Plum Blossom Yarn

In answer to Helen's question, I used some mystery yarn that I bought at the Marukai 98 cent store in Gardena, CA (near Los Angeles). At the time that I bought it, they had several nice colors, including taupe, sky blue and cobalt blue. As you can see from the scan, it is a cabled cotton. The yarn was very nice, with only about 1 knot per skein which I didn't mind.

It came with a pattern for a lace sweater and claimed to knit at a gauge of 5 sts/inch and 6.5 rows/inch. The swatch with the taupe yarn came out 4.5 sts/in, and the pink came out smaller than that. I had to double the pink yarn to get 4.5 sts/in. At 98 cents per 50 gram ball, I wasn't about to complain.

If you live in LA or in Hawaii, you should really check out the Marukai 98 cent stores. They have bamboo needles for $1.59 (or maybe $1.49) per pair. The needle sizes are mismarked, but I just measured them and wrote the correct size on the needles. They have lots of gross acrylic yarn, but look down low. The cotton stuff was on the bottom shelf where only my 5 year old could find it.

The Marukai store location in Torrance does not have the nice cotton yarn. Only the Gardena one had it. There is another Japanese 99 cent store nearby called Papier et Plastique in the Mitsuwa shopping center at the corner of Western and Carson. Origami paper galore.



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