My new hobbies: learning crochet-2

Encountering the yarn store 
I accidentally discovered the knit shop for crocheting while I looked for a stationery shop. During my application work in December, I needed huge black papers as a background for shooting photos of my 3D printing mock-ups. Because I had moved to the opposite side of Seoul and recently came back, where my old memory guided me was no longer the stationery store. Actually, the entire building that once had small fancy retails was now in a bad condition, waiting for reconstruction with its neighbor housing complex. It was a pretty shame that the old building intentionally had no plan to keep itself tidy. At the same time, the familiar atmosphere of signboards, stairs, and versatile floor tiles reminded me of my childhood nostalgically. Anyway, that was how I went to this shabby place and wandered around the maze-like alley, finding the knit atelier subsequently. 

I was vaguely aware of a few knit places when I was a teenager. Whenever I passed by and overlooked one of them, there were always full of middle-aged ladies who were laughing and chitchatting in a small square surrounded by fluffy knit garments and colorful yarns. This kind of knit store or atelier seemed more likely a room, coated with yellow plastic sheets where Korean took off their shoes and lay down or seated on its warm floor. In Korean, this type of shop is called th-gae-bang and 'bang' means a Korean-style room. 

The day I explored the neighborhood for finding a stationery store, I found the familiar words, th-gae-bang imprinted on a metal signboard hung over my head. They came into my mind. I scrutinized my conditions: Do I have a flexible time? - yes. Do I have spare money to pay for learning this mysterious technique? -yes. Am I interested in knitting?- I wasn’t before. Now I have time and I want to learn all that killing time methods. It was PERFECT. In combination with my driving force, I made up my mind to visit this place once the exhausting application process was complete. It was early in the morning when I stopped there so I just made a copy of its phone number written in a note on the closed entrance. 

I eventually first visited this th-gae-ang next month. There was a shop owner and two guests one of whom semed to be the shop owner next door. They were watching Mr. Trot, the singing survival show of trot music, generally loved by the old generation in Korea. As soon as I went there, the owner and teacher asked me whether I wanted to learn knitting or crochet. Was I supposed to plan one? I didn’t know anything about crochet and did know about knitting that I am really poor at. I decided to learn crocheting, hoping my crocheting skill could be possibly brighter. I slowly looked around the fabric works covering the walls from bottom to top. The very next to me, I found a brown bag that looked as rigid as a leather one. I asked the teacher whether it was also crocheting work and she said yes. That was how I started a crochet bag.

The tuition was a reasonable price. I needed to pay the fee only once and the owner would teach me whatever I planned to learn as long as I buy all the materials for the crochet work at this shop. She could have been my knit guru forever unless the store and its building would be demolished for renovation in August. For a couple of days, my teacher gave me some assignments to learn simple crocheting techniques. They were basic but useful enough, including single, double crochet, treble, and tying methods. I thought tying knots with needles was too dexterous for me to be adept. My guru, however, was patient enough to repeat each knot until I could slowly follow her movement of fingers.