When life won't give you lemons, decide you like iced tea instead.

Some of you may know, and the rest of you will by the end of this sentence, I love to crochet.  My Nana taught me when I was little and my family was plagued by my new obsession, all of them receiving hand-made hats (pom pom on top, of course) for that year's Christmas.  I started an afghan for my mother-- which has yet to be finished, in my defense afghans are huge -- and many other projects.  I forgot about it for several years, found my projects again with renewed fever, forgot them again, started new projects, etc.  I actually got pretty good this last year and hand-crafted a stuffed Totoro, and made my sister a "hover bee" pillow (long story).
So here in China I recently found that I was in need of a meditation-inducing hobby again.  I decided it was time to return to my hook.  There was one little problem.  Crochet apparently doesn't exist here.  Everywhere I found that sold yarn had knitting needles, but no one had hooks.  I even found a great little yarn shop not to far from my apartment, but still no hooks.  After several dead ends, it became apparent that I had a decision to make.
 I had avoided knitting forever because I had always known and done crochet, but now I found myself in the same situation I faced as a child trying to play Power Rangers with my mom and friends in the park.  All the other girls wanted to be my favorite ranger -- the pink ranger, of course -- so I strategized and became the yellow ranger.  From then on, I owned that ranger.
Sometimes life won't give you lemons, and that's when it's time to decide you'd rather have ice tea instead.

I bought needles, a beautiful colored yarn, googled a how-to site, and buckled down.

An hour later...