Current Projects

Since I haven't written in a while I felt like I needed to do something. So I thought, well why not? I'll just give them a run down of current projects! So some things I have running now... Japanese class (of course) 3 hours a day, 5 days a week with the occasional Saturday culture class thrown in. These are only occasional because the teacher is actually a full time historian working at the Tokyo National Museum and teaches all us lovely exchange students on a volunteer basis. 

We learned about e-maki or scroll painting in the last one and about how they were the predecessors to modern manga. Yet another thing that Japan owes to China in the beginning but has made its own over the years (along with the kimono, ramen, kanji, Buddhism ... the list goes on.) But she brought in carbon paper and dollar store hanging scrolls and calligraphy sets for everyone to try their hands at Japanese painting. It's pretty hard don't get your hopes up for my skill, despite my long years of art class, I always did drawing and using a brush is a lot different from a pen or pencil.

Also in the works is a rabbit eared hat (blog address if you want to check her other stuff out) for a friend of mine who just moved north from warmer climes. This means that I now have no particularly good excuses to visit Florida, but can finally make her those cute fuzzy things she used to love when she lived outside the same town that I lived outside, albeit on different sides. So because I don't particularly care for the hat pattern that goes with the bunny ears, I decided to use M.K. Carroll's Top Down Ribbed Beanie instead.

A note on this hat: not only do I generally dislike using solid white yarn because it gets dirty easily and like solid black yarn the individual stitches are often hard to see, but this stuff is fuzzy. I don't know if I will ever knit anything fuzzy again in my life after this. I really dislike the fact that I can't see my stitches to see where I messed up when I end up with an odd number of stitches instead of an even number. Oh well, I'm trying. I made the hat way too big the first time around and took it out to try it smaller. If my luck holds out I'll end up with it being too small this time.  It looks a little like a squid at the moment because I have it bunched up on the needles so my stitches won't slid off while it's in the night stand drawer, but I think I'll be done with it in about 12 rows of ribbing. 

Olympic Legwarmers

So in honor of the olympics I thought I would do some knitting. During the games I`m challenging myself to complete a pair of legwarmers. I`m using a pattern called Mosey with some yarn I was
lucky enough to find in Nippori Fabric Town when I was there with a friend. More about that in a bit. The yarn is pure wool and was super cheap, which means not great quality, but these are leg warmers, and I`m a poor college student so thats just how it adds up. Everything`s knitting up really nice so far, except for some dropped stitches and my inability to gauge. (No matter what it turns out longer than it should even if the width is right.)








As I was saying earlier about Nippori Fabric Town; it is not a place for knitters or any other type of needle crafter really. There`s bolts and bolts of fabric overflowing (literally, in boxes on the sidewalks) from shops on either side of the street, and shops selling buttons and thread and dyes and even leather, but I only found two places selling yarn. In both places it was more as an afterthought than as an actual sales item from the looks of it, and one of the places only had a few solid colors of acrylic. My wool yarn was a lucky find, at one of the three Tomato stores on the street and there was just enough of the color for me to make both legwarmers if my gauge is right *cringe* I may have to stop the pattern a few rows early. Luckily this won`t be a problem, and the extra inch I would have added by finishing the complete pattern with my bad gauge would have made them too long anyway.

 This beautiful coat I found on display outside a shop selling all kinds of leather, and smelling like heaven. I would love to own this jacket so I`m showing it off and wishing to no avail that it was priced so I could afford to buy it.

Spring Break! 春休み！

Wow, it`s been a long time since I`ve posted! Sorry for that. So I`ve been quite busy actually, but I won`t bore anyone with school details; say only I am in over my head with studying over break. I`m actually really excited because my mom`s just told me that she was able to get time off work and can come to Japan to see me! Vacation of a lifetime for her, and great time to show off my (admittedly still bad) language skills.

Other than learning 180 kanji and 20 new grammar points in two months and my mom coming to distract me from studying, I`m looking forward to a week long trip to Kyoto and the vicinity coming up here for me in about two weeks. I`m planning on spending lots of money on food and hitting all the open air markets and thrift shops I can find. As far as temples go there`s only a few I have specific plans for visiting, but I`ll see what looks fun to do when I`m there. Ha, I`m not such a good trip planner.

NaNoWriMo is over but I`m still working on my writing, though because of a broken computer, I have been put on hold for posting updates to my writing blog, as well as a lot of other things. I`m borrowing a school computer for this right now actually. I`ve met with my writing buddies about 3 times since NaNo ended actually, and we three are in various stages of still writing to editing. The beauty of using fountain pens while hand writing instead of ball points has recently made itself known as well. I`ve been using this lovely purple
one I found at a nearby stationary shop recently and I love it!

As for knitting ... Sigh. I`m still working on the Haruni Shawl from Ravelry, though I`m now in the final stages. I can`t wait to take it off the needles and block it to see how the lacework looks.




And here`s a lovely picture of a small Buddhist Temple near where I`m living now. We had a cold snap for the last few days and actually got snow yesterday. How cool is that? Of course back home in the US they have about 10in (25cm) on the ground right now. Nonetheless, this was a good picture and I thought I`d share it.

Stress Less

In the last year or so of college I've started getting more and more interested in knitting, and as I've become interested I've found that the more stressed I feel the more I want to knit. It is relaxing as nothing else I enjoy is. My current project is for a friend who saw a hat I made the first week I was in Japan. She said she wanted one just like it and offered to buy it. (Paying customer Woohoo!) I told her 1,000 yen (about $10) plus the price of the yarn, so she bought the yarn and gave it to me on Monday.

I suppose without realizing it I've been de-stressing all week by working on this hat for her. My class has had an awful week of vocabulary tests and grammar lessons. We did lessons 5-7 this week, plus the vocab test for lesson 4 on Monday. Tomorrow is, thankfully the last day of the week, and this week there's no Saturday class (Yay!). Hopefully next week isn't so bad, but thanks to my knitting I'm not feeling as bad as I could be.

I'm currently about halfway done with Emily's hat, and since the yarn is a bit fluffier, same weight but different brand, so it is turning out a little different, but I'm happy with the results. I found a little shop with some superwash wool/cotton yarn that I think I'm gonna buy to work on a shawl for when autumn starts cooling down as well.

Ok, So Knitting...

I've only been in Tokyo for a few days, but have already learned my way around the area a bit. Yesterday I was surprised to find a yarn shop sitting, as plain as can be, somewhere I think I've walked past 4 or 5 times and never noticed yet. Of course now that I have noticed it, I can no longer find it. 

Since that lovely little find, it was a tiny shop, I have been searching the internet for yarn shops in Tokyo. I've had some interesting finds that I will direct you to, though they are not too helpful to me. I really don't want to go to a lot of big name places, but find fun hole in the wall shops like the place selling green tea down the street from here that gives you a free sample when you go in...

This just looks fun, nothing to do with yarn: Nekobukoro (Cat House)
Yarn shopping: Pinku's Yarn Store List & Travelknitter's Guide to Tokyo 

Christmas present finished

So my first Christmas present is done now: fingerless gloves for my mail delivering mom. She needs the fingerless part so she can handle all the paper she works with. They didn't take long at all once I started them. Unfortunately I haven't quite figured out how to taper the wrists so that the gloves have a pretty fitted look. They kinda resemble tube socks in shape. I do like how they've turned out, that tube shape so the only thing I'm disappointed with.

The hat I was making my brother on the other hand, well that was a flop. I was using plastic needles I had bought at Hobby Lobby. Now, I love the store, but knitters, don't ever buy plastic needles! Get aluminum or wood ones, something tough. So my plastic needles for the hat broke, and then I only had size six needles. With my loose knitting, the gauge was already gonna be off and I was gonna have a big hat, but with sixes... this thing was big enough to cover a basketball. I took the whole thing out, and am gonna have to go buy some good knitting needles now.

Yes, I know that it's only the very beginning of August, but for knitters and other crafters it is time to start thinking about Christmas presents, or they will not be finished by the time the holiday comes around. 

Ugh, don't we all get enough of Christmas starting the week of Thanksgiving? I mean it's in the stores before the Thanksgiving stuff is out, some places even start putting up decorations for sale as soon as the Halloween stuff is out. I like Christmas as much as the next person, but one of the reasons to be excited about it is that, much like birthdays, it only comes around once per year, and is only one day.

I started knitting this hat for my younger brother in hopes that he'll actually wear it. He's one of those tough guys (or likes to think he is, but we all know the truth) who only wears those baseball caps, and doesn't wear stocking hats in winter no matter how cold it gets. Well I found this pattern on Ravelry, a site I absolutely love, by the way, and can spend hours at a time on. The hat itself has a nice brim that looks a lot like a baseball cap, but also has this stretchy bottom part that can be pulled down over the ears when it gets cold.

I am also working on a pair of gloves for my mom, who needs the finger-less kind because of her job. Sadly those are very difficult to find and actually get warm gloves without getting those ugly convertible mittens with the flap that always gets in the way of everything. Sadly I have no camera at this time and the photo you see above was taken with my mom's phone. No, not even the camera on my phone works. So the gloves cannot be photographed by her for obvious reasons. Anyway, more photos to come, hopefully.