sweetgeorgia

Almost all spun up…

Just before I left for Japan, I finished two more skeins of Koolaid yarn — the first is some spindle-spun singles (the first few yards are noticeably more slubby than the last few!) and the second is some grape and strawberry two-ply.

When I got back this Saturday, I found my lovely new Woolee Winder (plus four bobbins) waiting for me! I love it! It’s helped me spin up ALL the plummy fall coloured roving and ply it all — efficiently using all the space on the bobbin. I’ll set the twist on these yarns tonight!

Purple Haze.

Long flights are good for concentrated, attention-required knitting…so I started the Paisley Shawl from the Spring Interweave on the flight to Tokyo — it was a bit of a clumsy start with those bamboo double-points but after I switched to the circulars, things eased up and my yarnovers started to look better.

To prevent problems with getting through security at the airport, I chose to use Addi Naturas (bamboo needles). I can’t say I really like them very much — they don’t have a very smooth join and I find I have to work at moving the stitches around. In any case, I’ve finished 9 repeats and have four more to go before finishing with the paisley edge — almost there!

I also started — and finished all the pieces of the Rebecca 29 cardi… EXCEPT for the last 25 cm of the long tie. Why? I ran out of yarn. Agh! And I even bought an extra ball!?! I’m making the small size which should only require 4 balls of Kid Soft — I subbed for Rare Comfort Mohair which has nearly the same yardage, and bought an extra ball. Who knew you’d need 50% more yarn??? And me, being the tidy person that I am, threw out all the yarn labels so I don’t know what dye lot I was using. Mmm… silly girl.

Japanese Stash Additions

Well, you can’t leave Japan without some Noro… especially when it’s a lot less expensive than buying it here in Vancouver! I couldn’t resist picking up a pack of Cash Iroha and a few skeins of Kureyon…

And I found some nice cabled cotton yarn, made by Puppy Yarn, called “Kona Cotton”. After a bad, splitty yarn experience with Endless Summer Lara, I’m pretty picky about cotton yarn now. This yarn will probably be for a version of the Honeymoon Cami…

Apparently, pink Chibis are a big deal. Not sure why. They come with four straight needles instead of the two slightly curved needles that come in green Chibis. In any case, I couldn’t find any pink Chibis in Vancouver, so I picked up one for me and a few of my knitting friends here:

And like I mentioned before — spinning seems scarce in Japan, but there’s plenty of cute packages of roving around. I bought two bags of each of “Candy Mix” and a fine Merino — 100g each.

Nevermind the fact that I haven’t yet made anything from a Japanese pattern mag, I bought another one!

And finally, at La Droguerie, I bought some 100% alpaca to make a pair of gloves and a big hank of lovely light blue kid mohair to make a scarf. La Droguerie is beautiful, but expensive. The staff were adorable, giving me a card with the location of their main Paris store and saying, “Next time you’re in Paris…”

Knitting, Tokyo and Cherry Blossoms

Hello from (the Apple Store in) Tokyo! Don’t you just love free internet access from demo G5 computers? Alison noticed that I haven’t posted for a few days and I just wanted to post a note to say that I am, in fact, still alive and knitting in Tokyo! We’re here for two weeks (back home by Saturday) visiting friends and family… I have lots of photos and will post them…soon!

Last night, we had dinner with friends (had chicken sashimi!) and walked through Ueno Park where people are still having their Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) parties… So many people… Good thing we went yesterday since it’s pouring rain today!

So far, outside of visiting Osaka, Kyoto, an onsen in Osaka, and various neighbourhoods in Tokyo, I’ve found a few of the yarn shops on Pinku’s list — La Droguerie in Ometosando, the Rowan/Jaeger shop in Ebisu (where they have actual knitted samples from the new Rowan mag!) and the Okadaya craft shop (4 floors of craft stuff). It doesn’t seem like anybody in Japan does any spinning, but they seem to like felting and crocheting. In fact, you can get little kits of wool roving to make tiny toy felted dogs — so cute. I bought a few bags of roving (that they use for felting) and am going to bring them home to spin…

Ok! Off to find some coffee now!