Dublin, Ireland

We started our adventure in Ireland’s capital city!

We actually added an extra day on to our tour, just in case of travel issues and to have some free time in Dublin, if not. No travel issues, thankfully!

Included in our tour was a visit to the National Museum of Decorative Arts (which had a haunting exhibit about Magdalene laundries) and a delightful tour of Christ Church Cathedral, so we did a lot of classic sight-seeing with our free day: Oscar Wilde’s birthplace, Trinity College, Dublin Castle, and a tour (and pint) at the Guinness Storehouse.

Also on our free day, I ducked in to the one shop I could reasonably get to, that was open on a Sunday, that sold yarn. Probably the most fascinating thing about the whole trip was how knitters feel about knitting in the United States versus Ireland. We’re very trend forward here in the US, which isn’t too surprising since at our core, we’re still a very young country. Ireland, on the other hand, has ruins and artifacts from before Jesus Christ himself walked on this earth.

It felt like there were so many more Irish knitters, because it’s just something people do there. It’s in school curriculums. So in the same way most casual American crafters occasionally buy supplies from a limited selection in a big box store, most of the Irish yarn-selling shops had one kind of yarn, one size of needles, and one size of hook. That’s all they needed. Very practical, and very different from my usual travel yarn shopping. (I will say, Dublin has a highly rated LYS called This is Knit, but it wasn’t open when I was able to go!)

To that end, I went inside a sweater shop near Trinity College that had a wall of two types of Donegal Yarn (another one of the three historic woolen mills in Ireland) just behind the cash register. It was my first day on the trip, and probably my only chance to get yarn in Dublin proper, so I picked a green tweed (for the famous Donegal tweed) in the worsted weight. No plan in mind, which is an important note for later.

After two days of sight-seeing, we had two workshops in our hotel before trotting off to Galway. The first was a wire knitting class with Pauline Gallagher, which we thought was an interesting choice to start with. It turned out to be perfect, though, because there are Irish examples of knitting with wire from as far back as the 400s (though it was more akin to spool knitting). Also, it was a project we were able to finish in the couple hours the workshop lasted. Very satisfying!

The second workshop was actually a “trunk show.” Aoibhe (pronounced like “Ava”) Ni, an Irish Tunisian Crochet designer, showed off her fascinating designs with samples out of a cool, vintage trunk. Her designs were so different, and I was really excited to try a lot of them out. Her latest, the Irish Hiking Hat, particularly caught my eye. Remember that green Donegal yarn? It was the exact yarn that pattern called for!! I had to hunt down a hook, but I was able to start it in Ireland and finish it soon after I got home.

It was truly a joy to crochet. If you’re looking to start a new Tunisian project, I can highly recommend it!