Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Knitting and Art

Salentein winery in Argentina's Uco Valley includes an art gallery, mostly featuring work by contemporary Argentinian artists but also a few European artists (the winery owner is Dutch). Among the paintings is this:



The painting is by German painter Hans von Bartels (1856-1913), and it is titled "In de duinen," ("in the dunes"). Note the sheep in the background. It also looks like she is knitting in the round on three, maybe four, needles.

For more about Salentein winery and our travels in Argentina, select Travel in the Other Interests section on this blog's menu.

I am not getting much knitting of my own done during our travels, but I am not sorry about that.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

On the Road

I am not knitting much or writing about knitting much during my travels in Argentina. If you want to read about our trip to Argentina, click on the Travel link under Other Interests.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Yarn Day in Buenos Aires

Through the miracle of Ravelry, I "met" Marcela, who lives in Buenos Aires. She recommended a yarn shop called Milana Hilados and "introduced" me to Joji, who works there. Fun, fun, fun!




I looked at a number of other yarn stores on Scalabrini Ortiz, but Milana was by far the best. The others had too much acrylic and bulk commercial yarn, while the yarn at Milana is high quality and creative.

All of that yarn shopping was so exhausting, we needed coffee to restore ourselves.

Monday, February 07, 2011

Loooooong Scarf

I am a big fan of Jared Flood, and not just because he has local roots. This is his Woodsmoke Scarf from Brave New Knits by Julie Turjoman. I had several balls of assorted colors of Knit Picks Palette. Palette colors are more vivid than the original colors of the design, but it still works, I think.


The details:

  • Pattern: Woodsmoke Scarf by Jared Flood.
  • Yarn: Knit Picks Palette, Blue and Lilac; I used almost a full skein (231 yards) of each.
  • Needles: US5
  • Finished size: 6.5 inches by 89 inches (probably the longest scarf I have ever knit)
The surprise in this scarf is that it is incredibly boring to knit but the final result doesn't look boring. The center panel is straight garter stitch. The eight-row lace edging is easy to memorize. Because this was such a long scarf, I had to knit a lot of edging.

That said, I started another one with some more random balls of Palette. Sometimes boring is just right.