My Fifi-progress

view seeing from office window

Summer time is never a cosy season here in Taiwan. Temperature sometimes would rise to over 37 degrees celsius in the midst of Summer, which is indeed quite annoying! What you could do is nothing but stay in an air-con place, it's the only way to successfully get rid of the hot and the humid.

And about my Fifi, so far I am about to start to separate sleeves from the body. I'll have to try it on tonight when I am back home and see if the size fits me.

My weekday knitting time is so little that I could knit only during lunch break between 1 p.m. through 01:30 p.m., and a few hours only in the night...

Hot Summer Afternoon in a Cafe

Sitting in a Cafe in the hot summer afternoon is definitely the most satisfying thing of the day. My buddy Kim and I sat the whole afternoon at Fong Da Cafe in Ximentin area today, with a cup of Mendeling for myself and a glass of iced coffee for Kim.

With not too many chattings, we both were concentrate on our crocheting work. It always prooves to be good to have a partner doing the same project with you. Kim and I discussed about the pattern pretty often because there are parts that really got me putting down my hook and lost my mind...Luckily we figured it out and the work just went smoothly.

So, this is what I've done for the entire afternoon, to connect the two rounds, before doing that, I did alot trimming jobs, which was quite challenging actually. I will try to finish the other sleeve tonight and do the rest tommorrow.

To show my appreciation to the waitress for not kicking us out for sitting too long there, we ordered an extra cup of Mendeling for myself and a bowl of tremella and lotus seeds soup, which is a traditional Chinese snack, for Kim. :P

The frustrating French knitting

Ok, I know I am making my own trouble. I can not read any French at all, and I chose this project to knit, it's written in French!!! It's not that I am crazy or something, it's just because the garment is just so attempting to me that I MUST knit it! Isn't the tank top shown on the above photo fabulous? I could even smell the summer by seeing the photo only!

The local distributor here says they import the French versions only and it should be no problem for knitters to figure out the pattern. I've been online searching for a version with English translation, but the only way I could have is to get it from the states. See how much I'll have to pay for the postage along with the English version?! It's not cost effective at all and thus I would rather to having my soul crashing instead. Some experienced local knitters here have told me that they could knit the pattern without any difficulty by seeing the PHOTO only. Isn't that amazing?! Thus, I have gained more confidence that MAYBE I could do this as well.

The first thing is to find a translation on the french knitting abbreviations. A really big thank-you to CHEZPLUM for posting a valuable article talking about knitting the French way and the English way, in terms of knitting cultures and abbreviations. By having the conversion list of the abbreviations from French to English and vise versa, I have more clues on figuring out the pattern.

My buddy Kim has learnt French for years, though she said she almost forgot everyting on French, but indeed she helped me alot. And here's the results.



This is the pattern on the garment and I finally made it! I really want to screm out loudly when I saw the pattern coming out through my busy hands!

To figure out the pattern is just a beginning. Kim and I "studied" the pattern for days, and we figured out the knitting sequences clearly. I'll have to increase 10 stitches on both sides of the pattern, and have to increase by following the pattern...it's not easy though...

I am still looking for yarns for this garment and it's not easy since most summer yarn here are either fingering or DK, which will not match with the required gauge...but I'll try my best to finish this!