A whole bunch of people thought that knitting something challenging for the duration of the Olympics would be fun.  I agreed and picked out a crazy project – a lace blanket over six feet across that uses 1700 yards of yarn.  After many late nights, 60+ hours of knitting, and a blocking session during the men’s gold medal hockey game (grah!) I’m proud to declare myself a successful Knitting Olympian/Ravelete.  Meet Girasole.

Full project info on Ravelry.  I loved the pattern but I can’t say I’ll be making another one any time soon – I need a break.

The general concensus seems to be that knitting the edging is torture but I say phooey.  After a loooong circular slog the edging was like eating potato chips.  And not just any chips, but Pringles.  A huuuuge can of Pringles.  I couldn’t stop.

I didn’t have enough pins for all 213 points so I did the Olympic thing and sacrificed a few straight blocking wires to the cause.  They came out slightly bent but I dare say it gives them more character, not to mention war stories to tell the grandkids.  (“Do you remember the Girasole of 2010?  My, how limber we were back then!”)

I’m glad I decided to take up this challenge.  I grew as a knitter, watched more curling than I’d care to admit, and now have a kick butt blanket for napping on the couch.  Win, blank end, win.

I spent yesterday finishing up some nearly done projects and taking pictures of my latest knitting.  Yea knitting!

Armwarmers!  [project rav link] These are called Toast by Leslie Friend [pattern rav link] and are nothing but a stockinette tube.  The original instructions don’t have any shaping but I started a little smaller at the wrists and increased a few stitches at the forearm because I can’t leave a good pattern well enough alone.    I wear these every day now – I love that I can have my fingers out for train pass grabbing or more-or-less covered when I’m walking.

I call these Shipwrecked [rav link] and they’re just what they look like – striped socks.  The Knit Picks Felici yarn is really soft and wears okay so I think I’ll be getting some use out of these.

And here’s something that’s waiting for a block:

I should get to that.

No cookie.  So here’s an FO instead.

Rivolo [Ravelry]

Pattern:  Rivolo by Anne Hanson

Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, Impressionist Sky, roughly three quarters of a skein (~325 yards)

Needles:  US 6

Ended up adding a few repeats to make up for my row gauge and the measurements came out right on the money.  I finished the scarf in two weeks including blocking, which is soooo rare for me.  I have a stack of things in my closet waiting to be washed and stretched but this baby got priority treatment.

It blocked like a dream – a floaty, wispy cloud dream.

My Snow Queen shawl is coming along nicely.

Okay, so it may not look nice right now, but just wait until it’s washed and stretched as tight as a drum on my blocking wires.  It will transform from cat barf into lacy goodness.  At least, it better!

I have a feeling that this Avril yarn might be magical – the yarn cake never shrinks.

It was roughly five inches across when I started and it’s roughly five inches across now (I’m pulling the yarn off the outside).  Hey, if it’s a never-ending ball of yarn I’ll take it.

Avril, a one of a kind yarn store in Tokyo, recently had their annual sale.  Looming JLPT or not, I knew I had to go.

Walking around Kichijouji Station is like going back in time 20 years or so.  They don’t build quite like this anymore.  That’s probably good – this may look like a pedestrian thoroughfare but buses managed to squeeze through every few minutes.

In Avril there were boxes and boxes of discounted yarn.  A lot of it was in spring pastels I could do without but I did find a couple of gems.

This yarn is listed as  HK 5100, a 70/30 wool/silk blend.  It’s fine even for laceweight, almost cobweb I think.  There’s 180 grams here and the yardage is insane – it took me two hours to wind using my ball winder.  The sale price came to 945 yen, or roughly $10.

The tag was kind of vague:  “Sale yarn, silk/wool, 370 g”.  It looks like a blue silk single plied with a slightly thinner black wool single.  It’s a wonderfully rustic laceweight, just begging to be made into a Moonlight Sonata shawl [ravelry].  I should really get a digital scale so I could get some idea of the yardage but I’m sure there’s a ton.  It set me back roughly $15.

Most things at Avril are wound off of cones and sold by the gram, making it a little intimidating for a by-the-hank knitter like me.  The shop is small but the ladies were super nice and didn’t seem to mind that I was digging through their boxes for oh, a solid half hour.  Next time there’s a sale I’ll have to splurge on some laceweight cashmere… it looked positively yummy.

I managed to cast off another pair of socks today.  Really small needles and really thin yarn equaled a really long, tedious knit.  Worth it, though.

Prima Julia [ravelry].

In other news it’s Golden Week, an extremely well-placed series of national holidays.  This year they land so we get five days off in a row–sweet.  Ken and I don’t have any big plans so I’ve been knitting, studying, and trying to relax.

My handy-dandy countdown clock says there are 61 days left until the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験）.  While it’s not crunch time yet studying non-JLPT material makes me nervous.  My inner critic says stuff like,

You should be working on kanji!  How about those reading passages you wanted to get through?  Not to mention grammar…  oh, and your flashcards!  How have those been going, hmmm?

Le sigh.  So JLPT grammar, reading, and kanji it is.  I hate working from a set list when I feel like I could learn so much more from everything around me–tv news, magazines, conversations with friends.  One way to work through the tedium is to tell myself it’s only temporary.  Another is to buy myself new toys.  The newest:

This book is awesome because it explains the trickiest parts of Japanese grammar in English.  All the nuances are laid right out.  Example:  I’ve been having some trouble with related expressions like ue no/ue de, ue ha, and ue ni.  One tiny particle can change the whole meaning.  In the dictionary ue de has the following listed as one of several notes:

Ue de is used to express an idea that someone will do something rather important (quite often decision-making) after they have done something as a preparatory action.  The image is that the action expressed in the main clause is on top of the accompanying action.

Light bulb!  I love it.  There are two other dictionaries in this series as well, covering basic and advanced grammar.  I’m hoping to one day own the set though the price (roughly $40 a volume, or $120 for the set) will make it a piecemeal process.

The one complaint I have about the book is that the entries are in English alphabetical order, not Japanese あいうえお (a i u e o) order.  My brain jumps through a couple of hoops to figure out where a Japanese word ought to be.  That’s the only downside I’ve found so the book gets 4.5 stars.

Tomorrow:  more of the same.  Wish me luck!

You would never know it by looking at this blog but I’m a knitter.  Other things have been hoarding my attention since I moved to Japan but I recently got back into the handicraft groove.  Here are some recent finished objects:

Pacific Stripes [ravelry].

With these socks I realized I can never knit regular fingering yarn on size 1 needles again.  My gauge is just too loose.  I think these are going to fall apart rather quickly due to the flimsy fabric but that won’t stop me from enjoying them.

Work Socks [ravelry].

I was planning on wearing my crazy colored hand-knit socks to school every day and then I realized… with loafers everyone can see my socks, including normal people on the street who give me weird enough looks now.  Doh.  More plain, boring, dark socks are in order.  I’m trying to get two pairs of anklets out of this skein of Trekking Pro Natura.  The second pair will be done two at a time, toe up with a short row heel.  I’m curious how far up the leg I’ll be able to get before the yarn runs out.

I’ve seen my knitting time decrease a bunch since I came to Japan.  My morning commute is usually on a packed train so pulling out knitting needles is impossible.  I eat lunch with the kids so there’s half an hour gone.  Off-time in the staff room is spent planning lessons, not to mention that knitting there would be plain rude.  Home knitting it is.  Things may go at a slower pace but I’m still hoping to finish at least one pair of socks a month.  I also have a couple of shawls begging for attention as well as a scarf I forgot about until just now.  As long as I’m having fun, right?