I was going to write a post about medical miracles – my father had deep brain stimulation surgery to treat Parkinson’s last week, and it has had a miraculous effect, and after years of declining function, he has has renewed energy and abilities, and he is back, enjoying his retirement, and will be deep sea fishing soon. This article pretty much describes what Dad went through, and the effect it also had on him. He looks amazing, apart from some rather scary scars and shaved head.  I’m pretty sure he’s happy for the world to know about the surgery, he did tell the local paper!

Unfortunately, major brain surgery on my father is only one of the significant medical events happening in my family.  The family emergency which required the temporary closure of Yarn Workshop in September has become significantly worse, with the patient (who has entirely reasonably requested privacy), being diagnosed with a another life threatening condition that is going to require months of significant medical treatment. I’ll be doing more knitting in hospital corridors.

We only have a few certainties,  Yarn Workshop will go into temporary hiatus from 13 November 2009 until it is unpacked in Sydney Australia; and we are in the fortunate position where the Fireman has a job in Sydney. Apart from that, we do not know when we move, where we will move to, whether we will put the kids into school for the dregs of the Australian school year.  A few things to figure out.

I’ve recently come across A Commonplace Life via a-black-pepper, and decided to participate in her concept Moments. I edit what goes on in this blog fairly ruthlessly (so you can probably guess how discombobulated my life actually is), but in the photo below you see my dining room on Thursday.

For me, this actually isn’t that messy.  There is only one package on the dining table awaiting shipping, one old Koolhaas being stretched into a new shape (effectively as it turns out), the sewing machine which has been in same position for the last three weeks, and stacks of books and papers. The skein of alpaca over the far dining chair has been there for at least 4 weeks.  It is awaiting overdyeing. The books and papers situation does not improve around the house, and the guiltiest part of it all is that we actually have a live-in housekeeper who is maniacally tidy.

When we moved to Hong Kong, it became apparent that we had no reasonably priced child care  options apart from a live in helper (and I mean none – there are no child care centres for working parents, and we have no family here). N started with us, and stayed when I returned to full time work, and is still with us now. I manage to turn her tidiness into mess.

When we return to Australia, she will not be able to come with us (because of Australia’s immigration laws), and it will be a big readjustment for our family.  I’ve taken care of our kids without a helper, and am not so concerned about that aspect, but the girls have known her nearly all their lives, and for them it will be a real loss. Older daughter seems to have inherited a recessive tidy gene, so for her, the change will be really dramatic. What does it say when you actually have a housekeeper, and your house ends up looking like this?

In other news, I’ve updated my “About” page, and formalised my husband’s blog identity as “the Fireman”.  He really was a professional firefighter when I met him (over 10 years in the NSW Fire Brigade), and he is still wonderfully calm in the face of a crisis.

I received this email from the Hong Kong Addi distributor yesterday:

“Dear Ingrid,

Thank you for your payment and the previous orders. Unfortunately, I am sorry to tell you that I cannot supply you anymore the Addi Needle.

The Manufacturer of Addi Needle receives a lot of complaints from US distributors that there is online sale of the Addi Needle in USA. They have traced out the source and found that you are the supplier. Your online sale activity has ruined the market in US. As a responsible distributor in Hong Kong, I would take the responsibility to protect the market not only in Hong Kong but also in other countries. I am asked to stop supplying you the needles with immediate effect.

I would supply you again the Addi needles once your online sale activity stops. Thank you for your understanding and I am looking forward to doing business with you soon in the near future.

Very best rgds
Adrian Pong
Winsome Wool & Craft Co. Ltd”

There has been a lot of talk recently in the online knitting world about the exploitation of knitting designers inspired by this post by Annie Modesitt. I agree with Annie’s contentions, and after participating in the knitting industry for a couple of years, have noticed the inefficient archaic business practices throughout the industry that do not benefit knitting consumers.

It is absurd to suggest that my little online business has “ruined the market in the US” for Addi needles.   We literally store our  Addi needles in drawers under our bed. The existence of my business highlights the way in which Skacel has exploited their monopoly in the North American markets.  It seems that US wholesale prices for Addi needles are higher than the retail prices in Hong Kong.  All the products are produced in the same factory in Germany. There is a huge profit being made by Skacel, and they are adopting any means necessary to protect their market. Their price maintenance practices mean that many consumers worldwide are losing the opportunity to purchase good quality needles at reasonable prices.

Our family is fortunate, we weren’t relying on the Addi needle income to pay our rent.  We are planning to relocate to Australia in the new year (along with the yarn side of Yarn Workshop), and I had been approached by a potential buyer of the Hong Kong based needle business. Unfortunately, the value of the needle business has been destroyed by this predatory behaviour. Instead of selling that portion of my business, I am instead going to sell all the remaining stock of knitting needles at very significant discount.

The Hong Kong distributor was careful enough to send me their email immediately after I had received delivery of a large expensive order of new needles including Addi Click sets and Addi Lace needles. My decision to make this email public was motivated by my outrage at the facade of politeness that many in the knitting industry maintain while they engage in uncompetitive conduct.  I strongly believe in fair competition, and have not worked in any other industry where this style of conduct would be considered acceptable.  If you look at this post by Steve Elkins of Webs (scroll down the page), you will see that in the knitting needle market, this kind of behaviour is not isolated, and I believe that a lot of other participants have remained silent about their intimidation.

The whole knitting market, not just the pattern industry requires a shake up – so that profit is not stored solely in the hands of the yarn and knitting needle distributors. At present, companies like Skacel exploit inefficiencies in the model of distribution to their benefit.  Its a real shame, because many consumers have been priced out using good tools that really enhance their knitting experience. I’m interested to try Hiya Hiya needles – they are a new entrant in the market, and seem interested in offering quality at a reasonable price.

The old business model will inevitably be overcome by the forces of the market in an e-commerce world, and the demise of part of my business will be a hiccup along the way. If you think that Skacel need a nudge along the way into the modern world, or you feel that  you don’t want to pay an unnecessary premium on your Addi needles, try emailing karin@skacelknitting.com.

Finally, I finished the socks for my younger daughter, somewhere just before a pleasant sounding Qantas pilot announced that we would not be going immediately to Hong Kong, but had been diverted to Manila.  If you have a sense of deja vu, so did I.

I knitted with Knit Pro fixed metal circulars on both the flight to Australia and on the return, and knitting helped to preserve my sanity.  On the flight to Sydney, I was accosted by an elderly woman as I knitted.  She asked “How did you get those on the plane?”.  She began to tell a tale of woe about her knitting not being allowed when the seatbelt sign came on.

If I had had the chance, I would have said to her, that I am firmly in the camp of seeking forgiveness rather than permission when it comes to knitting on a plane.  I think that having an inherently non-threatning kind of project, and short needles also will help you clear security. Sock gauge bamboo double pointed needles also fit rather nicely in a small child’s pencil case, or in a make-up bag.

I should have removed the bag from underneath the chair for the shot above!  In the tradition of contrariness for which my family might be known, older daughter is modelling her younger sister’s socks, and I only had a small window of co-operation within which to work. If you look closely, you can see that I added a row of purl stitches after the ribbing, solely to provide a device for distinguishing the two pairs.

These socks caused me further trouble after the last incident with the incorrect number of cast on stitches.  I managed to start the heel on sock 1, mark 2 way too soon, and had to rip it out again after cutting the hand dyed yarn. This caused some irregular pooling in the yarn, which I am choosing to ignore.

When I reached the toe on sock 2, I realised that I had stopped the gusset decreases 3 stitches too soon, and had to rip back all of the foot.  Given that the first pair of these socks fairly flew off the needles, I was surprised at how many stupid mistakes I made on these.  Maybe waiting for a family member to receive medical treatment requires projects calling for even less concentration.  The patient has recovered well from surgery, and should recover completely.  I am glad to be back in Hong Kong, and back at work.

This is a quick post – I just have been out walking with the kids, and persuaded a my husband to take some shots of the Ene’s scarf on me. It was insanely hot and glary getting these, so you will have to excuse the squint.

That gives you the idea! Taking photos of lace is tricky – especially when I do not need to be wearing a shawl.

Project details here. The colour is much more accurate in the first shot.

Today is a typhoon day in Hong Kong, and schools (and the post office) are closed until the storm passes. I’ve taken advantage of the temporary break to finally finish my Ene’s Scarf (Ravelry link), and conquered my completely idiotic fear of the three needle bind off.

The colour is most accurate in the first photo -  the wild weather meant that while photographing, the light changed every 10 seconds.  As a classic triangular shawl, I was planning to block this with my blocking wires, but they appear to have completely disappeared.  If I loaned them to you, could you put me out of my misery?  Otherwise, the only other rational explanation is that someone broke into the house to only steal my blocking wires…

I started this shawl in Shanghai, on this trip. I motored through chart 1, without a single error, while the kids had an extended afternoon nap.  Chart 2 is substantially easier, but on completing it, I discovered that I was three stitches over. I shoved the scarf in a dark place and tried to ignore it.  Ene’s Scarf remained untouched through summer, and I had visions of me wearing it at the Sock Summit, so I decided to rip back Chart 2 on the flight to the US.  I ripped back, picked up the zillion stitches and reknitted chart 2, and discovered that I was exactly three stitches over again.  This time I said to myself “I’m not entering it in the Royal Easter Show” (that’s the equivalent of the state fair), and in the final row of chart 2 I planted three extra decreases.  After that Chart 3 was pretty easy going, probably because the lace pattern is the same one as in Cozy.

I usually take two projects with me for long haul flights – some thing lacy, for the long boring stretches of the flight, and a stockingette sock for when I am tired, or when there is some engrossing TV viewing.  I have had very few troubles with security and knitting needles, even flying to and from Australia, but never take a project on long needles, and will always have some bamboo DPN’s stashed in my handbag for the very rare occurrence when a security guard takes exception to a sock knitted magic loop on a metal tipped circular. While I find using DPNs to be like wrestling with a porcupine, the wrestle is preferable to sitting with idle hands for 9 hours or more. I was pretty confident about getting this finished at the Sock Summit, so much so that I asked Sandy to bring her blocking wires from Seattle, so that I could block it on the bed in the hotel room.  That didn’t work out, but finally it is done!  I’ll take some modelled shots this weekend, when hopefully the gale force winds will have died down.

Pattern: Ene’s Scarf (Ravelry link), by Nancy Bush, from Scarf Style.  Borrowed from Hong Kong Public Libraries. You can reserve a library book over the internet, and they will deliver it to the branch of your choice, for the princely sum of HKD $2.50 (about $0.34 USD).

Needles: Addi Metal 80cm fixed circulars 4.00 mm.

Yarn: Yarn Workshop Awaba, kettle dyed with Ashford Acid dyes a dark green.

Modifications: None apart from correcting the three stitches extra.

Posted in Dyeing, Finished Objects, Knitting, Travel Tagged: Awaba yarn, Ene's Scarf, missing blocking wires ]]> http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/has-anyone-seen-my-blocking-wires/feed/ 3 travellers yarn Blocking without wires Lace detail http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/everything-i-do-i-do-twice/ http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/everything-i-do-i-do-twice/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:22:26 +0000 travellersyarn http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/?p=645 ]]>

I was delaying blogging these socks – thinking that when I had finished younger daughter’s pair, I would write an everything I do, I do 2 times post, inspired by Siow Chin.  The socks are the plain vanilla Classic sock from Nancy Bush, knitted with cuffs, heels and toes from Louet Gems, and the body of the sock in Socks That Rock Lightweight. The size is the one where you cast on 48 stitches.  The girls chose the colour in 3 Bags Full in Vancouver. The contrasting heels and toes mean that one skein of Socks That Rock would definitely extend to two pairs of  elementary school sized socks with a relatively long leg. This pair are modelled by younger daughter, but were actually knitted for older daughter.

Younger daughter’s socks were my knitting group, and after school activities project, and I assumed that they were almost completely mindless.  I cast on for the second pair at knitting group and then continued working on the leg at the Hong Kong knit bloggers meet up, and then turned the heel fairly quickly.  At knitting group last Friday I had picked up the gusset stitches, and was checking my stitch count when I noticed that something was astray. It seemed like there were two extra stitches at the front of the sock.  I pondered this anomaly, and wondered if the gusset stitch markers were askew, and I’d picked up the wrong number of stitches.  Nope.  Upon studying the sock, I realised that I had cast on 50 stitches, an error so glaring, that in the cuff, there is a bank of four knit stitches instead of a neat knit 2 purl 2 rib. Despite the helpful suggestions of my knitting buddies that I make the error a a design feature; I instead had a sulk, threw the socks into my knitting bag, and thought that I should photograph them as a blog post.

This sock has already been frogged, and I have done a row of purl stitches around the ribbing to distinguish younger daughter’s pair from her older sister’s.  When I cast on, I checked my stitch count twice…

Apart from astonishingly stupid knitting errors, I spent a couple of days last week in Shanghai trying to track down some new yarns.  I did stop in at Heng Yuan Xiang, and picked up some laceweight, and the shop has moved directly across the road, and now has no English signage at all.

Posted in Finished Objects, Knitting, Travel, Uncategorized Tagged: Shanghai yarn shopping, Socks that Rock, Stupid sock knitting errors ]]> http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/everything-i-do-i-do-twice/feed/ 2 travellers yarn 2009-09-08 099 Sock error Heng Yuan Xiang Nanjing Road Shanghai http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/baby-steps/ http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/baby-steps/#comments Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:46:48 +0000 travellersyarn http://travellersyarn.wordpress.com/?p=633 ]]>

Since the Sock Summit, I’ve had very little time to knit, with work, and the kids’ return to school occupying a lot of my time. I have a back load of baby gifts, and inspired by Brenda Dayne, decided to “make do and mend” some baby socks.

Project Details

Pattern:  “Oh, Baby” by Anne Hanson. I cast on for the size with 32 stitches (perhaps 9 months – they don’t exactly describe them), but then managed to make them the length of the size smaller. They look tiny, but the fault lies with me, I didn’t check my gauge. Next time I will make them on 2.5mm needles. To me (not having seen a newborn for a while) they look newborn sized. The recipient is already 3.5 months old, and Hong Kong is in the middle of a period of very hot weather where it is 29° celsius and 85% humidity by 6am.  It seems highly unlikely that they will be worn, but they might get used to dress a baby doll….

Needles: 2.25mm Knit Pro metal 80 cm circulars, worked magic loop

Yarn:  Some of the leftover Titan Super Trekking from these socks - 10 grams to be precise. If I had known that they would use so little, I would have engineered a prettier part of the colour way.

We’ve had unpleasantness this week, with our older daughter being bullied by an older, bigger, “popular” boy on the bus (and it wasn’t the first incident).  Once again, lots of time has been spent on calls to the school, and on ferrying our offspring to and from school until the issue was resolved by his removal from the bus. Looking at the baby sock, I’m reminded how much my daughters have grown; but they still lots of love and protection. The same daughter did the styling on the photo shoot.  Apparently, every dolly needs a glittery dress to set off their hand knit socks.

Workwise, things continue to be very busy, and I’ve realised that I need even more assistance than the able help that I get from Rebecca, and have decided that I need someone to help out at least 20 hours per week. Hopefully, that will release more of my time for marketing, sourcing yarns, and parenting!

Anyone based in Hong Kong that is looking for flexible work for an online yarn retailer, please let me know. Ideally, the candidate will be a knitter, crocheter or other yarny type, and might have some Cantonese skills. They will be mainly weighing and packing orders, with some general administrative support as well. The new premises for the business look like being in Chai Wan. If anyone is interested, they should email me at ingrid@yarnworkshop.com.

This is the sight that confronted us when we arrived to set up the Yarn Workshop Booth. The set-up process was way more tiring that I anticipated it would be – not being helped by the fact that I had forgot to bring receipt books, a ruler, safety pins, a paper knife, a cutting surface for paper cutting, my mailing scale, a calculator.  All the above were located on a frantic trip to an Office Depot, with the exception of the safety pins.The woman working in the New China Laundry and Dry Cleaners clearly thought that I was a few cents short of a dollar when I was begging her to buy “at least 30 safety pins”; and she GAVE me a large handful. When she gave them to me, I had been wandering the neighbourhoods closest to the Convention Center frantically looking for places that might conceivably sell safety pins. The Office Depot did not have them, the Paper Plus store did not have them, and I could not see a craft or dressmaking shop to save myself.  I was looking  superlative; massively jetlagged, nose dripping constantly (and I had only one thoroughly used tissue in my handbag), and sweaty from scouring the neighbourhood.  I had seriously considered going into one of the several adult entertainment shops in the area in my hunt for safety pins, but decided in favour of  the preservation of my innocence.

As you can see, we managed to hang up Sandy’s Lyra (with the aforesaid safety pins), which attracted so much attention, and even got a comment of approval from Barbara Walker.

I did not get any photos of the booth once we had completed set-up, because then, we were greeted by hoards of shoppers.  If you want to see how it looked, see Majorknitter’s blog post here. That evening we went to the opening reception, and I finally heard the Yarn Harlot speak  The part of the evening where Barbara Walker got a standing ovation was very moving, and we met some lovely knitters.

The following days sped by in a blur. I had brought along Ene’s Scarf, thinking that there would be sitting and knitting time while manning the booth.  I completed about 0.4 rows in the whole time that I manned the booth, and spent the rest of the time talking to customers, meeting old internet friends, meeting new ones, and wrestling with the completely inadequate internet service in the convention center.  At one stage I had a particularly unpleasant interlude with the face of the company referenced here. Email me, or ask me about it when I have a glass of something in my hand, if you are so inclined.

I loved seeing the creations that people had made from Yarn Workshop yarn, both the lovely dyeing, and these socks below.

They were knitted by Jardinrouge (her Ravelry ID) from Footscray, and use the official Sock Summit Sock Pattern (which appears to have been pulled from the Sock Summit website).  I also got to see the original sock yarn blankie (Ravelry link) knitted by Shelly Kang.  The lovely, really fantastically friendly, ladies from the Yarnery were in the booth opposite, and it was a delight to look at the blankie every day. They also protected the blankie like it was the crown jewels, and it was never left unattended.  Sorry about the blurry photo – things were so manic that it is lucky that I got one at all.

Apart from the opening reception, the only other official Sock Summit function that I got to attend was the Luminary Panel.  It was interesting, and a relief to be finally silent – I think that I talked non-stop for the rest of the Sock Summit.  I finally got to knit a few more rows on my Ene’s Scarf.  Blue Garter (who I got to meet again!) has summarised the best quotes from the Luminary Panel, so that I don’t have to do it.  Then Sandy and I packed up the remaining stock – we had fortunately sold at least three quarter of what we had brought.

Sandy was the most amazing assistant throughout the whole summit – she is amazingly physically strong, a fountain of knowledge about all matters yarn, weaving and knitting, and excellent company.  We both discovered that she has excellent yarn selling skills (any Seattle are yarn shops should consider her if they need a part-time employee).

Overall, the Sock Summit was a success for Yarn Workshop, but there was many vendors in the marketplace who had not had a very successful show.  One woman was almost in tears as we waited for access to the loading dock. I am glad that it was fruitful, because the whole process, while interesting and entertaining, was a lot of WORK.  As an indication of how much work – below is a photo of my major purchase, while I was in Australia, in JULY.  It remains untouched in its box, and I really, really want to take it out for a run.  I have some Liberty fabric that needs to be cut out…

The delay in finding me a room when I was checking into the hotel had me a little worried, but after 15 minutes, all was well.  As I unpacked my bag for a much needed shower, I discovered the following damage:

Apparently, styrofoam heads require more protection than hand knitted goods. I’ll need to find another way to display my Koolhaas at the Sock Summit.

In other news, I startled a pharmacist today by asking for Betadine sore throat gargle.  She said that they didn’t have anything like it, and that  “folks round here mainly use Iodine to make meth”.

Yesterday I felt sorry for myself.  I had a cold, some severe self doubt about exhibiting at Sock Summit, and heaps of work to do.  My cold was just severe enough for me to have called in sick, had I been in paid employment; but not so sick that I couldn’t have done some knitting, and looked at the new Rowan magazine. Instead, I was working hard in the heat, and feeling wretched and self pitying. There was a track of unproductive thoughts running through my head, “what if no-one buys anything, what if I sell out on the first day, what if my stock does not arrive, why can’t I lie down and have a sleep, I wish that I could stop my nose from running, if I had a job like a normal person I could take sick leave” etc.

Then I took a break to have a cup of peppermint tea, and to allow the most recent dose of ibuprofen to work and I saw this blog post.

Ailsa is sending me this work of art to show at the Sock Summit – it is Ailsa, dyed by her, and knitted by her.  It is an act of unbelievable generosity, and will hopefully encourage lots of people to buy her yarn.  Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about running my own business.  I remembered that I had met some truly repellent types in my previous working life, and that no-one calls me at 3 am to answer stupid questions any more. As a compliance lawyer, people don’t make you gifts, but they do whine, winge and berate you.  Today, I feel much better after sleeping from 8.30 pm through to 5.45am, and will look at the Rowan magazine when I take older daughter to the doctor.