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Newport and it’s Namesake

I wanted to share this story the day that it happened, but couldn’t, because it would have given things away for Classic Elite, and they like their surprises.  But now that the design is out, I can tell you about it.

I wrote the Newport design nearly ten months ago.  By October, I had put the design out of my mind, and was working on other things.  I got an email from Classic Elite; they needed me to resend my pattern and, by the way, here’s some of the pictures from the photoshoot for the sample.

The pictures, which you can see on Ravelry, or in the previous pictures in my blog, were stunning.  I could hardly contain myself.  I went to call my mother, after forwarding her the email (probably against the rules, as I’m not supposed to make public the details of my design until they publish it, but I thought my mother could be… mum. heh.)  I’d forgotten that my mother and my two grandmothers had taken a trip that weekend TO Newport.

You can’t see it so clearly in any of the pictures used for Newport, but in Bondi, pictured at right, you can see some of the resort/hotels/condos that are typical of the Newport Beaches.  While I didn’t know for certain, I mentioned to my mother and grandmothers that I *thought* they had done the photoshoot in Newport.

I should have known that was dangerous.  Before I could say more, my grandmothers had declared that they were going to look and see if they could find the stretch of beach where the pictures were taken.

My poor mother knows not to protest when my grandmothers go off on a tear.

Me?  I could hardly contain my laughter.  Mostly because had I been with them, I would have been searching the beaches too.

Stories from Sunburst

Most of the work I did on making the Sunburst sample was while I was on a cruise with my grandmother back in October.  My paternal Grandmother loves traveling on cruises, but isn’t quite able to do it on her own.  So she gets her grandchildren to come with her, and we have a grand old time.  Grandma and I had decided on a cruise through the Panama Canal, from Florida to California.

Sunburst was the perfect project to do on a cruise.  Easily memorize-able, and with simple motifs, it was light enough to be on my lap as we sat outside and watched the water go by.

On one of the first nights we went to see a comedy show after dinner, and because we were nearly late getting there, the only seats were in the front.  Naturally we got singled out by the comedian, who saw that I was crocheting while he was performing.  After asking after us and what I was doing, he ragged on us a little before moving on.  From then on everyone one board the cruise knew me as “the young girl that knits/crochets.”  (It doesn’t help that I was dressed in vacation clothes, which make me look like I’m a teenager.)

It was a wonderful thing, actually, to be singled out, because it brought crafters out of the woodwork on the cruise.  So many knitters and crocheters made an effort to find me during the cruise, and we’d talk shop, knit or crochet, and admire each other’s projects.

Since Sunburst requires a set of circular knitting needles in addition to my hook, I took to sticking the circular knitting needle into my ponytail when I wasn’t using it.  It was the perfect place for it, because I wouldn’t forget to pick it up when I went to go somewhere else with my grandmother.  However, it did have the habit of making me look quite strange, with two pieces of wood connected by a plastic strand making a halo over my head.  Grandma liked to give me a hard time, teasing me about my “halo” or laughing when I got the needles caught on something because I forgot they were up there.

By the end of the cruise many of the people had watched the shawl form over the two weeks while I was there.  Many couldn’t quite imagine what it would look like when all the ends were woven in and it was blocked.

So, for any of you Holland America Cruisers out there who were aboard the Statendam with me, here’s the finished product.  I told you it would look better when it was done.