secret pal contest!

Oops, I just posted. Oh well, I’m chatty on blogs when I’ve got nothing else to do(just wait til school, work, and GREs start up…)

1. What is the one knitting accessory you could not live without?
This one is hard. I do without a lot of things, and improvise, mostly because I haven’t picked them up or haven’t found one that I liked. But I’m going to go with either my Kacha-Kacha counter or my awesome tape measures (I picked up a couple when our local joann fabrics was going out of business – $1.50 for one of those cute square retractable tape measures with pretty colors).

2. If you’re heading on vacation, do you take knitting with you? If
so, how much and what type of project?
I don’t go on vacation that much, but when I go away for the weekend to visit my boyfriend in PA, I almost always take something. In the past it had been a tank I was knitting, or a scarf I was knitting to use up the great manos del uruguay yarn I had laying around. And when I went to study abroad in Russia I took the sleeves to the boyfriend sweater with me. I’m always amazed at how people react to seeing someone young knitting, it’s a great conversation starter on the airplane! (I think I talked some woman into buying alterknits for her daughter on a flight from NYC to Syracuse)

3. Where have you travelled to that you’d consider your favorite spot?
I’ve been to California (SF and Yosemite), Colorado (Fort Collins), Ohio (Toledo, Youngstown, and somewhere I can’t remember…), West Virginia (Morgantown), New York (NYC, Syracuse, Long Island, Albany, Buffalo, etc. I’m from central NY so I’ve been all around the state…) , New Jersey (Cape May, Elizabeth, and wherever the Jets stadium is), Florida (orlando), Canada (Niagara Falls, Montreal, Toronto), Pennsylvania (State College, Philly, Pittsburgh), Czech Republic (Prague), Austria (Vienna, Mathausen), Slovakia (Bratislava), Hungary (Budapest, and ‘the great hungarian plains’ aka the puzsta), Russia (Nizhny Novgorod, aka Gorky under the Soviet Union)
My favorite place was probably Nizhny Novgorod. At first it was so hard, but I fell in love with the city after a month or so. I mean I can’t even verbalize how beautiful it was. 18th century architecture, two rivers, and churches that defy description. There are other places that I’ve loved, and other places that I want to live, but I think that Nizhny has been one of the places that will stay with me forever.

4. What is your favorite knitting book at the moment? Do you own it?
Hmmmmmm. I really like alterknits, but I think at the moment my favorite is naughty needles. I like to see how knitting can create all sorts of different projects. And not everything is naughty in the book, some of it is just sexy, or even silly (I’m going to have to make the bond girl top or goldfinger dress variation – me and the boyfriend are working through the entire bond collection, or rather he’s working on showing them all to me). And yes, I do own it.

5. Do you listen to podcasts? Which is your favorite(s)?
Sometimes, at the moment I’m sold on the librivox podcasts, where I can listen to novels while I cook, knit, run, work out, etc. Also a good way to pass time on the subway if I have a 2 hour trip to the Russian grocery stores in nyc.