TO MARKET TO MARKET: TRIM & YARN MARKET IN CHINA

Today was a bit of a short and easy day compared to the trip I'll make in March. There were no new/fresh fabrics/prints out in the market yet, so I could avoid the fabric section. We just shopped trims and YARN!

Bad girl...bad bad girl!
What, I repeat, WHAT business have I to get MORE YARN???

I had said I'd only get some yarn for fingerless gloves (to try Jody's pattern!) But then I saw it...ALL! My stash went up expodentially, and my niece will continue to be one VERY LUCKY GIRL!

Some of this yarn (1/2 the wool and all of the cashmere)came from Australia. They ship to Shanghai where it's repackaged with wrappers written in Chinese, and then sold only within China.
It's funny - the cashmere -- they'll package 4 balls (average 50-62.5g) into a box with fancy paper in it. Very nice, but I'll ditch the boxes to get it all into my suitcase!

I got some 100% supersoft Wool (periwinkle & green, orange, pink and ivory),
some cashmere (red), some cotton (lavender) with a silver lurex thread through it (for a tank top) and some custom yarn “bundles”.



For the bundles, basically you get to select a few yarns of different weights/textures, and they wind them together. NICE! I got a pink multi for a sweater for my niece and a pair of fingerless glove for me & a blue multi for a sweater. :-)

Oh - I also DID get yarns for WORK - mainly cotton - dyable - will probably become crochet trim to be done on the March trip!

Next we went on my button/bead/shell/ribbon hunt. There is a newly constructed section with trims in this market that I was eager to explore. And it really is exploration! You go through 20-40 booths of crap to find one booth with the perfect button.
Let me paint you a picture. Tiny booths with 1-2 sides open or 1/2 open, with dust/dirt laden products, some presented on cards that are wrapped in plastic (which are also dust/dirt covered.) There's often a hole in the ceiling with a 1/2 ladder hanging from it. When you select something one of the workers jumps up to the ladder rather quickly (over piles of stuff) and works their way through the ceiling to the crawlspace/storage area for your goods.
Here is a photo of one of the notions/trim places with ladder etc.



We came across a great place for seashells. Such fun! Summer 2006 will include seashells! :-)


Manouvering from one market space to the next on the street takes all eyes plus a few you find that are instinctively in the back of your head! Motorcycles, foot-powered trikes with a flatbed on them and small box-cars run every which way, and the pedestrian is considered a mere nusance to them, not something they should bother avoiding TOO much! And the NOISE - it's louder than a NYC subway zooming by! Anything with a horn is blowing it! All at once and repeatedly -- as both a warning and a promiss that they are coming through and NOW!
Today the sun is shining and warms us as we walk outside from section to section.


We see that lunch is in progress with ladies and men bringing around carts and ladeling out food into styrofoam. Once done, all is tossed into the walkway. This means all leftover food, orange bits, styrofoam containers (not necessarily closed) etc. In the warm weather we try to leave this market close to the end of their lunch. If we dilly-dally, the bugs come to feast on the leftovers, and I'll happily avoid them!

Lunch time!! We've become creatures of habit and now always go to THE COW AND BRIDGE for Thai food. If you are ever in Guangzhou, China, take time to eat here! Excellent food and very reasonably priced to boot!

Address info:
2/F, Xianglong Huayuan, 175-181 Tianhe Bei Road, Guangzhou, China
tel: 020-8525 0693 email: cowbridge@163.com


Above, lunch dishes and aloe tea (with pieces of aloe in it) with a "shot" of honey on the side.

It's 4pm, we left the hotel at 8:30am. We begin our journey back to Dongguan. Should take about 1.5 hours.

I got 6 rows done on the scarf on my way here...perhaps I'll work a little on it while we're on the smooth highway...before we hit the local roads. The only thing I can compare some of the local roads to would be OFF-ROADING... except that I'm in an eight passanger van, not a truck with decent shocks!

After only 5 hours of sleep last night, I'm beat! It's nap time!