Year's End

Our trip through Germany continues, with a bit more knitting, some knitted gift giving, and some yarny serendipity in a small town where my father's family lived 60 years ago.

First, my brother seems to really like the Grettir Sweater that I made for him last summer and gave him for Christmas. Jeff took a great picture of us together at the Gutenburg Museum in Mainz with Michael wearing it. It couldn't fit better, and it really looks good on him. He says, "Es ist die beste." I haven't gotten a picture yet, but my sister-in-law Suzanne also likes her shawl. She wore it the other day during a 5-mile walk we took from Nordenstadt through Igstadt and Erbenheim and back and reported that it was perfectly warm. I think maybe I could get into this Christmas knitting thing after all!

This evening, after getting back from a day trip (see below), I finally finished up the 3x1 ribbed socks I started way back in July -- nearly six months after starting them. I started them to have socks on the needle and to burn through some stash, but I never would have guessed they would have taken so long. This yarn fought me the entire way. It was splitty and z-twisted (as I learned from Janelle), and so I had to constantly wrestle with it. But the resulting socks are thick, warm, and quite possibly bullet-proof. I think I'll wear them tomorrow when we head down to Würzburg. Lord knows the chilly days in which I can wear these will be few and far between in Texas. Maybe these will make good winter around-the-house socks.

And today, Michael drove Jeff and me over to Idar-Oberstein to walk around the town where my grandfather was posted in the US Army during the early 1950s. He was able to bring my grandmother and their only child, my father, to Germany to live with him for a few years. I grew up hearing stories about their life here. We climbed up to a church built into a cliff, and further up the cliff to walk around a schloss and a burg. We were rather nostalgic thinking about our father and grandparents climbing up these same paths and enjoying these views.

As we were walking down the main street of the town, I noticed some yarn for sale outside a shop in little baskets. A yarn shop! I'd been looking for one in either Wiesbaden or Mainz, but hadn't been able to figure anything out. And here one was! I was kind of on my own language-wise, but I managed to get across that I was a knitter. I looked around a bit; it was one of those shops where most of the yarns were from just a few companies. I didn't recognize the larger-gauge yarn company, but for the knees on down, this was a Regia shop. So I bought some gray (!) yarn for a pair that I hope to make in a pattern that in some way ties in with this town. I'll have to think about it.

I hope everyone is enjoying the end of the year holidays and has great plans of all sorts for the next year. Einen guten Rutsch!