A Bluestocking Knits

  • The Peak, and the History Museum

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    One of the Hong Kongers that David works with arranged a bit of sightseeing for some of the folks here for only a short visit, and we tagged along.

    We were to meet at the tram for Victoria Peak at one o’clock, so I took the opportunity to dash over to Mongkok in the morning to look for this —

    Filokilo

    Filo Kilo in Sai Yee Street, just around the corner from the markets we visited last week (!), and from the Double Knit shop.  I may have to ration my HK dollars a little more carefully and come back here again, as there are some very lovely things and priced accordingly….

    We had lunch at the Peak Lookout, then walked along Lugard Road to see the views.

    Peak_tower

    The Peak Tower, landmark, tram terminal, home of Madame Tussaud’s Hong Kong.

    View_4_panorama_1

    A view of Central and the hills beyond —

    Harbor_panorama_part

    and of the eastern side of Victoria Harbour.  It was a beautiful day, and not so hot up here, either!

    Then we took a pair of taxis across the harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui (pronounced "chim sha choi"), and went to the Hong Kong Museum of History.

    History_museum_1

    It’s a good thing that it was open until seven o’clock and not six as we thought, as we’d gotten there around five, and there was no way that we could have seen much of it in an hour — jampacked with walk-through exhibits on prehistory, folk culture, the British colonial era, the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, and the handover in 1997.

    Even a bit of knitting —

    Pow_knitted_gloves

    a pair of gloves made by a prisoner of war in the 1940s, out of remnants of old sweaters.  It’s a very poignant piece of work, beautiful muted colors on the gauntlet cuffs, seed stitch on the back of the hands, all very tidy and meticulous.  What a ghastly time that must have been, and yet someone took the time and effort to scrounge bits of wool and make something beautiful.

    We were so exhausted from the heat of the day and the walking, and so full from our late lunch, that we decided against dinner after all, and said goodnight to our friends.  David and the girls and I walked along the waterfront promenade and watched the city lights — took the Star Ferry back to Central, and then home.

  • Peace

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    Big_ben_europeforvisitorsdotcom

  • “Untitled”

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    Untitled

    "Untitled"

    Laura (1999-   )

    plastic, metal

    approx. 23cm x 13cm x 13cm

    girls’ bathroom, limited-run mixed-media installation (until Mommy needed the hangers for laundry)

  • Mongkok Markets

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    The other day we went to some of the markets in Mongkok, on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong.  We started off at the Goldfish Market in Sai Yeung Choi Street — a fascinating array of shops and stalls with all kinds of aquarium fish, some in tanks and some ready for the asking, hundreds and hundreds of them.

    Goldfish_1

    Further along was Fa Yuen Street, an outdoor market with this —

    Double_knit

    tucked behind.  Didn’t get to go in as it was closed for the day, but I took a moment to appreciate those surreal mannekins from the shop next door.

    Not far away was the Flower Market, a number of blocks packed with cut flowers and small potted plants.

    Flower_market_2_1

    Orchids

    Around in Yuen Po Street is the "Bird Garden," a market and gathering place for bird-lovers.  Tiny open-air shops line the path, selling birds, beautiful wooden cages and little porcelain water bowls, and all sorts of accessories — including grasshoppers to feed to the birds with long chopsticks.

    Men_bird_garden

    Songbirds are very popular pets in China, especially with men — perhaps connected with the belief that the birds bring good luck.  The cages have a small handle on the bottom, so that they can be carried in one hand — men gather here to socialize and give their birds an airing, hanging the cages from tree branches and various poles hung along the path for that very purpose.  It’s kind of weird and sweet at the same time.

    Birdcages_1

    A very hot day, in the low 30s C and humid with it, so we moved slowly and drank lots of water, but enjoyed the afternoon immensely anyway.

  • Out of Sorts

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    Maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but I don’t really feel like knitting these days.  Not counting goof-off things for the girls, I have three current projects, and I find myself looking at them as if they were UFOs in the other sense of the word.  Silk Garden kimono jacket — mindless stockinette, despite my enjoyment of the colors went inches past my goal and will have to rip those out.  Ostrich Plume blanket — too depressing.  Forbes Forest scarf — well, um, I’m just bored with it, you know?  I like all of these projects, don’t get me wrong.  I just don’t want to think about them right now.

    Maybe I just realized that seven weeks from today, we’ll be back home in Southern California.  I haven’t decided if this sounds like a really long time or hardly any at all.  Bought some RYC Cashsoft DK this afternoon, in "Thunder," I see — oh, thank heavens, I was just scrolling down that linked page and thought, "Oh, my gosh, I hope it’s not ‘Poison’" and imagining in that eternal split second the finished garment and me screaming "Don’t touch it, it’s Poison!" then the relief that it was only Thunder, after all.

    I’m thinking of changing my hairstyle, so I’m letting the front grow out, and I look like something the cat dragged in.  And I found the only bug in Hong Kong that actually likes the taste of Off, so the back of my leg has a welt on it the size of a quarter — an excruiatingly itchy quarter, needless to say.  On the other hand, I spent the evening — okay, half the night, too — finishing the Moth Heaven archives.  Just discovered her this past week.  (I know, I’m a late bloomer, what can I say?)  Got caught up on the Mason-Dixon archives recently, as well, so to be honest, I’ve been reading more about knitting than actually doing it.  (I picked up one of the balls of Cashsoft while I was reading "Moth Heaven."  It was hard to concentrate for a while, so enticing was the soft roundness of it in my hand, so very perfectly did my thumb fit into the center while my fingers curved around the outside.  I could hardly bear to let go.)

    Well, it’s very late now, so I’ll go to bed.  Ho-hum.

  • Fourth of July

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    In honor of Independence Day, here are a few historical photographs from the American Memory collection at The Library of Congress —

    Fourthjuly_inkster 

    Fourth of July celebration at Inkster, North Dakota, 1894 (Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU, Fargo).

    Fourthjuly_osnabrock 

    Gathering at the school house for a Fourth of July celebration, Osnabrock, North Dakota (Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU, Fargo).

    Fourthjuly_huzzah

    "Huzza! ‘Tis the fourth of July!" by T. Waldron Shear (Music Division, Library of Congress).

    Fourthjuly_greasedpig

    Watching greased pig race on the Fourth of July, Vale, Oregon, 1941, Russell Lee, photographer (Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress).

    Fourthjuly_fireworks

    World’s Fair fireworks I, 1939 or 1940 (Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Library of Congress).

    Fourthjuly_melingcoulie

    July 4th celebration, Meling Coulie [sic], Milton, North Dakota , about 1894 (Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU, Fargo).

    Fourthjuly_boyonfloat

    Boy on float in Fourth of July parade, Vale, Oregon, 1941, Russell Lee, photographer (Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress).

  • Jumbo Shopping

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    Some more sightseeing — we went to the Jumbo Kingdom in Aberdeen for dim sum lunch again the other day.  A small ferry takes visitors over to the grand floating restaurant, a Hong Kong landmark.  Words fail me, really — gaudy isn’t in it.  (Here is some info from the Footprint guidebook.)  As you might expect from someone as nearsighted as I am, the photos I took were mostly close-up details of the little ferry and the restaurant itself.

    Jumbo_ferry_1

    Bench_detail

    Jumbo_dragon

    Jumbo_ferry_detail

    Dragon_cloud

    Jumbo_ferry_skylight

    We also did some shopping at the outlet stores at Horizon Plaza nearby in Ap Lei Chau — got that cool fabric wall calendar there, as well as more wooden track for the girls’ train set, and lots of art supplies for the school-free weeks to come.

  • Hello, Sunshine!

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    After a week of these —

    Rainynight_hkobservatory

    Thunderwarning_hkobservatory_2

    Amberwarning_hkobservatory_1

    ("rain expected exceeding 30 millimetres per hour") and even one of these

    Redwarning_hkobservatory_2

    ("exceeding 50 millimetres per hour") — we finally saw the sun.  We ran down to the playground in the morning and had an hour or so before a new shower chased us back indoors.

    Sunny_day

    Today, though —

    New_calendar

    was gorgeous, sunny and pleasantly warm.  I took the girls down to the pool —

    Pool_day_1 

    I wish I could say that I did lots of leisurely poolside knitting, but to be honest, I was too lazy, and the excuse of sunscreen on my hands was too easy to invoke.

    Evening_sky_square_panorama

  • Rain and Shakespeare

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    Heavy rain all morning, so I sat in the window to catch the little light, and knitted on my kimono jacket while listening to the last disc of the Arkangel "Romeo and Juliet".  I was rather indifferent to this version at first — it isn’t bad, by any means, but I thought Romeo (Joseph Fiennes) a bit too overwrought and Juliet (Maria Miles) oddly underwrought.  Certainly there are difficulties inherent in presenting a play entirely through voices alone, and I’ve gotten used to the visuals of movies, such as most obviously the glorious "Romeo and Juliet" scenes in "Shakespeare in Love", with the nuances available to the actor and to the audience of glances and gestures.  I had a bit of trouble adjusting to this for a while.

    Rj_silkgarden_2

    But the last scenes got to me, especially when her family finds Juliet (the last surviving of their children) apparently dead on her wedding morning — "But one, poor one, one poor and loving child, / But one thing to rejoice and solace in, / And cruel Death hath catch’d it from my sight! … O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!"  The thunderstorm outside echoed around me and made the thunder in the recording wonderfully atmospheric.  Romeo mourning over the supposedly dead Juliet had me in tears — "Death, that hath suck’d the honey of thy breath, / Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty" — and Juliet kissing the newly-dead Romeo, the quiet agony of "Thy lips are warm!"

    "For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."

  • ,

    I Visit the City Hall Library

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    Having gotten word yesterday that our departure from Hong Kong has been scheduled for August 21, I promptly fell into a bit of a stash-enhancement frenzy, seeing that time really is limited now.  When David found out that some of the prices here are almost half of those at home, he said, "Why don’t you stock up?"  His only request is that I have a project in mind for whatever I buy…

    I took the shuttle bus into town this morning, timing my arrival at the Star Ferry terminal to coincide with the opening of the City Hall branch of the Hong Kong Public Library at ten.  It was raining cats and dogs, so hard that I was quite glad to leave the driving to someone else, and to stare both appalled and marvelling at the rain sheeting down the bus windows.  As the wiper blade passed, a good four or five inches of water came down across the just-cleared section, to be flung away by the return pass of the wiper, so fast that it shot out from the windshield at least six inches away.  Well, a little video is worth a thousand words —

    Download 179-7992_MVI.AVI

    It was too wet as I dashed across the plaza to take a picture of the library for those who (like me) are into that sort of thing, but here is a view from the staircase window on the second floor — the eastern edge of the Star Ferry terminal with Kowloon in the distance across the harbor, the carpark at left front, another part of the City Hall complex at right front, all very wet —

    View_from_cityhall_library

    This branch of the library occupies quite a number of floors in the building, although each floor is not large in area.  The knitting section at this branch is rather dated, I’m afraid, but this is in no way limited to Hong Kong.  I didn’t have much time to browse and ponder this morning, as I had to collect the girls from school at 11:30, but I did find a few interesting titles, ran back downstairs to the check-out, and outside to the bus stop.

    Wet_cityscape

    The rain was just coming on again when the 10:45 shuttle came around the corner, about five minutes late.  As it tore out of the terminal, eager to make up time, I guess, we suddenly veered off the usual route, and since I’d been daydreaming, I had to glance surruptitiously around me to make sure that I was indeed on the right bus.  It dawned on me that this driver was an old friend, so to speak — I’d taken a downhill trip with Speedy Gonzalez once before, and it was almost an hour then before the hairs on the back of my neck calmed down.  This time he took a hillier but less-traveled road around the racetrack, but got stuck behind a public bus, which of course made stops every ten feet.  When the bus made a stop in a passing lane, Speedy zipped around him triumphantly, and I swear I saw a corner of his mouth turn up in a smile. 

    So at least I got my library books home safe and dry, and have been poring over them much of the afternoon.

    Poemsofcolor_keele_interweavepress

    Folksocks_nbush_interweavepress

    The Bohus one is really fabulous — such wonderful colors, such intricate designs.  "Poems of color" indeed.  The "Blue Shimmer" pullover is beautiful — in any colorway, I imagine — and the "Green Meadow" mittens, the "Large Collar" in any form.  Jaeger has a lovely alpaca that I could get at Paris Cotton Singlets — I wonder if this would be a good substitute for the wool/angora blends.  And I confess that I have never knitted a sock, not even one — but, no time like the present, eh?  I’m especially intrigued by the Welsh Country Stockings, the Highland Schottische Kilt Hose, the Norwegian Stockings, and the Estonian Socks. Lots of lovely merino at Paris Cotton Singlets and at Cheer Wool and Elegant….

Knitting, reading, other stuff.

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