{"id":457,"date":"2013-10-20T18:00:27","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T17:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/?p=457"},"modified":"2013-10-20T18:00:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T17:00:38","slug":"draft-vienna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/?p=457","title":{"rendered":"Vienna 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having travelled down the country all day by train, an 8 hour train journey, during which I swapped between knitting, reading and gazing out the window, I arrived in Vienna to night scenes and the drizzly end to what had been stunning weather.<\/p>\n

However the weather couldn’t stop me and we did another whistlestop whirlwind tour of sights and sounds and sachertorte.\u00a0 Vienna is big on non-symmetrical symmetry – lots of conversations contain the sentence “this building was going to have a matching one opposite but…” and it’s the most gothic, beroque, overwrought, wedding cake of a city.\u00a0 It reminded me strongly of Buenos Aires and had a very Irish atmosphere while being very definitely germanic.\u00a0 I particularly loved the art deco and art neuvo flourishes everywhere, from the famous cupola gracing one of the ‘tube’ stations to little hand paintings on doorways.<\/p>\n

Going from a protestant to a catholic country was actually quite startling in a way I hadn’t predicted.\u00a0 Having grown up with a mix of churches and styles to go from the simple, open almost auster protestant churches to the heady wrought, dripping in gilt (and guilt!), ornateness that is the catholism I was brought up with was amazing.<\/p>\n

We visited far too many places and saw too many things to mention, but highlights included Lobmyer glass,\u00a0\u00a0Klosterneuburg Abbey with it’s beautiful enamelled alter screen, St Patricks, The Summer Place and a lovely walk around The Dorotheum (auction house).\u00a0 The city centre is compact and very easy to get around with lots of ‘hidden’ feeling alleys and side streets – and of course the ubiquitous coffee houses.<\/p>\n

I was spoilt by M and her husband (and two very friendly cats) – and lots and lots (and lots of beautiful handmade patchwork quilts).\u00a0 I was also spoilt by M’s very lovely parents, who welcomed me into their home and\u00a0made me eat and drink lots of wonderful foodstuffs.<\/p>\n

I met a Vienna branch of a knit group, disingenuously in a Starbucks as the only place that stayed open late enough, and had a wonderful time sharing fibre stories.<\/p>\n

Of course I visited more yarn shops.\u00a0 Another ‘high end’ luxury store with skeins on the walls, it’s own range of t-shirts (I particularly liked “knit fast, die warm”) and the cutest sheep project bags, but M beat me to it!<\/p>\n

The other was the size of a cupboard (it was crowded with the three of us) but just the most wonderful place.\u00a0 Another ‘taken on by an avid knitter when the original owner retired’ shop – and almost as full with stock – but only because the space was so small!\u00a0 Very friendly, very fun and we had a wonderful time.<\/p>\n

In both shops there were one or two skeins\/balls\/hanks on display in each colourway for each yarn type and you took your colour to the counter and told them how much you wanted – at which point assistant would disappear into the back and return with what you wanted.\u00a0 I kept wanting to hum the theme tune to Mr Benn for some reason.<\/p>\n

I bought lots in Vienna, the yarn shops were lovely and though there was very high end expensive imports lots of it was very cheap.\u00a0 I’ve even let Purlescence have a little squish<\/em> to see what they think as I’d love to be able to pick up some of\u00a0 these brands without having to travel Austria!<\/p>\n

I got…<\/p>\n

2 skeins of Isager Spinni and 3 of Isager 1 (100% alpaca) in a beautiful sort of faded vintage teal colour to make (at some point) Camomille<\/em>. I also bought 2 skiens of Isager 2 Alpaca in black for a Spectra<\/em>. I know I can get this here in the UK at Loop, but it was a lot cheaper in Europe.<\/p>\n

\"Isager<\/a><\/p>\n

I then swapped shops (so to speak) and indulged…\u00a0 First to fall to me was the BC Garn Silkbloom Fino.\u00a0 The lightest, softest, squidgest puff of nothingness which apparently a lot of Austrians use to make baby blankets.\u00a0 At 45% mohairsilk and 55% super\u00a0 soft merino I’m not sure I’d be cranking out baby blankets, though to be fair it wasn’t that expensive. I bought 1 ball in the most lovely chocolate mocha colour (there were loads<\/em> of colours) for a pair of cabled fingerless mitts<\/p>\n

\"BC<\/a>Swiftly followed into the basket by BC Garn’s Jaipur Silk Fino – 300m of pure mulberry silk that I genuinely have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but it shines like it’s lit from within..<\/p>\n

\"BC<\/a>then I came across a whole new company (well to me anyway) with the wall of deliciousness that was Lotus Yarns.\u00a0 Into the basket fell a ball of Miya – a rich purple laceweight that is 70% mink (!), 20% merino and 10% silk.<\/p>\n

\"Lotus<\/a>then a ball of Moon Night – 95% lambswool, 5% cashmere and 600 meters per 50g!\u00a0 Yeap that’s right – SIX HUNDRED meters!\u00a0 In a beautiful smoke grey…<\/p>\n

\"Lotus<\/a>then, having become jealous of all the fine laceweights and cobweb weights a brave little skein of DK Cashmere made the dive.\u00a0 And not just any<\/em> cashmere, oh no, this was 100% Mongolian<\/em> cashmere.\u00a0 I have no idea is this is better, being a bit of a cashmere virgin, but it just happened to match the Isager bought earlier as well so I’m thinking mittens to match the shawl eventually, maybe,..<\/p>\n

\"Lotus<\/a><\/p>\n

I also had several close run in’s with mushrooms – more on that in another post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having travelled down the country all day by train, an 8 hour train journey, during which I swapped between knitting, reading and gazing out the window, I arrived in Vienna to night scenes and the drizzly end to what had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[61,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Ifg0-7n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":476,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuesdayfortnite.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}