My husband, Mike, recently returned from a week in Porto, Portugal, to study the wine industry, meet with industry leaders, and to eat and drink very well. I did not go because of the short duration of the trip but, based on his experiences, it sounds Portugal is an excellent destination.
Once he had his plans in place, the question he asked was, “Where is the nearest yarn shop?” A little online research and — voilà! — Ovelha Negra, which translates to Black Sheep. It was a short, but wet, walk from his hotel. He has been in enough yarn shops to know what to ask for: yarn with a local connection, produced locally or dyed locally.
He came home with two skeins of fingering yarn dyed by a local artisan, who also, coincidentally, works in the wine industry. He chose two colors that represent tawny port and ruby port (he also came home with bottles of port to drink). He had a conversation with the shop owner, who kindly gave me a gift of a Portuguese knitting pin that you can see attached to the ruby skein. I think the tawny skein will be a scarf for him; the ruby, a scarf for me.
Fortunately, I have the book Portuguese Style of Knitting by Andrea Wong. I plan to read it more closely and try it.
What goes better with port (and knitting) than chocolate? He also brought home some Portuguese chocolate to match with the wine.
Wonder where his/our travels will take us next? No doubt, somewhere with wine, yarn, and chocolate.
