Saturday, August 13, 2005

Cuties of Many Cultures... and Yarn Porn

Oooo... I saw some cute dancers tonight! Both of the "ooo... he's cute" type, and the "aren't those kiddies *adorable*" type.

Dad left me his last three tickets, and I couldn't find anyone who could go with me at the last minute. So I picked out three pavilions located nearby (I didn't feel like driving very far) and went by myself. It ended up being "Eastern European night" for me, because that's what happened to be close. I almost drove a bit further to check out the Tamil pavilion, but there were two right side-by-side (less searching for parking), and then dad had said the Hungarian pavilion was quite good. I'll have to branch out from Europe next year, I guess.

I checked out the Ukrainian pavilion:

Ukrainian Pavilion

(which didn't have a line tonight, but was packed inside). The dancers were great. This photo is quite blurry, but I actually managed to get one of the guys leaping up.

Then I popped over to the Croation (Zagreb) pavilion:

Croatia (Zagreb) Pavilion

where the dancing wasn't quite as exciting... they seem to like going around in circles with different footwork. It was interesting, however, to see how the costumes combined elements both from Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Makes sense, given their location. Plus they had a really nice cultural exhibit with some fascinating costumes. (It must have taken *forever* to do all that embroidery and beadwork!)

Finally I finished off my evening, tickets, and Folklorama with the Hungaria pavilion:

Hungary Pavillion

I was really impressed by the ladies with the bottles (not a single one dropped!), but the audience seemed mostly more impressed by the guys that clapped their boots.

I enjoyed all three shows. (Even without the eye-candy.)

Oh... I forgot to mention that I stopped in at Ram Wools earlier today.

I got most of the yarn I need for the baby blanket, but I needed to order a few balls. They only had one ball of yellow, and two of charcoal, but the two weren't even the same dye lot. (I think I need two of yellow, and three of charcoal.) The orange is darker than I'd like, but okay. The green is better than I was expecting. The remaining colours are quite pretty.

I bought some goodies for my secret sister, two balls of sock yarn for my mom, another two for my prof here, and a little something special for me. I found some qee-vuuk (aka qiviut) on sale for half price. It was still outrageously expensive, but I figured this is the only time I'll see it this low, and I'm exceedingly curious. How much was it? At half price, it was still $19.50 for a teeny-tiny ball. I estimate the ball is around 25g, but there's no weight or yardage given. Anyone have any idea what I can knit/crochet from 25g of qiviut? It is *sooooo* soft!

2 comments:

Annemarie said...

Hi! I'm a lurker on your blog, but I decided I'd go ahead and make myself known. Your blog is wonderful, witty, and funny. Keep it up! :) With regards to the qivuit, you might want to try holding it together with a strand of colorful novelty ribbon yarn (Berocco's "Zen" for example) and making a short drop-stitch scarf. I don't know if you want to knit, but the texture of a drop-stitch scarf (like the one seen in Stitch N Bitch Nation)knit on big needles is glorious to showcase soft yarn. I had a tiny little 25g puff of angora yarn that I had no idea what to do with, and then I saw a scarf that combined angora and ribbon, and it was delicious to the touch. It doesn't yield a long scarf, in fact, it's a short neck scarf, but delicious to wear. I'm sure whatever you make with it will be lovely! Enjoy!

noricum said...

Hi Annemarie! Nice to hear from you. Thank you for the compliments on my blog, and for the suggestion.