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| Woolnwords and Woolnski at our annual knit & fiber retreat! |
In June my dear fiber-friend from Unalakleet and I met up in Seattle for a fiber visit. Since "
woolnwords" has moved on from UNK (as it is locally known up north) we decided we would meet up every year some place to knit, explore yarn shops and 'fiber related things." I felt a bit like the Country Mouse (from Alaska/Montana) visiting the City Mouse (who grow up outside of Seattle and now lives in eastern Washington). The trip was wonderful!
City Mouse completely comfortable with city travel! I must say traveling by ferry is still one of my all time favorite ways to travel.
Leaving Seattle behind as we head out to Bainbridge Island.
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One of the first places we were off to was a nice outside cafe. This is one of those small pleasures one craves when you live in a rural, remote, Alaskan village. We had to go do this together as we were never able to treat ourselves to this type of a place in UNK.
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Do you see those orange boxes on the shelf in the distances? You may ask what is the big deal about those boxes? Those boxes are one of the many little things that makes our lives in the far north wonderful! Once a week in UNK we receive fresh box of produce from
Full Circle Farms. Here in the Seattle area they also make delivers. I can not tell you how wonderful it has been having fresh organic produce delivered to us in the village each week for over 5 years. Nor can I tell you enough how wonderful it is to work with Full Circle Farms! They are extremely professional and stand by their produces' quality.
Once coffee and baked goods were out of the way we were off to explore a wonderful
Bainbridge Island yarn shop. The
Churchmouse Yarns & Teas. Churchmouse is a wonderful shop full or colorful yarns and knowledgeable staff. They also have a classic collection or teas and accessories.
I am always looking for a yarn that represents the place I am visiting. Seattle and Bainbridge were full of flowers blooming their summer wardrobe. I purchased this pattern and yarn below. One has to agree the linen stitch has a wonderful way of showing off color with texture. This scarf is a nice knit even if one has to cast-on 450 stitches! Yes 450 stitches! I thought OMG no way! Casting on went smoothly and placing stitch markers every 50 stitches makes this process a breeze.
The yarn I am using is Koigu. I have never knitted with this yarn before but I am enjoying the wonderful rich color ways I picked. I truly feel like I am knitting a garden full of blossoms.
A few little tricks I am using to help keep the yarns organized are:
1. zip lock bags for the three different color ways
2. each bag is labeled with A, B, C to follow the pattern row labeling
3. the rows are on each bag as there is a six row repeat
Progress is being made on this scarf:
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Knitting away on the scarf on a recent forest service cabin camping, hiking, mountain bike trip, with knitting in between all the activity.
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The Next stop on our trip was to the
Nordic Heritage Museum. The reason for the visit was to see all things Nordic. We have wanted to visit the museum for years to see their knitted items. My words of advice if you are most interested in fiber and needle work is to start at the top of the museum. The top floor has a dedicated room to each Nordic country.
All photos were taken without flash. Below is the classic Norwegian National dress and Setesdal sweater. Not only are we fans of this style of sweater but we both love the stitching/embroidery that is incorporated in these sweaters.
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| Woolnwords working on her Setesdal style sweater on the Bainbridge Island Ferry. She always uses EZ's percentage system plus she is picking her own color work motifs from a variety of sources. |
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| What the heck a table---I am hoping to have my FIL build us a dinning room table along these lines. |
