The Good and The Ugly

Good morning. I hope everyone is having a wonderful day! My weekend was awesome. My wonderful husband chauffeured me around all day in Seattle. I never (I mean maybe once a year) go to Seattle -- the big city -- because of all the one way streets, traffic and just plain unfimiliarity of the place is daunting to me. So for my birthday I asked to go to 4 different yarn shops in Seattle and also to the Japanese bookstore, Kinokuniya. The yarn shops I visited were Hilltop Yarns, Weaving Works -- where I bought the pink Cotton Fleece and Trekking XXL sock yarn -- So Much Yarn -- where I bought 5 skeins of teal coloured Silky Wool, and Stitches.

At the book store I bought two very cool Japanese stitch pattern books. And I couldn't help myself so I started playing around with some of the patterns in them. You need to remember that these books are written completely in Japanese so there is no hope of actually "reading" anything but thankfully all the patterns are charted. The trick is figuring out what the different symbols mean. Again this isn't too hard since the back of both books have pictures of how to knit some of the symbols, but not all. It is definitely challenging.

The next two pictures are from the Knitting Patterns Book 250

The next two pictures are from the Knitting Patterns Book 300

If you are at all interested in Japanese pattern books, Marguerite of Stitches of Violet has some wonderful entries (and pictures) on her blog of Japanese books she has purchased.

Fleegle's Blog also has some great pictures and ideas on Japanese knitting.

So that was the very good -- now the ugly. I started a preemie baby gown last week since there seems to be so many requests for these lately (very sad). I started with Debbie's Sleeper Sack pattern for the top and then decided to make the bottom a skirt rather than a bag. After putting the sleeve stitches onto holders, I worked 1 inch in stockinette and then did k2tog, yo across to make eyelette holes. After that I increased in each stitch to make the skirt a little more full. From the book Knitting Stitches by Mary Webb I chose a pretty flower pattern to do the skirt in. Now for the ugly ... I wanted to add a ruffle on the bottom but didn't really know how so I just increased in each stitch and then knit for another 3/4 inch or so. That didn't work as you can see from the picture. I think I will just rip the ruffle part out and cast off. Will have to work on the "ruffle" stuff on another project.