About a month ago, I received a gift of about a kilo of yarn from Shanghai. It’s quite soft Merino wool, with an unusual halo of yellow synthetic fibres–I don’t usually wear yellow, but I found some matching buttons to make Kate Davis’ Owls sweater. I’ll probably start it on my upcoming trip to Montreal, which will involve at least 11 hours of sitting on a train.
The label is an odd mix of Chinese, Korean, and English. My experience with yarn from China (i.e., yarn sold in China, rather than intended for export) is limited, but elaborate English names seem to be a common convention. I’ve previously seen Love Is a Responsibility, Like is a Feeling, and now we have Korean Hands for Cashmere (which contains no cashmere at all):
In fact, it’s not even Korean. My initial assumption was that it was a Korean brand being marketed in China, but it turns out the name and the smattering of hangul on the label are just a marketing ploy. The helpful people over in the China Knitters group on Ravelry informed me that other languages carry the cachet of being foreign, and therefore superior, to domestic brands. The Ravelry group also helped me translate the yarn content, given that my Chinese is limited to a small amount of spoken Mandarin (mostly food-related) and a handful of characters:
It’s 90% Australian wool (with the ever important character for “imported” at the beginning) and 10% Japanese toray, which is some kind of acrylic or nylon. Fortunately the care instructions are listed in English… kind of:
I’m guessing the last line is “dry flat.”