Shopping in Hong Kong February 28, 2009

  Bettina asked if I found anything of textile interest in Hong Kong.  Well, this hat was one of the first things to catch my eye in the street market in Stanley near Repulse Bay.  Most of the items in the market were made in Hong Kong or the Chinese mainland but one lady had a table full of hats knit in Nepal.  Remembering the snow we left behind in Dublin, I thought one of these hats would be just the thing.  You can see it was done in a knit 1, purl 1 pattern.  I think it’s great but it’s now too warm to wear it back here in Dublin.  I’ll save it for next winter.  

Other items of textile interest were the clothes – I bought several pairs of slacks and a blouse.  I kept looking for knitting magazines but that quest drew a blank.

Shopping for books

  In one of my visits to a Dymocks book shop in Hong Kong I came across a book about cats by Doris Lessing.  I had a sneaking suspicion that I already had the book and sure enough, when I got home I found it on one of my shelves.  At least that time I resisted the temptation to accidentally buy a copy of a book I already had.

Knitting in Ireland

 Today at Kilternan Market, one of the senior members had this baby cardigan for sale.  I thought it was so nicely knit I couldn’t resist.  Sort of like coals to Newcastle since I could knit a cardigan like that myself but hers was already knit and cardigans take more patience than I feel at the moment.  Besides I like this member and was delighted that she was knitting again, even though her items might compete with mine.

Current long term knitting project February 25, 2009

  this is strip one for a knitted blanket.  This is a stash reduction project to say the least.  Each strip will be 60 inches long and 35 stitches wide.  I’m knitting on size 3 3/4 mm needles.  I’m not sure how many strips I’ll have to do but this is going to take a long time.  I’m aiming for a double sized blanket.

More snippets from the Trip to Hong Kong February 23, 2009

  One of the pleasures of the visit to Hong Kong was to watch television with the children.  Do you think their grandad has converted them to Sky News?  No such thing, they have converted him to watching the CeeBeeBees.

 

when we were ready to go out there were always red taxis available or the Parkview dedicated bus to take us where ever we wanted to go.  One day we took a taxi to Happy Valley (not far, it cost us $HK 30 = euro 3) and then boarded the double decker tram to go to the central part of the city.

 from the upper deck of the tram we had a good view of this billboard of President Obama – hooray!

And when we took the ferry across the harbour to Kowloon, we had a wonderful view of this big cruise ship Legend of the Sea

One day we window shopped in the Soho District along Hollywood Road

  I particularly liked this ceramic yellow cat in one of the shop windows

 street market

 a reminder of our neighbour’s cat Charlie who frequently visits our cat Slinky – this picture was taken near Stanley Market in another part of the island

 and this picture was also taken near Stanley Market – I like little glimpses of side laneways

Trip to Hong Kong February 23, 2009

We are just back from a wonderful trip to Hong Kong.  A great joy to visit one of our sons and his wife and their two little ones. Here are the 2 little ones, age 3 and 2,  enjoying a book written and illustrated by their grandad when we lived in St. Lucia and their daddy Andrew was their age.  The book – Coco the Palm Rat and the Three Little Boys.  Now a family heirloom written a long time ago. 

 Andrew is the little boy in the middle.

 

 Now Andrew is a daddy himself and he and his family live in a high rise apartment complex on the other side of the world in Hong Kong – here are a few views.

 this picture was taken quite late in the day as the sun was going down.  We had spectacular views initially and then after a few days the clouds descended and we couldn’t see beyond the white wall at our window. 

here is a partial view of the cloud and the mist

Despite the enveloping cloud at the higher levels we could descend to the lower levels of the complex and then go on to destinations at even lower levels.  And the nearer to sea level we went, the clearer the air.  I particularly enjoyed shopping at Stanley Market.  And inevitably we found bookshops wherever we went.

 Dymocks book shops seemed to be everywhere.  I was delighted to find 2 of Catherine Sampsons books – for readers of Jean Miles blog, Catherine is Jean’s daughter-in-law and she has been living in Beijing for about 15 years.  She has written several detective stories with a distinctly Beijing flavour.  As we traversed the miles from Hong Kong back to Amsterdam, I enjoyed reading one of her earlier books, The Pool of Unease.

  we enjoyed the open air dining at Stanley Market

  and then we discovered the fun of traveling on the Star Ferry over to Kowloon.  We chose Thursday as our day to travel on the ferry and visit the Museum of Art – alas, when we got there we discovered, much to our dismay, that Thursday was the one day of the week that the Museum was closed.  However, the Museum Shop was open and we had a good browse.

I’ll close for now and add more pictures and snippets from our trip on my next blog.

Artwork for today February 9, 2009

  Photo of Ashley and Tigger

 

 

 

  Art teacher’s (Liz Walker) sketch

 

I had a good time today working on an oil painting.  Since my painting doesn’t really resemble the child I was trying to show, I’m just going to call it “Child with Toy” (or something like that).  I made 3 unsuccessful tries at doing a good sketch of Ashley from the photograph.    Finally I asked my art teacher to do a sketch, and she did a very good one.  In my oil painting I still can’t get the face/head to look right.  The head is too square and the proportions of the body are not right either.  I’ll be eager to get back to my art class and have Liz show me how and where I went wrong.  I’m really enjoying my attempts at sketching and now my first attempt at turning a sketch into an oil painting.

Oil painting and knitting will be put on hold as of tomorrow when we fly to Hong Kong.  I have a very thick copy of War and Peace so that should keep me well occupied for the trip.

Scarf Season February 8, 2009

   Encouraged by recent sales of scarves at the Saturday market, I have just completed knitting another scarf.  My main colours were the yellow Norwegian Heilo yarn, some Donegal/Kilcarra yellow tweed, plus odds and ends of other colours to give contrast.  It certainly is scarf weather here in Dublin.  We have had snow and cold temperatures for several weeks now.   We were really fortunate though last Wednesday, the day of the concert – that was the one day when it didn’t snow and there was a bit of a thaw – no problems for anyone to get to the concert.

This morning when I woke up around 8, it was snowing heavily and the cat was frantically pawing at the window and mewing to come in.  I took pity on her.  Then I went back to bed to finish my book, The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland.  A very well written first novel – I recommend it.  By the time I had finished it the snow had stopped and it looked o.k. to walk to church, being careful not to slip on the ice underneath the new snow.   I was rewarded in my walk – I was able to watch a beautiful thrush eating berries from a hedge – a lovely bird.  The birds are especially enjoyable to watch against the outline of the snow on the tree branches and the bushes.

Meanwhile Ian is monitoring the weather reports and the flights leaving Dublin and Amsterdam.  Last week Dublin Airport was closed several times because of the snow and icy conditions and many flights were disrupted.  The long queues for rebooking sounded like our experience in Chicago at Christmas time.  It’s hard to imagine ourselves in Hong Kong later this week.  Son Andrew ran the Hong Kong Marathon today in termperatures in the mid-20’s centigrade.  Sounded very hot for running a marathon.  Well done Andrew!

Bass Recorder February 5, 2009

  This is my art teacher’s sketch of me playing the bass recorder.  Now that the recorder/viol concert is over, I want to spend some time learning the bass clef and practising playing my bass recorder.  In our recorder consort I have concentrated on playing tenor.  But now we have a break and it’s a chance to try something different.  I can recognize the bass clef when I play the piano but I have a hard time recognizing the notes when I play the bass recorder.  Hence, I did the sketch below to try to help myself remember the notes.

Recorder Consort Class meet the Viol Consort Class February 5, 2009

Last night was the night of the concert.  Our class of 4 recorder players plus our teacher joined the viol consort class of 6 viol players plus their teacher.    We played to a small but appreciative audience.

The recorders played 5 pieces:  Ah Robin gentle Robin

                                                                 Riu riu chiu

                                                                 Heth sold een meskin garn om win

                                                                 Ballet

                                                                Privilegi della corte

Then the viols played 2 long pieces, both by John Jenkins:  The Bell Pavan

                                                                                                                         Fantasia a6  (no. 12)

To conclude the concert the Recorders and Viols played together:  Canzona “La Nuvolina”

Then we all shared wine and cheese and other goodies.  A very pleasant evening.  Recorder consort

  Part of the viol consort

  Completion of the viol consort

Now to knitting.  It is snowing heavily and is quite cold so this is definitely still the season for scarves.  Here’s my latest.       Hard to see, but the main yarn is a purple tweed from Kilcarra in Donegal.