Month: January 2019

lately

Posted on by trish

What I’ve been work­ing on after the holidays…

This was some­thing that I start­ed on my trip to Hong Kong. Work­ing on this got me through excru­ci­at­ing­ly long flights and some moments of sad­ness as well as a cold. I actu­al­ly man­aged fin­ish­ing most of the body dur­ing the trip and fin­ished the sleeves after I came back. 

I made up the pat­tern entire­ly and jot­ted down some notes with the hope of shar­ing it some­times in the future… it might not hap­pen till May when the win­ter semes­ter is over, so hope­ful­ly I will still remem­ber what I did…

I used the Red Heart It’s a Wrap that was sent to me from Yarn Cana­da to review. Remem­ber the ghost­ly doily? So I fin­ished the doily AND made this sweater AND still have yarn left for prob­a­bly anoth­er doily. The yardage is incredible!

After school start­ed back again I did­n’t have as much time but I did knit a hat! I’ve loom knit­ted a hat with with this Caron Chunky Cake before but the wide gaps between stitch­es (part of loom knit­ting but I think it’s fix­able, I just don’t know how) make the hat not very warm… so I fig­ure I’ll unrav­el and knit a 2x2 rib one. 

And then I thought it’s a bit too short and the brim not wide enough, so I unrav­eled again and added stripes with the left­over grey sec­tion of the yarn cake.

I think this one is stay­ing knit­ted :D

Have a great week, everyone!

homecoming

Posted on by trish

Over Christ­mas I made a trip to Hong Kong with my mom and sis­ter, because my grand­ma is unwell. We tried to spend as much time as pos­si­ble with her, know­ing also that hav­ing vis­i­tors was also tir­ing for both my grand­par­ents. So my sis­ter and I did quite a bit of wandering. 

The grimy streets, the humid air, the plume of exhaust every time a bus pass­es by on the nar­row street. The palm trees, the emer­ald moun­tains, the trop­i­cal plants bloom­ing in Decem­ber. Peo­ple who would speed walk right into you if you don’t make way quick­ly enough. The sea that always smells faint­ly like the sewer. 

I love every tree, every brick, every grimy side­walk, every pedes­tri­an bridge in this city. 

But I won­der if I would say the same if we nev­er left. If I had to grow up and learn to be an adult in it. If I actu­al­ly have to live with its var­i­ous com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal and social issues now. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I will always be able to vis­it as freely as I do now, with the ways the said com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal and social issues are pro­gress­ing. We’ll wait, and see, and hope. And in the mean­while I’ll show you some pic­tures of this beloved city.

Porg, our trav­el com­pan­ion, pos­es in front of the win­dow at our guest house.
View from a pedes­tri­an bridge on King’s Road with the old style tram.
Oil Street arts cen­tre near our guest house. Folks relax­ing on the lawn at lunch time.
Street mar­ket and shoppers.
Wan­dered into Hong Kong Uni­ver­si­ty, a colo­nial insti­tu­tion built in 1912.
Of course, stitch­ing on the MTR. No one stitch­es on the MTR though…
Vis­it­ing Hong Kong Park. It has meerkats and lemurs. Much green­ery. Also unsea­son­ably warm this time of year.
Porg wants a pho­to. It’s not every day he gets to ride the MTR.
Anoth­er pedes­tri­an bridge, anoth­er view.
A refur­bished cot­ton fac­to­ry that turned into an arts cen­tre and retail space, with a thriv­ing rooftop garden.
One of the many ghost signs. It’s clear that there are lots of thoughts and efforts put into pre­serv­ing and show­cas­ing the orig­i­nal struc­ture. Even the bench­es are made from the orig­i­nal wood­en doors.
Vis­it­ed the neigh­bour­hood where my par­ents grew up and met with my mom and aunt. Also where I went to kinder­garten. I have a few spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries of this place.
My par­ents’ fam­i­lies lived in small flats like these.
Toasts at tea time.
We egg tart lovers. Held on to Porg’s wing just in time to stop him from falling right in. 
Spent part of our last evening at the har­bour, with many groups of enthu­si­as­tic buskers, and the back­drop of the icon­ic Hong Kong skyline.

One of my favourite poems by Ursu­la Le Guin comes to mind, wher­ev­er home is for you…

May your soul be at home where there are no hous­es.
Walk care­ful­ly, well loved one,
walk mind­ful­ly, well loved one,
walk fear­less­ly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us, 
be always com­ing home. 

– From Always Com­ing Home, 1985

new year’s awesome finds

Posted on by trish

A few projects to get the new year craft­ing start­ed! :D

A quick and cozy make. I love fun­nel neck. By Two of Wands.
Intri­cate stitch pat­tern inspired by the Great Lakes. From Cro­chet 365.
Impressed by how much it looks knit­ted! I’m not super into cro­chet projects that try to look knit (because there’s noth­ing wrong with cro­chet that looks cro­chet!), but I do love the look of knit­ted fab­ric while my hands pre­fer to cro­chet. From My Hob­by is Crochet.
I’ve always want­ed to make a good jack­et and this one looks stur­dy! A paid pat­tern by Eli­na Vaana­nen on Rav­el­ry.

Hap­py 2019! May your year be filled with love, joy and crafts! :D