Newsprint Madonnas

While I did manage one post on our trip, I couldn't seem to justify spending our precious vacation time searching out an Internet connection. I was too busy searching out yarn, and paintings of breastfeeding women in Catholic churches. The last one is a little odd. I'll cop to that. I was a wee bit obsessed with all of these breastfeeding virgin mothers, and their chubby-fisted counterparts. You almost never see women in France breastfeeding in public. I don't remember seeing many women in America doing it, and I only saw one mother in Italy doing it. Inside the churches is a different story. There are portraits of suckling Jeesi everywhere. Almost every other church we went into had at least one.


I'm still breastfeeding our son, and he's taken to letting me know he wants a feed, by cramming his hand down my shirt, giving me the worlds meanest titty twister, and then trying to yank the tit up and over my collar. There's nothing like walking around the Vatican with a baby's hand making one of your breasts look like it's hatching out of your clothes. I was a little embarrassed by the situation until I found this painting.


I love the look on her face, one part amused, one part annoyed and a lot of love. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who's been felt up by a toddler in a church.

The yarn search was equally comforting, comforting and soft. I found five different shops. Some of them I knew about before hand, and some of them were discoveries. There was Mirko Filati in Florence, Sheep Shop in Pisa, Lovilane and Filo et Filo in Lucca, and a shop I can't remember the name of in Massa Maritima. I bought a lot of cashmere, some cotton, some wool and a little bit of linen. There was even some mystery yarn. I'll post pictures of the newest additions to the stash soon, but for now, I'll finish up with a little bit of swatching.


This is a pure cotton yarn that I found at Filo et Filo. The lovely lady who owns the store is having a fire sale, and going into retirement. Or at least, that's what my limited grasp of Italian led me to believe. She was selling yarn at shockingly good prices, and I scooped up every ball of this stuff. I don't normally go in for worsted weight variegated yarns. I don't like heavy weight cottons, or tape yarns, but this yarn is a glorious exception. It's very Issey Miyake. It's stiff and soft at the same time. The yarn is knitted out of many very fine strands, and then pressed into a tape. The dye is painted on, and reminds me of newsprint.


It's nice to knit with and despite the fact that it looks like it would be a splitty nightmare, it's relatively hard to catch a needle on it. Because of the construction it doesn't have that chalky dead weight sort of feel that most other thick cottons have. I'm stalled on what pattern to choose. Right now it's between two patterns in Norah Gaughan vol. 2. There are several other contenders, but these both seem appropriate for the yarn. I'm leaning towards "Mobius", that's the one on the left.


Variegated yarns are tricky, and the last thing I want is something that looks like wet newsprint wrapped around my shoulders. I'm looking for something that will bring out the Issey Miyake in me. There's a fine line between origami and a fish and chips wrapper.