Twice Knit

Every time we headed out in the car in Scotland, I was armed with a list of knitting stores in our destination city. And I never made it to a single one.

One day on our way to Glasgow, however, we got sidetracked in Stirling. It’s a very old and adorable little city. (This is the site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Might sound familiar if you’re a Braveheart fan.) After a surprisingly good lunch at a Chinese buffet (I know, I know, but all food in Scottish restaurants is the same; you can only have steak pie so many times), we walked out of the restaurant and saw this across the street:

A yarn store!

It turned out to be a rather good one, too. It was stuffed full of all kinds of yarny fun. Mostly British yarns, not surprisingly, but a ton of them. The shop is spread out over two levels and had everything from cotton to novelty yarn to wool (their website gives a pretty good overview). The yarn store is adjacent to a haberdashery that carries everything from buttons to fabric to school uniforms.

The shop is right on the town’s High Street and is well worth a visit. I didn’t actually buy anything (stupid exchange rate, though I didn’t come home completely emptyhanded, more on that later), but the people were nice nonetheless.

Once you’ve finished browsing for yarn, Stirling also boasts a fabulous castle, perhaps even better than the one in Edinburgh. A definite must-see, should you ever be in the area.

And then they have this weird pyramid monument thing in the graveyard next door. Not sure what the deal with it was.

Yarn and a castle. What more could a tourist want?

Before heading to Scotland, I faithfully checked the weather forecast to make sure I’d be dressing for the right season. Yeah, that didn’t work. The predicted temperates turned out to be 10 degrees F too high–as in low 50s, rather than upper 60s–which makes a pretty significant difference. Layering came in very handy. That’s not to say this wasn’t my warmest trip to Scotland yet, but I was expecting something closer to at least late Spring in my neck of the woods, rather than what we get in about early March. A chilly March. Where it rains constantly.

The rain wasn’t new, but the sky did some far more dramatic things this time.

Growing up in Oklahoma, a cloud like that meant tornado. In Scotland, it just means your daily afternoon dose of water from the sky.

Actually, though, it’s a miracle that Scotland isn’t freezing year round. Take a look at the UK on a world map. I suspect that you’ll discover it’s much farther to the north than you previously realized. Now take a look at Scotland’s neighbors. The country is on the same latitude as Newfoundland, for crying out loud. The gulf stream is a wonderful thing.

The country’s placement so far up on the globe also makes for very long days. During the winter, it was pitch black by 3:00 in the afternoon. This time, it was still full daylight at

That would be 9:57 PM, taken without a flash. Well, it was 9:57 on my watch. I included W’s watch with its display in 24 hour time just to prove that it wasn’t 10 in the morning. Clearly, our watches needed to be synched. The flip side of this is that the sun comes up really, really early. And this is nothing. Further up into northern Scotland, it never really truly gets dark during the summer.

And yes, I’m wearing a jacket. Very nearly a coat. Long days, cool weather. It’s not a bad tradeoff.

I’m back with many, many Scotland posts percolating in my head. I even have yarn-related fun to share. The trip was wonderful, as usual. However, I first have to take care of laundry, groceries, and the like.

In the meantime, here are a series of fabulous signs from the harbor in the little town of Arbroath.

A succinctly compelling reason not to feed the birds.

I like how the person appears to be contemplating the jump. They’re even leaning into it. I’m more afraid of that wavy water.

I like this approach to the problem.

Something very bad had to happen to get the car to this point. Notice how the water apparently isn’t so deep when you’re in a car.

I was happy to see this amazing property of car/water interaction, as we had a car this time and spent much of our time driving on narrow, windy, roads along various coasts. Thankfully, we never had to test the car’s ability to float. Much more on that to come.

I finally finished the gloves. Good thing, because they are going with me to Scotland at the end of the week. They were made by request for a friend there.

• pattern: Knucks
  
• yarn: Karabella Aurora 8 (1 skein!)
• needles: US size 4

True to form, I made them exactly according to the pattern, didn’t like the end result, tore back all the way to the fingers, and remade them. The problem was that the palm was too long on the original version. I ran into the same problem when I made the same pattern for W a few years ago, but I couldn’t remember how I had modified the pattern.

This time around, I ended up taking out 5 rows on the palm. This made them fit much better. As a bonus, it also allowed me to get both out of only one ball of yarn. I tried to do the textured cuff, but it ended up being waaay too tight. Instead of the k1p1 rib in the pattern–which I used on W’s pair–I used a k2p2 rib on the red pair. I’m not a big fan of k1p1 rib. It always ends up looking messy. The k2p2 version looks much neater.

I also managed another finished object of sorts this last week. I present zucchini cupcakes.

I ended up with a bunch of leftover zucchini and was looking for something besides zucchini bread to do with it. I came across a recipe for zucchini cake in a cookbook–carrot cake, but with zucchini. This had never occurred to me, so I decided to try it. I added a cream cheese frosting and took them to a baby shower last week. They were a hit. I finally gave away Elijah at the shower, and everyone oohed and aahed over him. It’s been over a week, and people are still talking about him.

I’m heading to Scotland on Thursday, so you may not hear from me for a couple weeks. This will be my last trip before W comes home at the end of the summer, but rest assured, there will be many Scotland posts to come.

My current project wanted to give you a wave.

Also known as “Glove Growing Out of the Table.”

*If this doesn’t make any sense.

Pretty much all I have to show for knitting lately…

No, I’m not dead. I’m on the other side, you know, where the grass is greener. More specifically, I’m behind one of those frosted glass doors in the airport that blocks your view of the nice, quiet wildly overpriced frequent flier club things.

Well, I’m not right now, but I was Sunday.

W and I are both low-level elite frequent flier people (on different airlines, naturally, since we never seem to go anywhere together). I’ve always wanted to be one of these people. I imagined that it meant that you got to travel all the time to exotic locations and were very glamorous and had all sorts of cool adventures. I still have a couple more rungs of frequent flier-dom to aspire to, but I can say with some conviction that getting to this level usually means that you’ve made lots of trips to decidedly not exotic places and the adventures more often are based on cursing rental cars than doing anything that would impress anybody. And it’s not even possible to be glamorous in airports or airplanes anymore, not unless you’re in first class, which I have been lucky enough to score exactly once. On a flight from Dallas to Tulsa. Which is 30 minutes long. The main perk was that I got my water before everybody else in coach. Then I couldn’t figure out how to get my tray table out to put it on. First class on international flights is a whole different story and totally worth it if you can get someone else to pay for it, in my opinion. But why on earth would you pay for first class on a domestic flight? So not worth it.

Being elite frequent anything also turns out to be very underwhelming. A couple years ago, W and I were sent to Texas for 6 months. That time we got to go together. We opted to live in a Residence Inn rather than a corporate apartment almost solely for the rewards points. So what does the point accumulation from 6 months get you? About two free nights, three in a cheap location. Seriously? Same with the rental car. Guess what you get when you have a rental for six months? A free weekend.

We are, however, now the highest possible platinum level frequent customer person you can be for them both. I was very excited about this. It turns out not to get you much, except occasional fruit baskets and people who are very nice to you when you check in. The one time we actually managed to stay somewhere that had a concierge floor, the special access lounge thing that we were finally special enough to get access to was closed the whole time. Figures.

So back to the airport. I’m not special enough with my airline to normally get access to their club. But in their continuing effort to wring more money out of anything possible, they’ve started pretty aggressively trying to convince even us low-level people that we desperately want to give up tens of thousands of frequent flier miles to get a membership. Not going to happen. In the last round, however, they sent me a free one-day pass. I was terribly excited about this. I was almost willing to buy a ticket to travel before it expires at the end of June just so I could use it.

Thankfully, I already had plans to fly to Dallas this past weekend. I was determined to use this thing for all it was worth. I encouraged my parents to drop me off at the airport very, very early so I could get some real use out of the place. It was…okay. Very quiet. Very comfortable. Got some free drinks and snacks. Would I pay for the privilege? Absolutely not. Waiting is still just waiting, no matter where you are.

It’s official. The worst parts of the 80s are coming back to haunt us. I’ve noticed an unfortunate 80s influence on knitting patterns lately. 80s fashion seems to be in stores everywhere. A mainstream fashion magazine gushed this month about jellies. You know, the horrible plastic shoes that we wore during the summer against our better judgment. They’re apparently more comfortable now and somehow not as hideous, but whatever. They’re jellies.

Then I saw that the New Kids on the Block are back. And touring.

This is irrefutable proof that 1) only the worst parts of past decades come back and 2) I’m old. Like any self-respecting junior high schooler, I loved the New Kids on their first round. When they came in concert, I not only went with a whole troupe of similarly besotted junior high school girls (and our mothers who bravely stuck it our through not one, but two concerts), we stalked them at their hotel. (Oddly, we were all wearing hats. Not baseball caps, actual fedora-like things. We thought we were very stylish. I have no idea why. Clearly, our fashion choices weren’t too great either.) We were wildly envious when one of our friends caught a piece of Danny’s shirt that he threw out to the crowd. (It was sweaty and smelly and really quite gross, but that just made it more authentic.) And then we grew up.

Somehow the fact that their first comeback attempt failed–while I was still in high school–seems to have no bearing on their ability to make another go at it. (I no longer worshiped them at that point. I did have a certain college roommate who went to one, though–you know who you are!) I have a hard time believing that it will work this time around, but who knows. Duran Duran was also here in concert last week. I find it all sort of creepy.

If those weird little plastic things that we used to use to create a side tail thing with t-shirts come back (what do you call those? anybody know what I’m talking about?), it will definitely be a sign of the impending end of civilization as we know it.

I’ve been on a bit of a bread-making binge lately. This is partly because I’ve been going a little crazy with fruit purchases and have to find creative ways to use far more fruit than a single person can consume in a month, much less the time it takes fruit to go bad. Hence, I imprison it in bread that can be frozen, thus extending its life.

I then found myself with a bit too much taco meat. Bread to the rescue! I decided to make empanadas. Only problem–I didn’t have any pizza dough. At this point, sane people would either 1) decide to make something else or 2) drop by the grocery store next time they were out and buy some Pillsbury dough. But you already know that sanity is not my strong suit. So what do I do? I decide to make my own pizza dough.

Conveniently, I have three recipes for pizza dough. I settle on one and whip it up Monday night. It turns out to be quite easy. After letting it rise, I divide it into four balls and freeze three. One goes in the refrigerator for dinner last night. I follow the recipe’s instructions for preparing the dough, wrapping it in a couple layers of saran wrap.

This is what greets me this morning when I open the refrigerator to get the milk:

Mutant pizza dough attempting to escape. Apparently it kept rising. This thing was encased in a couple layers of saran wrap, meaning it burst through multiple layers of plastic. That’s some impressive force. When I picked it up, it felt like it was going to explode, it was under so much pressure. I’ve never refrigerated yeast dough before. Turns out the saran wrap wasn’t such a good idea for the refrigerator. Worked like a charm in the freezer, though.

Once I stopped shuddering and removed the weirdly alien protrusions, I made my empanadas. They were quite good. I had to make them last night, no matter what. I don’t think I would have been able to sleep if the freakish dough had remained there. I would have been afraid it would attack me in my sleep.

The baby shower got postponed (that’s the problem with surprise showers: sometimes the organizer neglects to make the event something the honoree can’t cancel and the person makes other plans) and the remaining yarn for Sheldon finally arrived. So now Elijah has a friend.

• pattern: Sheldon
• yarn: Knit Picks Shine Sport
• needles: US 3 and US 4

I’m not sure which I like better. Sheldon was a really fun pattern, particularly when you got to the assembly of the shell part. He looks far more complicated than he really is. And he’s so cute! As annoyed as I am with Knit Picks, the yarn was perfect.

Two more Sheldons to go!