Even when we have extensively gone to the mountains, our cabins always have WiFi. Being off the grid for even just a weekend was kind of a wild experience (no pun intended), and I can’t say that I am glad to be back quite yet. When I had no choice but to just be present, I suddenly felt so nostalgic for my years growing up when this was just my normal, every day reality. Sure, I was on the computer all of the time for school, or texting my friends on my pre-iPhone smart device thingy, but it made me realize just how caught up in it I am now in my life. We had some big talks about our dreams, and how we spend our time, and what we value, and there was no input or comparison from anyone else in the world to consider when we had those conversations. Is that pathetic? Sometimes I think I am too impressionable and social media just makes that so much worse. It kind of made me question why I make any of the choices that I do in my life: do I actually want and value that goal, or do I just follow a lot of people who want and value that goal? Do I actually want XYZ item in my life or am I just constantly getting ads for it on every social media platform I see? Am I actually stressed about big life decisions or am I just hearing a lot of ads on podcasts for Modern Fertility and Better Help?

Honestly, I’m not sure yet. But I know for a fact that getting off the internet and just knitting or just reading or just being feels like a whole new concept that I plan on doing a lot, a LOT more this summer. I’ve also been listening to music from back in high school on actual CDs (I know) and y’all, it has me all in my feelings.

In other, less philosophical news, I will be releasing a new shawl pattern SOON and I am so excited to share it with you. It’s so meditative and lovely and perfect for taking with you anywhere that adventure may call this season. More soon!

From the archives: First Rhinebeck

I’ve been blogging off and on since about 2012 on this website and others, and occasionally it’s fun for me to go back and re-read some of the posts I wrote when I was first getting really into knitting, spinning, and the world of fiber arts. I loved recently going through my old posts on Rhinebeck, which make me especially nostalgic since I have no real plans to travel much coming up this summer. You can read it too, by clicking here or searching “Rhinebeck” in the search bar to the right.

I hope wherever you are this Saturday you are taking it easy and connecting with those you love! Maybe, like me, you are also daydreaming about future travel and adventures, too.

Iceland Part 6: Wool from start to finish

On our last day together as a group, we started the day by prioritizing one of the most important things: pastries. We grabbed rolls with ham and cheese and massive sweet rolls before hitting the road back south by a new route. At a local gas station off route 1 we finally saw a large group of tourists after many days of feeling very uncrowded, and I bought a green juice, trying to make up for the dirth of vegetables I had consumed over the previous seven days. Seeing all of those other tourists somehow made me so grateful for our knowledgeable guide and all of the experience and perspective she brought to our journey.

Our first step of the day was the Textile Museum in Blondous about an hour's drive from the northern city we had spent the last few nights. The museum sits on the coast of the fjord and is directly adjacent to the first women's college in Iceland, and which now serves as the lodging and workspaces for visiting artists in residence for the Textile Museum. While small, the museum was richly detailed, and I was shocked that the staff encouraged us to put on gloves and handle some of the pieces in the museum directly, getting to handle the intricate lace shawls, mittens, and more that were on display. After hearing all week about lace patterns, traditional shapes, and the fine history of Icelandic handknitting it was so exciting to see it all in person. After studying and creating spider lace, eyelet patterning, eight-point flowers, and natural gradients, it was inspiring to see these elements throughout all of Iceland's knitting history. The mittens were some of my absolute favorites, and I look forward to recreating some someday for my own everyday use.

In Blondous, we also visited the first step in the process of wool becoming yarn. Istex, the company that produces 90% of all of Icelandic yarn in the country, operates different pieces of the process of making wool into yarn throughout the western regions in Iceland. Our first step on this journey was the intake of all of the raw wool that will transform over many stages, hours, and machines to be suitable for knitting. Giant bales of raw wool filled the processing center where the fleeces are sorted by color and grade, washed, scoured, and dried. Naturally-colored wool is becoming increasingly rare in Iceland, as Istex dyes all of its wool for its own specific colors and drives a demand in the market for predominantly white wool from farmers. Helene shared that she would love to expand the palette of naturally-colored wool in her own yarn lines someday and work to rebuild the market for it in Iceland.

Examining a lock ready to be washed for quality and grading

We waved from our window to Hotel Hrausnef and the elves that guard its entrance on our way to Borgarnes, about 40 minutes outside of Reykjavik. Here, we also got to have our first experience shopping for yarn in a grocery store and to say I was overwhelmed would probably be an understatement. :)

Never mind the odd looks from the locals :)

The epicenter of all yarn-making in Iceland is the Istex mill outside of Reykjavik, where freshly-washed wool becomes yarn in a hundred colors. The people who work here have so much knowledge and experience in yarnmaking and honing their process and craft. They were really generous to share it all with us and answer all of our questions.

Mountains of wool awaiting their turn to be carded & spun

The final step in the yarn's journey to become a finished object led us to Helene's own studio in a cozy neighborhood inside the city. A light-filled mid-century studio full of knitted garments and modern interpretations of Icelandic wool blew us all away and was so inspiring. Spending time there I also began to realize a sense of nostalgia in our group, knowing that this would be our last stop in our journey together before parting ways, back to our homes across the globe after a life-changing week. We lingered long, wanting to absorb everything, and not wanting it to all come to an end.

All good things do come to an end, however, and almost a year later I cannot believe that I had the chance to go on this amazing trip, to experience this journey in myself and within this beautiful group of women who believe in the magic of two sticks turning wool into something warm. I cannot say enough good things about Helene's knitting workshops and would be happy to share any more information about my experience traveling to Iceland or about this retreat specifically. Now that I am finally caught up on sharing about this amazing trip, I'm also excited to share about the yarn I brought home, and the garments I've been knitting with Icelandic wool. Coming soon!

Iceland: Part 5 (Up North, the Glaumbær Turf Farm & Spider Lace)

The next day, we continued our journey north. We drove on roads so elevated and narrow that in the wintertime, they become impassable, and we also learned about the unique sheep herding culture in Iceland. We passed a sheep pen which had many smaller pens inside of it, used annually by farmers. In Iceland, all of their sheep roam completely free throughout the spring and summer with no boundaries of a traditional farm, and come the fall farmers work together to round up every sheep in the countryside. Then, they meet to divide the sheep according to the farmers who keep them and ensure they stay safe for the winter. In the spring, they are shorn and released back out again to roam and grow another season.

We visited the Glaumbær Turf Farm, one of the last in Iceland of its kind, where the homestead was literally built into hills in the earth for insulation and protection, long hallways connecting rooms for every function a family would need throughout each season. Larders, kitchens, laundry rooms, sitting rooms, spinning rooms, everything was accessible through internal passageways that eliminated the need to let in the cold. I loved those yellow doors! It makes me want to paint my front door yellow, but I doubt I could pull it off as well. Everyone in the household slept in one big room in bunk-style beds which was also where much of the women’s work, spinning and knitting and braiding horse hair and all of the essential crafts occurred. On our visit, it was actually a special exhibition day where actors representing women’s traditional crafts and costumes from many different eras of Iceland’s history came together and demonstrated their skills, and how it might be like to all live and work together in one place at the farm. Seeing this unfold, I was once again amazed at the resilience, resourcefulness, and determination of the Icelandic people. Their relationship with wool was born of necessity, but grew beyond subsistence into artistry and love. It was bitterly cold by my estimation on this spring day and it gave me a whole new appreciation for their way of life.

Wearing my plotulopi sweater!

We ate lunch (salad sandwiches, pasta salad, yogurt, OJ) and finished our journey to Skagafjörður, a tiny, sweet town on the northern coast. We toured the only tannery in Iceland, if you can believe it, considering all of their sheep, and visited a local grocery store to peruse their YARN (something we were all in disbelief about) but alas! We arrived at around 3:50 PM and this grocery, in a tiny town at the top of the world, closed at 4 PM on Saturday for the whole weekend. Despite our collective disappointment, I had to smile. Sometimes it felt as though traveling in Iceland was like traveling back to a simpler time. Of course, everyone has internet, and modern amenities, they travel and go to school and do so many things like I do. But here, the grocery store closes at 4 PM for the weekend, so you better get your goods before then because this grocer is getting a Sunday off. I love that defiance to our culture of needing everything right now.

That evening, Helene introduced me to and made everyone laugh with her obsession with the Eurovision. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before! It was terribly awesome. The performances lasted at least 2 hours and we went to bed an hour into the judging, and they were maybe a third of the way through. Hilarious. She also demonstrated how she blocks her shawl designs and showed us an entire trunk full of various Icelandic designs and techniques for shawls. The shawls were all Icelandic in tradition but original in design, each with a unique variation and color story. Lots of undulating lace patterns, natural gradients, triangles, and lace borders.

The entire next day, we knit. Helene shared with us the basics of spider lace, a simple pattern to follow, and let us loose with a bag of yarn. I don’t think I’ve ever knit that long, with that fine of a yarn, and enjoyed it so much. Before I knew it, three hours had passed. All of us, sitting in an old church and knitting for hours. Quite reminiscent of the women we had seen crafting away at Glaumbær. We broke for lunch, coffee and to begin planning out the yarns we wanted to bring home for various projects to make sure we got them the next day (our last day), and then continued knitting until dinner. The result? By the end of the day I had made a tiny, traditional shawl, and Helene had taught me how to block the heck out of it as lace should be blocked (as in, I thought I had blocked it aggressively, but Helene saw my work, removed half of my pins and nearly doubled the size of my shawl).

One of the good, wonderful realizations that I had on this trip was that every one of us on this trip approached making in a unique way. I find it so easy to become enamored with the “things” you “need” to knit - the culture, the brands, the American way of having a special bag and a special tool for each thing. I love those things, and I love supporting makers who elevate my crafting experience. I think it’s worth it to invest in the things that make you happy. But this trip reminded me that sometimes, all you need is a cooking pot to block lace, that you can knit a baby sweater on old, straight, aluminum needles if you like, and that some knitters never use patterns. My roommate Kris was one of those, and during the week we spent together she wore a different sweater each day - completely unique, completely designed by her based on ideas that she had collected on a Pinterest board and which fit her perfectly. I don’t even think she used Ravelry. When you take away everything else, the one thing we all had in common was the act of knitting, looping wool over wool. How great is that?

Never been so proud of something so small

Iceland: Part 4 (Knitting workshops and plotulopi)

Our country hotel was my favorite place that we stayed the whole week. Right off of the main road leading north, it was flanked on both sides by wide, hilly fields and mountains that were obscured by clouds. Cows, pigs, sheep, ducks, and chickens had their homes near the cottages covered with mossy roofs and two hot tubs overlooking the river. Our first lesson, which took place in a room behind the restaurant, involved all of the varieties of Icelandic wool and how they are made: the plotulopi, lettlopi, alafoss lopi, einband and everything else that Iceland has to offer.

For centuries , all of the wool raised in Iceland was cleaned by hand, combed by hand, and handspun extremely fine lace. Today, it is nearly impossible to find that kind of yarn unless you spin it yourself, and so a few years ago Helene worked to develop her own lace-weight single-ply Icelandic wool in the old traditional way. A century ago, women rarely wore coats or jackets to stay warm like we might assume in modern times, but instead would layer wool shawl upon wool shawl, plenty long and tied in the back for warmth. And warmth, as you can imagine, was of the utmost importance to make it through incredibly long winters.

We spent the morning cozy inside with plenty of coffee, working with plotulopi, playing around with lacy eyelet designs, several cast-on and color-changing techniques, broke for lunch, and picked it all back up again. Mid-afternoon we stopped for coffee and waffles (a tradition I would very much like to keep up in my every day life) and then had some free time to explore.

I took a hike up the mountain which turned out to be much more of an adventure than I had bargained for. As I passed each animal’s pens following the river towards the mountains, I realized that the pigs were following me along the length of their fenced pen. “How fun!” I thought, “They’re taking a walk with me!” And fun it was, until I realized that at the end of the pen, some pigs had dug a trench under their fencing and decided that they WOULD in fact go on a walk with me! Not normally scared of animals and knowing that pigs were not known to be aggressive, I was nevertheless alone and several hundreds of pounds of pigs were headed in my direction and at a fast clip. I quickly diverted my direction back towards the farm, just in case I needed to call for assistance, and the pigs continued to follow me at a distance. I found a grassy ledge off the path with a small pebbled path running in front, and much to my relief the pigs decided to continue along their path and towards, I am sure, a favorite pasture. Crisis averted.

Some hiking, some journaling, some dinner, and of course a pre-bedtime dip in the hot tub, followed by a dip in the icy cold and clear river. And as if the day couldn’t get any better, I found out late that evening that I had a new niece waiting for me back in the States and I got to Skype with Lila Kate on the day she was born just outside the restaurant, overlooking the mountains. It’s a moment I will never forget.

How I loved you, country hotel!

Iceland: Part 3 (Borgarnes and sights along the way to Our Country Hotel)

The next morning, we were to meet Helene at 9 to get out of the city, and so the majority of us came down for breakfast around 8 AM. I met all of the ladies who would be journeying together: Brenda from the Netherlands, Pennie and Phillippa from the UK, Kris from Denmark, and Brigitte from France. I unknowingly outed myself as an American right away by eating an apple with peanut butter for breakfast (apparently a very American thing to do) and visited with everyone a little bit before collecting our things to load up!

Helene arrived in the most beautiful green cardigan and lacy shawl, exclaiming that she dressed for spring but couldn’t believe how hot it was (this was a theme of the week, apparently temperatures in the 50s in May were QUITE unusual for Iceland. We saw a few lupines on our drive that day and she was so surprised, she couldn’t believe it.) Our small crew loaded on a small tourist bus and began the drive towards Highway 1, which loops all the way around the country. As we drove, Helene told us all about the geologic history and answered a bunch of our questions about the history, culture, and agriculture of the country. A vast majority of the food that is eaten in the country is imported due to the harsh climate, but I was amazed at all that she shared about the ingenious ways that farmers have learned to cope with rocky soils, long winters, and an incredibly short growing season.

We were all, I think, taken aback by the views already. Whenever someone has asked me how I found Iceland since this trip, I always think of this moment on the first day when we drove out of Reykjavik. The plains, flat and grassy with almost no trees, giving away in a moment to towering, dark mountains whose peaks were completely obscured by the clouds. It made me think of God, and for a while I sat there in wonder at it all.

Of course, we were only just beginning. We stopped for our lunches, to be taken on the road, at a small cafe on the edge of Borgarnes and after travelling through the longest tunnel I think I have ever seen, which cuts across an enormous body of water and makes the journey just 45 minutes instead of 2.5 hours between the cities. The first day was a touring day, and we had a lot to see!

Our first stop after Borgarnes was to a farm owned by a lovely craftswoman named Rita, who had farmed all her life and spoke mostly Icelandic. She and her family raised sheep for many years and now focus mainly on dyeing and sheep-related crafts, including the making of buttons, needles, jewelry and tools out of Icelandic sheep horns. She had worked to source naturally-colored Icelandic fleeces beyond the traditional and easy-to-dye white in shades of fawn, chocolate, and even black. The purchases began. :) She also treated us to small glasses of bilberry juice, or wild blueberry juice, intensely sweet and delicious, while we spent some time on her homestead.

From Rita’s farm, we visited the country store and Wool Collective in the Borgarfjörður region. Composed entirely of individual artisans, makers, farmers, and dyers who directly benefit from the sales of their handcrafted wool goods, it was incredible, and a privilege to support. In an era of increasingly industrialized and outsourced souvenirs, I was very excited for the opportunity to directly support the people and crafts that made this country so special. A few naturally-dyed mini skeins made it into my shopping basket, each individually labeled with the person who dyed the wool, and the materials with which it was dyed. The region also boasts its own lopapeysa sweater completely original and representative of its culture which could only be purchased at the store. I love those little ducks!

After we had seen everything, and with promises of more treasures ahead, we drove to the home and studio of Gudrun Bjarnadóttir. Gudrun provided us with an in-depth history and look at her natural dye process to make her Hespa yarn. (This is a wonderful interview that Tolt Yarn & Wool did with Gudrun a few years ago.) A botany professor by trade, Gudrun began naturally dyeing Icelandic wool using traditional methods that combined all of her interests and passions. She taught us all about how she learned how to adapt traditional methods for a modern kitchen (subbing ammonia for sheep’s urine, for example) and her love of the craft. In her pots that day were yarns being dyed with Icelandic moss (actually a lichen), lupine leaves, rhubarb root and some non-native species that have a long history in Iceland including madder, indigo and cochineal.

Gudrun was so patient and attentive to our questions, and you could tell she has a real passion and a love for Iceland, its history, and her craft. She joined us for our bakery lunch of sandwiches with ham and hardboiled eggs (a new cuisine for me, but not for my European counterparts), fried “love balls” (donuts with raisins and cardamom) and an iced Danish. Her studio door opened up to more mountain views, chickens walking around contentedly, and a cool breeze. I could have stayed there forever. It was so special for me to see how deeply rooted natural dyeing is to the culture and history of Iceland and made my own experiences with natural dyes in my kitchen at home seem much more connected to a larger history and culture of extracting beauty from nature for our day-to-day lives.

In Iceland, one of the best and craziest things I figured out while traveling is how you can be on your way to some destination, and just so happen to be in the same vicinity as a waterfall fed by a northern glacier that was originally carved in its place by lava flows. (Is this real life?) So was the case with Husafell. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Our final stop for the day (as if the day had not already been one of the most incredible of my life) was at the Háafell goat farm. Goats, we would come to learn, have been largely persecuted and under-resourced in a country obsessed with sheep, almost to the point of Johanna. 16 years ago, Johanna made it her mission to save these animals and thanks to her incredible determination, a well-timed Indiegogo campaign and Game of Thrones, the goats survive to this day. In fact, a new baby goat had just been born a few hours before our arrival.

Just outside our lodging for the next few days, an incredible crater that we climbed to the top and where we squished our hands in the most lush moss you’ve ever seen.

Much earned at the end of our day, a beautiful meal in a restaurant where the sun never set and where we remarked on our exhilarating and exhausting day. The next day we would stay in our country hotel for the first day of our workshops!