crochet supplies – The Crochet Architect

June 6, 2018June 5, 2018

The Ireland Portion of our Anniversary Trip

This blog post is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about our 40th Anniversary trip to England and Ireland. If you haven’t read yesterday’s post, please check it out here!

After seeing some of London, we went to Ireland for a week. We saw the Cliffs of Moher on a good weather day! Wow! What a sight that was! The cliffs are very high and beautiful!

We toured a tower castle called Dysert O’Dea in County Clare. There’s a circular staircase in one corner of the castle that takes you to each floor and room of the castle. That was fascinating!

One of the highlights of Ireland for me was visiting the remains of the Ballyheigue Castle that is in my family ancestry! The castle was built in 1295 by Timothy de Cantelupe and held by his descendants, a line of Barons de Ballyheigue, until 1690. Many of my ancestors were born in Ireland and some of them emigrated to Canada in the 1840’s, around the time of the potato famine. What a thrill it was to be there where my ancestors lived many generations ago!

What’s a trip to Ireland without seeing the Ring of Kerry? There were so many pretty views there! I got to hold a lamb for the first time in my 60 years of life! What a thrill that was! The lamb was so soft!

I also visited a lace shop in Kenmare called the Kenmare Lace & Design Centre. It was on the 2nd floor near the Heritage Centre. I met Nora Finnegan there, the lady who runs the Lace Centre. She showed me how Kenmare Lace is made. And I bought a few souvenirs from the Lace Centre, too! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take photos inside. But take my word for it, the lace was exquisite! Kenmare lace is a needle lace and the quality of the pieces there was amazing!!!

My husband and I toured the Muckross House, a Victorian house built from 1839 to 1843 in Killarney National Park, and walked through the gardens. We also had lunch at their cafeteria. The house and gardens were gorgeous! I LOVE old houses and various types of architecture! The most fascinating story about the house is that the owners, Mr and Mrs Herbert, spent a lot of money to fix up the house and gardens for Queen Victoria’s visit in 1861. The queen only stayed 2 nights in the house! The expense almost bankrupted the Herberts!

There was a wool shop in County Kerry called Kerry Woollen Mills. I stopped in there and brought home a few souvenirs from that shop! The shop had lots of beautiful finished knit items to buy, but I just bought a hank of wool yarn and a cute sheep!

Another old house that we toured was the Fota House. That was an amazing house with gorgeous architectural details inside! The gardens were amazing, too! We had our own tour guide, Brian, who showed us many fascinating things in the house! What a fun tour that was!!!

We stayed at Air BnB’s in Ennis, Killarney, Cork, Waterford and Wexford. The BnB in Killarney was exceptional! The host, Adah, was so sweet and helpful! She even put an anniversary card and a box of chocolates in our room! Now that’s a great host!

Most of the Bed and Breakfasts met our expectations and most included breakfast, which was wonderful!

All in all, it was a fabulous trip! The weather in Ireland was sunny 4 out of 7 days! I guess that’s about average for there. If Arizona got that much rain, I bet we’d have as much green as Ireland! But then Arizona wouldn’t be a desert, would it?

Driving on the other side of the road was quite different! My husband drove and I was the co-pilot! Besides being the navigator using Google maps on my hubby’s phone, I got to say things like “you’re getting too close to the curb” or “there’s a rock wall coming up”! Sometimes I just felt like closing my eyes because it’s a little scary on that side of the car, especially when it’s your first time driving (or being the passenger) on the left-hand side of the road! But all in all, my hubby drove great and we survived the other side of the road! By the way, if you didn’t already know, some of the roads in Ireland are only wide enough for 1 car, not 2! Those are the really “thrilling” roads!!!

There are fields of sheep everywhere in Ireland and England! Some of the sheep are even colored so if they get out of the field, they can be identified by their color(s) and returned to the proper field.

We had such a good time in both England and Ireland. It was a trip we’ll remember with fond memories for many years! I’m so glad that we took the time and spent the money to go on this 40th Anniversary trip! Both countries are beautiful and have so much history to them! And it was wonderful to see both countries where some of my ancestors lived!

Until next time.

Happy crocheting,

Susan

June 5, 2018

What a Fun Vacation!!!

It’s been over a month since I’ve written a blog post and for good reason. From April 29 through May 17, my husband and I took a 40th anniversary trip to England and Ireland! Where does the time go? It seems like it was yesterday when we got married! Now it’s 40 years later!!!

Wow! What a trip we had! In today’s and tomorrow’s blog posts, I’d like to share the highlights of the trip with you (England today and Ireland tomorrow). Here are the highlights of the England portion of our trip:

At the beginning of our trip, we spent 3 days in London and saw some fabulous sights! We went up to the top of the Shard, which overlooks London. The sights were gorgeous from 70 stories up! Here are a few photos of us at the top:

We also toured Westminster Abbey and took a river boat cruise along the Thames.

Tower Bridge in London as seen from Thames River boat cruise

I was able to squeeze in a trip to a London yarn shop called Loop. What a nice place to see lots of gorgeous yarn and crochet thread! Some crochet thread by Scheepjes spoke to me in the shop, so I came home with 10 balls of thread! I look forward to designing something with these gorgeous colors after I’m all done with the 3 crochet contracts I’m working on right now!

Crochet thread from Loop London yarn shop

We saw a lot more than this in London, but for the sake of this blog post not being WAY too long, I’ll stop with these places.

We went to Ireland after London, then back to the southwest part of England, known as Devon and Cornwall. We rented a car during this portion of our England vacation (we didn’t dare drive in London, but took lots of public transportation there, which was fabulous).

One of the highlights of this part of the trip was visiting Port Isaac, where the British show, Doc Martin, is filmed. If you haven’t seen Doc Martin, you’re in for a treat! It’s a wonderful show that we’ve enjoyed for quite a while now. We could almost envision Martin and Louisa there! Port Isaac was a really nice, beautiful place! Here are a few photos from Port Isaac:

We toured an old house in England called Cotehele House & Gardens. It was a fabulous tour! This house had tour guides in each room to tell about the specific rooms!

We went to the All Hallows Museum in Honiton to see some Honiton Lace. Wow! The lace there was AMAZING! They had large drawers with huge pieces of lace that were exquisite! Each large piece took thousands of hours of work!!! Now that’s dedication to a craft! Lace making, and Honiton Lace in particular, was a cottage industry in the Devon area in the 16th and 17th centuries. Making lace provided an income for many families for several hundred years. Unfortunately, the invention of machine made lace made hand made lace virtually obsolete.

Since I learned to do bobbin lace this past January, I bought some souvenirs at the museum to help further my bobbin lace knowledge and skills!

The England portion of our trip was so much fun, just as the Ireland portion was also lots of fun! Stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog post about Ireland!

Happy crocheting,

Susan

May 12, 2014

Yarn Control and Keeping my Sanity!

Have you ever been happily crocheting away and the skein of yarn you’re using starts falling apart in front of your eyes? Well, that happened to me over the past month while working on a crochet design for a publisher. I was crocheting a project that is done in the Fair Isle technique. Oh, you haven’t heard of that technique yet, you say? Karen Whooley has designed a lot of projects in the Fair Isle Crochet technique, which is similar to the Tapestry Crochet technique, but not quite the same. You can see some Fair Isle projects that Karen Whooley has designed over the past 7 years on her Ravelry designer page. Check out Karen’s Fair Isle Crochet class on Craftsy, too. It looks like it would be a great class to take for those who want to learn to do Fair Isle Crochet!

In Karen’s Fair Isle Crochet technique, she works her single crochet in the BACK LOOP of the stitches (this is different from Tapestry Crochet, which is worked in BOTH LOOPS of the stitches). Karen also carries the non-working color on top of the stitches, encasing it until needed again, just like in the Tapestry Crochet technique. I worked my project in this style of Fair Isle, which worked very well, since the stitches don’t slant (like they do in Tapestry Crochet) and the back of the project looks as neat as the front!

Anyway, back to the trouble I was having with my yarn misbehaving! Since I was using 2 colors in each row of my project, I had to change back and forth between the colors often. And since I always crossed the colors the same way each time (whether that is correct or not, I’m not sure!), the 2 yarns wrapped around each other after a certain number of color changes. So I had to take one skein of the yarn and unwrap the 2 yarns, bringing the skein over and under the strand of the other color yarn many times so they wouldn’t get tangled. But that wasn’t too bad, all things considered. What was bad was how the skein of yarn that I handled a lot to unwrap the 2 yarns starting falling apart on the outside like this:

After working many rows of my project and having the skeins do this, I decided to do something about it! So I purchased some yarn sleeves to keep the outside of the skeins intact! Here’s one of the skeins with the yarn sleeve in use:

This yarn sleeve really saved my life (that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not too far from it)! I had never used or owned a yarn sleeve before, but it was time to give them a try. And I’m so glad I did. The yarn sleeve worked really well at keeping the yarn together when I handled it so much. And that saved a little of my sanity! When I told a friend of mine that I had bought the yarn sleeves to use, she said I could do the same thing with some panty hose! I hadn’t thought of that, but it sounds like it would work. Have you used something else to keep your yarn under control like this?

When I was done with my project, I decided to use my handy yarn winder and turn all the leftover skeins of yarn into neat “cakes” so they’d fit better into the box for storage. They’ll also be easier to use the next time I need to design something with these yarn colors instead of pulling my hair out in the middle of the project trying to untangle them! This is how some of the yarns looked before winding them up for storage:

And this is how they looked after winding them up:

Don’t they look organized and ready to use again? These 8 yarn colors above, plus black, are the colors I used in the project I just completed, which I recently shipped off to the publisher. I can’t show you the project now, but I can show it to you in July or August, after it’s published.

If you’re looking for a way (or 2) for controlling your yarn, I hope you’ll give yarn sleeves and winding the yarn into cakes a try! And if you’re looking for a new/different crochet technique to try, why not try the Fair Isle Crochet technique? It’s actually quite fun and the results are spectacular!

Happy crocheting,

Susan

February 1, 2013February 1, 2013

My Trip to Berne, IN

Last month, I had the pleasure of traveling to Berne, IN for a secret project. I can’t tell you what the project was yet, but stay tuned for the big news to be announced in 3 – 4 weeks! Unfortunately, I can’t confirm or deny any ideas of what I was doing in Berne, so please don’t ask!!! Just be patient and wait for the big news when it comes! Like I said, it’s a “secret”!!!

If you’ve never heard of Berne, IN, you can learn more about this quaint little town on their Chamber of Commerce website. Apparently, the population is only about 4,400! That’s a lot smaller than my town of 39,000 and a far cry from the big metropolitan cities across the US. Since I’d never seen any Amish people in real life (besides on TV), I was fascinated when they drove by in their horse and buggies! I got a decent photo of one of them for you to see.

Here’s a photo of Main Street with the famous clock tower in Berne in the background:

I stayed at the Black Bear Inn & Suites in Berne on U.S. 27. It was a nice place to stay with comfortable rooms. I had a Jacuzzi suite, but I didn’t know how to work the Jacuzzi, so I just had a warm bath one night instead of a Jacuzzi bath! If you know me, you understand my “challenges” with anything electronic or with buttons that I can’t read without my reading glasses!!! I still have a “stupid” phone and I’m quite happy with it, thank you very much! Here are a few photos of the Black Bear Inn, along with the buggy they have outside by their sign:

I had some time to do a little sightseeing one afternoon, so I browsed in some of the shops on Main Street. I went into the Engine House Quilt Shop and talked with Carol, the employee there that day. She showed me some really nice rayon embroidery thread by EdMar Co. I bought 5 skeins of Frost, which is a 3 ply thread with 16 yards per skein. I’m going to use this gorgeous thread, which has a beautiful sheen, for crocheting a new design or two. If you’d like to learn more about EdMar rayon thread, which is used for Brazilian embroidery, please visit their website. These are the embroidery threads I bought for designing:

Aren’t they pretty?

I had a great time in Berne and met some fantastic people there. I also had the pleasure of touring the Annie’s offices while I was in Berne. If you’re somehow not familiar with Annie’s, please take a look at the Annie’s website. They produce/publish patterns and kits for many different crafts, including crochet, knitting, paper crafts and more! I saw and talked to Carol Alexander, the editor of Crochet World and Crochet magazines, who I’ve met at many CGOA Conferences over the years and took a picture of her cubicle in the office. Here is her cubicle:

Carol Alexander's cubicle at Annie's — Carol Alexander’s cubicle at Annie’s

I met Brenda Gallmeyer, who I had contacted in 2011 about some tech editing I did for Annie’s (then called DRG). I also met some other people, but I don’t remember all of their names (that happens as we get older, doesn’t it!). Here are a few photos outside of the Annie’s office:

Front door of the Annie's office — Front door of the Annie’s office

Me by the Annie's Sign — Me by the Annie’s Sign on a windy day!

I met 2 photographers at the Annie’s office and one of them gave me a tour of the photography studio with all their props, lights and cameras! That was really nice! Since my husband and I are learning to photograph my crochet designs for self-publication, it was really interesting to see. I even learned how they store and use some of their props. I was told that they use 2 sheets of painted wood behind the props for a colored wall. To hide the line where the boards meet, they just remove it from the photo with Photoshop! It’s too bad we don’t have room in our house for lots of wonderful photo props. I would love to have a photo studio like theirs!!! Here are some pictures of their photo studio:

Camera & Lights at Annie's Photo Studio — Camera & Lights at Annie’s Photo Studio

Photography Props at Annie's Photo Studio — Photography Props at Annie’s Photo Studio

More Photo Props at Annie's Photo Studio — More Photo Props at Annie’s Photo Studio

All in all, it was a very nice trip and the weather wasn’t bad, either. It got up to the 50’s one day while I was there, which is warmer than it was back home in Prescott, AZ (I really expected the weather to be worse than it was in Berne, so I was pleasantly surprised)! There was light rain one day, but the rest of the time it was dry. I was in Berne for 3 full days, with 2 additional days for traveling. I got a few crochet projects made on the airline flights on the way there and back, too. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would love to return there again someday!

Happy crocheting,

Susan