Main Street Yarns and Fibers, Watkinsville, GA, USA

If you like visitiing the best yarn stores when you travel, head to Watkinsville, Georgia USA and meet the friendly southern locals. Main Street Yarns and Fibers is one of the liveliest, helpful and inspirational yarn stores on the planet. If you knit, crochet or felt, be prepared to stay for at least an hour browsing. You may even start your project there because you won't want to leave this fiber-lovers' haven. You'll meet Ruth, Darilee, James and Tina. Ruth will tempt you with the latest, luscious yarns from around the world. Darilee, a talented young fiber artist, will inspire you to create beautiful wearables. James will fire your passion for crochet. Tina will infect you with a compulsion to knit 365 days a year. I love Main Street Yarns and Fibers.

Spanish moss

Savannah Spanish Moss, Georgia USA - May 2005 

Crochet bucket hat with Capricorn brim

Hemisphere Matters - I'm back home in Athens Georgia USA where leafless trees silhouette the winter sky. I'm missing the heat and color of a southern hemisphere summer. Traveling from summer to winter is not easy. Three months of sun, singlets and sandals living close to the Tropic of Capricorn does not prepare you for the numbing winter temperatures of North America.

While I was in Queensland I designed a new hat. It's a lot like my Melbourne bucket-style hat for travelers but it has a wider brim. I have named this brim the Capricorn brim - it offers shade on a sunny day. It's available in neutral colors like khaki and black but I have since created a wild looking one called "A Key West kind of sunset". I have adorned it with a frangipani to overstate the tropical theme.




The e-pattern for the Capricorn brim hat is now available from my travel headwear blogspot.

Jekyll Island sunrise

Latitude Matters: Jekyll Island Georgia USA, latitude 31 degrees north, is a great getaway. Marshlands, spanish moss, beaches and brilliant, earth spinning sunrises soothe and recharge weary souls. Sunrise over the Atlantic is inspirational.

Where artists use paint to tell their story or to capture a mood, I use my crochet hook and yarns to create headbands and hats in textures and hues of the natural world. I crocheted a pretty headband in the peaches, pinks and gold of a Jekyll Island sunrise.