A March Birthday

I had a birthday! My boyfriend took me to Boston:



Where he had reserved a table for us at Rowes Wharf for an elegant Afternoon Tea overlooking the water:



It was an incredible tea, with rose petals on the table and champagne, along with the best tea and scones with Devonshire cream...

Afterward we wandered a bit down Newbury Street and visited a yarn shop:



and I didn't leave empty-handed:


Koigu, Farm-spun 100% cashmere, and Artyarns Silk Purse 100% silk

(I think I'll make the Linen Stitch Scarf from Churchmouse Yarns and Teas with these yarns)

When I came home I had wonderful presents from my best friends:



Yes, that IS a bar with chocolate and potato chips!!



My friend send me a WHOLE BOX of bags she had made! I love this one especially but they're all wonderful.

I love March.

Fiber Space... Out of this World!

The next part of out DC trip involved tea. Really, really good tea.



Teaism is such a fun tea room, stocked full of beautiful tea accessories and tea-related gifts downstairs:



and a small, cosy room to rest and sip upstairs:



We waited patiently for a table



next to a Zen-like minimalist stack of seating benches beside the winding staircase...



I very much wanted a bento-box with my tea, but was still full from the fresh-strawberry-and-nutella crepe I had eaten at the French crepery just a little earlier...

Our hotel was walking distance from the National Zoo, and it was a beautiful fall day so we strolled while I gazed, amazed at all I saw. The street was lined with gorgeous big buildings - with lovely vintage era details. This place has been turned into condominiums, I think. It looks like something out of an old Cary Grant movie!



One townhouse has this lovely llama sculpture in the front garden - doesn't he have such a personality in his face?



As I was trying to capture a good picture, a curious fellow jumped up on his back and watched me intently, seeming to ask for his photo to be taken too!



For some reason, at the zoo, I was so amazed by everything that I forgot to take pictures until we went inside the small mammal building!

We saw the Saki Monkeys:



The Golden Lion Tamarins (which I loved!):



The Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs (a big hit with a huge crowd of children):



and the Degu who were so cute sleeping in a big pile, using each other for pillows:



We strolled from one end of the zoo to the other and areas we especially liked were the Lions and Tigers. They were so beautiful! They hold themselves and move so majestically, it's easy to see why they're considered the "Kings of the Jungle".

After the zoo we had more tea and then took a drive to Old Town Alexandria, Va, and found this amazing place:



Fiber Space, a knit and crochet universe, is everything it's name implies. What a wonderful magical place!



The people were wonderful, the stock was immense and unique, and the atmosphere was relaxed and hip. I felt instantly welcomed there! One of the things that most enchanted me was that they had yarn from companies I'd never heard of before as well as patterns and yarn from companies that I'd always to own (like Pidgeonroof Studios).



Right away someone came up and said hello and asked if she could help me with anything. When I told her I was from out of town and just wanted to go around the store and look at every single thing, she laughed and said "enjoy!". I was there for about an hour and she came back a couple of times, not to bug me or to 'check up' on me, but to make me feel at home. We chatted about different yarns and she showed me the ones that were local to the area. We had a super conversation about cashmere, and she encouraged me not to fall for inexpensive cashmere that resulted from poorly cared-for animals. I was really touched that someone would be so open and friendly to a person that they didn't know at all. It was pretty amazing. Oh, by the way, the placed was PACKED with people - they had groups of people knitting and shopping and the staff were each helping someone to calculate their project, or wind their yarn, or figure out a pattern - but it wasn't hectic and didn't seem crowded... it was just so...nice...It was like a big family on Thanksgiving.



And I bought a ton of stuff. Of course. I was comforting myself for missing Rinehart this year. That's fair, right? And she put it in a GREAT Fiber Space bag!!



AND she gave me a Fiber Space tote!



This is my swag:



Brooklyn Tweed patterns - Hourglass Throw by Anne Hanson, Ranger Cardigan by Jarod Flood, Caldwell Vest by Stephen West, and Levenwick Cardigan by Gudrun Johnston.

A skein of Pidgeonroof Studios Cassiopeia, a MCN in a colourway that could either be "legolas" or "sage lt"...

A most beautiful local yarn - I could have bought one in every colour - of mohair and silk by The Neighbourhood Yarn Company in the colour Rock Creek Park...

A skein of Silk and Merino from a company called Viola, which is shortly to become hard to find... this skein is called Unpredictable and is a pretty pinkish, like a vintage doll's body...

Another Viola skein, this one fingering merino in "Dark Ghost" such a beautiful pale green...

and yet another Viola skein, a soft lace weight single ply this time, again in "ghost"...

and then a few accessories that are always highly coveted by me: Purple Puppy Snips, Green KA stitch holders, and the new wonderfully colourful HiyaHiya darning needles for seaming.

Did I say how much I loved Fiber Space? I love them so much. If you have a chance to visit one place in the DC area, go to Fiber Space.

After that, we wandered a bit among the lovely streets



and when it got dark we retired to the most incredible restaurant called Old Europe and ate German food and drank a chocolate-tasting beer...



The perfect end to a perfect DC visit.

Konnichi wa!

Today I had the most wonderful surprise! My tea group on Ravelry held a Valentine's swap and today my box arrived from my swap partner. My box had traveled a long, long, loooong distance - it was from Japan!!!



It was packed to the brim with wonderful things! Here you can see two skeins of soft 100% wool lace weight yarn, a tin of tea, a box of "mochi" chocolates, and 3 exotic Kit Kat bars.

The tea is so lovely (well, Everything is so lovely!!). It is from a tea company I've never heard of before: Tea Pi O. Their website says that they want to present the "Soul of Japan" through their authentic teas. They also have an Haiku contest on their front webpage. I was tempted, but haven't tried it out yet. My swap partner also sent me a package of green tea "sticks". I haven't opened the package, so I am just imagining that these are pencils of tea with tiny steeping holes in one end for brewing in a tea mug. These will be fun for work!



It's wondrous really how everyday things are so unique and unusual in other countries. I would love to go to Japan, and not just for the Kit Kats, either!



Oh, these aren't the ordinary Kit Kat bars! One is an Apple Kit Kat, one is an orange fruit Kit Kat that looks like it has black sesame seeds in it, but they are probably the fruit's seeds - maybe passion fruit? ...and the 3rd is dark chocolate with something in it - it looks from the picture on the wrapping like it's either coffee with a dumpling in it or bean soup. Haha! I can't wait to figure these out! But I must wait because there were 3 miniature ones in mocha flavour and I ate them right up - One! Two! Three!

There are many other wonderful things in this box, including a beautifully wrapped box of "Mochi Chocolate" - silver rice paper, green paper ribbon, Japanese seals.... all so elegant... and on top of everything else: four (4!!) little charms for my cell phone: the Sanrio purple doggie, the Katamari Damacy prince, a chocolate covered donut, and (my favorite) the Little Burnt Bun!



There was a mystery in the box, too. Does anyone have an idea what this is:



Do I eat it as is, or does it need to be cooked or soaked or grated or dipped??? Well, even if I don't get an answer, I'm going to try it out very soon!

What a wonderful box! And on top of that, it's "Top Chef" night! and... it's snowing.....

Arigatou, Swap Friend!!!

Tea in the City

Do you recognize this street corner?



This is Newbury Street, Boston. I went on a tea and yarn shop search yesterday. It's been a long time since I've been to Newbury Street - usually my trips to Boston end up in Cambridge.

The morning started, of course, with tea in the sidewalk cafe at Tealux:





I love wandering, window-shopping, and exploring. I saw lots of knitting and crochet in shop windows, and recognized these particular knitted curlicues from patterns in my vintage books:



This syle is a little dowdy, isn't it? Is it 60's style - the tan curvy suit coat over a baggy print dress?

The city itself is more stylish! One thing about Boston is its beauty. The buildings themselves are works of art in brick and stone:



Eventually the new yarn shop was found by my sharp-eyed bf, and I suddenly felt at home. Even though it was one small second-floor room, I spent an hour there, looking at everything, touching everything, envisioning each yarn as a special something, and admiring the beautiful samples made by the shop owner. One was an intricate cashmere lace scarf that caught my bf's attention - he wondered if I would make one for his mother for Christmas? So...some very nice yarn came home with me! and I bought myself a pair of baseball knitting needles.



What is it about Boston that is so magical and compelling? I'm always happy when I'm there...

Today my health is a little fragile, so I'm drinking my tea at home and yukking it up over these very hilarious old recipe cards.

Jasmine Nectar

This post is about tea...jasmine tea...

...but also about knitting...knitting Jasmine.

Some time ago, my friend Melanie sent me a precious tea ball from Canada, White Jasmine Moon:



This is one of those presentation teas, where the tea leaves are tied into a tight ball around a beautiful flower... in this case, an exquisite white jasmine flower. When the tea ball is placed in the heated water, the tea leaves unfurl and the flower "blossoms", often rising to the top of the water while the open tea leaves settle in the pot...



This one was so beautiful and the scent was perfect for a sultry summer day! The tea was lighter than other jasmine teas I've had, grassy and pure. I couldn't bear to remove the pretty tea ball, so after I enjoyed the two cups that this teapot holds, I refilled the pot with water just to enjoy having the floating flower in front of me while I read and had my morning toast.



Later today I started a new project while watching the rowing and diving competitions in the Olympics. There is something perfectly soothing about watching water sports on a summer day that's hot and sunny. If I can't be on the water, I want to be seeing the water!

The blouse I'm knitting is Jasmine, from Kim Hargreaves' Nectar collection:



Drinking Jasmine tea and knitting Jasmine... synchronicity!

I'm not a slacker, I'm just boring. My days have been filled with things, but little that's blog-worthy.



Here is my tea - Dragon of Fire green tea - Tears, tightly wounds, that blossom onto this beautiful tea flower.

And here is my book - Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, an Isobel Dalhousie gentle, philosophical mystery...

Other than that, the only thing I have done is sign onto the Ravelry Ravelympics,

where I promise to cast on a project on the 8th of August, and finish it by the 24th....I am entered in the Laceweight Longjump with The Shetland Triangle





I'm using my Blue Moon skein, Smokey Topaz, a soothing combination of light blue, charcoal black, and gold-ish beige:




and a size 6 circular needle, and the one you see in the picture above is from Grafton Fibers and is beautiful!

Other than that, I've neglected my friends, ignored my house and garden, and frittered away my time. I guess last week was just way too exciting and full of "stuff" and I'm still in recovery mode....