The Malaysian Yarn Hunt

Pheew, I'm finally back on Koh Phangan! The holiday wasn't very restful as first my boyfriend got the nasty bug and then I had some stomach-problems of my own, but at least I got some shopping done in Kuala Lumpur. I also froze my ass off watching Hobbit in an ice box cold cinema, but that's another story... The idea was to buy yarn for Horatio and Oren owl mittens and dropped stitch mitts from Knitscene accessories plus needles to do the State street cowl. Of course I didn't find exactly what I was looking for as the yarn weights were different (and the colours were pretty blah as well, to be frank), but let's see what I come up with with the ones I found. Have to try and get the tension/gauge right this time!

The Maycraft shop that I mentioned in this post turned out not to be the heaven I was expecting, but a tiny little place deep in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur (pretty much like the one I visited last time). So the trip wasn't really worth the price and effort of the taxi ride, as there is a perfecly ok little crafts shop just next to the hotel we were staying at (and which I still had to go to, as the Maycraft shop didn't have thick enough needles that I needed for the cowl). But now there is yarn and needles. The only thing missing is a ruler, so that I could measure the gauge swatch correctly. The only ruler I have is printed behind a yarn wrap, that is currenlty sitting in storage here on Koh Phangan (oh the joys of moving house). I will hopefully get it tomorrow, as we managed to get such a shitty motorbike for today that we're sure it'll explode if we try to make the trip to the other side of the island.... Or then I'll just go and buy a ruler from the town. It costs like nothing, I'm just making excuses. Can I play the jetlag card if the time difference between KL and here is only one hour? Maybe this is just dehydration from all the a/c we've had. Pheew! What I need is a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, I promise I'll start making the gauge swatches! I'll keep you posted.

With love, Lilje

The Yarn Fever

31.12 was rainy almost the whole day, but the evening was good enough to go to the beach, set off some lanterns and celebrate the year change. It's hard to believe it's 2013 already! It seems like we came to Thailand only a short while ago, and it's already been 4 months. We're more than halfway through our trip! Yikes...

Because of our tourist visas, we have to do visa runs every two months to get another entry stamped in our visa. This time we're heading to Bali (and KL as transit) and are having a bit of a holiday after the work filled Christmas "holidays".

As the trip draws closer, I find myself drooling over Maycraft website. Just look at this abundance of... everything! It's gonna be one baffled taxi driver who gets to take me there. On our last visit to Kuala Lumpur I visited a small crafts shop which turned out to be pretty hard to find. It'll be interesting to see how many times the driver has to ask for directions this time (despite also having a map)...

So yes, what to buy? On my making list are at least Barbara Gregory's cutesy owl mittens, dropped stitch mitts from Knitscene accessories, The Groke mittens (you know, the misunderstood "bad guy" from the Moomins?). Hmmh this seems to be an awful lot of mittens... Maybe I need to buy yarn for some sock projects as well? As I really need to practice those heels! And I also need a bunch of new needles as I only have the dp 5mm and 6mm in addition to the circular 4,5mm. And some stitch markers! And and... ;) We'll see what I can fit in my backpack as I plan to by some home decor items from Ubud in Bali as well.

Have you made any New Year's resolutions? Or what do you plan to knit this year? :)

With love, Lilje