Yarn and Piles of Stuff

Yarn! Delicious, silky soft wool!
This will shortly become the October Baby Blanket, for Brenda's firstborn, due in (come on now, you can guess this one). She hits five months very soon, and in two weeks she's going to find out the baby's gender, as long as the bouncing fetus cooperates for the camera. Either way, this color will go nicely with even the most gender-specific colors and clothes. And since the winters here in Yats are cold and the heating/insulation non-existent, baby will be happy with a wool blanket. I haven't discussed yet how much of a pain in the ass this is going to be to wash with Brenda yet, though. I'm saving that until it's way too late.So as soon as I got the yarn I had to try it out. The pattern calls for size 9s, and the only ones I have are the standard scarf-knitting length, which will clearly not work for a blanket. I cast on some anyway, because if I had to go buy new needles I wanted to be sure that 9 is really the size I want. I was a bit nervous that this yarn was a little too thin for that size, but actually I rather like the way it looks. And it seems to be a quick knit, which will certainly save my skin in the next two months.

Speaking of how much time I have left, I bought my ticket home! SQUEAL! I leave Japan for good on July 29th, stop over in Seattle long enough to make my sister and her husband drive all the way out to the airport to have coffee with me, before moving on to Orlando by way of Detroit, for some reason. Though I leave Tokyo at four in the afternoon on the 29th, I arrive in Seattle at 9:15 am on the 29th, so I gain a whole day - which I then immediately waste almost entirely by flying to Detroit, sitting there for over an hour, and then landing in Orlando at midnight of the same day. So in a way, it's like it only takes seven and a half hours to get to Orlando - by the calendar. In reality, it takes me twenty-three hours, and will seem interminable.

Anyway, I'm going home. Awesome. And once I get there - well, things are going up and down, and I am alternately seriously depressed/worried about finances and starting over, and incredibly elated/thrilled about everything else.

Someone was telling me (I forget who now, so if it was you, bear with me) that this isn't starting over, it's just moving on. This person should definitely be made to be in charge of the packing, throwing stuff away, and then re-buying, re-locating, and re-acquainting me with America, as well as making all my new friends for me. You should see the giant pile of STUFF I've made in the corner that will need to be dealt with. Hang on, actually -And that, my friends, is not even all of what I have to deal with before July. Bleah.

Well, anyway. The Prepster Librarian is coming along swimmingly, even if I am heartily sick of 1x1 ribbing. I've tried it on and realized I will need to make the 1x1 ribbing longer than I originally thought to make it fit the way I want, but that's okay. It is pretty and it will be nice and warm when it's finished.

In other news, Star Trek is coming to Yatsushiro! Yea! And that's what I'm doing next weekend.

Baby Blanket Blocking

Hagadaga! All right!The Leaf Blanket knitting is done. That bad boy is blocking in my apartment as we speak (type/read/whatever).

These pictures are terrible, and for that I am sorry. It's been raining for the past two days here, making picture lighting non-existent, and the only surface on which I could block this thing is white (and yes, it is a futon). So you can't see it well, but just use your imagination, that's what it's for. Alternately, wait until it's finished-finished, and you'll get a better picture (hopefully).Why yes, yes, I did pin the hell out of it. I'm nervous how it will turn out once I un-pin it and start the crochet border, because the yarn is mostly acrylic and acrylic doesn't block well, right? Making it not an ideal choice for lace projects. But there is wool in the yarn, and when I got it wet to block it there was a reassuringly wet-wool smell, so maybe that will help. Who knows?Now I have to figure out how to make a nice border. I had planned to do it in the same yellow yarn I used for the cabled baby blankets last year, but when I actually held up that yarn to this blanket, it was clear that would never do. Again, bad lighting = no picture, but since the blanket yarn is a cream in the slightly yellow range (you can't tell here, but I promise it's true), it looked atrocious with the rich butter yellow (sort of neon under florescent light) of the Fantasy yarn. A word popped in to my head immediately upon seeing it, and that was poisonous. Very apt.

I do have a skein of the Fantasy in pink, which I could do since the kid is a girl, but I detest that kind of gender-based color coding. The blanket took less yarn than I thought, and I have one skein of the Hamanaka left over. But is that enough? Am I going to get a tiny bit of border, run out, and then be forced to re-do or find my way back to Kumamoto to buy more? Is the border even going to work with my pathetic crochet skills? Will it take six years and inhuman patience? Will I finish and send it this month? Will Sheila and baby like it? What's for lunch today? What do you think birds think about when they fly? Are we alone in the universe?

The answers to these, and many others, probably not on this blog.

Edited for poor diction.

I Bought Yarn! Yippee!

I bought the yarn for the Prepster! Yea!Terribly excited. Isn't grey and pink a nice combo? I found this yarn at Tokai Craft Heart, the neat little craft shop inside the Youme Town. It's Wister Araeru Merino 100, an obviously wool yarn that's worsted weight - I think (Ravelry agrees). That's the same as what the pattern calls for, and just to be sure I took some bits of yarn to the store with me, including the clearly too thin Diaepoca.
There's only 78 meters to the skein, so I bought seven of the main color and three of the contrast color. I also bought the other needle I needed - Japan size 6, which is 3.9 mm. The pattern calls for a US size 5, which is 3.75 mm, and US size 7, 4.5 mm. The Japan size 8 is in fact 4.5 mm, but I was concerned about the difference in the Jpn 6 vs. US 5, so I also bought a Jpn 9, which is 4.8 mm (in case you're wondering, a Jpn 7 is 4.2 mm). In any case, I now have a range of needle size choices, which is good because I am finally concerned about gauge. I knit tightly, and I'm going to convert this pattern to a circular one piece rather than two pieces on straight needles, so I think I'll need choices. I have a feeling I'll be starting several times.Of course, I won't be starting at all any time soon, because there is still the leaf blanket to get through, and I am way behind, and for all I know, Sheila is having the baby right now. So today is for laundry and knitting. Perhaps if I am very good, I will allow myself to swatch tonight. But only if I am very, very good.

3/2 Edited for links.

Yarn Travails

So, I went yarn shopping over the weekend.

I spent some time on Friday figuring out possible yarns for the Prepster and the baby blanket that I thought I might be able to find at the craft store I like in Kumamoto city. Thanks to Ravelry, I could scope out some Japanese yarn brands and look at weights in English. I smartly changed the blanket pattern I intended to do, after seeing a note somebody wrote on my #1 choice saying "What was I thinking? This is taking forever." Bad sign when Sheila's due in three weeks. I changed it to the Lace Panel blanket, which called for a size 7 needle, same as the Prepster.

I also tried to work out what needle size I would need if I was going to do the vest in the round - I took the gauge, worked out how many inches each piece would be according to that, and converted the inches to centimeters. 18 stitches to four inches, 80 stitches for the back piece, 80 divided by 18 (4.44), multiply by four (17.78) for the inches, then convert to centimeters (45 cm). Perfect, right? So I thought I'd better go small, and cram more stitches on a smaller needle, than stretch out on a bigger. Something about that process seemed wrong, but I couldn't think what.

About this time was when I first began to clue in that US needle size numbers and Japanese needle size numbers do not match up. I was shocked to discover this, as I had gone along blithely assuming they were the same this whole time, buying and using Japanese needles for US patterns calling for US needle sizes. It hasn't been a problem, really, but still! I felt betrayed. And stupid. I realized I needed Japan sizes 6 and 8 needles, since the pattern calls for US sizes 5 and 7.

Not one to let a little thing like "budget" or "being able to eat for the next three weeks" stop me, I decided to get yarn for the vest and the blanket. I poked around and found Diaepoca. The Diaepoca is Gorgeous (with a capital G, right) and I've been lusting after it since I first went in to that store - I originally thought to do it for the Origami Cardi. They have a huge selection of beautiful colors in this yarn at that store, including an eye-popping dark pink that was perfect for the color scheme in my head. There's also a nice grey. Color cards here (click on Diaepoca, then color sample - mine is 319). The label said it was good for sizes 7-8 needles, and so while it seemed pretty thin, I figured it would work.

Then I looked for the baby yarn, and settled on the Wanpaku Denis, an acrylic wool blend. I realized I had written down the yardage needed but not the meters, and the labels here show meters. Whoops. I decided I would need six skeins for the blanket, to be on the safe side, plus an extra skein for the booties. Seven skeins.


Now, what about the vest? I decided to get the pink yarn now, and come back for the grey later - I couldn't afford all of it. I bought three beautiful, luscious balls of this beautiful, luscious pink. I almost forgot, but quickly went back for the needles - 40 cm Japan sizes 6 and 8. They looked short, but I'd worked it out, so I grabbed them, and went to the register.

Way too much money later, I had oodles of yarn and two new needles, and I was ready to start the blanket and was only six skeins of the main color away from starting the vest! Yippee!

When I got home, it all started to crumble.

First, I pulled out the needles so I could start the baby blanket. I took the size 8, same as the US 7, out of the package. 40 cm. It was tiny. It was incredibly short. It was the same size as the needle I have for a hat. I put it against my waist, trying to imagine knitting a top on it. Fail.

As I wigged out for a moment, I mentally reviewed my calculations and came up with the problem: I calculated for the back piece, forgetting to double it. This despite the whole point being to knit both pieces at once without having to seam. Fail.

Could I start the blanket then? 166 stitches on a 40 cm circular? Fail.

Then, the next morning I did a small swatch of the Diaepoca, since it was just so pretty I couldn't resist. I measured it. 18 stitches over 4 inches? Hah. Try 20 stitches over 3 inches. Fail.

The yarn is too thin. Way too thin. Ravelry says it can be used US sizes 6-8, and it is a DK. Is it me? Probably, but since I'll be knitting the vest, that's the important part. Can I get gauge with this yarn and have it look right? No. Fail.

Now I still need the needles, and the yarn. Fail.

But yesterday I bought a 60 cm size 8 so I can start the blanket, which I did (5 rows, which took ages - not a good sign), and I think that the Tokai Heart store at Youme Town has an adequate yarn for the Prepster, for when I get paid next. And now I have three balls of pink to use for something else.

Win.

Fetching Just Will Not Die.

I started a new project. Yea! After the blanket and the catnip balls were finally finished (but still not mailed - knit gift failure!), I was absolutely itching to start something else, and so I did what anybody does when they're about to start a new project: I stood in the middle of my apartment quivering in indecision two minutes before I needed to leave the house.

Tuesday was a very long and crappy day for me, so Tuesday night I was delighted to go for coffee with the girls. Coffee is our almost weekly trip to Starbucks to sit and gossip/bitch and moan, and since both Katie and Brenda have had me show them how to knit (have I told you about that? I think so...), I feel like this is my public knitting time. Therefore, Tuesday night right before I was to leave for coffee, I needed a project. Projects I need/want to start right now: Brenda's gloves, baby blanket for Sheila's kid, Prepster vest, wristbands, Brenda's headband, Emily's gloves. Do you see why my brain started to melt a bit under the pressure? Of course, I didn't actually have the yarn for any of that, but I tossed some of the leftover Vittoria in a bag, thinking I might do Brenda's gloves in that. By the time we got to Jusco I had nixed that idea, though - acrylic Fetching? I think not.

Luckily, Jusco is also the location of Pandora House, the new craft store that is inexpensive and carries the yarn I used to make Aashima's gloves, which turned out lovely. And who really needs even that much of an excuse to go yarn shopping? Brenda picked out this nice rusty red color, and I've got something fun and brainless to work on. Started it during coffee and continued last night during the first disc of Heroes (new addiction - thank you for your 4 for ¥1000 deal, Tsutaya!). I tried the cables without a cable needle for the first time, thanks to the article that subliminalrabbit cited in her blog. And hey, thanks for the comment! I feel special.

In other news, I bought the pattern for the Prepster Vest. I'm pretty excited about it, but a bit nervous as well. For one thing, I don't really like the way the pattern is written - I've read it through twice and there are bits that don't make a lot of sense to me. I think a chart would be better, honestly. And it's knit in two pieces, which I really don't like. I really hate seaming. I'm going to try to figure out how to do it in the round, because that would make me much happier - seaming = hibernation. Then there's the bit at the bottom of the pattern where it says: This Pattern Is Designed for SWTC Yarn Only.

Well, dang. Does that mean if I do it with something else they'll sue me or something? I mean, I was totally willing to buy the pattern for $3 online, but buying a yarn I've never felt (at $10.50/skein) and paying for it to be shipped internationally is just a bit of a stretch for me, when there are plenty of great yarns here. That little issue does not take much convincing for me, but what does trouble me is the issue of what yarn to use instead. See, I have this feeling that the first time around doing this pattern is going to turn out a bit off, because let's face it, all of my projects kinda turn out that way the first time around. But I haven't found anything at my cheap yarn sources that's really grabbed me, and I don't think I want to do it in ¥100 store acrylic, because ... well, because I don't. All that work for acrylic? Scratchy, inflexible? But then, if I use the yarn I really want to use, which is the love of my life in Japan, Exceed Wool, this is going to be a mighty pricey vest, especially if the first try doesn't turn out so hot.

So I'm stumped. But I need to go into the city soon anyway for some glasses, so I guess I'll just check out what they've got at that store in Shimatori, and see whether buying that yarn will allow me to eat for the rest of the month.

Also, check out what I found when I cut open an apple the other night. What the hell, man?

Updates in Knitting and My Bladder

You know, I spend waaaaaaay too much time on the internet. Mostly when I am at junior high, but also in general.

I guess I should have left the blog entry I did yesterday until today, because I've basically had nothing to do. Oh, there's still plenty I could and probably should be doing, but that's not what I've been doing. Instead, I've been surfing the net, checking on all the knitting blogs I discovered from reading the Yarn Harlot's post the other day where she was talking about the Noro Striped Scarf. I clicked on all those people she listed as having done it and then bookmarked those pages to check out later, which was today. And then I ended up adding most of them to my following list. My following list is now ridiculous. I mean, I didn't add all of them - bad grammar or writing immediately got the boot, and ones that looked to be too much about random stuff and not enough about knitting didn't get added here, although I may still check up on a few because I also read a few blogs that are actually about something other than knitting (mostly belonging to friends) - but all in all I added approximately one metric ton of blogs to my reading list.

On the one hand, this is fine, because not everyone updates every day, and I do have a fair amount of free time, especially when I am at junior high and have no classes, such as today. It's interesting to read the personal internet diaries of strangers, if creepy from a certain perspective. It gives me more blogs to comment on, so that eventually, someone might actually read this blog. Not that I'm ready for this blog to be read by hordes of strangers just yet, but one or two might be nice. Also, the huge number of hours I've spent goofing off on the internet in the past year has improved my typing, gotten me familiar with a number of aspects of this whole Web 2.0 thing of which I previously knew nothing about, and killed loads of time I would have otherwise spent doing nothing.

On the other hand, this internet obsession is bizarre and destructive. Starting next August, I will have to rejoin the real world. No more spending hours on end reading about other people's knitting projects, looking at pictures and playing word games on Facebook, obsessively adding yarns to my Ravelry stash, reading article after article on Cracked, obsessively listing books and comparing libraries on Library Thing, or getting caught up on four years worth of web comics. I am melting my brain with all of this useless stuff.

On the last hand, at the same time as I won't be doing all of that, I won't be listening to other people talking about me in a foreign language right in front of me. I keep hearing my name amidst a bunch of Japanese words I don't understand off to my left. It's driving me crazy.

Right, so, I'm adding the box that lists my other web obsessions, in case you get as bored as I do (if you're reading this, you really must do).

Last night I worked on the Nebraska Hat some more, but started getting bored already. This might have something to do with the fact that it was so cold in my apartment that my fingers hurt, and knitting was difficult. I decided to finally cast on for the Diamond and Smocked Blanket for Reidy, to give myself a bit of a break. After going to two more yarn stores this weekend and not finding anything that seemed like a better choice than the yarn I'd already bought, I figured it was time to plunge on in. I looked at the pattern and prepared to cast on to the foot-long size 6 needles I used for the Christmas Head Thing, then took a closer look at the pattern and realized that this blanket was supposed to be three feet wide. Um, whoops. So...out came the 24" size 6 circular. Not great, but better. So I cast on the 137 stitches the pattern calls for, then thought about three feet wide. Not very wide, really, for an adult and/or three cats - Reidy has said this is for her/her cats, and since I'm matching this to her living room, I assume it will stay on the couch and possibly be a lap blanket. I just hope she realizes it's not going to be an afghan, because I do not have that in me right now.

I remembered seeing something in someone else's notes on Ravelry for this blanket where they mentioned casting on an additional number of stitches for an extra column. I looked it up and saw that purlygirly had added 38 stitches. I thought, hmm, I should add two columns. That's a total of 213 stitches, then. I looked at the remaining tail of my cast-on - no way. Then I thought, do I really want to take all of these off and then cast on another 213? Um, no. Then I hit on the brilliant idea of a swatch. Of course! That's what I'm supposed to do anyway! So I cast on 48 stitches (enough for a column and a five stitch on each side border, theoretically), and started the seed stitch.

Seed stitch, it turns out, is a pain in my ass. But I was pleasantly surprised with the acrylic and mysterious Vittoria. It's quite soft, or at least much better than the almost-as-cheap acrylic I'm using for the Nebraska Hat. So we'll see how all this turns out.

Also, while I was in the second yarn shop for the weekend, not finding anything I'd rather use for the Diamond and Smocked, I felt really guilty about having been in this yarn shop numerous times and not purchased anything. I decided I needed to buy some yarn to assuage this guilt. Yes, I agree that this was a pretty flimsy excuse to buy more yarn, since even though I am a foreigner who stands out pretty dramatically in Yatsushiro, it's unlikely that they have a log in this store to keep track of my purchase-less visits. It's Japan, though, so who knows? In any case, I bought two small skeins of fingering weight wool, black and teal, that I'm going to use for wrist-bands, possibly to cover the tattoo I'm thinking of getting sometime before I leave this country. I thought the yarns were the same, but obviously I didn't look closely enough, since the kanji are clearly different. I couldn't find either yarn on Ravelry, and even when I had my Japanese teacher translate the labels for me and I found one of the same brand and name, it has different length and weight. Should I add these to the Ravelry database? I'm not sure I have a good enough grasp of the yarns themselves to attempt it. I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, or get it wrong, or whatever vague worries I have about trying something and having it not be perfect. Maybe if the label were in English...

Dammit, now I gotta go pee again. Drinking gallons of hot green tea is a decent solution to the cold, but the frequent trips to the icebox squat toilet are a significant down side.

Abusing myself = no knitting.

Once again, a busy weekend with very little knitting. How on earth am I going to get these gifts done?

On Saturday I did actually get something done on the headband while in the car on the way to Costco. Living in backwoods Japan means that a few of what I consider the staples of Western food are missing. Cheese, for instance, and proper hot dogs or pasta sauce. One can technically buy both of those things at any old grocery store in Yatsushiro, but they taste nothing like what I think they should taste like. The cheese is that plastic-y sandwich slice stuff (but not as good), the hot dogs all taste like frozen breakfast sausages (as if nobody ever realized that meats with the same shape might have different tastes), and the pasta sauce seems to all be missing important ingredients such as garlic, basil, and oregano. Enter Costco, which is just like the Costco at home except it carries futons instead of beds, has entirely too much J-pop in the music section, and has gigantic raw prawns with their heads and legs attached in the seafood section. It has plenty of proper cheese, hot dogs, and pasta sauce, although this time around they didn't have the mega-sized Prego I bought last time, so I had to settle for something that cost more yen for less sauce, and isn't even as good. In any case, it takes about two hours to get there, and I can't drive (no car, expired int'l license), so I got a fair amount of Sheila's headband done in the car, and I only got a little teasing for it. There were a few moments when Elissa's driving gave me visions of stabbing myself through the eyeball with the needles, but it was fine.

As for the headband itself, I'm just not sure. It's a very nice pattern, and I have finally gotten the hang of it, but my tension is clearly off. I've been following the chart, and the whole thing is a somewhat complicated set of knits, purls, slips, yarn overs, k2ts, ssks, etc., all one right after the other. It makes for a cool headband, by there seems to be a vast difference between the tension of my knit stitches and my purl stitches, usually not so obvious in stockinette or regular cabling where there is enough space for things to work themselves out in between pattern changes. But this pattern has me switching things up every two or three stitches, or less, so the whole thing looks sloppy as hell. This is the first time I've ever done ssk, too, and now I finally understand it. I've seen it in patterns before without knowing what it meant, and I kept wondering how just slipping something is supposed to decrease anything. I looked it up in my trusty Knitting Answer Book, though, and a small dim lightbulb went off. Duh. But it turns out that I was still screwing things up for a while, anyway - the pattern calls for alternating a yarn over, k2t with a ssk, yarn over on every right side row, so that you get a pattern of alternating holes, like this:

X X O X
X O X X
X X O X
X O X X

I'd show you an actual picture, but I haven't taken one yet. The only reason I have the one above is that I hurriedly snapped one this morning before I came to work, knowing it was the only time I'd get a chance to blog for the next undeterminate number of days. You can see that the lighting is all wacked out, because the blue pillow is purple and the lilac headband looks pink (the sun was barely over the mountains and the light was lovely and orange and turned my colors weird).

Anyway (geez, distracted much?), this means that you have to wrap the yarn one way on one row (because you will be knitting next) and the other way on the other row (because you will be purling next). Then on the wrong side row, you're supposed to be purling the y/o stitches, except I was purling wrong on one kind of y/o, so my holes didn't appear on that row, giving me this for the first few inches of the piece:

X X O X
X X X X
X X O X
X X X X

Because I am a dolt. I figured it out and started doing it the correct way, then decided that no one would notice the messed up part because there's more of a pattern to the whole thing anyway, as you'll see when I can post proper (that word keeps coming up today) pictures. THEN I managed to do this a few inches later:

X O X X
X X O X
X X O X
X X O X
X O X X

And that I could not handle. I had finally gotten the hang of the pattern, wasn't looking at the chart, and guess what else I was doing? Watching a movie, of course. Friday night Katie and I watched Atonement (such a great movie, one of the best book adaptations I've ever seen) and Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (goofy but entertaining), and so naturally I screwed up my knitting. Spent the first part of the car knitting on ripping back to that and fixing it. Then I had left the key to the chart at home so wasn't sure how to start the decreases and had to stop, and the whole damn trip took about four hours longer than it needed to because we had to go into the city and that was clearly a mistake.

Now I'm almost done, already started the decreases and everything. I'd like to finish tonight, but I can't promise that because I will be here at school late again with the final practice for the prefectural English recitation concert (thank god! I can't take any more "Iz zat ze Maori lawnguage?" "or "My name is Janet Blaun" [should be Brown] - I love these kids dearly, but I seriously can't take it anymore), and then I should really get to the gym. Yeah, suck. But I did the 3,333 steps (why, you ask? what an excellent question. I don't know) on Sunday, an all-day, completely exhausting excursion that is the other reason I didn't knit more this weekend, and my legs are still so incredibly stiff that getting down my extremely steep stairs first thing in the morning is torture. But hey! I climbed a mountain completely via staircase. In November. When I haven't worked out in oh, forever. Dolt.

Robin's Fetching is still sitting thumbless in a corner, but I bought the yarn for Aashima's Fetching and Reidy's Diamond and Smocked blanket, I think. I'm not sure about the yarn for the blanket - I got ten skeins for ¥500, and it's 100% acrylic, not even in the Ravelry database. Clearly not high-quality stuff, but she has said that this blanket is for her cats. And she wants either bright royal blue or sour apple green (to match her living room, apparently - !!!), and this yarn fits the blue bill. Still, I think she deserves something nicer, so the jury is still out. Maybe I'll do the acrylic blanket for the kitties in a different pattern, and do the Diamond and Smocked in something nicer. Yeah, in all my spare time. Of which I used to have plenty, as I recall, before the Winter Term ALT Busywork kicked in. Sigh.

Christmas Knitting Begins

Technically, it began when I started the Stripey Zo, which is for my godson, but now it has started in earnest with the beginning of the first of several pairs of Fetching for friends.  Now, I love knitting these gloves - they are quick, easy but interesting, and pretty.  But I finished my pair a while ago and am not sure if I will ever actually wear them.  Yet here I am planning on pairs for three of my friends.  Am I thinking more of them or myself?  Well, myself, obviously.  But since I will be spending Christmas in Vietnam without a single member of my family within three thousand miles, they can suck it up and accept a thoughtful hand-crafted gift that they damn well better feel too guilty to throw out.

So I began this first pair of gloves in a Naha, Okinawa hostel.  I was waiting for my phone to charge so I could wander off, and I cast on.  Naturally, some chick about my own age wanders in and acts all astonished at me.  She politely asked what I was doing and I answered pleasantly enough.  She had kind of a creepy vibe, though, and she didn't seem to know what to say, so I volunteered that Japan had all kinds of great yarn.  She replies, "Who knew?" and I thought myself, "Duh, knitters and crocheters everywhere."  I have hereby resolved not to say "Who knew?" to people when it's clear that plenty of people knew besides myself.  Anyway, I continued knitting the next day at a Naha Starbucks, and didn't get any reaction at all.  

That brings the Christmas Knitting tallies so far to this:

WIPs: 2

FPs: 0

Knitting in Public: 

Stripey Zo - train to Kumamoto, dentist's office

Xmas Fetching - Naha hostel, Naha Starbucks

Also, while in Okinawa I did not end up seeking out any yarn shops.  I posted to the Knitters in Japan forum kinda late and never got any responses (bummer), so I didn't know where to go, and I really didn't need to be spending money on that anyway.  Nevertheless, yarn found me. While attempting to browse the Tsuboya Pottery area, but finding only one store that just had the same kinds of shiisa as everyone else, I wandered back to the shopping arcades.  Down one little street, rather far off Kokusai-dori where most of the tourists, especially foreigners, were conspicuously absent, I found the saddest little craft store you've ever seen.  There were some tables with stuff outside, and a fair number of 80's-era buttons on one wall, but most of the shop was empty.  Shelves with maybe a scrap of fabric, drawers of thread that mostly empty and covered in dust.  I mean, it was like a going-out-of-business sale on it's last day, but I feel certain that they weren't intentionally going out of business.  The only yarn they had was this Hamanaka Garcon (not in Ravelry) stuff I bought for ¥105, and some fingering weight stuff that was an odd shade of yellow.

I also went ahead and got the size 1 dpns for those bab

y booties topping my queue that I'll need to get around to before Sheila is due.  The old lady who worked there was giving me the evil eye at first (tall white woman, likely American, wandering around desolate Okinawan store and getting evil eye from old Japanese lady is not surprising), but then she seemed so happy that I bought stuff.  I'd like to think that I impressed her with my polite Japanese, but let's not get too carried away.  I'm sure she was just glad when I paid and left.

But for real, no more yarn!  How on earth will I save anything for grad school when I'm buying ¥100 yarn every time I turn around?

And the geek knitting project I am YEARNing to start is still so far away.  Sigh.