Friday, February 16, 2007

I Am Back.......

First...Happy Birthday to Me! Heehee

Second....I had to remove my lovely KnitPicks circular needle and leave it behind in Shannon. I was fine all through the trip, knitting away, having a blast thinking the three projects taken would have a little bit of Ireland in them and then at the very last check point where they hand search your luggage(we had them remove their latex gloves as son is allergic) they grabbed my Dale sweater, No this would not be allowed...yet the socks and the bamboo circular were ok. Now mind you the sock DPNs are longer than the ends of the circular but NO...ok so check it...(in my head I am yelling are you crazy) but I declined the offer and ripped the needle out of the 300+ sts and handed it over. I truly think they though it was a full length needle as the security lady seemed mesmerized by the needle once I handed it over. She thought me clever to have saved all my sts onto it. Go away, take my needle and leave me alone. I just set up my bag so the next colors needed would be easily reachable. Poor sweater had lose some sts and needed 2 inches of frogging. I am still putting the sts back on needle....now I would have done nicely and moved sts to another piece of yarn, but this was literally 15 minutes before boarding the plane and you know at this point I didn't have any scissors. I did manage to nearly complete one of the bags for my swap...trouble is I love it!! LOL...I will post pictures perhaps tomorrow morning after I offload the Ireland pics. BTW no yarn worth mentioning in west Ireland. We went to the supposed number one yarn place there and I have more yarn in in WIPs, than they had. I am very spoiled by the accessibilty of yarn via the internet. The Donegal they had was Debbie Bliss(she had been there a week or two previous) so when we return in June we will go right to Donegal County and hopefully get some Kilkarra...which is widely available on Ebay. The other yarn spots had primarily acrylic yarn, Wendy, Patons, some light mixes..there was a sweater store who had some lovely plum Donegal that had just arrived but they were not ready to sell...they seemed quite perturbed that I asked if they would. They took me to a secret closet that had natural, burgundy and grey, NO we do not measure yarn in metres rather by weight and it will taked 800 grams for a sweater, right lady so when the yardage runs short .... On Inish Moor? one of the Aran isles we went to the Aran Sweater Market and Museum and the museum was closed and I think that is where their yarn is. I will post pics as you cannot imagine the different colors of sweaters...glorious, she did have some Tivoli Aran yarn but nothing impressive and was natural and after seeing the colors and knowing I had Queensland Kathmandu at home in several colors...I did purchase three sweaters though so I may purchase some Kilkarra today from ebay and use my free day as such...actually since I have all the yarn money still I may purchase more on this day as birthday giftee to me. It rained everyday, which we hoped it would and the places we went other than the Mohr Cliffs would not interest the youngsters so I am glad we did this trip the way we did.
Ok, we update photos in a bit.

8 comments:

Cheryl said...

We were in West ireland, galway, Shannon, Bunratty, Connemara, Aran Isles. We are going back in June and doing Blarney, maybe Donegal, Dublin all the other areas...I saw some Tivoli but wasn't real impressed so....

Lorraine said...

Well, at least it was memorable.

I have bought Donegal Tweed on Ebay, but one day I'm going to go there and have the whole Irish yarn experience.

Cheryl said...

Hi Lorraine
Yes it was memorable and we even tossed around buying property there.....I was a bit disappointed with the lack of yarn but we were in such a small area I am sure we will be more successful in June...plus there will be 5-10 suitcases to laod up instead of 2, LOL

sunneshine said...

Welcome Home!! So sorry to hear about your needle, that knitting heartbreak is hard to get over....

Lia said...

Welcome Home!!

Sorry to hear that your much anticipated yarn shopping was such a bust :( And they took away your knitting needle! *gasp* Meanies! You didn't have your little stoppers and "key" in your bag so you could just take off the ends? Bummer! I think they are always surprised when you just say "Whatever. Keep it."

CaveGurl said...

I am so sorry to hear about your needle! I am always afraid they will keep stuff! I lived in England for just over a year and while there we visited Scotland twice, but never Ireland! I miss it so much! I am really sorry about your not finding any yarn. Which shops do you buy the most of your yarn from on eBay? I am always looking for good - reliable sellers.

Welcome home!

Cheryl said...

I will trach down their names and post probably Sunday night....

Cheryl said...

I will trach down their names and post probably Sunday night....