Warm Weather On the Way!

Hey, um, I think I’ve managed to break comments on my blog. Normally I’d just assume no one was commenting, but I’ve completely stopped getting spam comments as well, so I’m pretty sure I’ve broken them. (Although, I have no idea how.) So, if anyone has a moment today to try and comment, I’d really appreciate it - and we’ll see if we can get things working again.

Edit: I think I’ve fixed it! Somehow the letter ‘o’ got on my comment blacklist, which means that if you posted a comment with an O in it it would have been incinerated at once. Sigh.

Anyway, I haven’t crocheted much this last month. I mean, I’ve crocheted some -

and that’s good progress, too. That poor guy’s been nothing but a neck since October. Still, he’s far from finished, and I can lay a large part of the blame on my newer time and money suck hobby, jewelry making. This month the sun came out…the snow melted…temperatures rose…and the Arts and Crafts store got a whole shipment of summery beads and materials. Cowrie shells, coconut beads, mother-of-pearl, abalone, tiger shells, hemp, and far, far more - and I was not immune to their lazy tropical call.

Enough to bedeck a whole beach party, I know, but they’re just so cheerful! After all, why not? It’s WARM! It’s SUNNY! It’s SPRING! It’s….

Snowing? Now that is not even right.

Driving in Japan (part 2)

Before I get into today’s post I would just like to mention that it started snowing from a sunny blue sky yesterday, and proceeded to dump two inches on us. So. Not. Fair. But where were we? Oh, yes. The police.

As you can see, even though it’s a bit different, it’s easily recognizable as a patrol car. Here’s another shot for a better view:

Pretty! Of course, there are a few differences. First of all, I’ve seen them slap that paint job on any vehicle they please and use it for patrol. Once I saw a black-and-white minivan. Another time it was a black-and-white compact car. It’s kind of funny, actually. Really, the most important thing to know about the patrols here involves the lights - if the car’s lights are off, the cop is off-duty and won’t do a darn thing about it even if you go speeding by at double the speed limit. (Although really, it’s not difficult to double a 30 klick limit.) If the car is on-duty they’ll drive around with their lights on (no siren) and that’s when you need to watch it. Greg likes to say that only idiots get speeding tickets around here, because that means you were speeding right next to a police car with its lights flashing. Who does that? Really, the traffic laws here are quite reasonable. For instance, it’s illegal to drive unbuckled.

Here’s your friendly neighborhood…swan…man? reminding you to BUCKLE UP! You can just see the buckle beginning to come down from the upper left corner of the sign. Remember, guys: Swanman wants you to drive safely.

It’s also  illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving. However, they know that sometimes you’ve just got to take that call, so there is a place prepared!

That’s right. They’ve created regular pull-offs on the side of the road where you can pause your car, make a call, and pull right back onto the road. (If you look, you can see that the first four kana under the little car say “moshi moshi,” which is the standard phone greeting in Japan! “Mo” is the little fishhook and equal sign, and “shi” is the plain fishhook.) Of course, they only have these on the highways - probably to stop people from just flipping on their hazard lights and stopping on the side of the road! Don’t laugh. That’s standard here. If you want to stop somewhere, all you have to do is park your car (as far to the side of the lane as you can) and flip on your hazard lights. Or, if your car is small enough, pull it up onto the sidewalk. This is most commonly seen on small streets with low traffic, but drivers have no problem navigating around cars sticking out into the street wherever they appear.

I’m not sure that I’m conveying the insanity of this very well. Seriously, people will just stop, flip on their lights, and wander into a store to pick up a few things while their car is out on the street. It’s nuts, and it’s made worse by streets that look like this:

Believe it or not, this is a full-fledged bi-directional two-lane road. The general rule of thumb is that roads can take one more car than you think they can. If a road looks like you could barely squeeze two cars down it, then it’s for two lanes of traffic and one lane of parking. If it looks like it can barely accomodate one miniature car (like above), then it’s two-lane, and if it looks like it couldn’t take anything wider than a bicycle, then it’s a one-lane road. Here’s another shining example:

As you can see, this looks like you could squeeze two cars down it, which means that this road is one that you could expect to see cars parked on. You know. If it wasn’t deserted.

To be fair, the only reason that these roads are so narrow is because they are old roads. When they build new roads, they are  very wide and very nice, with wide sidewalks and high curbs and crosswalks all over. It’s a great symbol of the Japan we find ourselves in - somewhere between cramped and crumbling side streets and sleek new asphalt, where you’ll see an old woman in a kimono walk across the street right in front of a luxury car decked out with neon lights and LEDs. It’s a really interesting experience that we get to have.

Next time: They’re just so nice!

Random FO Driveby Post

So, wisdom teeth out! Ouch. I’m feeling much better now, and maybe I’ll actually start posting again. (Driving in Japan part 2 is still hanging out around here somewhere…) Somehow I knit something while I was spaced out on painkillers, though, and I thought I’d share a picture!

Pretty cute for drugged knitting, right? A friend of mine is having a baby girl but doesn’t want to go in for ruffles and flowers, and I thought she’d like it. (She did, actually, I gave it to her tonight and she thought it was awesome.) If you want to make your own the pattern is free over at Coffeebra. I used size 6 dpns and Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Oxford Grey, Dk Rose Heather, and Rose Heather. It was fast and fairly easy, but if I make it again I won’t be joining the brim as directed. In the pattern you’re supposed to knit the ribbing, then fold it up and knit together around to form a casing, inserting the brim as you go, so that your brim is all done once you get to the stockinette. Clever, right? Well, yeah - but knitting the cast on edge and the live stitches together was a pain, even worse where the brim was, and it made it hard to knit the stockinette above the brim for abour five rows, as well. I think I’ll stick to sewing up the brim at the end.

Surprise! New Patterns!

Well, as you may have guessed, I got the pattern for the snowboarding hat written up very quickly.

Now you can knit your very own Appi Slopes hat (creatively named after the place where my husband bruised a rib on Monday, hahaha).We’re not done yet, though! That doesn’t count as one of the six in production I mentioned a few posts back. These next patterns do - yesterday the spring issue of Crochet Uncut was released! I have two patterns in this issue that I’ve been just waiting to show off since January. First is a lovely hat:

which I’ve decided to call Meredith.  You can’t see all of the hat in this picture, but when I have it I like to show a different picture than you’ll see in the pattern for the blog reveal. Go check it out!

Last but not least for today, I have puppets. (I love puppets.)

They’re Spring Finger Puppets, and they’re just begging to go into an Easter basket. They’re really, really quick to make, use teeny, tiny scraps of yarn, and the kids love them. All three fit into the little bag styled after an Easter egg, and in all I just think it’s an adorable set.

In other news, I’m getting my wisdom teeth extracted tomorrow, so I don’t expect to post for a few days. Wish me luck.

Possibly the Best Hat Ever

So, Greg heads back to work this week. Before his first day, though, he was taking a snowboarding trip with a bunch of his friends. Last week he mentioned that he was thinking of getting a hat like he’d seen one of his buddies with - a knit black cap with a brim.

“You know, I could make a hat like that,” I told him.

“You could make one like that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You could make it look good?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You could make it by Monday?” he asked.

“Ye - oh, crud,” I said.

Having knit myself into a corner, so to speak,  I accepted the challenge. We looked at hats online to establish what, exactly, he was looking for.

“You want ribbing? Cables? Or just plain knitting?” I asked.

“Just plain knitting is good.”

“You know, I can do cables, it’s okay.”

“No, plain is fine.”

“What color?”

“Black, of course.”

“Okay, then. Yeah, I don’t have any black yarn that would work for that. Last time I checked, they don’t at the Arts and Crafts Store, either. But the girl who works there told me how to get to the yarn store in the next town over…”

(That’s actually why we took the trip that resulted in the photos for the ‘Driving in Japan’ series. We found the yarn store…eventually…and it was nice. It was more of a craft store, to be honest, but they had wool - which can’t be bought at the craft store on base for love or money - and they had black. Next time I go back I’ll take pictures inside the store, because it’s definitely worth a blog post all it’s own.)

So if you think you’re going to find Lion Brand or Patons or Cascade out on the town in rural Japan, you are apparently in for a shock. After careful consideration, I emerged with (among other things) this:

Three balls of Wister Mama-amu, a very nice 60/40 Wool/Acrylic blend in what appears to be DK (or possibly Sport, my WPI-detecting skills are a bit weak) weight. So, with three days to snowboarding, it was game on. There’s not much to tell about the knitting (except for the fact that I knit it on size 3s that were a bit too short  for the project…), but by late, late Sunday night I had created this:

and I love it. I made the brim with plastic canvas wrapped in duct tape, and it is the most excellent brim I have ever made. Seriously. Try it the next time you need to make one. You won’t regret it. I told Greg that if he decides he’s not going to wear this for whatever reason, he shouldn’t expect it to sit around for him. Even though the 1 x 1 ribbing was death on my hands, I might make one for myself just because it’s SUCH an awesome hat.

Expect to see this again.