It has been raining a lot here in Hong Kong. For nearly three weeks we have had rain every day, and on some days, spectacularly heavy rain. The usual is fairly constant, driving rain. There are floods in southern China, and it has been a long while since I have been able to get out for a walk. I am wearing Crocs, because I don’t want my shoes to get ruined in the rain. When we wake up in the morning, the weather man usually says something cheerful like “it is 98% humidity” and it is hot – often over 30 degrees celsius. Hong Kong is beginning to smell of mildew. While there is a wet season every summer in Hong Kong, it is early this year. Everyone is losing patience, and there eons to go before ”summer” is over. We often need all the lights on in the middle of the day. I don’t want to even talk about what it is like having a 4 and 5 year old constantly indoors.
Instead, I will show you pictures of Finland. We were there in late May 2007, and the tulips were in bloom. The photo below looks fake, but I was there while my husband took it! It was still cool enough to wear woolies.
When I visited Helsinki, I fell in love with the city - it has the most amazing parks, and amazing interesting playground equipment for kids (and yes, older daughter is wearing an un-blogged hand knit, of my own design). She is not actually standing amongst the flowers!
Helsinki also obviously places value on the hand made, and is not as consumeristic as Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, you are hard pressed to find anything second hand, where in Helsinki, the second hand markets were curated with pride. I loved it (I also enjoyed my time in Novita, but did not bring a camera). It also helped that I was a normal size in Helsinki, and could shop without feeling ridiculously oversized.
My love affair with Finland has been reignited by all the supercool Finnish knit bloggers, and my discovery of Ulla. The patterns in Ulla, are lovely, all free, and it is all in Finnish. The page that I directed you to is the only page in English. Luckily, Google translate has just started offering Finnish to English translation, but with some severe hiccups with knitting terminology. I really like this pattern, but Google translate only helps a bit to make it clearer. It also destroys the charts and pictures. I know that I sound like the Yarn Harlot, but I think that I could knit this scarf in Finnish!
I shouldn’t complain, I really do love Hong Kong. I had a lovely time on WWKIP day, as I do every Friday with our knitting group, who happily knit in public frequently. Of course, we couldn’t knit outdoors, because of the rain! I will just keep using my Marimekko umbrella, and hope that the rains stops soon.
