Knitting... Japanese style

A little while ago the lovely Rachel from New South Books got in touch with me to ask if I'd be interested in reviewing a couple of books for her - OMG can you hear me trying to be all cool and calm and oh yes I suppose so and if I must?  Yes, it was nothing like that.  I love craft books.  You can never have too many, in case you have the odd day where you've got nothing to do, all the yarn and fabric in the world, and the right zips, needles, thread to make your masterpiece.  

incidentally, did you know that the original intent of the word 'Masterpiece' was to describe the piece of 'whatever' made by an apprentice to signify that he'd (because they were usually male) finished his training and was ready to go out into the world & actually be let loose on your Cuban Mahogany, your Brazilian Rosewood, your Australian Jarrah to make the most magnificent pieces of furniture?




Anyway, I'm sure that learning knitters do the same thing, if some of those magnificent Japanese shawls are anything to go by:

So, when the this book arrived, I was interested to find that all the patterns were charted.  

It's a lovely solid book, with clear pictures, beautifully laid out with a Symbol Glossary at the beginning, and a 'How to knit these stitches' for some of the more complex stitches at the back.

.  

I have previously found charts difficult to follow because I'm usually sitting on the sofa, in front of the TV, trying to multi-task, and the symbols jump around a bit.  I made this a few years ago from a chart, and vowed never to do it again because I had to frog it a lot of times to get it right, and the act of unpicking, counting & translating the symbols into words then the pattern itself nearly undid me!

This book has, as advertised, 260 knitting patterns, some of which I've seen similar cleaned-up versions of, in various other books, and some I've never seen before:

The book is divided into sections of 'Lacy', 'Lacy With Leaves', 'Lacy With Smocking', 'Bead Embroidery', 'Overall Patterns', 'Crossing Stitch Patterns', 'Panel patterns', where the hard work has been done for you & a beautiful end result is almost guaranteed, then 'Pattern Arrangements', where elements are swapped around to increase the variations.  

There are patterns for yokes (beautiful for kid's cardigans!), and then a huge selection of edging patterns.  There are also some full garment patterns.  

At the back of the book is a really useful section which shows you how to knit some of the more complex stitches, such as Butterfly stitch (5 stitches slipped and lifted over 9 rows, ooh tricky). 

And here's my worked piece - it's hard to see because of the three colours, but I'm going to finish the scarf with this pattern, so I'll post a bit more as it gets closer to the end.

So! If you're looking for a book which will challenge you a bit, but provide you with a great result, this could be the place to start.  Go forth, knit!

And I'm going to...

Anybody got any suggestions what I can knit with 6 balls of Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette, in the gorgeous "pebble" colourway?  I don't know why I do this, but I always do.  I buy just enough yarn to make half a cardigan, or a jumper for a midget.  Sorry, vertically challenged person.  So irritating.  I want to knit myself a jumper, and I've found the pattern I want - v neck, loose, bit of interest, not too challenging (although I am a competent knitter, you understand, I can't read a pattern & watch TV at the same time!!) - and here's what I found:

Image courtesy of JesikaJack

I love the colour of her jumper, too, but I'm knitting it in Lana Gatto Jaipur, in the blue colourway, simply because I had enough balls of this to get started without worrying about running out soon, and also because I found 14 balls of it on the fabulous Internet here, at $3.00/ball.  The original price was probably around $12 or $13/ball, so I was able to buy enough to finish the jumper for just $40 odd.  That's amazing, especially because, according to the pattern, I need 21 balls.  21.  FMD.

Anyway, I now have these six balls of Jo Sharp Alpaca Silk Georgette, which is discontinued, in the beautiful grey, and no idea what to do with them.  Socks? Too thick.  Shawl?  Too old lady.  Hat?  Too late, I've done Rome'n.  Hahhahahahahah Oh I'm so funny sometimes.  Sorry.

Ahem.  Anyway, if anybody has any suggestions as to where I can get more of this beautiful yarn, at a price that doesn't involve selling Mr Golightly's body parts, or even better, some sensible suggestions about what I can do with six balls, I'd be grateful.

Ciao!

"...Twice is co-incidence..."

I had no idea Ian Fleming said that whole thing - I do love it, I have to say, having first read it in a book by one of my favourite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold.  The whole saying goes "First time is happenstance, second time is co-incidence, third time is enemy action".  Lying here in bed with my second bout of the nasty for this year makes me wonder if this little maxim applies to me... and then I started wondering what a maxim actually was...

You see, Gentle Readers, where my brain takes me when I'm ill?  Into the weird and arcane world of words.  I was reading "My Grammar and I" the other night, loving the way it changed my view about "people who" and "things that", but supported my view about nouns of mass - "no amount of things here" - and wondering if that made me truly odd.  And then I thought "probably".  I've been firming up my vocabulary quite nicely by playing Wordfeud a bit, with a bunch of people, and I've used great words like 'thine' and 'sucre' and 'drib' and 'fart' and 'turd', so you can see it's not great works of academe... but it is improving.

Digressing (see?) somewhat, I've just been to see my lovely Dottoressa*, who's given me the rest of the week off - again.  Man.  The only way this could be any better is if I wasn't sick, so I could knit, write, sew, cook, clean.  Hey, let's not get carried away here...

My lovely Ma & Hank are off to Bali tomorrow morning at 6.00am (shudder) for 10 days of warmth and sun, MGF Kaz & Az are in Europe enjoying the last days of summer in England, then moving across to France, for Vintage, in Burgundy, no kidding.  Bastards, all of them.

In other news of huge importance, I took up the fantastic suggestion from The Peppermint Penguin and flicked over to Ravelry, where I probably haven't been for more than a year, to look for patterns for hats for little boys.  I found a couple of goodies:



http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/gooseberry-hat (free download)




http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/aston (free download)


http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/easy-peasy-newborn-sock-hat (free download)

I love Ravelry.  Such a nice feeling about a site where people are kind enough to share their patterns, no crap about "you can do this or that with them".  Even the patterns for sale are very reasonably priced - 

Even the one I bought today (for me, not the Bub) was only C$6.50.  That's almost unheard of here, where patterns, like yarn, are relatively expensive.  My favourite Filatura Di Crosa yarn is retailing at US$11.00 on the net, but we're being charged A$14.50/ball.  And the Aussie dollar is above the US Dollar.  Makes me mad... and our shops wonder why we don't buy from them anymore?

Off to the needles.  Ciao!



 *Doctor

Tempus fugits (Part III)

It's a sad, sad indictment of my life that I seem to be only able to find time to post when I'm at home sick.. which I am.  Again.  Sore throat, dry wheezy cough, sore ears, sore eyes.  Yesterday I felt a little off, and somebody kindly pointed out that the usual colour in my cheeks had highlighted itself to be ugly blotches, and my eyes were red and watery.  Ick.  

What's been happening?  I had a very pleasant outing with MBF to the Church Point churchyard (yes, that's why it's called Church Point, because there used to be a church as well as a churchyard) to take some pictures with Miss N & Master H... it wasn't particularly atmospheric, but terribly overgrown.  Such a shame...

I've bought bits and piece of fabrics...

Some of these are old favourites, some are a new adventure.  All gorgeous though...

And in exciting family news, Mr Golightly's middle niece, Miss Emma, has given birth to her first baby, a boy named Isaac Phillip, - a fantastic name, given that Mr Golightly's actual given name is Phillip - apparently it's a tribute to Mr Golightly's awesome uncle-ness.  Nice.  I've ordered some fantastic baby burp cloths:

and I'm looking to make a cot quilt in similar colours - eventually... And I've been sussing out the knitting patterns for babies, but interestingly, most of them seem to be targeted at girls.  I don't know if it's just my imagination, but they just all seem a bit fluffy.  Anyway, I've started knitting a rib tube, which is pretty cute, and I'll post a picture when it's finished - it has surfaced before, looking like this:

Much as I find knitting rib boring, it does make a very cute hat... 

I'm making a doorstop for Mr Golightly's lovely Ma, cut out and pieced, but gone no further...

Phew.  I just ran out of energy.  Back to bed.  Ciao!

It's the weather, you see

So, there's no excuse now, except for the slightly pathetic one that it's too cold in the study, where my big laptop lives, and it's too hard in the living room/loungeroom, because the keyboard on the small laptop is so small I can't type properly.  Oh, life is so hard.


Also, a busy few days had me rendered immobile by Saturday night (Sydney traffic, yum cha, Archibald Prize, more Sydney traffic, bed by 8.30pm)... Sunday was Mother's Day and we had a delicious lunch at Mr Golightly's elder sister's house, along with the nieces and nephews... Miss Cathy did try to talk us into a cat, but Mr Golightly demurred, saying they didn't really have enough flesh on them to warrant eating... I'm not sure if she believed she'd heard him correctly, but needless to say we didn't come home with a cat.


Upholstery continues apace.  Yesterday I got stuck in to stripping a drop-in seat which Miss Cathy had - I counted 60 old tacks, three lots of webbing, some very nasty looking flock and coconut fibre and some dodgy fabric... the frame is actually quite nice, with a lovely bevelled edge, but it needed an application of new glue, and I had a good time taking to the frame with the wire brush, redrilling  the holes and getting it into a stonking big clamp to leave until Thursday, when I intend to take to it with elastic webbing, vinyl, foam, linters and that evil of evils, calico (remember?  Calico has no stretch!), and finally, some fantastic fabric from KA International, which Miss Cathy has had tucked away in her magic storeroom for about five years - no pictures yet, but soon, I promise...


And speaking of other fabric:

I confess to buying 2 metres of the last fabric here - the other two did not quite meet the 'PrettyDog Test for Redness', which it needed to pass to be considered for the footstool I'm going to make for Az - however, the two fabrics I bought on Etsy also have failed the test, one is the same red as tomato soup with a can of half milk & half water in it (the usual Golightly tomato soup recipe), and the other one is just raspberry pink...

So I'm still looking...

What else - I'm learning more about what a pain in the arm vinyl is to work with, having made absolutely no progress on this from last week:

and how much fun traditional method upholstery is - a sprung footstool, with coconut fibre and flock - very dusty, prickly, irritating, but very satisfying...

And the class is shrinking, we had a whole five people on Monday, considerably down from our original 11.   Madam Late is apparently quite unwell with previously undiagnosed gall stones.  Having had my own gallbladder out some five or so years ago, I don't quite understand how you can have them and not know - I only had to look at a piece of blue cheese for mine to start howling from the rooftops, but then... 

In other news of unparalleled excitement, the doorstop man didn't leave any feedback on Etsy to say he'd got it - hopefully it turned up OK.  The postage on a 900g/1.9lb doorstop was, surprisingly, $10.00 - is this good, do you think?  Oh yes, and I'm making good progress on the surprise (for he who cannot be named), but more on that later.

And now, Gentle Readers (and hello to the lovely Peppermint Penguin, who has escaped the tangles of Ravelry to catch up on the ultra-thrilling world of the Golightly household, and also to my other new followers - I'm very happy to see you on my list, hope you're not too disappointed by the reality of it all...) I'm going to bed.  I've got a lot happening tomorrow, but more on that... later!  Yes, you guessed it.  Later.

Ciao!  

Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye...

Cheerio, I don't know, the next line...


We're off to The Tasmanian Craft Fair today, flying at lunchtime & coming back on Monday arvo, with Kaz & Az, and my lovely DSSIL* & DSB*.  I expect to have many tales to tell of the webbed-fingered folk who live on that fair isle, bring back much crafty booty to be ooh-ed and aah-ed over, and several 10Kg blocks of Cadbury's Chocolate to fill my arteries with cholesterol... I am telling you this,  Gentle Reader, because I will not be blogging for the entire time.


Agggggggggggggh.  Withdrawal.  But there will be many, many photos on my return.  Be warned.


Also, I'm going to attempt to smuggle bamboo knitting needles into my hand luggage, so if I get arrested, please be ready to put the hat around to bail me out.   I get very irritated by our govinmint's blind stupidity on this issue - I was reading YarnHarlot's blog where she posted about the 'Stitch & Bitch' row on her plane trip to somewhere, and thinking why, oh why, is our govinmint so paranoid?  Surely they've realised by now that knitters are more likely to be dangerous if they can't knit than if they can and are?  Bizarre.


And just to keep everybody involved in fabric porn happy, here's something I acquired yesterday at Tessuti:

So cheerful but I have to wait until Monday before I get the scissors out & make something with it!  Ah, torture.

As Daav yos'Phelium would say, "Until soon".  Gotta pack!