Knit happens

My knitting followed me to America. I spent three weeks on the other side of the world, more precisely in Virginia with a trip to Florida, all for the purpose of visiting my husband's family. It was my second trip, but only now I experienced it as a country of contradictions, mainly for realizing how big differences there could be between rich and poor and how close they can be found each other. A shock for a European, although coming from a kind of worn-out conditions as well, but with a social background that seems to me fundamental.






Looking at the architecture, which caught my eye the most, I was puzzled on my first trip by the villas around Virginia built in a sort of Victorian style. At first, driving through the vast housing areas with large gardens and woods around the houses, I thought that they were really old! Second day I started to understand more that this is rather an eclectic style that they have been building in through out the centuries and the most since 1970s (which I learned little later), most of the houses in the neighborhood weren't more than 40 years old. Another shock for a European who bumps into modernism on every step. Even the furniture and equipment inside the houses likes to look old, as if it has been there since ever. Maybe it is for the lack of deeper roots. Also the establishment in U.S. hasn't changed for two centuries and therefore the architecture tends to resist any big changes, seems to me. (Talking about that, it crosses my mind now how I heard recently that America today is more like 1950s again, stress on tradition and convention in society, no big excesses, and the architectural style confirms it...)




So Virginia is nice and neat, with well maintained country picture, at places even looking like a painter composed it, whereas Florida is wilder with poorer spots here and there, which on the other hand, looking at it aesthetically, is more appealing to me, it is more interesting.



So I am writing all of this to say that I went to yarn shops there, one was called Knit happens and the other one was Yarn Barn, both filled up with beautiful yarns that I often see on Flickr and elsewhere. They are expensive! No wonder that many people end up knitting socks! I picked this Japanese Noro for myself and "jumped" on knitting as soon as I got home that day. Trying to be little inventive, I am going to make just front part of a sweater from it and to finish the rest in one color yarn, a color that would match with Noro. I was also supplied by a bunch of yarn and fabrics from my relatives and that is good for my projects.