Swatched "Ene’s Scarf" this morning —
listening to English madrigals. A very strange sensation — sitting in a company flat in Hong Kong, knitting with Italian wool, listening to English renaissance music. Pleasant, nonetheless, I must say!
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Went out this morning while the girls were in school, and found Cheer Wool in Wan Chai, at Hennessy Road and Landale Street. I saw it a few weeks ago from the top of a tram, and it seemed to disappear ever since, like Brigadoon. (I’m afraid the yellow pages were very little help.) I found it eventually, by walking east from the bus stop at the Pacific Place mall until I saw it again, which actually took much longer than it should have, as I’d gotten there far too early and it was locked and shuttered. But time passed, and I walked around and back again until it was, as the name promised, bright and cheerfully open.
The saleslady was very helpful, and through sign language and halting English (hers, as my Cantonese, to my shame, extends only to "ni hao" and "mm-goy") we browsed through the stock. She admired the patterns in my copy of "Scarf Style" and I picked out some Grignasco Merinogold, in a lovely murrey color, six balls at HK$35 each — a steal at about US$5 — for "Ene’s Scarf". I also got one ball of Anny Blatt Adélie in Glacier — HK$68 — have no idea what to do with this, really. The colors appealed to me — perhaps a simple scarf, nothing fancy so as to enjoy the colors and texture. I’ll swatch it and see how it goes before making up my mind. The colors don’t seem to show up very well in this photo — it’s a multi-textured yarn of one smooth ply alternating between ice blue and green, twisted with a bouclé-type strand that alternates between ice blue, yellow, a slightly darker blue, and green. The mohair gives it a bit of a halo, and the viscose makes it shimmer. I also picked up a pair of Aero circular needles for HK$28 for the merino.
I had to laugh when I came out of the shop with the bag of wool in my arms, as the morning had been grey and hazy, but was suddenly bright and sunny, and I could have sworn that I even heard birds singing!
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Well, I discovered that the Rosedale cardigan was turning out to be far bigger than I’d expected, so I was faced with a decision. I debated for a day or so, reluctant as usual to rip out weeks of work, especially something that really was pretty, but in the end, out it came yesterday. I had at that point four balls of wool going, for the intarsia blocks up near the shoulders, so it was quite annoying to pull out a few stitches, stop and untwist, wind, pull, untwist, wind, pull, untwist, wind, endlessly, and I got impatient — which turned out to be quite a mistake, as I ended up with a wodge of strands the size of a volleyball. It took me most of the morning and afternoon to sort it all out, and I had the dubious satisfaction of telling myself "I told you so."
But at last it was done, everything wound up neatly, and by this morning I had this to show —
Sure enough, the beginnings of another Clapotis. I so loved this pattern, made up in less than a week this past March, from Silk Garden #88, and I so love wearing it, that as I ripped out the Rosedale, I couldn’t keep the Clapotis out of my mind. Since the Silk Garden makes the finished piece much less scrunchable that the Lorna’s Lace (I’m guessing from the photograph), I usually wear it more as a shawl, which made me wonder how it would work sewn together at one end, in the way of the Union Square Shawl from "Weekend Knitting". So, in order to be a little different this time, I’ll try it. I may have to square the end off a bit, instead of the parallelogram ….
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Went to Victoria Peak yesterday — found something that should make a lovely knitting bag —
Nice and roomy, although not much in the way of pockets for organizing — but the colors are wonderful!
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After reading knitting blogs a bit obsessively over the past few months, I’ve decided to try my hand at it. I’ve been impressed enough with the Yarn Harlot, the Knitting Wench, Atropos, and others to have finished a Clapotis in record time, and the urge to record my knitting in words and pictures as well is by now insatiable. And yes, "blog envy," as the Knitting Wench says, is a pretty good way of putting it!
When I can get past the basics of TypePad, I will post a brief "About Me," but for now I will write that I am a married at-home mother of two pre-school daughters, an English major and former library cataloger, located for the next six months or so in Hong Kong, but otherwise from Southern California. I have been knitting off and on for about 25 years, I think, partly self-taught from the old "Golden Hands" series and partly learning from my mother, an experienced and dedicated knitter.
("Former" cataloger — is there such a thing? Once a cataloger, always….)
"Bluestocking" is an 18th-century word, even now usually derogatory, for a bookish woman (see a longer explanation at Bartleby). The "stocking" part is, of course, a nice little pun that probably needs no explanation on a knitting blog….
Here is the first picture of my current work-in-progress, a Rosedale cardigan by Amy Swenson, in Noro Silk Garden #39 —
I started it here in Hong Kong last Tuesday, on the back first, as I had brought only one pair of needles, size 7 straights (the sleeves are to be worked in the round), and it has quickly managed to fill those almost to bursting.
We found a yarn shop this afternoon, Mui Tong Co., at 28 Bonham Strand in Central, near the Sheung Wan MTR station. All I bought this time was needles — this set me back a mere HK$199, about US$25. The shop is definitely worth another trip, when the Rosedale is finished, and I will be thinking about projects for Filatura di Crosa wools, as that seems to be Mui Tong’s specialty.
