Chinese Treats

Our daughter Lucy has recently returned from a trip to China. She has spent a month in Beijing studying acupuncture and then had a few days travelling around ending up in Shanghai. Apparently she had a fabulous time and met lots of lovely people and saw lots of interesting sights. She also bought presents.....

Lucy bought this for me to keep my knitting in. It's gorgeous and she got this in a street market in Beijing. Apparently haggled down from 850 Chinese Yen (prices always seem to start at 850 Chinese Yen) to around 250. It's too nice to be kept for knitting and I might use it as posh going out bag, just in case I ever get to go out during the evening. (Unlikely).

She also bought this yarn.

I think it is a cotton boucle, but it could be anything really. Apparently you had to buy four balls for around £3 and they had lots of pastel colours to choose from. Lucy tried to buy one of each of four colours, but the shop assistant got 'very cross and quite rude'. As Lucy does not speak a word of Mandarin, we were interested to hear that she can argue in a foreign language, thousands of miles from home without fear, but she is fairly intrepid. Anyway, I came out the winner as now I have eight balls of yarn. It is very pretty indeed and I can feel some more children's garments coming on ....