Yarning around town

There's a lot going on in our world, including one more trip to Phoenix next Wednesday to get my Mom moved out of her house and up here to stay. She'll be moving into a nice senior community in Wilsonville, OR. She doesn't "believe it" but we think life will be easier without a house and yard and 100°F-plus to contend with.

Off the needles
In the meantime, I've been knitting away between trips and move planning. Before I headed to Chicago, I found a quick little crochet pattern so I wouldn't go to the Fiberly weekend empty-handed - a soap sack pattern on Simple Knits. I added an extra row of changes to make the edge more lacy and this is what I came up with. It was a quick and easy project, and in the course of a week or so I whipped up about a dozen out of Sugar and Cream cotton yarn.
 

I started the Indigo Ripples skirt from Interweave Knits Summer 2007 before going to Phoenix, but didn't get much knitting done while I was there. When I got home, I set to work. The yarn is Elann Den-M-Nit Pure Indigo Cotton. The indigo dye seemed to be a little drying to my skin, or it may have simply been having to wash my hands after each knit session. It was a good pattern to knit; it knit up fast and like those who went before me, I do like the result.


On the needles
Evelyn Clark brought several knitted samples to class. One really grabbed me - Baltic Blossoms. So I took a picture to remind me and after I got home, I ordered it.


The Habu Bamboo lace yarn I got from Knit-Purl in Portland had been calling me to knit it up, so I cast on Baltic Blossoms. It's a 20/3 yarn, so very fine and my resulting shawl won't be large, but I think it will be pretty an oh-so-soft.


Portland Area yarn stores
Early this month I got news that Tangle in Lake Oswego will be closing in June. The same week, I also saw a note about a new shop opening in Vancouver, WA, Stitchcraft. It's an interesting market here. I've updated the Yarn Shops lists to reflect the changes.

In the meantime, a couple of days ago, my new neighbor, Laurie (who knits!!!) and I headed on a little shop-hop, since she is new to the area. We started at Mill End Store (she also sews - some). Then to Abundant Yarns, where we each picked up some Abundant Yarn naturally dyed yarn. I got 50/50 wool/silk in Bandon Dunes.


I also found Noro Designer Mini Knits by Jenny Watson that I couldn't resist bring home.


Next Laurie got to experience Yarn Garden. It's a great shop, but neither of us found anything that screamed it had to take it home, so we headed for our next destination - Yarnia. There were lots of yarns in wool, rayon, bamboo, silk, cotton and more and the concept of creating a unique blend of yarn was intriguing, but it's a new one to us, so we left with ideas and will probably return with projects in mind.

We headed across the Columbia into Vancouver to check out Stitchcraft. It's a nice little shop that has some quilt fabric and a very nice yarn selection. We both fell in love with the Purity shawl from Rowan Magazine 43 and decided we had to knit it.


I loved the orange, but I'm just not an orangy girl. The Rowan Kid Silk Haze was just so soft, I actually bought the pattern yarn, but picked out a more red version, which it turns out is not too far from the color of the Habu bamboo. Well at least I'm consistent. So far it's an easy knit in stockinette on size 9 needles.


I also found yet another book: Heartfelt by Kim Hargreaves.

   

Our last stop was Knit-Purl and Josephine's Dry Goods, where admired the yarn and fabric, but didn't make any purchases.

One more thing
Not yarn related, but worth mentioning is the restaurant we found - Kappaya. I ordered the Tempura bento, which I thought was a little spendy at $7.50, but I was wrong since it came not only with rice, salad, miso, but included two dumplings, pickled vegs, and more than a dozen pieces of tempura - more than half of which went home with me.

While I'm on the subject of Japanese food, I'll give honorable mention to our favorite (though not nearest) Japanese restaurant - Fuji Sushi in Clackamas. Good reasonably priced sushi. My favorite thing is the Sunnyside roll, with tempura shrimp, cucumber, cream cheese and avocado - topped with Fuji sauce. We haven't figured out exactly what's in the sauce, but it is good.

It was a good day out.

A lace obsession

I really have to stay off this computer and not go to bookstores. It started with Japanese knitting and now it's Japanese lace crochet.

We had some time to kill before going over to Flossie's house to plan Thanksgiving so we went to Uwajamiya which houses Kinokuniya. I came home with four books–three crochet and one knit. And now I'm obsessing about crocheted lace.

 
 
ISBN: 978-4529042246

 
 
ISBN: 978-4277171885


ISBN: 978-4529024129


ISBN: 978-4277113854

And on order from YesAsia
 
ISBNs: 978-4529044431 and 978-4529044349

Knitting Japanese

It's that power of suggestion again...
It started with the Mystery Stole Yahoo group extoling the loveliness of a shawl that Queen Mudd had knit; which showed a project she was working on from a Japanese pattern book; which lead to a search for the book; which found Fleegle's blog; which lead to YesAsia, a bookseller and the ABCs of Knitting; the former of which lead to more books, and so on...

Logistics
Lots of Google searches later here's what I uncovered about Japanese pattern books. I tried to use ISBN numbers to search, as well as English titles, and where possible copied Japanese symbols. Lacis, in Berkeley, CA and Needlearts Book Shop in Toronto, ON have a selection of Japanese books, including the symbol reference books that Fleegle uses.

YesAsia has a lot of pattern books, but searching is iffy since they use the Roman characters as the enunciation of the Japanese symbols and don't always use the full titles, but a little perserverence did locate some books and for some there are images of some of the patterns. The good news is that they also ship for free on orders over US$55. The bad news is that they ship in 21 days.

Amazon Japan has lots of different books and the exchange rate isn't too bad, but now they ship to the US only by air, so a US$13 book will cost US$20 to ship. It was a good tool, however, for tying images to ISBN numbers and Japanese symbols.

And then there's Kunokuniya Bookstores. At first I found only the Japanese site, but yesterday found Kunokiniya BookWeb. The good news is that they site said where the books were in inventory; the bad news is that most books don't have images. That's where the ISBN number and Japanese symbols come in handy for searching and comparison. I have the advantage of having a local store in Beaverton, OR, but there is danger there because once I was pointed to the knitting/crochet books, I was able to peruse more books and find even more than I'd found on websites and blogs.

The Books
Here's what I've acquired through Kunokuniya and YesAsia. The symbols reference books are on order from Lacis.
    

Added to my evergrowing "to do" list
       ;     

Just two reasons to learn to crochet more than edgings
 
(Reminder: clicking on little pictures brings up big pictures.)

And there are a lot more patterns where these came from...

"Romantic Style" frustration

What is it with book and magazine editors? Are they so concerned with the page layout that the pattern completeness and accuracy isn't import?

I've finished the body of the Dressing Gown from Romantic Style and am frustrated with the inadequate intructions regarding the collar and edging. "Start collar at left shoulder edge" is the only placement instruction. Then the pattern launches into the collar itself with no mention of how it is attached. The starting sentence would imply it's knit on, but the instructions don't bear that out.

Same goes for the edging. Is it sewn on or knit on? Since the edging instructions only provide the pattern, I'm guessing it's sewn on, and I'm guessing the starting point is the back of the collar once it's attached, but you wouldn't know that from the instructions.

I'm not a novice knitter and I can usually figure things out, but with one lousy diagram with just the shape and dimensions, and two stylized photos, the hope of having this done for Mom's day is fading fast.

I've emailed Martingale and Co. We'll see how quickly and thoroughly they respond.

More Lace

I'm still working on my mom's dressing gown, but stockinette is just so darn boring, so I had to spell the project with some lace. I chose the Möbius scarf from Arctic Lace because it's a 20st/4row repeat and I thought it would be easy to memorize. Rows 1 and 3 memorized, but I haven't quite put 2 and 4 set to memory. After a few false starts (I really hate the foundation rows...) here's what I have. The yarn is Crystal Palace Kid Merino and the project is so light it will be good to carry around...if I could just get 2 and 4 memorized.



I saw Lace Style in Elisabetta in Los Gatos and checked Amazon (where I'd preordered it in December) but it was still "preorder." A couple of days later, it was "in stock," but still no ship notice. After an email to Customer Service, the "in stock" was removed from the description page and my shipping had been upgraded to 1-day and it finally arrived on Saturday. I'm not as enamored with all the patterns as I was with the Scarf and Wrap Style books, but there are a few "must knit" (geez...how long is my list?).