A Bluestocking Knits

("The Mothers’ Day" in Mandarin, according to Laura’s lesson plan for last week!)

We had a thunderstorm in the morning, but it was just a bit of rain by the time we went out.  We went to California Pizza Kitchen in Times Square for lunch and then — admire my cunning plan! — walked around the corner to look for this —

New Style Yarn Co., at their current location in 1/F 87 Percival Street in Causeway Bay.  We had a little trouble finding it, as not only do many of the shops neglect to put their numbers on the door or window (this is universal — why??), but I wasn’t expecting from the phone book address, which didn’t have the "1/F", that the shop might be upstairs.  I should know this by now, after two months in Hong Kong, shouldn’t I!  Well, David spotted the staircase (just behind the bicycle in the photo) with "New Style Yarn Co." painted in large, friendly letters on every other step, and there it was.

There were half-a-dozen or so women knitting and chatting away around a big table in the middle of the little shop, and David sat on the girls while I browsed for a while, then told the smiling shoplady that I’d come back another day without the children, and we went out again.

(I am on something of a quest to find the Hong Kong yarn shops listed here at WoolWorks.  It’s a ten-year-old list, but so far a number of them are still around.  I’ll email WoolWorks an update at the end of the summer.)

Meandering up the streets afterwards we came upon, by happy coincidence,

Paris Cotton Singlets Co. Ltd., at 13 Pak Sha Road, also in Causeway Bay.  A strange combination of knitting wools and men’s sport shirts, the shirts available for browsing and the wools — a little bit of a lot of things, Rowan, Jaeger, Japanese and Italian brands — packed safely away in plastic bags behind the counter.  I did buy two balls of merino/acrylic, tentatively for socks.  It was a bit awkward, with the three salesmen all looking at me expectantly, as though perhaps I should already know what I want and simply point to it immediately.  I may go back and browse the Rowan and Jaeger books, though — it really would be a lot easier if I already had a pattern in mind….

So this — not counting the spaghetti-sauce chins, the wet umbrellas, the thunder fears, and the fight over the pink plate at breakfast — was what I got for Mother’s Day, along with some very sweet smiles and kisses.