Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Does Anyone Read Arabic?

It was our last day in Egypt. Oh...btw, the pictures from that trip are finally going up over at Hedgehog Librarian, if you don't follow along there already. 

Anyway, I leaned up to our guide and told her I knitted and I was looking for yarn. Did she have any ideas where to buy some?  By this point in the trip I'd stopped carrying my knitting so I couldn't show her the barely worked on sock I'd been ignoring. She had to think about it for a minute to come up with what I was talking about--but once we figured out that I meant the craft with two sticks rather than a hook, we were fine.

Marwa didn't knit but she had some friends/family who did other similar crafts. So she made some phone calls. At the end of the day and our trip to the Bazaar, things weren't looking good. We climbed back into the van and headed for our hotel and there, as we were on the on ramp to the highway--I saw a stall packed floor to ceiling with yarn.

Only, we were on the on ramp, on the wrong side of a ten foot fence--and it was in an area of the Bazaar that was outside where the official guides are allowed to take tourists. So we couldn't have gone there without costing Marwa her job.

Still, she had one more thought. We'd leave the van at our hotel and then walk to a nearby fabric stall. Perhaps they would have yarn? It was a safe place she could take us and on the way to where we planned to have dinner, so that was agreeable.

The shop was very small--room for two small counters, shelves floor to ceiling, and a couple of folding chairs. There was a small television in the corner. And there was a cabinet, the upper half of which was filled with yarn.

Most of it was strange Chinese yarn--with names for various man made fibers that I'd never heard of. I didn't really want that--we were in Egypt. I can buy stuff made in China in the US--though I have to say I've never seen any of those yarns here.

There was some Egyptian cotton--at least, that's what Marwa told me it was. It feels like cotton and it was available in several colors. I cleaned out my wallet of Egyptian pounds, paying about $1.25 per skein.



I don't know what I'll make with it--but it's vibrant, and it's vacation yarn--so it doesn't count as stash. And I bought yarn in Egypt!! 

Does anyone read Arabic who could translate the label for me?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Leave me a message! (Blogger doesn't give me your email address so if you'd like an answer, please see my About Me page for my email address)

A Redo

 I started this pair of socks on New Years Eve just before 2020. I finished them in May 2020 , amidst a lot of optimism about what I'd a...