Connemara and Strokestown

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I am writing these last 2 posts about our Irish Knitting Tour from home. I've been telling people that I'm being dragged back into the real world kicking and screaming, not at all ready to let go of the magic of these 10 days.

Just look at this picture taken in front of the Leenane Sheep and Wool Centre. It was an absolutely stunning drive north from Galway through sparsely populated countryside. The steep hills on either side of the road (with but a mere 4" of shoulder on either side of a single generous lane) were marked with traces of "lazy beds", the completely inappropriate name for the hand built furrows in which potatoes were traditionally  planted before the famine of 1845-49.   

As we arrived at the centre, we were met with the great news that all merchandise in the  store was 20% off as an end of season clearance incentive. This call to retail action did not go unheeded. And although it was not a very sheepy treasure, I did buy myself a bracelet of silver and beautiful Connemara green marble. I love it!

Patricia, our guide at the museum, gave us a great demonstration on everything from shearing to weaving the wool from local sheep.  

 Don't you just love this magnificent piece of fabric art. It was made by a French artist for a local woolen mill from pieces of "jumpers" made by the company. When the mill closed, they asked if the museum would like to purchase the piece, and it holds a prize place at the museum's entrance. Too bad you can't see much of the detail in this less than adequate photo, but the aran fleece on the ram and the texture in the rocks can give you an idea of the detail of execution.

The next day, we made one final stop on the way back to Dublin at the Strokestown Park and Famine Museum. This is a picture of Deirdre. I don't think that it's an exageration to say that Deirdre pretty much ran the whole show while we were there. As we arrived, she was working in the gift shop and setting up displays. She led us on the tour of Strokestone House, a faithful preserving of a way of life that was coming to a shabbyish end for some of the great families of Ireland in the 20th century. It was fascinating to see, not just a hint of the oppulence of their glorious past, but the sad decline as times and resources changed.

After the house, Deirdre introduced us to the only museum in the Republic that houses the few remaining documents of the years during and after the great famine. What was particulary impressive was the link that was made between the conditions that led to the famine in the mid 19th century and its dire consequences, and the famines that plague different areas of the world today.

Then we went to the centre's most excellent cafeteria where I had a tuna salad with real fresh tuna, that was definitely the product of false advertising...they absolutely should have noted that it was Salad For 4! Amazing. Oh, I forgot to mention that Deirdre was on the cash register in the cafeteria and then ran back to the gift shop when all were served. She was a wonder, and a beautiful one at that.

After lunch I took a walk through the walled garden of Strokestown House. Since reading The Secret Garden as a child, I've always wanted to see a real walled garden, and this one is a prize. Again in keeping with Strokestown House's commitment to portraying life as it really was at the end of the era, the garden has been allowed to grow beautifully wild around the perimeter while the croquet lawn in the centre is immaculately groomed by the full time gardener.

Just before leaving for the airport, we found out from our very favourite bus driver on earth, John, that we had completed 1800km of driving in the 10 days in Ireland. Now you must realize that only about an hour of that was at our habitual North American speed of about 100km/h. I figure that the distance of 1800km probably represented about 30-35 hours on the roads. That which kept us cheerful and sane were the stories that our guide, Gerry, shared with us as we passed different points of interest. History, geography, botany, geology, current events, all manner of Irish lore and a good crash course in Gaelic were what we were treated to. Gerry knew it all.

So we were a little surprised when we drove through Longford later in the day and Gerry commented: "Ah, yes, the town of Longford...What can one say about it?...Not much actually." But then he remembered about a lovely young woman from the town who moved with her new husband to Chicago (I think) and had a son before they moved on the Australia. They named their son after the patron saint of the Longford: St Mel. You guessed it. Mel Gibson's mother came from Longford. Unfortunately, St Mel's church burned last year and they are in the middle of a campaign to rebuild it. You would think that it's namesake would foot the bill. 

The last post will cover our wonderful time in Dublin before we headed back to Canada. I'll try and get to it tomorrow, before my brain gets too pulled back in to the swing of the old life and loses touch with the magic.

A knitter's Mecca: The Aran Islands

This was one of the days that we were all awaiting with great anticipation,  the Aran Islands being the birthplace of  traditional Irish knitting patterns. But it really must be said that the Aran knitting tradition must be one of the most myth surrounded types of knitting ever. We really weren't sure what to expect on Inis-Mor, the largest of the 3 islands steeped in Gaelic tradition.

A few interesting details that we learned from our local guides:
-It isn't too difficult to buy land on the Island but in order to receive a permit to build on the island, you have to have lived there for 7 years and be a fluent Gaelic speaker.
- Unlike many of the areas of Ireland, they recycle and reprocess almost everything that can possibly be recycled right there on the island. The small amount of waste that doesn't fall in to that category has to be transported to the "mainland", which of course is the island of Ireland.
- Dun Aengus is the largest of the prehistoric stone forts left on the Islands. Our guide helped us situate it in time by saying that it predated the "Braveheart" area.

 And there can be no question that stone is their most plentiful resource. Here are pictures of the countryside with uncountable kilometers of "dry stone walls",  incredible feats of engineering whereby rocks from a field are piled strategically  to create a freestanding division of fields  to keep animals enclosed to protect the adjacent grazing lands.












As we drove by that former pub, we were told that it was now the local KFC outlet.













This picture shows what appears to be a palm tree in the front "garden", as they call it here, but it's actually a form of Australian Yucca tree which flourishes in this weather but does make a rather odd sight 




As for the shopping part of the journey, there were a few sweater outlets, including An Tuirne, where we met Rose (how I wish I had had the presence of mind to take a picture of her) who is one of the youngest traditional knitters left on the Island. We may have left our mark on the Aran tradition of knitting by introducing Rose to Ravelry and showing her a few of our Canadian interpretations of the Aran traditional knitting. It might be a portal through which young Aran residents can be enticed to become knitters.


Down by the ferry docks there are a series of shops, including the Aran Sweater Store where Jen displays what appears to be a replica of our Block Afghan back at WOOL-TYME Kingston. We were amazed!


There is no question that one has to be very careful when choosing a sweater to buy. Like in any other tourist centre, there are different levels of authenticity and quality offered in some of the shops, but without question, the real McCoy is easily available on the Island.


Anyway, all in all it was a "grand day", as they would say, and we had a "good crack", mixing with folks from all over the world on the ferry and on the walk up to the fort, then lunching with the locals at Ti  Joe Watty's pub , with the best seafood chowder that I have ever had.

Bunratty to Galway

The problem with having more fun than you believe possible is that it leaves very little time to get on the computer to blog about all the fun that we're having.

Here we're at Durty Nellie's pub, (est. 1620) just outside of  Bunratty Castle. The unusual thing about Bunratty is that unlike most of the ruins of ancient castles and forts that we passed along the way, this is a fully restored "tower home" which shows how the family would have lived over 500 years ago. Most of the furniture is actually from that period, and unlike many curated exhibits, most of it is still in use and fully available for visitors to investigate. The concept of sitting at a 500 year old table really boggles our relatively young North American minds.  

Making our way towards Galway, which we will use as a base for the next 3 days, we stopped off at the Cliffs of Moher. Absolutely stunning, and the "access ramp" that was along side the 300 odd steps to the top was a bit of a joke. I couldn't imagine any electric wheelchair or human pusher who could make it up those hills. We did however see a fellow with a golf cart, which explained that what we took for a  "ramp" was more likely a small track for the few motorized vehicles on patrol. 

 

Besides being distracted with exciting activities that keep me away from my blogging duties, the only other problem that we are encountering are that our guide, Gerry and our bus driver, John have completely spoiled us for any others who will ever try to fill their shoes on future tours. They have both gone way beyond the call of duty when it comes to being flexible about changing routes and plans. And add to the mix that they're both as funny as can be, well, we're trying to figure out how we can kidnap them and bring them home with us. It was particularly wonderful  to have them join us for a REAL Medieval Feast in a 17th century castle where King Jason and Queen Tammy presided over the company.

The Ring of Kerry

Killarney is a wonderful city for tourists: it's small and gentle enough to feel wonderfully welcoming and authentic, populated with locals who love to meet people from away, yet it offers everything that you could imagine. Here we are visiting
Muckross House , a typical grand home where Queen Victoria visited for 2 days in 1861. It took 6 years of work to complete the preparations for her visit, including the weaving of 2 rugs for her bedroom suite.

The Ring of Kerry is Ireland's version of the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton, but as I mentioned in an email back home, the road through  Killarney National Park 
makes our Canadian trail look like the 401. This is a picture of one of the wider stretches of road. As they don't have snow to plow here, there are barely any shoulders to the roads, perhaps 18 inches. This view shows cliff rock on either side, but just around that bend is a sheer drop of hundreds of feet on the outside of that tiny road edge. And remember, this is a wide section of the Ring's roadway.

 One of our group asked the guide if there was anywhere to camp in the National Park. He was completely perplexed at the question; what on earth would possess anyone to want to pitch a tent on this land?



Kinmare is the home of the world famous Kenmare Lace, a tradition established by a convent of nuns who spent a good part of their lives learning and creating these beautiful details. The curators of the exhibit found a prize book with a note to the Mother Superior, who was astute enough to recognize that to promote the sale of their magnificent work, it was important that it be seen in competitions around the world. The note in the book said that as the sisters were not interested in receiving the prize medals for their work , would they accept this commemorative book.

While in Kinmare we did some shopping in a wonderful Irish craft store. I was speaking with a lovely young lady there who told me that she had come to Canada for a visit when she was ten. She went on to say that they first arrived in Hudson's Bay at Churchill, Manitoba. I was thinking: "How sweet, but she must have made a mistake." She then went on to explain that they were on a "cruise" that went from Iceland to Greenland into Hudson's Bay, then they "paddled" (she said) on to Vancouver. I was amazed by visions of this little 10 year old with her family, paddling voyageur style through the waterways of Canada to the West coast. I was relieved when I realized that she must have meant that the cruise ship brought them around to Vancouver. What an experience either way.

Waterford to Blarney

After leaving Dublin, our bus driver was a real trooper in accepting to do a little detour to Cushendale Wollen Mills. Well, actually it was more than the bus driver who was a bit inconvenienced. Imagine the mill owner receiving a call at about 4:55pm to warn him that a bus load of Canadian knitters was on  its way for a  visit...when he generally closes at 5:30!

I bought some of this interesting fibre. It's cut from the edges of the woven mohair blanket/shawls from Cushendale's. I'm not sure what anyone else would do with it, but I made a scarf in literally 10 minutes by making an open chain stitch of the entire 140g of it, then I cut the chain in 3 equal lengths and tied the ends in to a large knot and braided it very loosely. Voila!

In Waterford, we toured the showroom of the Waterford Crystal factory. When I first saw the details of the tour that our travel agent, Pam had put together for us, I was thrilled to see that rather than being a retreat, exclusively for knitters, there were many quintessentially Irish attractions that had been built in that would appeal to anyone, the tour of the crystal factory being one of these activities. Consequently we have enjoyed the company of 4 non-knitting spouses and a non-kniiting sister, all of whom seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously.

Here is a picture of one of the prototypes of pieces being worked on at the Waterford plant, which will be used as gifts during the 2012 Olympics in London.

At Blarney Castle a good number of our stalwart gang actually climbed the 140+ stairs up to the top of the castle to hang upside-down over the side in order to position themselves to do the requisite kissing. I took pictures from below looking up at their gymnastic efforts  but they didn't turn out very well. I decided to share instead this nice picture of the castle (which, through the magic of digital photography and photoshop, I was able to straighten the towers so that they would be perpendicular to the ground, and not leaning as they seem to do in real life. )


This beautiful garden on the grounds is deceptively peaceful looking. In fact it is the Poison Garden with signs like the one below posted everywhere describing the poisonous properties of each of the plants featured, including Mandrake of Harry Potter fame.

My favourite part of the Poison Garden was the giant iron web which enclosed but 2 little poppy plants. I was confused, especially when I read the horticultural sign, which identified the exhibit as cannibis. Then I read the other sign that said that the marijuana plants had been confiscated by the Garda (police) and they were hoping to replant the exhibit next season when the licensing issues had been taken care of.

In Dublin Fair City

Here we are in Ireland on the first day of the 2011 WOOL-TYME Kingston Irish Knitting Tour.  32 of us from Montreal to Hamilton are on the tour, with Gerry, our guide and John, our bus driver.

A lovely flight and a busy first day, especially considering that most of us got minimal sleep time on the overnight flight, but we had a great time today anyway.
 First of all, let me tell you about the serendipitous situation that happened with Lisa, from This Is Knit, the only and loveliest yarn store in central Dublin. I had made arrangements several weeks ago for us to see Lisa and her staff in her shop then on Saturday, she emailed me to say that due to some odd circumstances they would be moving their store on the very day we would be arriving, but that we would still be welcomed and she would keep the traditional Irish section of her "old" store intact for us to visit, which we did. We also got to stick our head into the new digs which opened at noon today. It's absolutely wonderful and happens to be next to a fabulous tea room which we also visited. What a feat to have accomplished their move all in just a few hours. Link here to their blog to see more pictures and read about it. 

Here are a few other things that we discovered about Dublin on this first day:
They LOVE beer, which is synonymous with Guinness here.



They are a bilingual country, with the Irish Gaelic appearing everywhere above the English on their signs.



They love their stories and folklore here, as seen in the statue of Molly Malone, of song fame, and the street musician sitting at her feet, and in this other beautiful sculpture at the Garden of Remembrance where the Queen, during her historic visit to Ireland earlier this summer, laid a wreath to remember all those who died in the conflicts with Britain in the past.

On to Waterford.

MAGGIE JACKSON is coming soon to ONTARIO

For those of you who aren't able to join us this year on the 2011 Irish Knitting Tour, here's a great way to console/treat yourselves and get a bit of a taste of what the new Irish Knitting is all about.
Linda from Rose Haven Farm has arranged for a whole weekend of activities and workshops with Ireland's knitting queen,  Maggie JacksonThree days of immersion into Maggie's world is a very special treat.

The following is the full scoop and registration form. Don't miss out.



...Big news for knitters and fibre artists.  We have Irish knitting diva, Maggie Jackson of Maggiknits, here for a Fashion Show and 2 days of workshops in October from October 7 - 9.  Mark these dates if you wish to have a fun knitting experience.  This is her first time in Eastern Canada.   See www.maggiknits.com.
Maggie will be coming to our shop in Picton for 3 events.  You can come for any or all them.  All will be held in our shop.  For those who wish to stay over night we can offer accommodation ideas, although we have tried to schedule the events so you have options.
Maggiknits Fashion Show & Wine & Cheese ~ Maggie Jackson, October 7
Fashion Show with Wine & Cheese: Friday, October 7, 4:00 – 8:00 p.m.; Fashion Show at 5:30 sharp.   Wonderful opportunity to see and try on many kinds of Maggiknits garments and to share time with Maggie herself.   Check out the books, materials, kit options and which work for you!
Cost: $20.00 including wine & cheese.  Max. 50.

See over for the 2 days of workshops.

Registration Form (pre-registration by phone, email or email is required)

Name:  ________________________________________________________

Address: _______________________________________________________

Phone #: _______________________________________________________

Email: _________________________________________________________

Please indicate which event you wish to attend.  Payment can be by VISA/MC, cheque, or if in the shop, debit or cash.  The 2 workshops will have a $30 deposit on each required to insure attendance.  Should you wish to attend all 3 events there is a savings, as the package fee will be $200.00.

Fashion Show with Wine & Cheese  $20.00                                  ____________

Workshop 1 Oh No Not another Scarf with materials  $100.00  ____________

Workshop 2 Wearable Art with materials $100.00                                ____________

Package – all 3 events $200.00                                                                     ____________

Please make cheques out to: Rose Haven Farm and mail to Rose Haven Farm Store, 187 Main Street, Picton, ON K0K 2T0.  Call for VISA / MC 613-476-9092.

Workshop 1 ~ Saturday, October 8   Oh No Not another Scarf

Garments will be available during the day.  

10:30 - 4:30, ½ hour lunch break

Cost: $100 includes class materials.  Max 20

By the end of this class Maggie hopes the piece you will make will NOT go towards a scarf but one of the other design options she shows in a table runner, a pillow, a purse, a shawl, a wall hanging, etc.  Maggie will have you thinking "outside the box" by making holes in your work, joining her renown tubes and working a Ladder stitch.  She will show some finishing techniques for the project and give advice on what she learned from being a Fashion Designer doing Ready to Wear for 25 years selling to emporiums such as Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom and having 45 knitters.   Samples of these stitches will be shown on garments to stretch your creative thinking.

Needles 4.5 - 5 mm, preferably wooden, bamboo or plastic to work with the linen and others (as metal needles are slippery). Scissors, darning needle.

Workshop 2 ~ Sunday, October 9     Wearable Art

Garments will be available for viewing during day.

10:30 - 4.30, ½ hour lunch break

Cost: $100 includes class materials.  Max 20

This class is a combination of various small squares which can be put together after class to make a scarf or towards a larger project.  We will make knitted and fabric bows on a square, a ruffle stitch with a tube and 2 coloured picot tube, knotting yarns to make a loopy stitch, to name a few.  Samples of these stitches will be shown on the garments to stretch your creativity.

Needles 4.5 - 5 mm, preferably wooden, bamboo or plastic to work with the linen and others (as metal needles are slippery). Scissors, darning needle.

Please note that refreshments will be provided but lunch will be at the cafe of your choice in Picton. We will provide a list of nearby places.  Food may be brought back to the shop.  All events will be held at the shop.