June 1, 2008

Lucky me

Adam has me figured out - no question. We had several hours last weekend in Lyon to wander around in the city center and do a little shopping. Adam likes to plan these things out and had googled and mapped and researched and was ready to go. He was on the hunt for board games - Europe does amazing board games and we're developing quite the collection. Clever boy that he is, he'd also printed off a list of yarn shops and after lunch our first stop was La Droguerie.

It's an amazing shop with all manner of goodies. The ribbons and trim section was literally unlike anything I'd ever seen. As you might imagine, there was also yarn. The cashmere and linens were lovely and tempting but (as usual) I ended up with some good, plain wool.


It's lovely soft and the colour (picked by Adam) is really rich. There's 300 grams of it here, I'd guess between 600 and 700 meters at a light worsted weight. Sometime in the coming months it will become a scarf.

So, with me on the slight high of stash acquisition, Adam was able to spend the next several hours wandering amongst the game shops of Lyon in peace. It was a wonderful afternoon and a I am so fortunate to be with someone who not only understands my craft but encourages it.

On Sunday afternoon we visited the Lyon Textile Museum. Lyon was once the center of the silk trade in France and still supports a significant textile industry. The museum only had a few knitted pieces (including a pair of silk stockings knit at a gauge that I truly do not care to attempt - about15sts/in) but the collection is remarkable. Weavers in particular will be interested in the completely accurate scale models of looms showing changes in fabric making technology over the centuries.

The sock visits the musee tissus,
Lyon

The greenwood blanket did not make the trip to Lyon, but I've been hard at work on it since we returned and it is growing steadily. I set myself a goal number of rows per day and usually manage to achieve it. The pattern has a 36 row repeat so there's no way I'm going to memorize it, but now that I'm into the third repeat it is at least beginning to become intuitive to some degree.

I can hardly believe that it's already June (the weather certainly seems to be stuck in April) and that in less than a month we'll be making our way to Canada. Best get knitting.

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