I’m on the bus headed for Logan Airport, surfing the net – WiFi on the bus! This makes me feel giddy and all space-age, like Judy Jetson. I’m off on my Shetland-Scotland adventure and realize I haven’t posted enough about Peru.

I share surfing in Huanchaco. Every evening around sunset you can watch fishermen surf to the shore in their reed boats. While here at this beach resort, it may be a bit of a show for tourists, when my husband was on his rugged surfing adventure, he met fishermen who still use these boats for fishing, with plentiful catches. You can see by the bas relief above, they’ve been at it a loooooong time.

Notice the diamond “net” pattern on the left…found frequently in knitting stitch patterns.

When I hear that Ellen is having an event at her perfect yarn shop, Purl Diva in Brunswick, Maine, I drop everything. Despite my current hectic schedule, I grabbed my friend Jane, hopped in the car and zipped on down. This time there was a convergence of designers and knitters, all of us fans of the designing duo behind the great new book New England Knits: Timeless Knitwear with a Modern Twist, Cecily Glowik MacDonald and Melissa LaBarre. What fun to meet them, admire and even try on some of the great garments from their book. So many beautiful knits! I was dying over the Chelsea Skirt with secret lace trim and almost hoping for cold weather when I tried on the comforting and cute Portland Mittens.

A further bonus was meeting Carrie Bostick Hoge, talented designer, photographer and one of the geniuses behind the fabulous new yarn company Quince & Co. Suffice to say much gushing ensued.

I can’t wait to meet up with them again.

If Cecily and Melissa  come to your neck of the woods for a book signing, be sure and give them a visit.

I’ve been wild, with plans to head to Scotland on Friday, first stop Shetland! Yay! Dream come true on the way!

What shall we call this sock I designed especially for my favorite local fiber event? I was thinking of the clear starry skies of a warm Maine evening and rosa rugosa which blooms by the sea; inspired by the gorgeous environs of Searsport Shores, a fantastic old fashioned campground on Penobscot Bay which is the setting for Fiber College.

I’m teaching this sock in my Fair Isle Sock class, we’ll tackle corrugated ribbing, working with two colors on double pointed needles, and an afterthought heel. I’ll also teach the rudiments of Fair Isle sock design, so students are free to design their own! The kind and generous folks at Knit Picks have donated all of the seven beautiful colors of Palette Yarn for each student’s sock kit. Wowee!

The raspberries are going wild this year, daring one to pass without a taste!

Fiber College

Thursday September 9th- Sunday September 12

Searsport, Maine

http://www.fibercollege.org/

Be sure to read the lively Fiber College Blog to learn more about this fun event.

I’m also teaching Styling Your Knits for Photography. Learn more on my Classes page.

Hooray! I’ve been asked to step in for the much adored Franklin Habit, to cover his photography courses and a class on Elizabeth Zimmerman’s beloved Tomten Jacket. Although I can’t possibly take the place of Franklin, I am thrilled to be teaching at this event. My own photography class will be tweaked to include the points that Franklin promised to cover. As for the Tomten Jacket, at one point in my life I had it memorized! I’d just take off and knit it for my kids. I’ve been asking around to see if any of my nieces or nephews still have any hand-me-down versions hidden in the back of their closets, sadly the ones put I put away for posterity were lost when our house burned down. I’m working up a new version, with a fun Andean Checkerboard edging.

Above are the results of this mornings shoot with my ten-minute light box…really, ten minutes start to finish!

UK Knit Camp

Monday 9th August 2010 – Friday 13th August 2010.

Ravelry Weekend

Friday 13th August 2010 – Saturday 14th August 2010.

Sterling, Scotland

We had an impromptu photoshoot yesterday when my daughter showed up with four gorgeous friends.

At “magic hour” my husband zipped the girls, my friend Jane and Sophie’s boyfriend across the bay to an island bathed in summer light. While the men hunted and gathered, the girls set up our kitchen, wearing various newly designed knitted objects, while I took photographs and Jane recorded the shoot on her cell phone. I got some keepers, and Jane captured the cute picture above.

The girls, hailing from Nashville, Montreal, Hungary and Australia, had a glorious time, the first visit to a Maine Island for 3 of them.

We feasted on steamers, our in –a pinch specialty–clam rake chicken, roasted potatoes, beets and turnips, and a salad from Sophie’s garden, with raspberry pie for dessert.

When it was time to leave we discovered our boat aground due to our having too much fun plus an exceptionally low tide.

No fear! Thigh deep in water after much struggle, we 7 women pushed it off!

Happy summer day!

I’ll be teaching “Style Your Knits for Photography” this fall at Fiber College in nearby Searsport, a fantastically beautiful location right on the water.

I’m also teaching a Fair Isle Sock class, pictures of the sock designed especially for this class coming soon!

More details on my “Classes” page.

Blue skies and lupines.

Blue water and sailboats. Hmmm, should have a picture of some actually sailing.

Happy Weekend!

I’ve been practicing my newly learned skills. On the left is the beginnings of a intarsia colorwork hat made with a corded join. We’re viewing it from the public side. It is actually made by purling from the inside. There are practical reasons for this, working from the “wrong side”  it is easier to control all the little bobbins, and make sure they are properly twisted when encountering a new color. It is also easier to wrap every stitch if you’re obsessed enough to desire this elegant interior. I vacillate between making everything super tidy and amazing with every stitch twisted, to the slightly quicker stranding, which is pretty in its own way.

On the right we see a some grutas, or lumps….like you’d find in your oatmeal…only these will be soon be found adorning a sweet and cheerful baby hat.  I’m making strands of grutas, a fairly new development in gruta technique. What at first seems tedious, quickly becomes habit forming. Practice at your niece’s soccer game, and you’ll be surprised how quickly your ribbons of grutas grow!

…now that I wrote that, maybe they were called grumitas, which I have written in my chicken-scratch notes in another place. When I look up in Google translator, I find bultitos for little lumps…any one out there know? In Quechua or Spanish?

Update!

reader Trudy says:

“I just looked up in my big Spanish dictionary – gruta is a “cavern or grotto”, grumo is translated as “lump” – as in a lump in sauce, or a clot 9(of blood), or cluster or bunch (of grapes). So I think it might be grumo – and the diminutive would be grumito(s)”

So you Spanish speakers and Andean textile experts can have a laugh on me…taking about making stranded grottos…which sounds kind of nice, really, like the hotsprings outside of San Miguel de Allende, that are linked pools from deep and cold following streams to warmer, all the way up to the final hot pool that is ….yes!…in a grotto. La Gruta…that must have been the source of my mistake.

Extra! I found I noted down “kurpa” when Phetra from Pitumarca was teaching me the knitted in variety…

Extra! Extra! Cindy found the translation for “kurpa”

ta da!

I’m test-driving a workshop in these techniques this week in Boston.

I’ll also be informally demonstrating grutas at the Maine Fiber Arts booth at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens at this weekends Garden Fair: The Maine Gardeners and Artisan’s Festival. The festival will feature garden luminaries Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, woo hoo! I’ll be there Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

Costal Maine Botanical Gardens

132 Botanical Garden Drive, Boothbay, Maine