The Yarn Shop

Here in Penang there are quirky shops and dirty shops, funky shops and monkey shops, shops in modern malls and shops in old Chinese shophouses. Then there is the yarn shop. I will leave the description of this shop up to you, but what I can tell you is that I co-incidentally stumbled upon this shop one day after searching for a haberdashery on the island.  I actually gave up any hope of finding either yarn or a crochet hook anywhere in Penang and decided to order via Amazon. Only to have Amazon declining delivery of crochet hooks to the island . . .

I still think it utterly unbelievable and co-incidental that I walked past this shop and discovered the yarn tucked away on shelves at the back of the shop, exactly one day after trying to order via Amazon.  The choice lies only with the colours, not the yarn.  It is 100% acrylic, manufactured in Japan and is sold in bundles of 5x40gram. The quality is OK, at least the yarn is soft. I have since read about another shop selling yarn and will investigate and report soon. Oh the fun of living this life, one simply has to have an outstanding sense of humour.

The front of the shop and the backstreet where I park - note the storm ahead, it is wet season.

The "Shop"

Hexagon & Granny's Soccer Ball Cushion and Handbag

The Tween's room is mostly a blank canvas of white which is spruced up with a few interesting objects among others "paintings" on raw wood that she purchases every alternate month or so from the quint Amelie Cafe in Armenian street, a favourite space of ours. Various bloggers have documented Amelie and to get an idea of this cafe where everything is recycled by the artist owners take a look here and here. 

As soon as I came across the beautiful African Flower pattern designed by two South Africans, I decided to give it a go and fell in love with the satisfaction of hooking these Grannies. The Tween and I selected the colours at random from our stash of yarn (yes, she is hooked on hooking too!) and it was great fun to see the flowers evolve. I hooked the borders of the hexagons in green and the pentagons in blue, a combination that popped all the colours beautifully and created harmony between other objects hooked in the same tropical colours. After 8 years of desert living in the Middle East we love the vibrancy that comes with living on a Tropical Island.

The "soccer ball" cushion is assembled with 12 pentagons and 20 hexagons and unfolded looks like this [you might also want to head over to Crochetbug for a tutorial on how to assemble the ball]: 

You might also want to head over to Imaging Maths to see it unfolded in a different way:

Or use this one:

The pattern for the beautiful Summer Garden Granny Squares can be found on the lovely Attic24 blog.  44 Squares were used to create the bag.

The pattern for the African Flower is illustrated and described step for step on the fabulous blog Heidibearscreative