I'm Home!

Okay, well, I've been home for a few days. We flew home last Thursday. But I honestly don't remember jet lag being this... unpleasant. Or of this long duration. I spent the better part of the weekend napping and whining.

I feel mostly back to normal now. Mostly.

We had such a fantastic time in Japan. We spent the majority of the 2 weeks in Tokyo, but took an overnight trip to Nikko, a state park 2 hours from Tokyo in the mountains. We wandered around, shopped, ate WAY too much delicious food -- it was the perfect honeymoon, even though it was belated almost a year!

A couple of Fridays ago, Tobin and I split up to have our own respective "nerd" day. He went to the electronics district, Akihabara, to look at video games and arcades and cell phones and wires the beeping, blinking things. I went to Kamata, only 15 minutes away from where we were staying, and spent the day at Yuzawaya, the craft department store. How could I possibly spend a whole day in one store? Well, it's easy when the store has ELEVEN BUILDINGS scattered throughout the neighborhood.

Here's a view of the street housing buildings 10 and 11:

Each floor of each building specializes in a different craft. I spent the most time in building 6:

There's one whole floor with leatherworking tools and materials, and purse-making supplies, including this whole wall of bag handles in any color you could want:

The same floor had shelves and shelves of colored glass for stained glass and mosaics:

My favorite floor (besides the yarn floor, of course) was the sewing and quilting floor. They had the most amazing kits! Kits for EVERYTHING. I think this is what impressed me the most. This shop sold raw materials for every single craft you could ever want to do, but then also made it easy to try new things. You could walk in thinking, "I want to be creative today, but I don't know what to try." And walk out with an adorable measuring tape kit:

Functional, and cute! And you'd learn to sew! Or you could try felt crafts and make a cute little felt puppy keychain:

Less functional, but come on -- you'd have an adorable pal to carry around. :) I spent a lot of time perusing the aisles and aisles of quilt squares. They had quarter yards in little drawers. This is only one of about 8 aisles:

Each square was between $1.50 and $3, depending on the fabric. I spent a bundle, believe you me, but got the sweetest fabrics. I love Japanese fabrics so much. The designs are cute, often modern -- not as fuddy duddy as so many you can find here. I'm going to make drawstring project pouches and tool pouches with them -- I promise I'll show you! I'm getting to work today!

And then, of course, there was the YARN. An entire floor of yarn, as far as the eye can see. There was a fantastic display of basic worsted weight wool:

There were tweeds of every description, cottons, organics, lots of novelty yarns:

I honestly didn't think I'd buy that much yarn. I don't need any... I have a riDONKULOUS stash of yarn already. I wandered for like 2 hours and looked for some gifts for my knitting friends (found some cuties!) and all of a sudden I had a huge pile of yarn in my basket!

Here's a crappy, jetlagged picture of what I bought:

I got about 700 yards of this silvery-grey linen/cotton blend. It's about a dk weight, and I'm thinking a simple cropped cardigan. Maybe a whisper cardy, but maybe Liesl, by Ysolda (Ravelry). And I got 5 balls each of this cute, cute cotton tweed! The pink and green you see in the photo, on the left. This is going to be two cardigans, one for each of my nieces Lily and New-Baby-McBroom, due in June. I also bought a skein of Noro Kureyon Sock, because it was on sale for $9! What a steal. I couldn't let it go, despite the mixed reviews and the fact that I have no need for more sock yarn.

Yuzawaya is amazing. If you're ever in Tokyo, GO THERE. It's totally inspiring and so fun to wander around in. Kamata is on the JR Kehin-Tohoku line. It's a pretty bustling area, right around the station. There's a mall with a Muji store (LOVE THEM!) and plenty of tasty food to eat (we went to a restaurant on another day that specializes in Omu-rice --tasty!). It's easy to spend a whole day!

Ravi's Argyles

So, Wool Candy went down a couple of weeks ago. I might have mentioned it in passing, but it was really just too painful to think about so I haven't mentioned it since. I think I'm ready to talk about it now.

It was all Dreamhost's fault. No, it really was. I've taken down the blog with my own stupidity before (or, I might call it spunk or chutzpah, since it was with the thought that I'm smart enough to figure out how to update my own Wordpress, dang it. I wasn't.), but this time? No, it was all Dreamhost. Apparently, they're as dumb as I am when it comes to moving domains to new servers. Only, I only have to worry about taking down my own blog -- not hundreds or thousands of other blogs, too.

Dreamhost sent Tobin an email saying they'd moved all of our domains from one server to a nice, shiny new server, and that we should check to make sure everything was okay. Just a formality, you understand. Everything should be fine, all routine, blah blah blah. HO no. Tobin goes to coziahr.com, I go to woolcandy.com, and we see nothing. Just blank index pages.

In the immortal words of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, "Oh good".

24 hours and several panicked emails later (Dreamhost notoriously has no support phone number. I suppose they just don't want to hear it from hundreds and thousands of disgruntled customers. They know how much they suck, but they're CHEAP), and woolcandy, coziahr.com, icannhascheezburger.com and all of our other domains are still down with no explanation.

So, in steps our friend Ravi. Ravi does some webhosting for some of his friends. He offered to host woolcandy.

I said, "You are my hero. I owe you some handknit socks."

And he said, "No problem. Happy to help. And I like socks."

So, he and Tobin spent the better part of the day getting the candy back up and running, and after ironing out a few hiccups, she's all better! AND Ravi totally has a support phone number. And support AIM. And he can smoke some really damn tasty ribs. Really, the man knows his meat. Hush. Get your mind out of the gutter.

So, I'm knitting Ravi some Ravi-gyles. He's so an argyle guy. I dyed up some Green Apple, Blood Orange, and Brulee Marzipan Merino, and got to work on these seamless Argyle socks. (Ravelry)

I love argyles. Love. Them. I think they're so fun, and have endless potential for color combinations and playful additions (like the Arrrgyles chart for the hipster pirate in your life), good for boys and girls, men and women and everyone in between. The thing is? I hate intarsia. With ever last knitting fiber of my being. I hate the little bobbins and fiddliness and the many tangling strands. Hate.

So I just about swooned when I stumbled upon this short-row formula for seamless argyles. You knit each diamond, one at a time, in order, starting from the top and working your way down the foot. It's almost like entrelac, as you build the tube from square to square. It's genius! And no intarsia!

There are still quite a few ends left to weave in.

But it helps that I only have to work with one color at a time, instead of keeping track of a chart and twisting two colors together across the row at the right time. These are turning out great, and I'm already planning my next pair, for Tobin, since I stalled on his Arrrgyles almost as soon as I started them on our honeymoon last June. Oops. Stupid bobbins.

The Shawl that Knit Itself

Yesterday for Valentine's Day, Tobin and I spent the day relaxing and doing our favorite things: He sat on the couch playing video games, and I sat on the couch watching him play video games and knitting. We've both been so busy lately that we haven't taken the time out to just sit back and relax, so it was a much needed break for both of us.

I don't much like playing video games (it takes far too much time away from my knitting and spinning) but I like to watch Tobin play. It's like watching a movie, which is a perfect occupation to go with knitting.

Friday night, my Sakura Laminaria looked like this:



It was  just a center-pull ball of potential shawl-ness.

By last night, it looked like this:



This is knitting itself. Really, I don't think I'm doing anything at all, just moving my hands and watching Tobin play Fear 2 (which is really, really scary, by the way)  and then I look down and it's a shawl.




I love how it's turning out. The BonBon is simultaneously soft and squishy and silky. The colors came out exactly as I wanted them too. And I love, love, love how the star pattern is reminiscent of tiny little cherry blossoms.





I'm already through 3 repeats of the Star Chart, the Transition Chart and halfway through the second repeat of the Blossom Chart.

I'm going rock-climbing today, which is my second favorite thing to do after all of my fiber-related hobbies, but I gotta tell you: It's really rough leaving this shawl at home. It's raining and blustering and weathering outside (we don't get much of that out here in sunny C-A) and it's making me want to snuggle up with my cats and my shawl and watch her grow.



Though, since she's apparently knitting herself, maybe when I get back from climbing today she'll be done.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

I've been so busy lately knitting:



and dyeing:



and spinning:



that I haven't stopped long enough to blog about everything I've been working on!

I've made a promise to myself, though, that I'm going to blog every single day, and what better day to start than a Monday?