Nutkins Complete!

I finished my Nutkin socks about 1.5 hours into a ten hour flight from San Francisco to Munich.  Of course all of my other knitting projects were packed in my checked baggage.  This was probably a good thing in the long run as I really did need to sleep on the flight.  Having no knitting to do during a 5 hour layover in Munich was less ideal, but I did get some work done (reviewing presentations and answering e-mail) so objectively that was ok too, if not nearly as personally satisfying as knitting.

My current knitting project is the second of Boy's Zombie Socks.  I got about three hours of knitting in yesterday while waiting and riding in a car.  I could have done more if I hadn't kept taking pictures of the countryside. (We drove along the edge of a broad valley where wheat and oats were being harvested.  The golds and greens of the fields and trees were stunning against a backdrop of blue sky and thunderheads.  Too bad Van Gogh and Monet never used the Georgian landscape as subject matter.)

More Fibery Goodness
We visited the Kutaisi State Museum briefly yesterday.  They had the usual museum display of what the inside of a typical home looked like 100+ years ago.  It included a legless spinning wheel and wool combs!! The textile room included a 2 harness loom with a 24-30 inch weaving width.  It was threaded with very fine yarns.  I couldn't quite tell if it was new weaving or old weaving on the loom due to the faded colors.  The boat shuttle has clearly been used often.  Display cases held spindles, a crochet hook, patterned knitted socks (with a pointed toe that I associate with Turkish-style socks), embroidered clothing, a crocheted shawl, a knitted shawl and some religious textiles with heavy, detailed embroidery using gold threads.  If there hadn't been a couple of disapproving-looking museum ladies, I'd have taken a whole bunch of non-flash photos.  I should have asked if anybody actually uses the loom for demonstrations.   In the commercial products/industry room, there was a cotton gin and a dissertation from someone which was apparently about thread production and included small skeins of silk threads from various places.  The dissertation was handwritten (marvelous script) in French, so I was able to figure out what "soie et Canton China" meant.  I snuck a picture of that too, but will have to wait until I get home to upload from my camera.

On that note, I'm going to load my knitting, bottled water and camera into my backpack and go find a nice park area in which to sit and knit for a few more hours.