So Many Things to Do, So Little Time: baguio yarns

Friday, May 24, 2019

Back to Crocheting... Modern Granny Shrugs

I'm back to crocheting, yay! Also, this is my first entry in almost two years, yay again! I took my sweet time posting another one, busy mom of two indeed. Back to crocheting because I had to set aside this hobby to venture to a new one which turned into a great business, my beaded wire trees. Unfortunately, I had to take a break from it as well when I got pregnant with my second child and I had to really rest. It was a difficult pregnancy. Then I just had to completely give up my beading craft because it is a little bit dangerous with a crawling baby and now a walking toddler. My work area is not in a separate room and there might be beads, wire, pebbles, or clay that my little one might pick up. Anyway, crocheting is much safer and this is my first love so I'm happy to be hooking again.

I made costumes for my second baby for her monthly photoshoot until she reached one year. Then, I got a hold of these gradient yarns which I fell madly in love with so now my favorite things to make are shawls, shrugs, scarfs, and ponchos. These projects show off the beauty of the colors of the yarns. I now have over 200 cakes of these gradient yarns.

Last holiday season, my husband gifted a few of these shrugs and got a bunch of orders for them in return. This lovely pattern is the Modern Granny Shrug from the The Crochet Crowd which was made even lovelier by the colors of these yarns.

This is a sample of the gradient yarn cakes I kept on talking about. The yarns I usually buy are cotton and polycotton multi stranded yarns. I get them from online sellers here in the Philippines. The maker manually winds the yarn, changing colors a few strands at a time to create that gradient effect. I'm not an expert but that's the gist.

These are some of the shrugs I made. Simple yet beautiful, aren't they? For my other works, you can visit my FB page Justise & Jordana. This is a new page because I had to deactivate the old one due to a lot of inquiries and requests I was still getting for the beaded wire trees. I only ship within the Philippines because unfortunately, shipping cost to other countries is even more expensive than the cost of my creations.

For the yarns I used here, you may visit the following FB pages:

Ashley's Crochet

Crocheted by Carisse

WANDerful Creations

Artsy String Fiber Crafts

Icee Crochet

These are the online yarn shops from where I always get my gradient yarns. There are other yarn shops I frequent which sell other types of yarns. That's probably for another blog entry. They are all here in the Philippines but some, I think, also ship outside of the country, you may inquire from them directly.

That's it for now. I'd probably be back next year, lol. Would like to feature my other works next time or maybe a list of my favorite crochet and knitting supplies store. See you!

Saturday, February 6, 2016

My Precious... Yarns from Baguio Hangar Market

My favorite cake, yarn cakes. Well, of course I specially love the edible ones but don't these yarn cakes just look so yummy? I know knitters and crocheters agree. If you are a yarn hoarder like me or just simply love yarns and you live here in the Philippines, you have probably heard about yarns from Baguio. Last year, I was finally able to visit the famous Baguio Hangar Market where mountains of yarns are sold.

This is the stall where we bought my yarns. This is the second one we saw and a bit smaller than the first one located near the entrance of the market's second floor where the yarn sellers are. The first one sells acrylic yarns for Php 350 (a little over $7) per kilogram while it's only Php 300 (a little over $6) here in this stall.

I'm so sorry if I won't be able to give you the directions to the market because I honestly don't remember, lol. We just asked the friendly people there how to get to Baguio Central Market and once we're there, we again just asked around where the Hangar Market is.

They have different kinds of yarn, acrylic, cotton, and fancy yarns. It was almost nighttime when we got there so I didn't really look thoroughly at everything, I just went straight to choosing different colors of acrylic yarns. What I really wanted to buy were cotton yarns but they only have black and white available, they don't have hand-dyed ones, so I settled for the colorful acrylic ones. Maybe I'll learn how to dye cotton yarns in the future, it would be a useful skill for me.

I bought a total of 3.5 kgs of yarn worth Php 1,050 (about $22). This would make lots of afghans, table runners, and more though I'm pretty sure I won't be able to use them all up in the near future. I just want to keep my yarn inventory full.

Each cake is more or less this big and I could make a bulky scarf from this and with a small leftover cake.

I made these Gryffindor and Slytherin scarves using just maybe a quarter or less than half of the cake of each color. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff scarves are still in progress.

Of course, yarns are not the only stuff you can shop for when in Baguio.

You can try this delicious strawberry taho...

... or this strawberry ice cream with lots of chunky strawberry bits. We got them when we were in the strawberry farm.

Also in the strawberry farm vicinity, we got these broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce...

... Sagada oranges and this green pinipig.

Inside that brown paper bag is 1 kilogram of ground Benguet coffee. The aroma in that coffee store in Baguio Central Market where we got this was so intoxicating. We caught it from afar and we were immediately drawn to the place to buy coffee.

And these are the pasalubong stuff. We bought them from the vendors who gave us directions to the yarn stores, we promised them that we'd come back and buy from them after we got my yarns.

These ones, we got from the Good Shepherd store in Mountain Maid Training Center. The 12 oz. Ube Jam we got from the central market was Php 220 and the ones sold from the Good Shepherd store are Php 200, just a small difference.