Camping trip

No knitting today, sorry. I thought that I’d share some photos from my camping trip, instead! (I did knit a lot while I was camping…)

Some time ago, I found out that there is a 17 mile hike-and-bike trail linking the 4 Spanish missions in San Antonio. Since we were planning to camp relatively close to SA, I took my bike along and did the bike trail.

Now, I grew up in Ohio. I know a lot about Ohio history. Texas history, not so much. I knew about the battle of the Alamo, of course - that is well into mainstream American history. What I did not learn until much later was that the Alamo was one of 5 missions built in what is now San Antonio by Franciscans during the Spanish colonial period, in the 18th century. While the Alamo is now a shrine and tourist attraction (with an amazing garden!) the other 4 missions are active Catholic parishes. They are also part of the National Park System, which runs several visitor centers and provides historical interpretation.

The bike path linking the missions is very nice. I did not have to deal with any stoplights or traffic - a big change from my normal cycling here in Austin!

The first mission that I visited was the Mission San José. This mission has been extensively reconstructed, including the wall running around the grounds which enclose several acres of green space. Many of the converts who came to live at the mission lived in homes that were a part of the outside walls.

 

 

 

 

 

On the way to my second stop, I passed by the Espada Dam, which was constructed around the same time as the missions as part of the local aqueduct system. It was impressive to note that even though we are in a drought period and many of the water tables, lakes and streams are low, the aqueduct was full to the brim! I saw several cranes out fishing along parts of  the dam and aqueduct.

 

 

 

My second stop was at the Mission San Francisco de la Espada. This photograph is deceptive, because from the outside, it looks like the church is partially in ruin. It is in fact still an active church with a lovely interior. I saw an awesome container garden in back of the residence - there were hundreds of plants!

 

Stop three was the Mission San Juan Capistrano.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My last stop was at the mission Concepción. They also have a very nice prayer garden out front.

After riding 17 miles in the wind and the heat, I decided to skip going up to the Alamo (which I’ve already seen several times) and head for our campsite. Because of the drought, there is a ban on campfires, so I took along a little charcoal grill to cook with. After supper, I took everything containing food back to the car. I did not, however, take the bag of charcoal - I closed it up and left it under the picnic table. No animal was going to invade our camp for the charcoal, right?

Well, in the middle of the night, I started hearing thumping and crunching sounds. I stuck my flashlight out of the tent door to look around, and saw a raccoon sitting on the picnic table. He was munching on a lump of charcoal with one hand and rummaging around for more with his other! Raccoons eat charcoal. Who would have thunk it? 

Roped Shell

This is the Roped Shell, by Angela Hahn, out of the Summer 2008 issue of Interweave Knits. (If it looks familiar, it’s because this is the pattern from the cover photo.) Some of her patterns are really cute - it might not be long before I do another!

I knit this with 2 skeins of Claudia’s Handpainted 100% linen, which is the green yarn, and 1 skein of Louet Sales Euroflax, which is the blue. I have a lot of linen in my summer wardrobe already, so I was happy to add another piece! Linen is so great for the climate here; I can wear it for at least 8 months out of the year.

The pattern was straightforward and easy enough. The colorwork uses a technique called “slip-stitch” or “mosaic” knitting. Basically, you do a round with one color, and then do the next round with the other color. If you want the color that you are working with to show, you knit that stitch. If you want the other color to show, you slip the stitch you are working. It makes for a really neat effect; it’s hard to see in the photo, but the pattern is charted and knit as a square, but the slipped stitched stress the fabric such that they turn into little hexagons!

I should have added some more waist shaping; the pattern shaping only draws the waist in an inch or so, while my actual waist goes in about 7 or 8 inches. Still, it looks nice. I did add a loop and snap to each shoulder, to help hide my bra strap. I might still add a second set of loops to keep them more secure.

The linen yarn is quite slippery, so I used bamboo needles for this project. I normally use metal needles for everything, but the bamboo is “stickier” and doesn’t let the yarn slide around quite so much, making a slippery yarn such as linen much more manageable. This is the second sweater I’ve knit using size 2 needles. For such a fine gauge, it went by quite quickly.

You can see in the bottom of this photo that I’ve started my garden up again. I have lots of deep shade, so I picked out 7 different kinds of caladiums, along with a few other things. I’ll post some garden photos soon. In the meantime, let’s hope that the caladiums work out!

Summer

We’re pretty much into what I would call summer here. The current temperature is 96, thankfully not too humid. I took a photo this morning while out on my bike ride of some wildflowers, at the top of the trail that cuts from Shoal Creek Boulevard to the Far West/MoPac bridge. From the photo you wouldn’t think this was a densely populated area at all!

The linen shell that I cast on last week is progressing well. I’ve always heard lots of complaints about how hard linen is on the hands, but I’m doing OK with it. This could be because my hands are already well accustomed to working with fine gauges, or because I tend to get bored and switch off between projects frequently, but I haven’t had any trouble with it. My swatch has been getting the usual swatch treatment: I like to throw my swatches into the bottom of my bag and let them rattle around for a few days to see how the finished garment will hold up. It felt a bit stiff at first, even after laundering, but no different than how my other linen garments feel after being line-dried. Now, after a week of being buffeted around, it has developed that classic, much-beloved drape and hand that linen is so famous for. Good stuff.

As you can see, I swatched with the pattern colors one way, and then switched their placements in the pattern. I had a hard time choosing which was to knit the garment; as you can see, I decided to stick with green for the main color and blue for the contrast. Maybe I should have done it the other way? I doubt I’ll ever know.

I’m still having fun riding all around town. Last week I went to Spec’s to get a bottle of wine for the potpie we made this weekend, and found yet another bike rack that was obviously constructed without thought to how a ladies’ bike frame should fit. You can see from the photo (which is a bit out of focus because I forgot that my cell phone camera doesn’t have macro capability) how the designer thought the bike should fit on the rack:

I’m not real sure why the rear wheel is supposed to be suspended like that. It would make it easier to do certain types of maintenance work, but I don’t really plan to oil my chain out in front of the liquor store or JoAnn’s anytime soon, y’know?

Fortunately, securing my bike to this type of rack isn’t so problematic as the swing-arm rack at Costco was.

(In answer to the question, “Whatever could you buy at Costco that you could take home on a bike?” my answer is: prescriptions! They have a good pharmacy. You don’t even need to be a member to use the pharmacy there, and it’s cheap.)

One last photo, just to laugh at the whole “pedestrian and bicycle friendly environment” the developers are supposed to be creating in the Gateway/Arbor Walk/Domain area:

Gotta love the wheelchair-accessible highway access road! Um, could I get a sidewalk to go with that?

Knots and locks

While my husband meditates on his prospective sweater swatches and the meaning of the question, “Which do you prefer?” I’ve cast on the Roped Shell from the Summer 08 issue of Interweave Knits.

The navy blue yarn is Louet Euroflax in sport weight. The green yarn is Claudia’s Handpainted 100% linen. These are produced from the same base yarn, which is spun by Louet (this means that Claudia’s buys the yarn from them, and they dyes it to their colors, which are superb).

I haven’t worked with linen before. It almost feels waxy - like a giant strand of dental floss, with about at much stretch. Right now I’m switching back and forth between this and another project using Jaggerspun Zephyr, which is a 50/50 silk and wool blend. The Zephyr feels spongy by contrast! The linen yarn is 4 ply. I took a waste bit, separated out the plies, and tried unsuccessfully to break a single ply with my hands. Strong stuff. My swatch, however, washed up great. It looks fabulous and handles like all of the rest of the linen in my closet… which is not a small amount of linen. Good stuff, linen.

I’m totally happy with the Louet skein. The skein from Claudia’s, however, has some problems. It was skeined and tied very poorly, which meant that I had a difficult time winding it into a ball. Then, less than 10 yards into the skein, I found 3 knots! I can understand 1 knot… sometimes… but not in a premium yarn. Given what I paid for this yarn, I think that it is totally reasonable to take issue with this many knots. The markup on the yarn is almost 2x what the Louet-brand is selling for, but the quality is not as high. I really like the color, and I’m far enough into the project that I’ll just deal with it, but it might be a while before I buy anything from Claudia’s again.

(Yes, I did email the company. No, I haven’t heard anything back. I don’t really want a replacement, but an apology and/or a partial refund would be nice.)

I’m still having fun bicycling all over Austin. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many bike racks there are in town, especially at places like Costco. However, the racks at Costco leave a little something to be desired - namely, the ability to lock my bike to them! This type of lock has an arm that swings away from the rack. The arm has three spikes that are meant to go through the front wheel, the frame, and the back wheel, thus securing the most easily-stolen components in one fell swoop. You then use your own padlock to lock the swing arm in place. Nice idea. I can tell you, however, that a man thought this up.

How do I know that it was a man and not a woman who designed this thing? Because it won’t hold a woman’s bike! The swing arm won’t go through my frame at any angle. As you can see, I had to lock up with a cable lock - I can’t use my good U-bolt lock on this one when the swing arm isn’t fully engaged. Since my bike was still there when I got back, I suppose it’s the though that counts (and I am appreciative that they put in racks at all!). If anyone has any tips for securing a ladies’ bicycle to this style rack, I’d love to hear them.

Enough complaining for today. I’m going to take a nap.

Swatching

I have an odd fondness for swatching. It’s so much fun, when I am nearing the end of one project, to pull out the yarn for my next project and get just a little taste of what knitting with it will be like. It’s always a great time to try new stitches, try using my needles and tools in different ways, and continue my constant experimentation with directional decreases.

Most of my knitting friends seem to dislike knitting swatches. I can’t count how many times someone has asked either myself or a group of knitters at large for advice on a garment, but when asked, “How did your swatch come out,” she confessed to not knitting one. Although I can understand, in an academic sense, how they are excited and impatient to cast on the actual project, I don’t really “get” it.

(It’s like stashing - something else that I neither enjoy nor really comprehend. Having extra yarn at home feels to me like having homework left undone: it hangs over my head and makes me feel guilty and lazy. Yet many of my fellow knitters cheerfully discuss and constantly add to their stashes, using phrases like, “She who dies with the most yarn, wins!” One of them is even gleefully using a random number generator to select new projects from her stash. Whereas I attempt - and sometimes fail - to have yarn on hand for my next round of projects. Maybe I’m in the wrong hobby.)

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I knit up a swatch for my next Fair Isle project, a pullover for my husband. We picked out the colors while on a trip to Wisconsin, where they actually stock yarns suitable for Fair Isle, and had the yarn shipped to our house.

As is usual with Fair Isle, the colors didn’t quite do what I expected, so I put the yarn back into its box and thought about it for a while. Yesterday I pulled it all back out and played around some more.

I always think that it is neat to see how mixing up the colors can totally change what I see in a pattern. These are two of the better swatches. I suspect that I’ll be knitting the sweater with the colors from the bottom swatch. I like how the top swatch showcases the motif, but I can’t see putting that much yellow on Jim!