Yarn in South Korea - No Problem!

I know I have been neglecting this blog. But it is not without good reason. For the good part of February I was preparing to and during March I was moving to South Korea. If you were moving to the other side of the world what would be some of your concerns? What your kids' school would be like? What kind of housing will be available? I was somewhat concerned about those too but if I'm being perfectly honest, and I do try to be, I was really worried about how I would find good yarn.

Well have no fear, within a week I have tracked down two yarn stores that are each within 2 blocks of my apartment and found a local guy selling bags of yarn on the corner by the subway station. I am set.

I haven't made it into the second store. We just found it as we were strolling around looking for a place to eat last night and it was closed when we discovered it. The first is on the way to the subway so I stopped in and took some pictures. The shop owner really doesn't speak English but I had already used Google Translate to translate: "Can I take some pictures? I have a blog."

I'm not sure how that translated but she said yes so I snapped a few of her and her friends. Two were knitting and two were crocheting and she was working on crocheting a purse with a plastic flat yarn.

I stood and watched for a few minutes and then pulled out my iPhone again to translate: "Is that a lesson? May I come back and knit with you when you are not teaching a lesson?" She nodded yes to that so I will return.

I have to wonder what they said after I left. Probably, "What's with the crazy white chick? Don't they have knitting in America?"

I wandered off down the street past the subway to kill some time before I had to go to pick Kayson up from school. I'm glad I did because on the other side of the Jihaeng subway station there was a guy and his wife selling yarn.

A friend of mine had sent me pictures of this same guy but in her pictures the yarn looked cheap and stiff. I was wrong. It was fine and there were nice colors and all kinds of textures. My only concern is that the multi-ply yarns did not seem to have much of a twist to them and may be hard to work with.

His English was minimal but he said $5 for one bag (with 4 balls) and I was trying to tell him I would be back and a passerby realized we were struggling and translated for us.

But that wasn't the last yarn-related event of my day. As we were waiting for the subway home we met one of Kayson's classmates and his family. Take a wild guess what his sister was doing. You have a 50/50 shot!

She was ... Crocheting!! Her mom said she was self taught and when I took a look at her project I could tell nobody had ever told her to chain one between rows. I gave her a bit of help and I could tell she was eager to learn. You have to be if you have self-taught yourself and are already toting around a 8x10" piece of work! I was so pleased to see a young girl picking up the craft.

If I have found three yarn vendors within 500m of my apartment then I am really excited about how many more opportunities are out there.