Treasures from Our Trip

These are my precious souvenirs of New Zealand and Australia. I love to knit, so one of my main goals in going Down Under was to bring home some luscious New Zealand yarns.

That proved to be harder than I'd expected. Knitting is not as popular there as it is here in the States. I talked with a girl at a yarn shop in Queenstown, NZ, and she said she has read of the popularity of knitting in the States, and has heard of our beautiful yarn shops and knitting cafés, but the craze hasn't found its way there yet. This surprised me a little, given the fields full of sheep that we spotted during our drive from Auckland south and on to the South Island. I guess most of the wool is shipped overseas to be made into suits.

But I did find a few yarn shops, and I snagged what I could in the little time I had to browse. At the Agrodome  in Rotorua, NZ, I got four skeins of merino sock yarn. In Queenstown I purchased four skeins of worsted for various projects. My pride and joy, however, is the three hanks of handpainted wool from Tapestry Craft in Sydney.

For months before our trip, I'd been reading daily the blog of a girl who works at Tapestry. I'd hoped to meet her while in Sydney, but she changed jobs a week before we left for Down Under. I was still determined to visit the shop, though.

Once we got to Sydney, and I saw how large the city is, my hopes dwindled. What were the chances I'd have time to find this shop? It was probably located way on the other side of the city.

I took its name to the desk clerk at our hotel, and she kindly did a google search for me. She located the shop at 50 York St. She assured me it wasn't all that far: "just walk through the park, take a right, and you'll be on York St. It's a long street, though...." As it turned out, she could have said, simply, "It's the next street over, parallel to this one."

After our Blue Mountain Tour, which brought us back to the hotel at 4:00 p.m., Ken (who knew how much visiting this shop meant to me) suggested we try to find Tapestry. After turning right and realizing we should've turned left, and after finding the sign for the shop but no shop itself ("The shop is actually in the next block," the kind stranger told me with a shrug of her shoulders.") we trekked on a finally found the shop. (I'm still wondering about that sign with no actual shop nearby.)

The entire basement of Tapestry is full of luscious yarns, but I wanted only New Zealand yarn; French or Italian or British I can buy at home, for heaven's sake. And I wanted worsted weight, to knit myself a sweater as a reminder of our trip.

I scooped up three hanks of handpainted 100% wool in my favorite color combination, threw down my trusty credit card, signed the slip, and happily left the store. 

Mission accomplished.