and finally...TiSA's adventures in Scotland!

TiSA is now winging her way stateside as I type and will hopefully arrive at her next destination very soon.

So...where to start? ...well I had to pop a couple of wee wedding pics in first! We are now les 'Marchants' as my cousins french boyfriend Francois put it (he's very impressed with the frenchness of our little scottish famille as Sebastien was born on Bastille day! We aim to please!)

And now a warning...I like taking pictures! A lot!! So without further ado, introducing TiSA in Scotland! And more specifically in St. Andrews. I feel I should explain, since I am from Aberdeen, why all the photos are in St. Andrews. I am half St. Andrean and it is a far prettier town than Aberdeen, I had meant to take pics in both towns, but as the wedding was in St. Andrews and it is also the town where my grandad lived, we have inevitably spent most of the summer there this year...

This is TiSA with my beautiful wedding dress, I had planned to take a pic whilst I was actually wearing the dress, but as any bride will confirm, the day goes past so quickly that you forget a million things you had planned to do!


This is TiSA sitting on the blanket box in our beautiful turret room at the Rufflets, the gorgeous country house hotel where we had our wedding reception. That's a magnificent four poster bed in the background...and a Rufflets 'Do not disturb' teddy bear that is sporting my veil (the house keeping staff would turn down our bed and put the veil on the teddy every night!!).


In the glorious two days of summer that we had in Scotland this year we did a spot of tourist-type sight-seeing. My husband has never visited the castle in St Andrews, (I used to go with my granny all the time when we could say 'Locals' and get in for free! Gone are those days, now it's £7 each!!!), so I decided it was a must that we take the tour. This is the castle entrance, though not the original drawbridge clearly!


As any good castle is built on the cliffs by the sea, there are many fantastic vantage points. From here you can see St. Andrews pier and the towers of the ruined Cathedral.


Here you find us in the remains of the castle kitchen checking out the handy garbage disposal, straight into the sea! (Don't worry, no remnants of rotting food were present!)



You will also be glad to hear that it has been a long time since this sandstone hole functioned as la toilette!

From here you can see the East Sands that were used to film one of the great sequences from the 1981 british movie 'Chariots of Fire'.


And this is a pic of one of the eeriest places in the castle, the bottle dungeon. So named because the entrance is shaped like a bottle neck, prisoners would be lowered down and left, unable to escape. I kept TiSA safe on my hand, wasn't going to risk her falling down the bottle neck!

...and this shows another of the eery places in the castle grounds, the counter mine. This was dug out during a siege on the castle when the inhabitants found out about a plot to dig a mine into the castle and attack. They dug the counter mine and a battle took place where the two mines met! It's very dark, very small and quite damp!

TiSA, my hubby and I then took a wee tour round the castle visitor centre and met some interesting types.

TiSA jumped into the peasants bucket...


...and then onto John Knox's fist...


...before ending up on King James II table whilst he was discussing pressing political matters with the bishop!


We then went on to visit the family church where we got married, All Saints Scottish Episcopal Church.



This is the beautiful church courtyard.


...and this is the garden of remembrance filled with just some of the flowers for my grandad, (my granny keeps saying her house is like Kew Gardens just now because of all the flowers, there are a lot).


We took a short stop for 'refreshments' (a nice glass of chilled white wine, mmm mmm!) in the Castle Tavern, which is run by my cousin Myk, here he is pictured with TiSA and a massive grin!


...before we moved on to the Cathedral visitor's centre.


Here is TiSA pictured with the intricate bishop's emblems.


...and then at the top of St Rules tower


It was very cold and very windy at the top of the tower, so we didn't stay for long!!



We then took TiSA on a wee tour of the St. Andrews Preservation Trust Museum where she found this 1950's wedding telegram, the message reads, 'Two pints make a half pint!'


The counter at the general store in the museum, (another willing model!)


St. Andrews, as you may know is the home of golf, and this is TiSA at the grave of a very famous St Andrean golfer Tommy Morris...

...and finally this is TiSA and myself ending our tour on the famous Swilken Bridge that looks on to the 18th hole and the club house on the Old Course in St. Andrews.

I hope you enjoyed the pics and the tour as much as we did, sorry again that it took so long, but I hope this made up somewhat for the delay!!

Jenni x

A sincere apology

I am very sorry for my part of keeping you all in suspense. I had been on track with my part of the TiSA sock (despite wedding preparations) but sadly my grandfather passed away the week before our wedding and everything was pushed aside for the funeral, which was then followed two days later by the wedding. I am now home and catching up on everything, the sock will be in the post on it's way to the next knitter tomorrow. Sincerest apologies again and I hope to make it up to you all for the delay by posting some fabulous pics of the sock on tour in Scotland.

Tisa in Philly

Well, I finally named the sock. It is Tisa (Truly International Sock, Alright?), and Tisa is on it's way to the next knitter.



Here we are at the Baltimore Aquarium. Tisa had to hide in my purse for most of it though. We were in the splash zone!



When in Philly...you must see the Liberty Bell!! My big head is blocking the bell. D'oh! It was either that or tourists.



Um...I am not sure what this is. There was construction in front of the building that housed the Liberty Bell, and everyone was taking pictures. I was amused and so was Tisa, so we posed for a picture ourselves.



This is Independence Hall. We couldn't figure out how to get in. You know...past those gates. So this picture is from behind them. Which is actually better, it's hard to get a good portion of the building in the picture.



My friend wanted to stop in Starbucks during our walk around Philly. I'm not too fond of coffee, but Tisa was totally thrilled and insisted on posing with this employee. Who seems to be generally thrilled about holding some weird girl's needles and yarn. This ended up being my favorite picture, we were all thoroughly amused by this guy's enthusiasm.



Here is my friend posing with Tisa in front of the Koigu at Loop. I mean, we had to sample the local yarn!

Well, unfortunately that is all I have for you. Apparently I am a terrible tourist. Hopefully the goodies I sent with Tisa will make up for at least a little bit of my delinquency.

Drumroll please!

The votes have been tallied, and the winning pattern is....... MONKEY!

In joint second place: Broadripple and Baudelaire

Monkey got almost a third of all the votes, so I think we'll knit the same pattern in both of the groups.

The socks will be sent out on Monday. Yay!! There are still a few knitters who haven't answered the questions, and I've resent the email to them once more. If you haven't received an email with questions (about address and so on) from me, please let me know. And if you haven't answered the questions yet, please do that before Monday!

I'm not going to tell you which knitter gets the first visit from the sock, or in which order the sock will be travelling. That's a surprise! :)

Just about ready...

Hi everyone!

It's so nice to see that so many of you have introduced yourselves here on the blog! Most of you have also answered the questions in my email, but I'm still waiting for answers from 9 knitters before I can send out the socks. If you could answer a soon as possible, that would be great! I was planning to send the socks out at the beginning of next week. If you haven't received an email with questions from me, please let me know and I'll resend it.

I have also counted the votes for sock pattern that I have received so far, and the three most popular patterns have the same number of votes. I still need the votes from the knitters who haven't answered yet before I can announce the winning pattern. If it's really close, we could knit different patterns in the two groups.

The itinerary is also starting to take form, and it looks like the socks will have an amazing journey all across the globe! So exciting! Let's hope that the remaining knitters answer the questions soon so we can get this adventure on the road. I can't wait! :)

We're on our way!

And so it begins. The International Sock KAL is ready to take off!

You should all have received two emails from me by now. One that includes some information and a few questions, and one invitation to contribute to this blog. If you have not received both of these emails (check your spam/junk folder), send me an email to voivitsi@yahoo.com and I'll sort it out.

If there are knitters out there who are interested in this KAL but haven't signed up yet, there is still time to do that. Sign-ups close at the end of the day today (May 6), but if you feel that you can't survive if you don't get to participate in this KAL, and you discover that on Monday or Tuesday, I'm sure I can squeeze you in... :)

The faster all of you knitters answer my email, the sooner we can start sending the socks out. So exciting!

Oh, the places we will see!

Knitters from a whole bunch of different countries have been signing up at a steady pace, and the socks are already beside themselves with excitement! :) I'm sure you would be too if you had a chance to visit places like Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden and USA (among others). There are even rumors that the socks will get to meet a real celebrity sock...

Sign-ups are open until Sunday (the 6th of May) and after that I will send out an email to all the knitters with some questions and more information. We will be posting our pictures and stories here on the blog instead of on Flickr, because it makes so much more sense to keep everything in one place. I will add all the knitters as contributors to the blog.

If we get just a few more participants, we can send two pairs of socks out! Yay!

A question...

I just wanted to ask all of you if you would rather post your travelling sock pictures here on the blog instead of on Flickr. It might be better to keep everything in one place and not have to alternate between two websites. If you want to do this, you would need to set up a Blogger account, if you don't have one already. What do you guys think?

Button, button, who's got a button?

Would any of you, dear participants, be interested in making a button for this KAL? I'm not much of a button maker myself, so I'm sure you would do a far better job.

The blog has been up two days now, and we already have enough members to make one whole sock and the cuff of the second one! Woohoo! :) Do tell all your blogland friends about this KAL. We want as many members as possible.

And remember, it's not a contest to make the most beautiful sock. It's the experience that counts! It doesn't matter if you've knitted 100 socks or 1, everyone is welcome!

Comments and suggestions

I see that some knitters have already found their way here. Welcome! It would be great to get some comments and suggestions about this KAL.

What do you think about the idea?
Will you participate?
Is there anything that you would add or change?
Any comments or suggestions that you might think of are welcome. Just comment to this post.

A few knitters have already signed up, and there will be a list of participants on the blog when we have a little more names.

If you have any special requests about when you would like to knit your part (e.g. if you're going on a trip or otherwise are unavailable during a specific time), please email me and I'll try my best to adjust the knitting order accordingly.

Sign-ups will be open until May 6. It will be so exciting to see how many socks we can turn into globetrotters! Send me an email with your name and blog address to voivitsi (at) yahoo (dot) com to register.

Guidelines

How to register

Send me an email with your name and blog address to
voivitsi (at) yahoo (dot) com.


General stuff

1. Depending on the number of participants, one pair or several pairs of socks will travel around the world.

2. Every knitter will knit a small part of the same Knitty sock pattern. The participants will vote for a pattern, and the pattern with the most votes will be used. More information about this later.

3. The goal is to get the socks to visit as many countries as possible during their journey.

4. The first knitter will receive a package with needles, the pattern, instructions, a journal and a small treat. Everything except the treat will be sent to the next knitter.

5. The address of the next knitter will be sent to you by email. (No list of participants addresses will be travelling around the world inside the package)

6. The last knitter in line will be responsible for grafting the toe, weaving in the ends, and washing and blocking the socks. This person will also send the socks to the person who wins them in the drawing.


What you need to do as a knitter

1. Register for this KAL by sending me an email with your name and blog address. The email address is : voivitsi (at) yahoo (dot) com.

2. Knit your part of the sock within a reasonable time frame using your own sock yarn. Your part could for example be the cuff, or a pattern repeat, or the heel, etc. Follow the instructions that come with the sock. Needles will be included in the package. The needles will be dpns, so if you prefer to knit with circs you can transfer the stitches to your own needles. Just remember to put them back on the dpns before you send them!

3. Take a picture of the sock at an interesting location and post it to our Flickr group. Write a "story" under the picture, why not in the form of a post card.

4. Write something in the journal that comes with the sock.

5. Include a small treat in the package for the next knitter (optional, but highly appreciated).

6. Cut the yarn and put the sock in a bubble envelope after you've finished your part and make sure that it gets sent to the next knitter (appropriate postage, etc.).

7. Have a lot of fun!