Hi there. Thanks for stopping by. You’ve stumbled upon the work, musings, pics and adventures of Suzie Briddsang. There’s a bit more about me here: bio at Rowan Tree Travel. This website and blog developed out of a desire to share travel experiences with family and close friends. It’s now expanded to include material on knitting, wool & fiber animals, general musings and textile-related travel.

Blog entries are posted in reverse chronological order (meaning most recent first). They can be hard to follow if you’re not receiving them via subscription. I’ve grouped several by destination and date and given them their own “trip page”. This allows you to peruse a single adventure if you so desire. Look for a list of trip pages to the side or in a menu, depending on the apparatus with which you’re viewing the site. Again, entries appear in reverse chronological order. Some day I’ll get around to organizing all this stuff. I really will.

Publications provides independent reviews and an Amazon link to my 2011 book The Nervous New Owner’s Guide to Angora Rabbits. It’s available for purchase in both paperback and ebook form.

Knitting Patterns offers up a small selection of knitwear patterns. Because I’ve never been able to knit a pattern as written — always changing this neckline here or that sleeve length there or changing the cable pattern to one I prefer — it finally occurred to me that I have enough general knowledge to create a garment from scratch. Now, when I look around and don’t see anything that I want to wear, I ask myself Can I identify what I would want to wear? What should it look and feel like? How would I do that with knitting? And I make an attempt. It turns out that if you create a garment PLUS write down what you did as you did it, you’re writing a knitting pattern. Add in a few more steps like figuring out your gauge and yarn usage, gathering nomenclature, finding test knitters, sizing the garment up and down, reworking it because you don’t like this detail or that one, photographing it, designing a legible and printable e-pattern, posting to various venues and being available to assist those who try to follow the pattern… and you’ve got a knitwear designer. All those steps mean it takes quite a long time to shepherd a design from initial idea to finished knitting pattern — thus, the small number of patterns listed here. There are about 1,355 initial ideas in my head for garments. One by one, I might get a few more of them onto this page in pattern form. Wish me luck.

Rowan Tree Travel is my current employer. Yes, it’s a fantabulous job. Also a hella lotta work. But I wouldn’t change it for anything. Check out what we do, where we go, etc. Come with me sometime. I can promise an amazing experience.

Suzie’s Gear Corner provides excerpts from a section I write for Rowan Tree Travel’s quarterly newsletter with travel tips, gear reviews and miscellaneous suggestions for getting from here to there in a more comfortable, less stressful manner.

Welcome. Cheers!