O, What a Beautiful Morning!

It's glorious here in Greenport today.  The hot and humid weather of the weekend broke around midnight last night.  It's 60 degrees and sunny right now -- just perfect.

We spent the weekend tearing up the front yard -- which we are redoing -- and painting the attic, which will become by new studio.  I feel a little like Goldilocks trying out the three bears' beds.  I started in the garage, which was lovely for years, but is now too wet for any sort of fiber art.  Pete will take that over for his ceramics.  I moved into the new basement, which is really dry and has radiant heat, but I hate being underground -- even though we have over-sized windows.  We are going to turn that into a music room and studio for Clara when she is at home.  So -- the attic is the last place I can go and I am loving it.  It is a little smaller, but I will keep my light table and non-hooking craft supplies in the old basement.  I'll get lots of exercise walking up and down two flights of stairs.  I will post pictures as soon as it is set up.  I am stripping paint off an old desk I bought to fit a specific space, so it may be awhile yet.

In the meantime, here are some more photographs from Ireland.  That trip has just stuck with me.  I have been reading some Irish thrillers by Benjamin Black, which I found in the library totally by accident.  They take place in 1950s Dublin and it so fun to read about places I have been . . . .

The view from our room at the Burlington

A leprechaun

A Hen Party  (the woman in pink is the bride-to-be)

A fabulous green cowhide-covered chair at Monart

The salon in the manor house of Monart

The hallway into the modern addition at Monart

A stone stile near Wexford

The Samuel Beckett Bridge.  Ann took this photograph with her iPhone upside down in the back of a taxi.  I think it is fabulous, as is the bridge.

Irish Wool

I wouldn't be a dyed-in-the-wool rug hooker if I didn't hunt down some wool in Ireland.  I googled "wool" before we left and, for the most part,  came up with places to buy yarn. I did find Dublin Woollen Mills (I love that they spell it with two "l"s)  near the Ha'penny Bridge, and it was our first stop after we checked into the Burlington Hotel on Friday morning.

It was a quirky store -- creaky wooden floors and a mixture of fabric, kilts, sweaters, trims, and acrylic yarns.  It reminded me of Horwitz Brother's in downtown New Haven, where my sister Patty would take me to pick out kettle cloth she'd make into dresses for me.  I did find some woolen yardage that I liked:  two tweedy pieces and a heathered pumpkin.  (You can never have enough pumpkin wool, in my opinion.)  It's all washed and fulled and ready for hooking.

We looked around for more fabric stores, and kept our eyes open for a great yarn shop.  We went to Hickey's, which had great oil cloth for sale -- Ann bought a piece to use as a tablecloth -- but really lousy yarn. 

On our excursion south last Sunday (was it really only a week ago?), we passed a sign that said "Avoca Handweavers."  Great!  We thought we would find someone sitting at a loom, weaving freshly spun wool from the sheep we saw grazing the pastures above the highway.  Not.  Avoca is a fabulous store and restaurant, full of color and light and good things to eat.  (Avoca does still weave their own wool in a tiny town south of Dublin in the Vale of Avoca -- you can read about their 280 year history on their website.)  I loved the scarves on the spools and the candy colored throws.

We did find vestiges of other woolen shops in Dublin.  The Blarney Woollen Mill is now occupied by a pharmacy.

Here's a reference to hooked rugs in a book about handcrafts that was way too heavy to schlep home.  Don't you love all the names the Brits have for rag rugs?

Thank you, Ann, Paula and Pete for indulging my appetite for wool.  I couldn't have asked for better traveling companions!