So, it’s been a while… I’m aware of this. You’re aware of this. Let us move on…
I wanted to let you know that I’m leaving very soon for Ireland and I plan on sharing my travel experiences along the way through posts over on my tumblr: notes from the margin. The reason for this is that tumblr is easy to post to from my iPhone and, because I’m not a fan of how tumblr handles long posts, it will force me to make smaller posts more frequently, which I think will help motivate more regular sharing of photos and other fun travel tidbits. That is the theory.
I will be traveling mostly around the coast of Ireland for the next two weeks. I’m super excited! I want to see and share all the things. I’ll again be accompanied by Euan, the intrepid traveling bear. You remember Euan, right? To jog your memory, here is a photo I snapped as he was creeping up on my donuts during my travels in Japan back in 2009:
And another of him visiting the Kamakura Daibutsu:
Besides his fascination with seeing the sights and sneaking my food, he’s green; so, he’ll really fit in on this trip. I hope he doesn’t get lost in some tall grass…
I will also, of course, be accompanied by some knitting! More specifically, a vacation project that has yet to be named but will be following the Camptown Races pattern in some lovely quince & co. finch:
The colorways I’ll be using are (in order form left to right in the photo): frank’s plum, chanterelle and apricot. I purchased this yarn at the lovely Hidden River Yarns this past weekend, during the shop’s quince & co. party. HRY is one of the few LYSs that are able to stock this precious yarn. I, for one, am very happy about this, although my budget won’t be. This will be my first time using any quince & co. yarns and I can’t wait!
And, because there’s going to be quite a bit of car time on this trip, I’ll be supplementing that knitting with an Hourglass Cowl that I started back in January but have neglected ever since and a set of needles to cast on some simple socks if I happen to pick up a beautiful skein of sock yarn in my travels… I was thinking of perhaps trying out the Hermione’s Everyday Socks pattern if the yarn is appropriate and, well, I feel that the pattern would lend itself well to many different yarns. Perhaps, however, I’ll have to purchase multiple options, just in case…
I’ll also be documenting my travels in a journal, as I did when going to Japan. I’ve purchased another Moleskine but this time in a wonderful mustardy golden yellow. I haven’t yet made the cover page, but I’ll be sure to post some photos after I do.
I guess that’s all the travel talk for now. I did also want to let you know that I’m planning some more blogging here on marginalia once I’ve return from the trip and things have settled down (I’m coming back to finals week and graduation hysteria at work after the trip). As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like the way that tumblr handles long posts; so, I’m planning on putting more of those types of posts back here on marginalia again and saving notes from the margin for smaller, quicker posts and reposting of content from elsewhere that I find interesting.