Teaser

After Michael sent me all of those photos, I sent him a wish list in reply. And a day or so later, I received another e-mail with a zipped file attached, which the text of the e-mail assured me contained a photo of everything he had bought for me.

When I unzipped the file, this is what I found...


Michael is adamant that everything is indeed there in the photo, including a lovely brown paper bag which I can use to store my knitting.

As apparently my original wish list wasn't quite long enough (I had no idea what the prices might be like there, so I kept my original list quite short), Michael asked if there was anything else I might like that I'd perhaps left off that first list.

So I sent him a message suggesting that I might like some of the silk yarn I'd spotted in one of the photos.

And the next day I received another e-mail with another zipped file attached, which turned out to contain this photo...


That's right... All of the additional purchases are shown in this photo, along with a lovely white plastic bag which can be used to store some more of my knitting.

I'm sure I've been terribly spoilt, but I'll have to wait until the morning -- Michael should be in the air right now -- to know exactly what is hiding inside those bags. The wish lists I sent him were total guess work of course, as it was difficult to know what any of the yarns might be like in real life, or even how accurate the colours might be. And for anyone who is interested, I've uploaded a few more photos that Michael took before he was shooed out of the yarn store -- they can be found on the end of the 'Tokyo yarn store' set. I'm just amazed that Michael was brave enough to venture into the foreign territory that is The Yarn Store, and incredibly grateful that he did it for me. :)

Tokyo yarn p*rn

Michael is overseas in Tokyo at the moment, and today I received a series of ten e-mails from him which were just jam packed with photos of yarn and knitting needles which were taken at a store near where he is staying. It took over an hour and a half for the e-mails to download over my poor, overworked dial-up connection, but it was so worth it! :)

For the most part, I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at, but everything is just so stunning and gorgeous, and in so many beautiful colours! Even though Michael only took photos of things he thought were likely to be Japanese, and not obviously European or Australian imports, there's 50+ photos all up and it really is total visual overload. :) I was about to upload the photos here to share, when, fortunately for everyone, I realized the complete and utter insanity doing that would be. So as a more practical alternative I've uploaded them to Flickr!, collected together as 'Tokyo yarn store' to make them a bit easier to find. I'd really love to have seen Michael taking all these photos though, as he says he took them 'ninja style'.

Now I just need to choose a favourite out of all of that yarn -- Can you feel my pain? ;) If anyone should happen to recognize something in the photos that they can recommend, do please let me know as I'm going to need all the help I can get to make this decision.

In the meantime, does anyone know anything about Japanese knitting needles? For instance, are the Japanese sizes of the Clover bamboo needles the store had available in abundance likely to be sized differently to the metric sized ones available here? Has anyone tried any of the other brands they have on their racks, as obviously I can't tell from the photos how smooth the needles or the joins of the circular needles might be. Even though I have no idea how practical they'd be, I'm definitely tempted to ask Michael to get me one of the 'KA' 22cm circular needles to have a play with as I've never even heard of circular needles that short before. :)

Just by the way... Is anyone else amused that my husband sent me yarn p*rn from Tokyo? ;)