Tuesday, May 12, 2015

First and Last Weekend in Salem for Awhile

Boy did this weekend fly by! Probably because it was action-packed with all of my favorite activities: knitting, exploring, brunching, and buying yarn.... plus unpacking, which is definitely not a favorite activity of mine. My adventures started out on Thursday night after work when I ventured over to Sip 'N Stitch night at Circle of Stitches, an adorable new yarn store on the water in Salem. I met two lovely ladies who gave me great advice on where to eat and places to visit throughout town. I also bought two skeins of Malabrigo Rios in Purple Mistery and Sand Bank to start testing a new hat design I've hat swirling around in my head for some time now.

Malabrigo Rios in Sand Bank and Purple Mistery from Circle of Stitches
Friday night after work I went to the Common Cod Fiber Guild meeting, where Anna Dalvi gave a talk about her inspirations for designing lace. Not only were her lace designs absolutely gorgeous, but they all had really interesting tales behind them. She told us several of the mythological and fairy tales behind her shawls, and to be clear, these were not the cute kind of fairy tales... we're talking about gory, chopping-up-bodies kinds of fairy tales. It was such a good talk! One day I will get around to making her Eyjafjallajökull Shawl, probably when I learn how to pronounce it.

Anna Dalvi giving a talk on the inspiration behind her lace designs.

On Saturday, Michael and I did some unpacking, but I will skip that to get to the good stuff. We had an amazing breakfast at The Ugly Mug Diner, a shared plate of pancakes, chipotle hash, eggs, bacon, and parfait. Did I say it was amazing???

We forgot to take a before shot, but here's the after shot of our amazing breakfast!

Surprisingly I didn't fall asleep directly after eating. Instead we hit up yarn store #1. Unfortunately Seed Stitch Fine Yarns, another LYS in Salem is closing at the end of the month, so I took the opportunity to pick up two skeins of Cascade 220 Superwash in Citron and Doeskin Heather, and two skeins of Quince and Co. Puffin in Glacier and Fjord while I still could. (Plus everything was 30% off!) The Cascade will also be for hats, and the Quince and Co. will be for projects using a pattern coming out this winter... sorry for being so vague, but you'll see!!

Cascade 220 Superwash in Citron

Cascade 220 Superwash in Doeskin Heather

Quince and Co Puffin in Glacier

Quince and Co Puffin in Fjord

After Seed Stitch, we headed to BACK to Circle of Stitches so I could have my Malabrigo wound. Again, there was a lovely group of ladies knitting, and we had some great knitting and academic conversations. I was telling the ladies about Michael's love for baby alpaca, because it is indeed, the softest yarn in the world in his opinion, so Ana, the store owner and the dyer of Toil & Trouble yarns, introduced him to some Blue Sky Alpaca Sport. So we picked out a skein of Avocado and Navy Blue for slippers. I've been promising Michael a pair of slippers for the longest time, and now that I have such nice yarn to work with I have no excuse. Plus he was a really good sport about yarn shopping :)

Blue Sky Alpacas Sport in Avocado. I forgot to get a picture of
Navy Blue, but I'm sure you can picture the color.

Sunday was less fun as it mostly consisted of grocery shopping and working, although we again had an amazing breakfast, this time at Bagel World. Although, we did pick up and hang an oil painting that we bought while roaming through some of the other in town on Saturday... I guess I forgot to mention that there are non-yarn stores in Salem. The painting is of Marblehead, MA at sunset by the late Rockport artist Charles Stepule. When we sit on our couch, we just can't stop looking at this painting.

Oil painting next to our built-in shelves. Note the lack of furniture...


Sorry for my crooked picture! It's the picture not the painting, I swear!

I hope your weekend was just as knit-filled!  As the title suggests, this is actually my first and last weekend in Salem for awhile. On Friday, I am leaving to work in Germany for a few weeks and then I'm off to Spain for a conference and a little vacation. Rest assured, there will be plenty of knitting and blogging, just not in New England. I'll share more about where I'm going and what I'll be knitting next time.


3 comments:

  1. That talk at the guild sounds so interesting! And look at all that lovely new yarn... and your new painting is awesome!

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  3. Lovely! I really enjoyed visiting.

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