Lupines in Wool

Route 4 through Nova Scotia does not have the vistas offered by many of the other roads in the province, but it does have lupines. In June, the verges were lined for miles with tall purple, blue, and pink inflorescence. Nothing, it seems, is more purple that a purple lupine.

Upon returning home, I started knitting lupines. This is something that I have tried out with before without satisfactory results. It turned out that buying almost every purple available from Jamieson and Smith was essential, and I was able to design a motif that unmistakably represents a lupine in full bloom.

I have wanted to knit a sweater for my mother for a long time, and for a long time I have wanted it to be purple. This is because she once owned a purple Archie Brown & Son yoke knit of Shetland wool. She says that she bought it in 1983 while vacation in Bermuda. Sometime in the 80’s, the sweater was stored away in the basement and it remained there until my sister and I found it around 2000. There were dozens of moth holes, and I wore holes and all it for a decade before discovering darning. It now has mends, some more visible than others, as well as elbow patches, and I wear it regularly.

This photo was taken about two years ago, before the elbow patches.

Using Kate Davies’ Foxglove pattern as a template, my sister and I decided to knit a lupine cardigan for our mother’s birthday. In July 2017, I shipped main color yarn to M, she knit the sleeves and shipped them back to me, and then I joined them with the body before knitting the yoke. When my mother’s birthday came in early August, I had just joined the body and sleeves. She was patient through the fall and early winter as I finished knitting the yoke, cutting the steek, and painstakingly sewing a ribbon over the steek’s raw edge.

For those interested in knitting details, Kate Davies’ Foxglove pattern is available as part of her YOKES book. Kate Davies’ sweater sits nice and flat across her chest, but this is not the case for many other knitters. Based on Ravelry photos, I think that knitters have struggled with the yoke shaping and the neckline sits high and wide on many women. I modified the yoke, beginning with extra short rows in the back at the join of the arms with the body, and then more short rows at the top of the colorwork. I also decreased more within the yoke than is called for in the pattern. This allowed for a closer neckline that is wide enough not to scratch our mom’s neck. I cut the steek without reinforcement and then hand stitched it in place, rather than using a crochet reinforcement. The method that I used is described in Alice Starmore’s Book of Fair Isle Knitting and works well with Shetland wool. My Ravelry project page is here.

We are all three – M, Mom, and me – very happy with this cardigan and hope it sees decades of wear.

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Snow Geese in Wool

After sighting a flock of Snow Geese in March 2017, I have been thinking about how to capture the migration of Snow Geese in wool. Last week, I finally sat down and knit up a hat in the species’ honor.

The simple triangle motif based on quilters’ flying geese is knit in black, gray, and white to resemble Snow Geese flight feathers, and the three repeats form subtle V shapes to imply movement.

This hat is now winging its way to my uncle in Pennsylvania in time for winter.

Sister’s Lake

Back in September, G and I spent a warm weekend in the Adirondacks. I was desperate for the smell of spruce forests and the feel of cool water. We packed our car, loaded the canoe, and headed east after work on Friday September 22. It is a long drive from Buffalo to the Adirondack State Park, so it was well into the night by the time we pulled over at a trailhead and lay down across the trunk and back seats in our small hatchback. Gazing through the back windshield, the wide canoe on our roof cut a black gash across the starry sky.

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On Saturday, we took our time reaching our final destination. We first bought cider doughnuts and coffee in Old Forge, then drove Uncas Road to the trail for Black Bear Mountain. It was a perfect blue-skied day, warm enough for mid-summer though technically autumn had arrived. The maple trees were burning red and orange across the landscape, with the birch just beginning to glow yellow.

When we first arrived, G and I were the only people at the summit, but we were soon joined by an extended family with young children. They reached the peak, and immediately began to search for something. When we inquired, the father explained that one of his sons had passed away a few years ago and he, the father, had carved his son’s initials into the rock as a memorial. Now they were back a year later and could not find the carving. They looked for at least an hour, with no success. Perhaps they were on the wrong mountain. At the risk of sounded insensitive, I must say that we were glad that they did not find their carving. Engraving the Adirondack granite is leaving a trace to say the least. It implies a sense of self-importance and a disregard for the value of a natural area. It affects other people’s experiences. Fellow hikers, please follow Leave No Trace ethics and keep your penknives away.

In the afternoon, we drove to Big Moose Lake, where we parked our car at the public boat launch and headed out for the night. Our destination was a lean-to that lies three miles past the far end of the lake and is only accessible through a combination of boating and walking. This lean-to is perched on the edge of Sister’s Lake, with a natural rock outcrop serving as a swimmer’s ideal entry. We shared the location with three men who were also out for the weekend.

I had brought my Acadian hat with me as the weekend’s knitting project, which I had first knit as a memory piece from our honeymoon to Nova Scotia. The hat is made with Quince and Co. Lark yarn in calming blue-greens that remind me of early twilight. The original was in need of brim modifications. One of the men who was staying at the lean-to saw me knitting and liked my Acadian hat so much, he requested that I sell one to him. And so, I did. Last week, PH received his own Acadian hat, with just a few modification. I hope it keeps his cozy and warm all this winter long.

 

Connections

The first thing that drew me to Nova Scotia as a honeymoon destination was it’s clear cultural ties to Scotland, especially cultural ties expressed in wool. M and I made a trip to Scotland in 2015, and I had since been interested in the historic and present ties to New Scotland.

In the 1800’s, the infamous Highland Clearances took place across northern Scotland. Landlords forced thousands of peasants from their homes in favor of sheep. These people were forced to settle in Scotland’s less arable lands and many risked emmigration rather than eek out meager livings on the plots allowed to them in Scotland. Scots arrived at the harbors of Cape Breton and made new lives for themselves as fisherman, subsitence farmers, and, later, coal miners. (I suspect that these people included my maternal grandmother’s Murray ancestors, though my great great grandfather ended up in Montreal rather than Cape Breton.) Commercial fishing, farming, and mining have all declined, but Nova Scotia’s Scottish heritage continues to thrive in the language, music, and dance of Scotland, which have evolved into endemic styles.

Less attention is given to the geological ties between these lands. The Aspy Fault slices through the Cape Breton Highlands just as the Great Glen Fault cleaves the Scottish Highlands. Two faults are in fact one in the same. They are both part of the 300 km fissure known as the Great Glen Fault formed millenia ago when Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and Northern Scotland were all part of the Avalonian subcontinent.

Travelling the Cabot Trail brings you to a number of Aspy Fault viewpoints. If you are moving by pedal bicycle, these points are good places to rest after climbing the steep road.

The vegetation makes for a different looking landscape, but standing at a Cabot Trail overlook of the Aspy Fault, I also saw the view from Conic Hill in my mind’s eye. I like to think that the ancient geological connection between Scotland and New Scotland is part of what drew thousands of Scots to settle the northwestern Atlantic Coast. True, these people were low on options, but perhaps the Canadian land felt surprisingly familiar to its new residents and allowed for the flourishing of Celtic-Canadian culture that continues to this day.

 

 

Bicycling the Cabot Trail

Cape Breton is, perhaps, the most famous region of Nova Scotia. It is known for dramatic vistas, for Celtic music and dance, for Cheticamp rug hooking, and for the Cabot Trail that links it all together. It is also known for its hills, which Nova Scotians had been warning us about since our arrival in the province. G was confident that we could climb any hill, but I was uncertain, especially due to a deep and unignorable pain that had developed in my left hamstring. Still, there was no way to know until we tried, and really no alternative anyway after we had already come so far to ride The Cabot Trail.

We left Port Hastings on Highway 104, which is a true highway with plenty of trucks, tourists, and resident islanders travelling north. 104 does have a large shoulder, but riding a pedal bicycle on a highway is never pleasant. The pain in my hamstring became unbearable as we climbed the rolling hills toward the Cape Breton highlands. It seemed to take over my mind and all I could think of was the sensation. We were on a tight schedule to reach Cape Smokey Provincial Park for the night, but we were forced to pull over repeatedly for me to take breaks. This was the way of things until we reached Baddeck, the first town of our route on The Cabot Trail. Baddeck is home to Baadeck, a yarn shop of course, so we took the time to peak at the yarns before buying thick, pasty all-natural sunscreen at the drug store and chatting with a M’kmaw man in the parking lot. In the heat of late afternoon, we were in desperate need of ice cream, but there was none to be found. This ended up being the first of several ice cream hunts that ended in disappointment.

The rest of our afternoon was uneventful but for a very short ride on the Englishtown cable ferry.

Many of the craft shops were closed by the time that we reached them in the early evening. This was disappointing, but we had nowhere to store woodwork or pottery anyway. It was getting toward civil twilight when we started to look for a place to stealth camp rather than continue to Cape Smokey. We came across several places that I thought would do just fine, but G felt that they were too exposed, too visible, too this or too that. We had made up our minds that we would continue to Cape Smoke Provincial Park in the dark after all, which meant climbing Mount Smokey first, when we stopped for a hamstring break in the parking lot of Wreck Cove General Store. The store was closed for the night, but the owner was outside packing a trailer for a trip to Halifax. It only took a few moments of chatting with pathetically tired me for this man to realize that I truly did not want to continue on and climb the steepest hill of Cape Breton after dark, and he offered us a place to camp by the woodline behind the store. There were thousands of mosquitoes back there, he said, but no one would bother us. Not only this, but he brought us each a cold beer to have with our dinners. G and I have been both treated well by many strangers while we are travelling – Appalachian Trail angels and magicians, Warm Showers hosts, drivers giving hitches, the list goes on – and we never take it for granted. We are always more grateful than we can express and can only hope that we are able to pay kindness forward.

Lunenberg

Lunenberg is one of the best-known towns in Nova Scotia, having received UNESCO world heritage site status in 2012. The town is exceptional because it represents one of the only examples of a planned town in British colonial America. 289 years after it was founded, Lunenberg still boasts small wooden clapboard houses, a strong sense of local pride, and surprisingly steep roads.

We rode to Lunenberg from Rissers Provincial Park via route 331 and the LaHave cable ferry – a first for both of us. It was cold and wet and the ferry operator allowed us to warm up in the staff cabin. Unfortunately, we reached the ferry before the LaHave Bakery opened for the morning, but this put us in a good position to patronize Lunenberg’s #9 café. We also, later, had one of our best meals of the trip at The Salt Shaker.

Lunenberg is an artistic town and we spent most of our day in the independent book stores, gift shops, and art galleries. In the Lunenberg Bound book shop, we bought three large and heavy tomes entitled Flora of Northeast United States and Adjacent Canada Volumes I, II, and III. I have since weighed them and they total 6 lbs 8 oz.

Later that night, looking skeptical about the wisdom of our purchase.

We did also stop into the Mariner’s Daughter, the local knitting shop, but there was no wool yarn that met my particular requirements.

A must-see in the town of Lunenberg is the Musuem of Fisheries. We began our tour of the museum on the ground floor aquarium, which ranked as the most depressing aquarium I have ever seen. Many of the tanks were drained and empty. The tanks that were inhabited were dark with scattered stones and a few sad fish or crustaceans. Fortunately, the other exhibits in the museum were more educational and enjoyable. We learned about the evolution of cod fishing, the life cycle of lobsters, the interactions of north Atlantic currents, and more. There was even a bit of fisherman’s knitwear on display!

We left the museum in late afternoon and it was time to head out of town. We detoured by The Bluenose – Nova Scotia’s pride and joy- and the small grocery store, and then we were back on the path and heading toward Graves Provincial Park for the night.

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Graves Provincial Park is located on an island in Schnare Cove. It is connected to the mainland by a short causeway. We stayed in one of the walk-in sites and had the area to ourselves.

South Shore

The second day of our bicycle tour around Nova Scotia started with strong black tea brewed in a Royal Albert china teapot graced with white trillium flowers, homemade strawberry jam on toast, and well wishes from our host. An auspicious start.

We rode from Tusket to Barrington along the Yarmouth County Rail Trail. The trail in this section is well maintained and lined with vistas.

Our ride went a little less smoothly when we turned onto Oak Park Road. Our map called this out as suitable for cars with 2-wheel drive, and this was true at the start.

This became decidedly Not True as we progressed.Deep puddles with soft sediment proved challenging. We even took our first, and so far only, tandem tumble, and then were forced us to walk Leonid for a few short stretches.

All our struggles were worthwhile because the municipality of Barrington hosts a must-see for the knitter-tourist: The Barrington Woolen Mill Museum.

Thanks to the knowledgeable and skilled staff, this small museum was a treat. It is full of the original equipment and even displays wool in multiple stages of processing from when the mill was operation, though this all looked more than a bit dusty.

The museum also houses a beautiful tapestry and embroidery made by the women of the area. The entire piece is made of hand-spun and hand-dyed wool.

The tapestry was meant to show Nova Scotia first three groups of settlers: the Acadians, the Loyalists, and the Scottish. We appreciated this, but also couldn’t help but think, “And where are the M’kmaw?”

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Leaving Barrington, we met another bicycle tourist. Our new pal told us that he was headed to the Boxing Rock brewery in Shelburne. This sounded too good to pass by, and we worked our little legs non-stop until we reached the beer. There is simply nothing as satisfying as a good beer and a nice meal after riding all day.