We returned a few days ago from a fun vacation in Montana, the treasure state. There’s a lot to enjoy about the place, primarily the glorious scenery.

The highlight for my kids was playing with my parent’s dogs, Mia & Taz, who are rather fun-loving Bergamascos (Italian Sheepdogs).

And there’s a lot about Montana that makes me cringe. It upsets my father when I tell him I couldn’t move back because the culture is too difficult for me to embrace wholeheartedly; however, that’s the case.

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My knitting group, the Purlygirls, held their first-ever retreat last weekend. I had a fantastic time. We laughed, ate, knit, spun, shopped and laughed some more.

We woke up early on Friday, caught the Kingston Ferry and headed to Port Gamble, where we stopped in to the Artful Ewe. What a glorious shop. I lost the power of speech the minute I set foot into Heidi’s store. It’s not like any other yarn shop you’ve been in. The beautiful yarns and fibers aren’t stuffed into industrial shelving. You’ll find braided fibers hanging from the branches of a tree, brilliant curly locks heaped in baskets; and batts of mixed fibers arranged in alluring splendor on a table. In the background, you’ll hear the crackle of a fire burning away in a woodstove, and Grace, a friendly little Whippet, curled up in a basket full of wool soaking in the heat.

When I regained my senses, I grabbed one of the beautiful batts and a pile of soft-as-a-cloud merino-??? top (got to find the name of the breed.)

I didn’t want to leave, because I felt like I had finally arrived at Nirvana, but the promise of lunch in Port Townsend lured me out. We had a nice meal at the Public House, visited a few shops and then checked in to the house we rented at Fort Worden.

During our time there, I knit quite a bit on Robert’s green cardigan. I’m 2/3 the way done with the second front. I may finish it sometime this century! He’ll be glad, since even the patches on his old sweater are starting to wear out.

I also learned a little bit about plying yarn and plied the corriedale I had spun up for a class. My singles were on the soft side and kept falling apart , but I managed to produce a reasonable facsimile of yarn.

It was a nice creamy white when I started, but my artistic inclinations got the better of me and I tried dying it. All would have been well if I had tried to keep it simple, but nooooooooooooooooooooo, that was too boring for me. As a result, I ended up with this lovely blotchy specimen. At least it was fun!

Anyway, after two nights at Fort Worden with my wonderful friends, we loaded up our vehicles and headed for Bainbridge and Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. That’s where I found YARN! (You have to say that as if you were part of a hallelujah choir.) I bought two skeins of The Fibre Company’s Terra, a blend of merino, silk and baby alpaca. It is luminous and soft. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. Right now, I’m content to treat it as “pet” yarn. It sits on my desk looking at me affectionately (or so I like to imagine) and I give it a pat every now and then.

I fell in love with Vintage Modern Knits the first time I spied it on the bookstore shelf. It’s an incredible collection of designs by Kate Gagnorn Osborn and Courtney Kelley. On average, I like maybe one or two designs in a knitting book; I plan to knit no less than seven designs from this one. They’re classic styles with lovely details–and they seem so wearable!

The first project I tried was Yvette, the Roositud Hat. Roositud is an Estonian inlay technique where stitches are wrapped but not knit with contrasting yarn to create a patterned effect. Working the Roositud is a lot like intarsia in the round. What makes it less difficult is you don’t have to worry about gaps, since the embellishment lays over the actual stitches. All the messy ends in the interior are still annoying, but I have a low tolerance level for dealing with that due to a traumatic experience as a beginner knitter with cotton yarn + intarsia.

For the body of the hat, I used Rowan Designer DK wool, which had been in my stash for a long, long time. It’s OK yarn, but tends to split. For the inlay, I used bits and pieces of other DK/sport weight yarn I had in my stash, not all of which was labeled. I do know the green was Felted Tweed.

I like the hat a lot, but wish it was as slouchy as the one pictured in the book. While I did a gauge swatch, I think my knitting grew tighter as I worked.