Drama, drama, drama!

You guys should know that I haven't be around that much do to lots of drama in my life the past month, but it seems like most of it is coming to an end. I have great friends and wonderful family who haven been right here by my side, and I want you all to know that you are magical people, and I greatly appreciate your love and support. Everything is mostly ok now, and life should be returning to normal soon. I have been keeping up with the knitting, but not the posting and blogging. More to follow soon, I promise!

Oh Baby!

I found out a couple of weeks ago that our department secretary is having a baby girl, due in January, which will be her second child and her second daughter. Of course, that provides a good excuse for any knitter to go a little crazy in the yarn shop and with patterns. I bought about ten skeins of Katia's Baby Fantaisie in white sprinkled with dots of pink to make a blanket with, and maybe some other accessories for the new bundle of joy.
So I've started the blanket, and it just won't end!!!! Granted that I am using sock yarn and fingering weight yarn, but I feel like this blanket is going to be a challenge to get through. I'm using the Pinwheel Baby Blanket pattern from Genia Planck. So far it has sucked up 3 skeins of yarn and a second pair of needles. It is soft and snuggly, but I'm ready for this to be done. The baby isn't due until January/February, so I still have plenty of time to get it done. Mindy suggested that I start doing eyelets for a couple of inches, and then call it done, but I have yet to find anything that I like. Suggestions?

Lady in Red

My best friend/college roommate was just here for a three-week visit and wanted to bring me presents, so I asked for yarn dye. Vira brought me lots and lots of Kool-Aid from the states, so we had to have a dying party. Even though we had five different flavors, they were all various shades of red and pink, so we decided to go for some of the most intense reds that I have ever seen. I'm still really new to hand-dyeing, but its amazing what I can do with a pitcher of hot water, Kool-Aid, yarn, and a bathtub. It didn't take that long, but the result was three beautiful skeins of red, in some subtle varieties. All the yarn came from Ingrid over at Yarn Workshop. The few times that I've attempted hand-dyeing has been with her yarns, and they are so user friendly and absorb the dye really nicely. I think that I might be hooked! Vira helped a lot, and it was her first time dyeing yarn, so I think that I am going to use one or two of these to make something for her. She just moved to NYC, so she is going to need fabulous knitwear come winter.

Instead of just taking a plain picture, I was really inspired by the reds in the skeins to find all the favorite things in my life that are red, which turned out to be a lot! My favorite cookies come in red package, one of my softest scarves, cranberry juice, nail polish, and my MAC lipstick. I really like how this photo turned out, so this could become a regular thing. I will have to expand more on my stock of hand-dye as well then!

Forays into Welsh Yarn

So even though I spent six weeks in the UK, I managed to restrict myself to only buying four skeins of yarn. (Having a strict budget also helped) Even though I bought 2 skeins in Edinburgh and Whitby, both yarns turned out to be Welsh. If it came down to yarn over food, I think that there could have been a couple of times on this trip where I would have been happy to go hungry.

The first place I found beautiful yarn was in a shop in Whitby, on the north-east coast. Whitby is a great little seaside town itself, and its claim to fame is, if you have read Dracula, the town where Dracula's boat ran aground in the novel. Ontop one of the cliffs is a ruined abby, which gives Whitby a great deal of spooky charm. Add in all the Dracula fans and gothic kids who make pilgrimmages there, great fish'n'chips, and you have a good day on your hands. On the side of the town where the abby is, there is the knitting shop. It looks like it was a church hall at one point, and right on the outside was a sign that said "Knitter's Paradise" I of course, entered to test this assumption. The store itself is actually called Bobbins, but it is indeed a knitter's paradise. Inside, it was just one giant room full of yarn, books, and some of the most intricate sweaters I've ever seen. Instead of having neatly organized shelves, yarn was inside great wooden seacheasts, and I wants to dive right in and roll around in the yarn. The ladies there were really fun, helpful, and great to talk to. I found this great wrinkley yarn in all my favorite shades of blue and green there. I could have bought every colorway, but that would have meant living in a cardboard box for the rest of the trip. This is one of the yarns that I think will have to go on the shelf just for me, and I'm thinking a delighfully snuggly shawl or scarf. The pictures I've taken don't do justice to the range of blue and green in this yarn, but if you know me, its every color that I love to wear and work with. This yarn is the Colinette Zanzibia in the Velvet 114 colorway. It feels so soft on the skin and slick to the touch, so I cannot wait to make it into something lovely and cozy. Now I just have to find the perfect pattern.......

The next skeins of yarn I purchased were found in Edinburgh, Scotland, on a street just off the Royal Mile. I really loved the time I spent in Edinburgh, and it was topped off with find this great shop, k1 Knitting Boutique. The vibe of this shop is liking being in an old 1950s ice cream palor, because its filled with bright colors and comfy couches to sit and knit on. The lady there was one of the nicest women I have encountered from all the yarn shops that I have been into. She took a great deal of time to help me find the perfect yarn, and also just spent a lot of time making small talk, If you ever go to Edinburgh, you must go here! The yarn I picked up here was Fyberspates Scrumptious, in this great green/grey/bronze wool and silk blend. Once again, pictures do not do this yarn justice. Even just in the skein, it shimmers. This is definitly going on the shelf until my skills improve and I find the perfect pattern. I am going to be selfish and keep this one for my own, but I feel like it deserves to be made into something spectacular. For now, I will be content with occansionally petting it, and sighing. I do think that I am in love with this yarn.

Even though that is all the yarn I bought on my travels, I did encounter a cute shop while staying in York, down the Shambles. I believe that it is the last yarn shop in York, and the staff there were great. If I had a little more time and money, I probably could have bought a lot more, but then I did have to think about suitcase space. All-in-all, yarn shopping in the UK was a huge sucess!

Knitting in Yunnan

So I just go back from a trip to Yunnan, and I was shocked, truly shocked, at how everywhere I went, there was always a lot of women knitting! Even in Shangri-La, high up in the mountains, there were people knitting. I hardly saw any when I was in Beijing, but you can't swing a yak in Yunnan without hitting a knitter! The interesting thing about the knitting is that everyone was using long, about 12 inches, double-pointed needles for everything they were making. My friend Megan must have gotten sick and tired of me stopping on the street and exclaiming "She's knitting too!" over and over again on our trip. Strangers also were a little perturbed when I would stop on the street and watch them for a few minutes, but they were creating some of the most intricate knitted items I've seen. I even got Megan to pester a couple of women about where they got their yarn, but it was fruitless.

I did managed to pick up some yarn goodies through other ways. In Shangri-La, I spotted women weaving on home-looms to sell in souvenir shops, so the light bulb above my head went over. Weaving = yarn, which I might be able to purchase. Using my very best pointing and gesturing skills, I walked up to this woman and gestured to her pile of yarn on the floor. She then smiled at me, and gestured to the scarves for sale in her shop. I firmly pointed at the yarn on the floor, and said "I want this." In return, I got a great "there must be something very wrong with you" look. Even though this woman clearly thinks I belong in the insane ward of the closest hospital, I did manage to start bargaining, and bought three balls of yarn off of her, ever though I have no idea about length and content, but I really wish that I had gotten a picture of the look on her face when I told her I wanted her yarn. The yarn itself is very slick and shiny, and I will be posting pictures soon as I can borrow a camera. I bought the green and blue that she is using in this picture, and a large bundle of a bright pink. It feels very soft, and and when I briefly swatched it, it had a great flowy drape to it. I'm going to bring it to knitting group and hopefully get a consensus on what it might be.

The other yarn-related coup of this trip was during our last days, in a town called Dali. The original plan was to ride bicycle around the lake and into some villages, but a rainstorm ruined that plan. So instead Megan and I spent the day exploring the old town, their coffee shops, street snacks, and doing some shopping. We had just finished our soft-serve ice cream from a street vendor, when I literally skidded in my tracks, just like a cartoon character. My friend Megan looked up at me questioningly, and with amazement in my voice, I said, "I think we just walked past a yarn shop." Her reaction was to sigh, and humor me by walking back down the street to see if I was just hallucinating, or if there was indeed a real yarn shop in this tiny little town. We found two huge open shops directly across the street from each other! I was fairly giddy, and Megan decided that needed a photo. Now, its not the nicest picture of me, but I think it does a great job of conveying my level of happiness in randomly finding this shop. I picked up some shiny soft stuff in beautiful jewel tones, with no labels. The women running the shop told me that each skein is 150 meters, and for 20 kuai apiece, I picked up 5. My intentions are to make a lap blanket or big shawl. Most of the yarn in these shops looked kettle-dyed in big batches, and not like they were all commercially dyed. If I had more room in my pack, I would have brought a lot more back with me since there were some lovely colors and it looked like she was selling yarn for pretty cheap, compared to Hong Kong.......oh well- that just gives me an excuse to go back to Dali someday! So yes knitters of the world, if you go to Yunnan province, there will be yarn in strange places, and you will be happy with what you find!

Vests

This week I have started three new projects, all of them being vests, all of them being pullovers, and all of them bottom-up. Two of the patterns I'm working on are from CanaryKnits, and so far I am loving her patterns. Most of them are free, easy to read, and would look great on most body types. The two that I have cast of her's are the SexyVesty and Corona, and both are coming along quite well. I've finished the main part of the body of the SexyVesty and gotten a good solid 6 inches of the Corona knitted. The other vest that I'm working on is Green Day by Mari Muinonen, for which I found a translation of.

SexyVesty is going along really well for me- finally I've found something that is worthy of my green malabrigo that I have been saving forever. My favorite thing about this pattern is the lace pattern; it looks like its argyle, but without all the tedious colorwork that you would have to put into an argyle sweater. Now that I've reached the point where it comes time to do the front piece, I find that things are getting a little sticky. I need to put it down for a while so things can click in my brain.

So then we can move on to Corona, also designed by CanaryKnits. I would consider this more of a hoodie than a vest, and the cable details on the collar make me so happy. I'm a simple kind of girl, and this little bit of detail is just perfect for me. Right now I'm knitting it in red, using two balls of red sock yarn held together. I'm really loving the fabric that is being created by doing this, and I can see myself using this pattern over and over again.

The vest from Mari Muinonen is progressing, but not as quickly as I would like. I think that I got caught up with the other two projects, and I've ignored this one for a little too long. I'm also not as happy as I could be with the cable details on this one, but not unhappy enough to frog it. But its also simple enough to put off to the side for a little. Its what I like to do, have several projects going on at once so I can move around when I get bored. I'm a bit of an ADD knitter. As soon as I can borrow another camera, pictures will follow.

Mo Rocca and Itchy Sweaters

Every Sunday morning, I like to sit with some coffee and knitting and listen to one of my favorite radio programs from NPR, Wait Wait....Don't Tell Me The past week featured comedian Mo Rocca stating that he never wore handmade sweaters because "they are always itchy". As a knitter, I was defensive, but this week's program is currently an apologetic Mo Rocca reading a prepared statement after being bombarded by knitters up in arms, and I nearly shot coffee out of my nose from laughter. I think that it is a testament to how we take things too seriously sometimes, but it is nice to know that many knitters have decided to convince Mo wrong, and are making him some lovely hand-knit sweaters. At least we know that the knitting community welds some power in the world of mass communication.




So I feel this this photo of my stash is a fitting commentary on where my life is right now. If you compare it with my past one, you can see that things are a bit more organized and co-ordinated, but still with a little chaos, which I need my life. On the bottom shelf, I keep most of my FOs that have yet to find a home, and the top shelf contains most of my craftyness tools. WIPs are scattered around the apartment, some on my nightstand so I can finish a few scarf rows before bed, or the pair of socks next to the TV, so I have something to do when I watch bad television. Everything is a little bit scattered, but I like it like that. Organized chaos and all...



My favorite project at the moment is a pair of socks that I am making for my friend Heidi from some lovely hand-dyed Footscray from Ingrid over at Yarn Workshop. A few of us gathered around her yarn-dying kettle a few weeks ago, and these beautiful yarns came out of that. It was my first time hand-dying anything more than a tie-dye t-shirt, and I must say that I am hooked. Since then, I've been perusing the asiles at Jusco and Japan Home Center, musing over the rows of stainless steel cookware, mentally justifying the money it would cost to buy myself a shiny kettle of my own. I keep telling myself that as soon as I finish my TEFL, I can reward myself with the kettle and some dye and then just go to town. The thought of all the colors that could come out of my kitchen makes the 4 hours of coursework on verbs and conjugation a little less daunting, but still tedious none-the-less.

5 Months?!

Aiya! 5 months have passed by without one post on either of my blogs! People must think that I have fallen off the edge of the planet..........but I haven't.

Lack of posting is due to several factors in my life, including, but not limited to:

• Flexible work schedule that has me running all over this S.A.R. that I call home
• Insufficient amount of pictures to do knitting projects justice
• Earning online certificate for TEFL
• YouTube........it will suck you in and never let you go.

But seriously folks, I have been slacking off in the online posting department, and I'm going to remedy that by re-instituting my Sunday rule; Sunday evenings are for getting caught up with emails and blogging, and other such correspondence. Things work out much better for me if I schedule them into my calender and have a chunk of time blocked off for any activity. I'm also the person that needs to have everything written down, otherwise I probably won't remember. So, starting tomorrow night, things should start to become more regular in the blogging universe for me and for all that read this. Until then, happy knitting!