New Year, New Post

Wow- I haven't posted for over a month. This promises to be short. I am excited about actually knitting through a lot of my stash thanks to my friend knitcrit's (her Ravelry name) Ravelry group LOTSAFOS10
- you have to be a member of Ravelry for the link to work. Some famous podcasters have joined! Cuteknitter, Missviolet - and I am sure there are others there. Some lists are very long - maybe folks who have lots of time, knit in their sleep, or have lots of UFO's that re less than 50% done and qualify for making the list. Actually I just counted 29 on my list. Whoa - that's more than 2 a month...
January is when I start thinking about my summer. Well, with the economic woes, I don't know what I'll be doing. Some ideas that range from possible to improbable are:

• UK Knit Camp at the University of Stirling in central Scotland during the second week of August: 9th August 2010 - 13th August 2010, with The Ravelry Weekend taking place on 13th- 14th August 2010. There's a trip to Shetland following this but I have to be at work by August 16th (academic schedule isn't flexible).
• rent a house on Cape Cod - Outer Cape - for a week
• the Golden Gate Fiber Institute Summer Intensive

Swell Season again!

I am late posting about the Swell Season/Frames concert at the 930 club in DC on november 9th. It was awesome - of course. But there are disadvantages to going to a standing (unseated) show. It's hard to see! I think there was an above average number of guys over 6 feet tall in the audience. Also, standing for over two hours gets old fast. Here's the set list from the show. Their encore included four songs! I knew they'd be doing High Horses as an encore cuz it wasn't in the show, and one of the best songs from the new album Strictly Joy. Another favorite is Low Rising - and the video seems to confirm my impression that this album is about the end of Glen and Marketa's relationship
Be sure to check out the video of Red Chord, the final song. Glen sings The Parting Glass as a moving tribute to Liam Clancy, the last of the Clancy Brothers, who passed away December 5th, 2009. Now that I have given up my subscription to the Irish Voice I miss out on this kind of news which doesn't reach mainstream media. Glen notes the pivotal role that the Clancy Brothers had in bringing Irish music to America (and he notes - of course it was here already). Irish traditional music in fact was kept alive in America when it was on the wane in Ireland. The years I lived in Boston there were a number of accomplished musicians who worked during the day as streetcar drivers, house painters, and at other blue collar jobs, and at night and on weekends played traditional music. Fiddler Larry Reynolds , brothers Paddy , Johnny, and Mick Cronin, and Joe Joyce. There were many nights when I sat in living rooms, VA halls, and other gathering spots listening to them play just for the joy of it. An era is ending.

Stitches on The Bridge (to the isle of Skye)

This summer I finished knitting a panel for the Stitches on The Bridge project for Highland Homecoming Scotland. I made my panel with 2 skeins of Kiparoo Farm Skye yarn (very appropriate) in a beautiful colorway of heathery purples, and greens. There are 2 shots of it on the top.
Here's a description of the project from their Ravelry page:

An invitation from Luib na Lùban (In Amongst the Stitches), a new textile art group in Skye and Lochalsh, to Scots, ex-pats, Scotophiles and anyone else to take part in an ambitious project to cover the Skye Bridge in knitting!The Skye Bridge links the Isle of Skye with the mainland in the West Highlands of Scotland.Our aim is to link this (rather large!) piece of guerrilla knitting with Highland Homecoming 2009, which celebrates Scotland’s great contribution to the world, in October 2009.

The panels were hung on the Skye bridge this past weekend of Oct. 24th-25th.
There are several links to videos on YouTube.
The best are: BBC and my favorite in Gaelic on BBC An La.

Sheep in New York : Rhinebeck!

I attended Rhinebeck for the first time last weekend with my friend Martha. The weather was challenging on the drive up (rain) and Sunday (light rain), but it was worth it! Rhinebeck is very awesome (can you say very awesome because awesome is a superlative already). I loved the opportunity to see vendors I'd never seen before at either Stitches East or Maryland Sheep and Wool, including: Black Rose Fibers, Hope Spinnery, Buckwheat Bridge Angoras, Decadent Fibers, Foxfire Fibers and familiar favorites from MSW Brooks Farm, Green Mountain Spinnery , Carolina Homespun and Spirit Trail. My new favorite yarns are cormo (expensive!) and yarns from small farmers - especially naturally dyed (plant dyes rather than acid dyes) and natural colors (brown sheep). I just took pictures of the yarn I got and put it on Ravelry this week. I bought yarn from Hope Spinnery (6 skeins), Decadent Fibers (1 handpainted skein of bulky), Carolina Homespun (Elemental Affects), Green Mountain Spinnery (Wonderfully Wooly), some alpaca, and another natural colored skein of something soft and wooly- have to find the name which I wrote down somewhere. My sister Christine drove over from NW Connecticut (under 2 hours) and I ran into my friend Rose from Texas, Mary Alice from MA (both friends from Golden Gate Fiber camp), Heather and Kate from (Red) Sox Knitters who came down in June for a Red Sox game, someone I know from work (totally random), and 2 friends from Maryland Cheryl and Monica (who was somewhere on the grounds but we didn't run into her). It's amazing to see so many people you know at such a big festival.

Book swap IRISH

In the summer of 2008, I met someone at a professional conference in Lake Como, Italy who turned me on to Paperback Book Swap. Recently I have focused on requesting books by Irish authors, or on Irish topics. Out of the 93 books I have received in the past 14 months, 36 are Irish-related. Check out the hyperlinks for more info on each title. The books I have gotten include literature, fiction, memoirs, poetry, mysteries, history, women's studies, and more.

Mysteries
1. Divorcing Jack Author: Colin Bateman
2. Stone of the Heart: An Inspector Matt Minogue Mystery Author: John Brady
3. Walking On Water Author: Gemma O'Connor
4. Whispers of the Dead (Sister Fidelma, Bk 15) Author: Peter Tremayne
5. The Marching Season Author: Daniel Silva

Non-Fiction
6. Border Crossings: Irish Women Writers and National Identities
7. There You Are: Writings on Irish and American Literature and History Author: Thomas Flanagan
8. Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972
Author: Peter Pringle, Philip Jacobson
9. Politics and Performance in Contemporary Northern Ireland
Author: John P. Harrington (Editor),
10. Wild Irish Women Author: Marian Broderick

Memoirs
11. Under the Eye of the Clock: The Life Story of Christopher Nolan
Author: Christopher Nolan
12. The Star Factory Author: Ciaran Carson
13. The Bend for Home Author: Dermot Healy

Literature
14. The Portable James Joyce
15. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation Author: Seamus Heaney

Poetry and Drama
16. The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry Ed: Edna Longley
17. Selected Poems 1966-1987 Author: Seamus Heaney
18. The Spirit Level : Poems Author: Seamus Heaney
19. Selected Poems of Louis Macneice
20. New selected poems Author: Les A Murray (not Irish, but an influence on the poet Sinéad Morrissey)
21. Modern Irish Drama (Norton Critical Editions) Author: John P. Harrington
22. Selected Poems (Cape Poetry) Author: Michael Longley
23. The New Poetry Author: Michael Hulse, David Kennedy, David Morley

Fiction
24. Nocturnes Author: John Connolly
25. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne Author: Brian Moore
26. A Son Called Gabriel Author: Damian McNicholl
27. The Thief of Time Author: John Boyne
28. Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas Author: Morgan Llywelyn
29. Titanic Town Author: Mary Costello
30. The South Author: Colm Toibin
31. For the Love of Ireland: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers
32. The Christmas Tree Author: Jennifer Johnston
33. Dislocation: Stories from a New Ireland
34. A Green and Mortal Sound Author: Louise DeSalvo
35. The Tea House on Mulberry Street Author: Sharon Owens
36. An Irish Country Doctor Author: Patrick Taylor

Emergency [room] knitting

Last Wednesday at 6 a.m. my son had to go to the Emergency Room. As he wasn't bleeding or in severe distress I did take time to grab my knitting before going out the door. It turned out he had a collapsed lung - which is not unheard of in young men (and for no reason). We were in the ER 9 and 1/2 hours before he was admitted. I have been doing plenty of knitting the past 5 days in the hospital including knitting this Turn a Square hat (Jared Flood's free pattern) from the Berroco Pure Merino and Berroco Pure Merino Chine I bought last Sunday at The Fiber Space in Alexandria VA with my friend Martha. I knit this up Friday night watching my Red Sox playing the team who shall not be named (there is another name they are commonly known by among Sox fans but I want to keep this clean) in New York.
I took these pics with my Blackberry so they aren't the best quality.

"The Troubles" for Tourists

Belfast is booming economically - reflected in the graffiti commentary on the wall above. Not only has it shed its gritty past as a grey, industrial city, but has been peacful for the past ten years since the Northern Ireland Peace Process culminated in the Good Friday Agreements . It is significant that the Northern Irish peace agreement occurred on Good Friday, as it is a day that many Christian churches - both Catholic and Protestant - throughout the world stage peace walks.

I made several visits to Belfast during the troubles in the mid-1970's and early 1980's, and was witness to the devastation of the Troubles. That is why I have mixed feelings about "Troubles" tourism. I didn't have an opportunity to take a Black taxi tour in Belfast, and some appear to focus on the famous murals.There has been a great deal of "disneyficaiton" of historical sites in the Republic of Ireland, and I worry that this is spreading to the North.


I also visited Derry a city I had only passed through in the 1970's. On that day, I only got a glance of the famous mural YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY, and quickly left town. The hostility to strangers was palpable (understandably so).
There are recently created murals in the Bogside, the Catholic area where the Bloody Sunday killings occurred, and the site of many battles between the British Army and locals. Catholics established Free Derry a self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area from 1969 and 1972.
The Bogside Artists , three artists, have created 12 murals in the neighborhood illustrating history of the troubles, and paying homage to peacemakers. While this is a tourist attraction, The Bogside Artists efforts do not come off as a commercial enterprise. I visited their gallery, and because it was a hour wait for a tour, and starting to rain, walked through the area on my own.

.