The other day I was thinking to myself that knitting from english instructions is just too easy - how can I make it harder? Enter Let's Knit 12 and Fair Isle, etc. - my very first Japanese Knitting Books. When I bought these, I thought it should be no problem for someone who took two years of Japanese in college and spent a semester in Japan, right? Then I remembered that Japanese consists of over 40,000 (that's forty thousand) characters - of which "only" 2000 are required for everyday use. Hmmmm...
Fear not, though! The real reason I bought these books - other than to impress everyone with my knowledge of Japanese - was to see the Japanese method of charted knitting. The beauty of Japanese knitting patterns is that you don't actually need to know Japanese (other than a few key characters) because the patterns are completely charted. Amazing!! I feel I really could knit something from this book. Plus, the patterns are simply gorgeous - just check out the cover of the Fair Isle book.
Now I can combine my love of all things complicated with my love of knitting, and maybe even knit something!! Also - if you are interested in buying your own Japanese knitting books, the website I link to above has great (fast!) service and reasonable shipping.
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5 comments:
And we ARE doing show and tell tomorrow night, are we not?!?!?
Yes, my Japanese books will be accompanying me to the knit group!
Where did you study in Japan? In college, I had many Japanese friends-some have returned to their home cities, but some have stayed here as well. I love the Japanese culture! Just one more thing we have in common...
I studied at Senshu University in Tokyo. It was a program geared towards English speakers, so while I attended over 2(!) hours of Japanese class a day, the other lectures were in English.
I decided to click on your knitting blog to see what you are up to knitting wise and thought the Japanese entry was funny. Blogger is showing up in Japanese right now, so I am looking at many Japanese characters that I don't understand. I could use your Japanese knowledge right now. I have learned chotto, chotto...but I do think the kanji are beautiful and intriguing. I feel like I have so much to learn and I get overwhelmed. As to knitting (is that familiar?), I brought a few knitting needles with me, but I have not really knitted anything since before Jonas was born. I was just looking at yarn the other day at the hyaku en shop and couldn't decide which colors to buy and wasn't sure about the quality of the yarn since it was so cheap...we are in northern part of Honshu and will probably need extra scarves, so I should get knitting...
you guys sound busy these days. i hope your new job is going well.
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