Has anyone seen my blocking wires?

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.

Everything I do I do twice

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.

Baby Steps

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.

Sock Summit Report

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…