Japan 2011 Day 2: Shopping & Train Tickets

Well, Charlie managed to sleep past 4:00 am today- he took melatonin & it worked! Brendan & I woke up between 4:00 & 4:30 & read until 6:00 am :(  I think I'll try the melatonin tonight...

Breakfast was pastries that we got last evening when we bought our dinner, from a bakery that, rather surreally, had all of the pastries labelled in Italian (in Japanese katakana) & then the English name below, also in katakana. In the picture above is my cappucino bread- it was delicious! It was made like a melon pan, which is yeast bread with a layer of sweet cookie on top, but coffee-flavoured. I also had cold green tea & part of an orange. Also in the picture is Pikachu & the cute socks Momo gave me yesterday that are okapi-patterned.

The bottle on the right was supposed to be Charlie's breakfast beverage, to go with his cinnamon-raisin bun. Unfortunately, I didn't read the label very well, which says that it's orange-flavoured jelly... in a bottle. He put it in the fridge, so it was nice & hard when he tried to drink it :D Only in Japan will you find jello in a bottle.

Today's major goals were to get our Japan Rail passes & to shop. We bought the rail passes in the US & then you have to turn them in at the right office, along with a bit more paperwork & show your passport, after which you are issued rail passes that work on all of the JR Line trains. We decided to head out to Shinjuku Station around 9:00 am to see if the ticket office was open. On the short walk over there, the incredible mass of humanity streaming from the station made us think twice about even going in that direction, so we stopped off at our nearby Starbucks instead for a hobbit-like second breakfast. After about half an hour the people thinned out (there were a lot of people running out of the station as we watched, clearly late for work) & we felt we'd successfully be able to swim upstream, so we went to the office & found that it opened at 11:00 (it was then a little after 10:00).

So, we went shopping instead! I had some definite shopping plans, based on yesterday's excursion to Tokyu Hands & Takashimaya, so we split up & Charlie & Brendan agreed to meet me at 11:00 & then decide what to do next. I headed to Yuzawaya, by way of Uniqlo (which I just wanted to see), & had a great time looking at yarn & crochet books.

I got an amigurumi book & a tawashi book. Tawashi are scrubbies that are very populat in Japan because they're reusable ("eco"). The book has some absolutely adorable patterns- all sorts of shapes & themes. I also found bamboo crochet hooks, which I can't get at home, & a couple skeins of gorgeous, sparkly yarn.

That shopping took me to 11:00, so after we met up we went to the stationery department of Tokyu Hands & bought stickers, pens, notebooks, & origami paper, mostly for gifts.

One thing I find fascinating about shopping in Japan is how beautifully everything is wrapped. The paper bags in the picture above are the pens & stickers all neatly packaged.

The bags are sealed with tape at the top:

For lunch we went back to the tenpura restaurant we went to yesterday because it was so yummy. I regretted not taking pictures then, so I got some today:

Sooooo delicious!

The other thing I really wanted to photograph yesterday was a sign that had Brendan in absolute giggles yesterday, after coming back from a bathroom trip while we were at the restaurant:

These are the instructions for using the "washlet" toilet that is pretty standard everywhere you go.

A close-up shows the source of Brendan's hilarity. How often to you see the word "buttocks" on a sign in a department store?

After Lunch we went back to the train station, discovered that the office that was closed at 10:00 wasn't the right office after all, & so one map & two inquiries later, found the right place! We got our rail passes & also reserved our seats on the trains tomorrow, for the next leg of our trip, going to the southern island of Kyushu to visit friends. The ladies in the train office were lovely & very helpful.

It's another hot, sunny day in Tokyo & I'm really glad that our hotel is so close to so many cool things to do! I'm also glad of the sun, in small doses :) Brendan & I are both pleased by how easy it feels to communicate this time. For example, I bought 2 copies of one of the crochet books, one for a friend & one for me, & when the checkout lady asked me if I wanted 2 copies, I not only understood her question, but was able to explain why I wanted two. I am really enjoying the smiling faces of the people we speak to :D

This afternoon we're taking it easy. Charlie & Brendan want to try the ofuro (Japanese-style bathtub) & it's too hot to go far outside right now anyway. Later we'll go back & get dinner & breakfast across the way at Takashimaya, just like yesterday. Tomorrow at 9:30 am we board the shinkansen (bullet train) for Kyushu, & after one train change & ~6 hours, we'll get to see friends we haven't seen for 4 years! 

More Nerd Wars 2 Projects

Hi again! I've been really busy creating & it's a good thing, because otherwise I'd be thinking too much about the fact that we are getting on a plane in 2 1/2 weeks & flying to Japan! Don't get me wrong, I am very, very excited to be going back & seeing friends & eating wonderful food & just being there. But I also get very, very nervous when anticipating travel (particularly traveling halfway across the world!), so it's been a wonderful thing to be working on my Nerd Wars 2 challenges & not thinking too much about the traveling just yet.

For the "An Adage a Day" challenge (make something that illustrates a saying or adage) I chose the Japanese saying "ひゃくぶんはいっけんにしかず" which is very similar to the English "a picture is worth a thousand words". And to illustrate this adage, I made this pair of thumbless baby mittens using the 2-colour knitting technique (aka Fair Isle Knitting) which I learned from the photos in the book "Fox & Geese & Fences" by Robin Hanson. The yarn is KnitPicks superwash merino DK which I dyed using procion fibre-reactive dyes, plus a bit of pink Swish DK for the bunnies. The pattern is my own design.

For the team spirit aspect, the bunnies represent the character Haninozuka Mitsukuni (Honey Sempai) from Ouran KoKo Hosutobu (Ouran High School Host Club) by Hatori Bisco. As you can see in the picture, this character carries a pink bunny around (even though he is a senior in high school!). I found the bunnies charted for embroidery in a Debbie Bliss book, but worked them as Fair Isle instead.

Then there's this little bag, crocheted with KnitPicks Simply Cotton Sport & a size D/3/3.25mm hook. This was for the Team Spirit challenge "There is No I in Team". The challenge is to make something that expresses your feelings for your particular team/fandom. This one took some thinking... & I learned a lot during the research part of it. I settled on making something for a character in one of my favourite manga (& anime) series, Bleach by Kubo Tite. One of my favourite Bleach characters is the 13 Bantai (squadron) Taichou (captain) Ukitake Jyuushirou.

You can see him, with the white hair, in the pictures behind the bag. Along with being a beautiful & elegant man, he is also very wise & kind. He's an amazing warrior, too (he's a shinigami, a defender of the realm of the souls of the dead) in spite of having had a chronic illness (believed to be tuberculosis) most of his long (1000+ years) life. He's often shown drinking tea (when not in battle) & this led me to think about tea/tea ceremony/tea ceremony accoutrements. As I researched tea ceremony I learned about shifuku, which are fancy bags that hold tea utensils & canisters of tea. I combined the idea of shifuku with a design in Kumiko Sudo's book "Omiyage" for a sewn kusadama (traditional flower ball decoration, often made from origami) bag that is suitable for tea utensils.

I chose the "Granny Pentagon" motif from Heather Lodinsky's "150 Knit & Crochet Motifs" because, when made in the colour combo I chose, it looks like little, 5-petaled sakura blossoms. The white reflects Ukitake's white hair & Taichou Haori (kimono jacket), which is white & lined in the reddish-brown colour at the top of the bag. I really like the way it turned out! I think I'm going to make another one in a slighly different colour scheme for a friend in Japan whose birthday we'll be celebrating while we're there...

I also finished hat number 2 for my dissertation project, shown above modeled by Yoda :)

I'm calling it the "Naruto & his Mom Hat". In chapter 498 of the Naruto manga, we finally meet Naruto's mom (who died not long after he was born). The chapter is entitled "My Mom's Red Hair".  Naruto's hair is yellow, like his dad. This hat combines the yellow & red of their hair & celebrates their reunion- even if it was in Naruto's mind/soul. It was very satisfying to finally learn the back-story of Naruto's parents, who made the ultimate sacrifice so that their son (& everyone in the whole village) could live. I dyed this yarn also, using the KnitPicks superwash merino DK & procion dyes. I crocheted it using an I/9/5.50mm hook & Lion Brand's crochet earflap hat pattern (one of my favourites).

So, thank you Nerd Wars 2! You are providing me with great distraction when I really need it, the opportunity to learn things I might not have otherwise have learned, & a great sense of accomplishment, as 4 out of the 6 June challenges are done!! 

Seven weeks, seven pairs of socks...

Hello! Sorry it's been so long since I've been around. First the Holidays hit- we celebrate Hannukah & Christmas, and Oshougatsu (Japanese New Year) so it was really busy. I hope to catch the blog up on the holiday crafting in time... And then, seven weeks ago I had surgery- a total reconstruction of my lower back (L4-S1)- and I've spent the time since surgery in recovery. My initial recovery went very fast & very well, (for a middle-aged chick who turned 53 in the middle of it all... :) but now I'm in a slump & looking around for amusement. So, I thought I'd finally update the blog & get some of what I've been working on into the blogosphere.

Before I went into the hospital I thought about what I'd like to do during recovery. I designed two adult Surprise Jackets, based on Elizabeth Zimmermann's pattern (which I purchased from Halcyon) and found the wool I'd need to make them (just laying around the house, you know :). I also thought that small projects would be a good idea, so I purchased both of cookie a's sock books and stocked-up on sock wool (knitpicks was having a kit sale, so that helped a lot :). I also cast-on a pair of socks for Brendan, since he needed an extra pair & I figured having them already worked for an inch or two would give me incentive. I've gotten to the point where plain sock knitting is pretty boring, hence the cookie a books (very intricate patterns), so making socks for Brendan, even though they may be from fair-isle striped yarn, & he really needs them, can be a chore. Plus his socks are BIG. He's only 2 sizes away from my husband Charlie's feet (Charlie is 6'2") and I can only just get Brendan's socks from 100g of sock wool any more (adding to the excitement, let me tell you).

OK, so I went to the hospital & 5 days later came out with a new back. I also came home with a walker, a commode seat with arms for our downstairs toilet, and the inability to walk up stairs (completely unexpected). Charlie, bless him, was able to deal with this ably (with just one day's notice!) and set up the only extra bed we had in the living room. This extra bed happened to be a Victorian monster & you can see the cosy fit in our small living room :)

It all worked out very well, though, & a week later I was doing stairs, & the bed came down, & we got our first floor back. I was very glad for the projects planned and started ahead of time. It takes some time for anaesthetic to wear off, and add to that the pain medicine (which I only used for about 9 days- yay!) and what you get is a googly me. My hands were also pretty swollen from the IV's (one in each hand, plus numerous pokes from failed attempts) so about all I could handle, literally, was sock knitting. Brendan's socks became rather a blessing- bland knitting just when I needed it :)

Another unexpected twist that affected my knitting life was the addition of an "afo" (ankle-foot orthotic) at my 4-week check-up. My right foot had "dropped" from some pre-existing nerve issues combined with the stress on the nerves from the surgery, so they recommended a brace to support it while the nerve recovers. The orthotic guy told me I'd want to wear knee socks with the afo, which is a plastic thingy that slips into my shoe, runs up the back of my leg, & then fastens with velcro right under the knee. He was right- it feels really clammy without a sock between me & the top of the thing. But I had only 2 pairs of knee socks when I arrived home from that appointment... My initial response was to start wearing mis-matched socks, since this eked out my knee sock supply. I also found that tights or leg warmers (thanks, Momo!) under regular socks help with this.

mis-matched me

I then looked for some knee sock patterns &, since I wanted to knit them quickly from sport-weight wool, ordered some more yarn. Knitpicks has a sport-weight sock wool in their Felici line, so I went with that. I also ordered some solid-coloured sport-weight wool, only to discover that this wool was heavier in weight (less yards per grams) & not appropriate for the pattern I'd put together for my socks. Of my existing knee socks, 1 pair were made from a Nancy Bush pattern (from her Folk Socks book, not unreservedly recommended as she is rather a ditz- I've met her- and I find there are errors & other monstrosities in her patterns that editors miss). As for the other pair, I looked high & low for the pattern, remembering them as Elizabeth Zimmermann's sheepfold socks. I finally found them in Meg Swansen's Knitting, a book I'd rather forgotten I had. I think I now have all my Elizabeths & Megs in one place, thanks to that little search! At any rate, looking at the charts for the socks (& blanching), I decided to make a short-cut, for the sake of quickly-knit knee socks. I will confess that, at some point in this process, it occurred to me that most people go out & buy knee socks... Anyway, one thing I dislike about knee sock patterns is the point that, if you decrease in the back, forms when you decrease from the upper leg to the ankle.

Brendan's sock at top, plus new knee socks

 Meg's socks elegantly deal with this by decreasing on the sides, by making the sheepfold smaller each pattern repeat. What I did was lift the rate of decrease from her pattern, then put a double-decrease at this rate on either side of a cable running down the sides of the socks. Whew! I kept track of my decreases & cable pattern repeats using a nifty little app on my iphone called Stitch Minder. I was able to knit a pair of knee socks in 4 days, with minimal messing up, thanks to that app.

My version of Kai Mei, with Momo's leg warmers buffering the afo zone :)

In and around making knee socks, I've managed to make 4 other pairs of socks, 3 from cookie a and one, my second pair of crocheted socks, that I will feature in a future blog post. My first foray into cookie a was from her book Knit. Sock. Love. I really liked (& still do) the look of the Pointelle socks, partly because they're so beautiful & partly because they're knitted mirror-image for each foot. The charts weren't too hard to read, but, as always when dealing with charts, I ran into an impediment. I am left-handed & must reverse all shaping in order to get the lace to come out right. I usually just read charts from left to right, but that was difficult with these charts, as they're slanted & not numbered on the left & tiny. So I just read from right to left, reversed all the shaping, & it all turned out just fine.

Pointelle is the pink sock...

Her right sock was my left, & vice-versa, but what the heck, & I love the socks. Encouraged by this, I decided to take-on the Kai Mei socks from sock innovation. I decided to use the new sock yarn from Knitpicks, Chroma fingering, in Pool Party. (I actually started the Wedge sock from K.S.L but they didn't really turn me on, so I ripped.) I love how the lace pattern starts in the arch & moves over the foot so gracefully. Unfortunately, when I got to the lace, I ran into a big snag. The pattern, as charted, just didn't work :( No way could I get her instructions to make the pretty-heart-shaped lace- maybe a lefty issue. No idea. So, I went looking for another lace pattern to plug in & came up with one that was narrower, requiring more ribs between it & the rest of the sock.

It's not nearly as nice as the original lace, since it kind of gets lost in the general ribbiness of the pattern, plus the Chroma is a bit fuzzy, as it turns out, for lace, so it obscures things as well. But I survived & learned along the way.

The next cookie project was much nicer, cookie's Monkey socks from K.S.L. I could read the chart from the left & it was easy to memorise, & I really enjoyed making them.

What next? I have a gorgeous ball of red sock wool waiting for a willing pattern... I have also taken on some other recovery-time knitting projects, to be detailed in a future post. My sock population is certainly benefitting from my recovery  :) I have doubled the number of knee socks I own, & hopefully, within a month or so, I'll no longer be wearing mis-matched socks at all. I'll keep you posted! 

Lindsay's Lace

Here is another project that I was waiting to post (until after the gift was given :) but then things got busy... Our friend Lindsay got married in late August &, as she was combining households with her new husband, it took some creativity to think of something to give her that she wouldn't already have. I decided that everyone could use a little lace on occasion, & decided to make her some odds & ends that she could use around the house- under lamps, as coasters, a small runner for dinners, that sort of thing. I had already made shower presents for her (domino knitted trivet & dishcloths) using a natural palette of browns & creams, so I stayed with the same yarn (KnitPicks Simply Cotton organic yarns) but went from worsted weight to sport, for crocheted lace.

I used motifs from the wonderful book again & it was a lot of fun to mess around- combining the motifs & the colours. For example, I really love how the lace in the top picture forms a wreath in the middle when you put 4 motifs together...

Once again, this lace can be washed by machine or hand, & just patted out flat to dry. I blocked them with pins (as you can see) to make it nice, which is an easy next step, but not necessary to useability. 

I do wonder sometimes if these ideas I get for prezzies are just weird, or do they work out the way I hope? I sure hope they are enjoyed as much as I enjoyed making them!

A Wonderful Book

This is my go-to crochet book these days, when I want really lovely motifs that either work together (to make something bigger) or stand-alones (to use as small doilies or coasters. The title translates as "Motif*Edging 300" & the book is from Japan, land of the always-charted crochet patterns, and appears to be published by Nihon Vogue. I bought it late winter time from the late, lamented Sasuga books (moment of silence) & I honestly didn't even know what I gem I was getting at the time. I think I was trying to get my book order up to $40 so I'd get free shipping...

Other than every last design being charted in easy to understand terms, the other main thing I love about this book is that it not only shows you photos (some in colour) & charts of each motif, but also photos & charts of the motifs put together, with charts for any small motifs to fill in the spaces between motifs. Multi-coloured motifs are shown in colour, so you can see how pretty they are (or not... but most are gorgeous).

The small motifs at the bottom of the picture are the beginning of something to soothe a soul hungry for lots of colour. Most of what I've been making lately is shower & wedding presents for a friend who requested muted colours for gifts, so it's been creams & taupes & browns for the past couple of weeks. Occasionally I go over to Attic24 & geek out over the lovely colours (& how she refers to crochet as "hooky" :) so I decided it was time (now that the wedding prezzies are blocking on the bed (I can hear Charlie's plaintive call to unpin so he can go to bed...) to make some colour splashes of my own. I found a little, 3-round motif that kind of pinwheels around, so I thought I'd put together something with every colour of Knitpick's comfy fingering that I have... I'll take another photo when it's farther along.

I have made everything from swatches, scarves, doilies & baby bonnets, to the aforementioned wedding prezzies (will post pictures after the wedding) from this book & have not even begun to get bored. Hooray for wonderful books like this one. Hopefully it will keep me busy until we get back to Japan next summer...