Chifas and some yarn

Saturday was a day for exploration in Lima. My friend, MJ, who is Peruvian, and I went to Chinatown in search of a good chifa, or Peruvian Chinese restaurant. Many folks who haven’t been to Latin America find it difficult to believe the number of Asian immigrants here. Peru likely has more than most, having had even a Japanese-descended president, Fujimori. Chinese food in Peru is similar to Chinese food everywhere, but with some special Peruvian touches. The fortune cookies are different, but the fortunes are the same. Mine said, “The stars are in your favor”.

After eating, MJ and I wandered around Chinatown a bit and saw the arch. It is small, but definitely Chinatown. I think that you can buy everything there, from Peruvian handicrafts to the latest in Japanese technology to Chinese herbal medicine to books in German. Wild.

Someone gave us intel on where we might find some yarn in the area, so we left Chinatown for downtown Lima. Neither place, I will note, is somewhere you want to go with a big handbag and lots of jewelery. You need to be very careful down there, and don’t go alone, even in the daytime.

Eventually, we found the Galería Santa Felícita on Huallaga Street, a big warehouse-like space with a bunch of stalls dedicated to crafts of all sorts on two floors. The first floor is mostly stalls selling retail or wholesale craft supplies, such as ribbon, beads, fabric, and, most importantly for our purposes, Yarn. The second floor is a series of workshops where you can take classes in different types of crafts (“manualidades” in Spanish). While these aren’t crafts in the taste of many gringos I know, I think that it would be fun to go with a Peruvian friend to make some things and learn how to do them. I’m always up for learning something new, craftwise or otherwise. There were even tables of women knitting, crocheting, and macraméing! That was cool.

Now, about that yarn. If you are looking for acrylic yarn, this is your place. They have a pretty decent variety of Peruvian-made acrylic yarns for good prices. There are some really fine cottons, too, if you want to make tatted lace or something crazy like that. However, we asked at every store about wool or alpaca, and not a single one carried 100% or even more than 10% natural fibers. For me, this was a grave disappointment. Like coffee-producing countries where the people only drink Nescafé, wool and alpaca producing Peru only uses acrylic for home crafting. I imagine that this is probably due to the better price that one can get in the export market or the value added that knitted items have in the tourist market.

So, I left empty-handed. Now I’m in Cuzco, and I have high hopes for finding some stash-worthy material up here.

Some Spanish yarn vocab, for those of you who are interested:
• Yarn: lana, lana hilada, lana para tejer
• Wool: lana, lana de oveja, lana de oveja hilada
• Alpaca: lana de alpaca, alpaca
• To Spin: hilar
• To knit: tejer
• Sheep: oveja

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yay! One more fun year down, and many more to go, I hope. To the left, the birthday gifts I got today:

• Flowers from Joe! What a good husband.
• A pretty black scarf from the hotel (how many hotels that you've been to give you birthday gifts?
• A cold Old Speckled Hen, my fav British Ale
• Yarn! Of course

I also got flowers from my colleague, WB, which are also beautiful, and are currently decorating my office. A manicure was my present to myself, but I couldn't get a good pic.

The yarn came from a yarn store that my friend AS told me about here in Lima. The store is called Nakayama knits & crafts, at Avenida La Paz 324 Miraflores (they are still working on the website). The owner is a Japanese-Peruvian, and it looks like she may speak Japanese. They sell a lot of beautiful hand-knit items, both traditional Peruvian style and more modern stuff, as well as a wall full of yarn. They sell a wider variety than Alpaca 859, including blends and acrylics and novelty, which is nice.

I bought 700 grams of DK weight so-soft acrylic in a pretty light yellow color, made by a Peruvian company called Hilados Acrylicos San Juan, S.A. It is their Cigüeñita line, and even though it is 100% acrylic, it is super soft, and perfect for a baby blanket (I wonder whose...!).

This is a very friendly and nice store. I recommend that you stop by if you are in Lima.

One thing that I still have not found here in South America is a yarn store where you really feel like you could spend hours just looking; where you could plop down in a chair with a project and knit for hours (like at Lovely Yarns or A Good Yarn); where you feel comfortable touching everything and asking 2 million questions. Alpaca 859 and Nakayama have nice things, but limited selection (although Nakayama's selection of types of yarn is broader), but no... community space. Maybe that aspect of knitting just hasn't exported this far yet?

This second pic is the back of my tank top so far. I'm almost at the neck, and then I will block front and back and Kitchener them together at the shoulder, and then do the neckband. So far, so good.

Saturday shopping

This is what I brought home today. I also saw a pair of too-cool-for-school shoes in a window, but decided to save my money for baby alpaca. Good call, no?

On the left, three postcards, two with pics of cute alpacas doing their alpaca thing, and one of three vicunas. Two of these will hopefully make their way through the snail mail system to a couple of special people who shall remain nameless.

In the center, an unbearably cute watercolor of alpacas that I bought in the Parque Kennedy art market. The artist's name is Francisco Yarleque Antunez, but everyone calls him Chusty. He also does some oils that I'm not as fond of. If you would like to get in touch with him when you are in Lima, go to the park on a Saturday afternoon and ask for him among the other painters.

On the right, the baby alpaca in question. The color is a beautiful apple color, and it is a super soft DK weight, perfect for a Christmas gift for someone else who shall also remain nameless, but let's just say she's not yet received a knitted gift from me, but certainly deserves one. It is made by Mitchell & Co in Arequipa, Peru. This is their "Indiecita" 100% baby alpaca. I bought 500 grams for $48. Each ball is 50 grams, $4.80 a ball. This price is by no means great, but it is better than it was two years ago when I went to the same store.

The store in question is pictured below. I know, this is the one I complained about earlier in this here blog, but I couldn't help it. I didn't find any other place to buy and I just had to.

Alpaca 859 is on Avenida Larco in Miraflores. In fact, it is at Larco 859. you can email them at alpaca859 at yahoo dot com. The last time I went there, they were kind of rude and snobby, and told me that they didn't know where else one could buy yarn in Lima. This time, probably because I bought something from them first, they were nicer, so I have some places to check out next week. The selection is limited, but the colors they have are nice and the quality is high. They sell the little yarncakes individually or in bags of 10, and also have 1 kilo fingering weight cones in many colors.

In addition to all that goodness, I also had a grand treat today. A serendipitous treat. Passion fruit green tea bubble tea. YUM. This was my first (yes, I know, I'm behind the trend, but really, does that surprise anyone?) bubble tea, and I LOVED IT. They sell in in the cute Japanese store pictured below, along with a ton of other great Asian goodies on Pasaje Los Pinos 118 in Miraflores, across the street from the Ripley department store. They are open from 10am to 10pm. I drank this stuff down super quickly, and I swear it is the best remedy for a mild hangover ever invented by human beings.

Math and knitting

Exhibit A: proof that I can do math when assisted by technology.

As my colleagues and those who go out to eat with me know, math in my head is not a talent that I have. Inevitably, I will get things as simple as 10% of 100 wrong. Therefore, I had no faith in my ability to figure out knitting math in my head unassisted.

To the rescue: one very awesome Motorola Pebl phone in the blue color, and its very helpful calculator.

The pic shows the alpaca swill I bought in Bolivia in the process of becoming a boat-necked tank top. I had to double it because it was too fine to knit even with size 1 needles. That made me annoyed, but so far, so good. In spite of the overpowering smell of patchouli on that stuff. Yuck.

Yarn shopping in Lima update: I got a lead from our receptionist about where I could potentially buy yarn here in Lima, but will not be able to do so until the 15th or thereabouts (payday). I bought my ticket to the States today, so I have no money, and plus it is a holiday here until after Easter.

However, I did check out a place on Avenida Larco that I found the last time I was here. It is closed like every other store that I actually want to go to, but I wasn't that disappointed. Really, I just wanted to get a pic of the inside and some prices so that I could complain to you, dear reader, how overpriced the place is and how it smacks of serious economic injustice. Lucky for Alpaca 859, they were closed.

Pen Pal Project update: I'm almost done my first letter to my pen pal! Very exciting.

Get Yarn in La Paz

While also not as easy as you would imagine it to be, it is possible to find alpaca and sheep's wool yarn in La Paz, Bolivia. On Calle Sagarnaga, where there are a ton of touristy souvenir shops (some of which sell great stuff), there is a store in a random shopping center where you can buy yarn in skeins, and two stores where you can buy very very very (light fingering, laceweight) yarn on cones. Even the yarn I bought (seen resting on my seedum at right), four 250-gram skeins in black and dark grey, are very light weight. Each skein cost a rather expensive 75 Bolivianos, or almost $10. I thought that it would be cheaper. In fact, the high price made me angry enough that if I knew of another place to buy, I would have gone there.

If you think about it, what are the chances of all $10 of those dollars, or even $9 of them, going to the women who washed, carded, spun and dyed that yarn? Very very low. The guy who sold it clearly wasn't a yarn expert, so he surely didn't earn whatever cut he was getting. Thus, I'm even more committed to figuring out the whole wool industry here in the Andes, and from that finding a way to get better prices to the producers.

If you want to buy yarn on cones (probably cheaper, and you can double it, but it was too awkward for me to carry back this time), or if you want to go and bother the other guy, the places are on Sagarnaga, below San Francisco by 1/2 a block on the left hand side. The shopping center is called the Galeria Palace Center, and is in the bottom of the Eva Palace Hotel. The stores are on the upper level once you go inside.

Some pics for you:
1) The FINISHED Afghan that I made for a friend as a wedding gift (shhh), using Cascade Superwash (which is AWESOME):














2) A finished scarf for hubbo, k2p2 rib with a 100% wool called Pecora from LHO that I bought at Manos de Hada. The yarn is a single that is wonderfully slubby, and makes a great show:














3) A silk rayon blend being made into the back of a sweater based on MDK's "Perfect Sweater" (losely based on), yarn also from LHO. You really can't tell, but the colorway has such great gradations of color and is really lovely:

Yarn at Megamaxi

I can't find the reciept from the store to let you know the name, but there is a store in the Megamaxi on 6 de Diciembre (parking garage side, by the tailor) that sells yarn. Unfortunately, they only sell acrylic. They do have some novelty yarns, though, for those of you who like that sort of thing. The woman working there was unable to tell me why they didn't carry wool. If I go back and see someone else there, I'll ask again. This aversion to the most fantasic commonly available fiber for textiles is a mystery to me.

They also carry embroidery floss, thread, and other things you need for sewing, including a limited selection of patterns.

Hojasdegracia -- I see your comments, and will check out the places you mention when I get a chance.

Yes, Virginia, there is a decent yarn shop...

I found one! On my way back from dropping some things off at our new condo today, I looked to my right and saw a sign that said, "Lanas de Argentina!" (Wools of Argentina). Yeah, I couldn't walk past it. So, even though the shop was closed, the lady let me in because they were having a class. They have classes!

The shop is called Manos de Hada (Fairy Hands). They distribute only LHO yarns from Argentina, most of which are unfortunately not made from pure wool, but all of which are nice for what they are. And cheap! I got four 250 gram skeins of a silk-rayon blend for $24, and two 100 gram balls of pure wool in a sort of slubby heavy worsted for $8. The shop is run by the Fiorella Group, which also sells some scarves and things made by the women in the shop.

Manos de Hada is located on Noboa Caamano 438, between Coruna and 6 de Diciembre, near the La Colina (or La Paz). They are open until 6 on weekdays.

I'll post pics of the yarn when my camera battery is charged.

Getting the Scent

Today while I was working on some things here at home, the maid came in to clean my apartment. She complimented my knitting (a strip for an Aran afghan), so I asked her if she knew where to buy yarn in Quito. She did! I hope.

Apparently, one can buy yarn somewhere in the old town section, near the Santo Domingo church and up Calle Flores to the Teatro Sucre and to the east. I didn't see anything when I was there the other day, but I was very preoccupied with not being robbed. She suggested that I not take a purse at all, but just stick my ID and money in various pockets and my bra when I go down there, and to take the trolleybus.

This weekend, I will. And I'll drag Joe along. Woohoo!

Also, sorry for the lack of photos. I don't have the cable to hook up my camera. When I do, you will see pics, I promise.

A Yarn Shop for those of you in Lebanon

Since I couldn't tell you about a yarn store in Quito today, I thought that I'd give you the skinny on one I found in Beirut.

Y.knot is a really great shop with a fantastic and friendly multi-lingual staff. They carry a wide variety of imported yarns such as Rowan and Anny Blatt. It is a beautiful shop, with a big rustic worktable and endless tea or coffee for sitting around knitting. I highly recommend it.

y.knot
Saifi Village
Mkhalissiya street 162
Beirut, Lebanon
y.knot at cyberia dot net dot lb
+961-1-992211/+961-70-108608