I've mentioned that I my next knitting project involves stranded knitting - that's something that has intrigued me for a while now, but I hadn't had a project for it. Until now. There is something that, design-wise, looks like a lot of fun to me; there is suitable yarn for what the final product is intended for, and there's a good reason to knit it. So.

The thing about stranded knitting is that you have two colours in one row, and they are used more or less alternatingly, so to work efficiently (which, we all know, is something that I tend to be rather obsessed about) you have to hold both yarns at the same time. In a way that makes each one easily available for knitting... and the nicest and most efficient way to do that, it seems, is to hold one yarn in the left hand and one in the right. Which means that you are knitting both Continental style (which is my usual style), picking the yarn from the left hand with the right needle, and English style (which I had not done yet), throwing the yarn on the right hand around the right needle tip.

This was... awkward. It still is, though I am getting better at it. I had the knit stitches sort of mostly down when the first purl row started, though, and it was awkward times eleven again. Which I found vastly, vastly enjoyable in some weird sort of way - the joy of learning something new, and with this, looking at the old things you are doing in a new way. It's a whole new finger dance to get into muscle memory (preferably in a way that is ergonomical and, yes there we are again, efficient right from the start). Since knitting is one of my non-work-related textile techniques (and for me counts as hobby only, even though there are a few slight digressions into work-related spaces), I have all the time in the world to learn this, and I can stumble and fumble as much as I want to, which is somehow delightfully fun for me.

Also - colours! Motifs! Great fun!

I love knitting. It's a wonderful pastime, it makes beautiful things, and since most of my knitting is modern and just for my own pleasure, it is a nice way for me to play around with yarns without feeling it to be work-related in some way.

I am not a very fast knitter, though - in the sense that it often takes me a long while to finish a project. Not because my actual needling action is so slow, but mostly because things tend to lie around for a while between stints of knitting frenzy. So I'm always quite happy to have a project finished, and it feels like a Big Thing. The latest one was finally bound off on Saturday morning, and it has now been blocked, and I am utterly delighted to have this done just in time for the cold season:



My Arabian Nights shawl is finished. I didn't knit it all to the end, as I want to have it more like a scarf than as a shawl, and since I used lace yarns, not sock yarns, it is a good bit smaller than the pattern states for the original - but I'm happy with the current size, and it definitely is very fluffy and very nice and warm.



Yarns were a two-ply fine wool yarn, dyed by Micky in a wonderful shade of grey, and a silk yarn, dyed with indigo by Margit.



It was my first venture into brioche knitting, and I did like it. The knitting itself was rather mindless, apart from doing decreases, which were a bit tedious, just the thing that I was looking for, though now I'm happy to have this finished and do something a little more exciting next. (Stranded knitting, just in case you are wondering. Time for some colour shenanigans.)

 

To my grand delight, I will be part of the Knitting Symposium taking place in Leiden on November 2 - which includes an adventurous train trip there (with a night train! Yay!). The symposium itself features a number of very interesting topics, including information about current research in knitting history, dye experiments in regard to the silk stockings found in Texel, the experience of wearing such (reconstructed, obviously) stockings, and Citizen Science (which is why I have gotten the opportunity to join in, as I've been involved in Citizen Science before that was a term, it seems).

In case you are in the area, or can get there, and want to join, it looks like there are still tickets available. The Symposium is organised by the Textile Research Centre; you can read more about it (and download the full programme) on their website. You also find instructions for registration there.

 

You might have noticed Friday's blog post coming up early (on Thursday afternoon), which might tell you something about the state of things here, which is rather, um, leaning towards hectic. There's the Textile Forum coming up, I have a few days already earmarked for travelling both for my own enjoyment and for a conference, and there are some other things that have to be done before end of October - which is approaching ridiculously fast - such as taking care of tax-related paperworks.

I have also been planning how to get to NESAT next May. Yes, it's a while until then, but... well. Excitement. Also the prospect of travelling to Finland by train and ferry, instead of taking the plane, and seeing a town or two on the way up? That, to me, sounds utterly delightful.

Related to this, I found a very interesting route to follow, proposed by Google Maps, on how to get from the train station at Lübeck Travemünde port to the port itself:



Here's the original link to the routing, in case you want to take a closer look. It's about 100 m as the crow flies between the start and end point, by the way - but Maps has clearly seen that I am out for an adventurous journey, and wanted to add to this!

The Danish museum group has published a catalogue of their finds, which means 100,000 pictures. It's freely available, open access, and it includes archaeological glass beads from Ribe, among many, many more things.

Not all finds have pictures yet, and you will have to search in Danish, but it definitely is worth a look. ("Tekstil" is the correct spelling for textiles.) So... go check out the catalogue of the Sydvestjyske Museer!

I like to travel. I especially like to travel by train - there are comfy seats, you can eat and drink and read or work or knit. There's no pesky security check circus where you have to empty all your liquid containers, there's no arriving at least an hour before your transport actually leaves, and it's much more friendly to the environment.

Yes, it can be a tad nerve-wracking if a train has a delay, but so can a plane. Or a car.

I've recently had the pleasure of being invited to a conference in Leiden, and I was utterly delighted to find that I can travel there with a night train. It did take some creative routing (I'm first going south-east, to catch the night train at a sensible place and time, before heading north-west in it), but it turned out to be both cheaper than a flight and, for me, train journeys are always more pleasant and relaxing. So I will be sleeping while magically being transferred from Passau to Düsseldorf...

Years ago, I already used the night train to get to Copenhagen, and that was a wonderful way to travel. So I was devastated when the Deutsche Bahn gave up their night trains; now I've found that the ÖBB (the Austrian train service) does run their NightJet across quite a bit of Germany as well. And then I found that there are, indeed, quite a lot of night trains running in Europe. So maybe, maybe I'll be able to turn the trip to NESAT in Finland next year into a train trip with a daytime stopover to visit one or two of the northern cities...

If you're curious now, here's some resources:

The Man in Seat 61 is an info site about train travels in Britain and Europe;
Night Trains has information about the various routes, and most importantly a map of current night train connections;
for those of you reading German, there's a blog called Train Tracks that offers hints and info on train travel, and some info about night trains;
and finally you can also use the Interrail Website to find out about night trains in all of Europe.

By the way, I've read a few weeks ago that the Deutsche Bahn is actually considering to re-introduce the night trains... which would be glorious!

The last bit of what we did in London - we managed to finally, finally go see a show in the Globe Theatre. I've wanted to do this for ages now, ever since I heard about the theatre, back when I was still studying in Bamberg. However, I'm not in London that utterly often, and the times I happened to be there in the past were usually outside the Globe's season, or there was just no time at all to go there. This time, however, it did work out, and we went to see the Merry Wives of Windsor. The play was nice, there was tea, the theatre was very much an experience as well, and so overall, it was fantastic.

What I found especially impressive was the performance of one actor - Bryan Dick. The actor that was supposed to be on stage was indisposed, so they had to fill this gap with someone... obviously. The audience was duly informed of this by someone coming on stage telling us before the play started, and there was also a note outside (which I didn't see until afterwards).



What I didn't realise at first was that the role would be read... either I didn't catch this bit, or the announcer did not explicitly state this. Anyway, it took me a long while to realise that the man holding a few sheets of paper in his hand did not hold stage props, but they were actually the text in case he'd need it. If not for the paper, I wouldn't have been able to tell who the stand-in would have been. So - very, very impressive performance, and I'll happily go see more things in the Globe if I can, in future visits to London. (The only not-so-enjoyable thing was, by the way, the planes going overhead, with quite a bit of noise... but that can hardly be avoided in an open air setting close to an airport.)

We also went to see another thing that had piqued my interest, also already a good while ago: The musical "Matilda". While I didn't know a thing about the story, which was originally written by Roald Dahl, I did know that Tim Minchin wrote the music... and since I vastly enjoy his music, that was on my list of interesting things one might sort of stumble into if one could. And we did. With a dash of luck, we got the two last leftover side-by-side seats in the theatre, and it was utterly glorious - the stage setting alone, and how it was used in the different scenes, would have been worth a visit, not to mention the choreography and the music. Ah, the music. Here, have a snippet:


All the song lyrics are very, very much Minchin, and so is the music. I found it vastly enjoyable and now have lots of new earworms.