Impulse Buy

I'm supposedly saving my design money for something. Either a new couch or something camera-related, I'm not sure which. Or I'm trying to, anyway. Things keep coming up. Like this recent purchase--three crochet pattern books, in a language which I don't actually read.

A common lament of the crocheter is that all the good patterns are for knitting. Crocheting is, by nature, more bulky, and there just isn't as much good stuff out there that's really wearable. (I've made my share of bulky sweaters, which aren't getting much use here. It just doesn't get that cold.)

Recently I ran across some gorgeous crocheted sweaters on Catheryn's Crochet blog (specifically this one and this one), made from Japanese pattern books. I found the books she used on yesasia.com (and another one, too) and ordered them. They took almost a month to come, and finally got here last week. Yay! I've been having so much fun looking at them and figuring things out.

The books are in Japanese but the patterns are charted, which means they look like this:



I'd only recently become aware that there was such a thing as charted patterns, and I'd never tried to work from one. I found some good information here, and after spending some time looking at the charts I was pretty sure I could figure them out without too much trouble. Some of the assembly instructions are more complicated (and some border on bewildering), depending on the pattern.

Here are a few more of the pieces in the books:




I really like that last one. I started trying to figure out the gauge, to see what kind of thread would work with it. I managed to decipher where in the pattern it gives the hook size, and I found a conversion chart for Japanese hook sizes (why they can't just use metric I sure don't know). This pattern uses a size 4 hook, which I think should be 3.3mm (I think I'm dealing with the bamboo hook sizes here). The green sweater that Catheryn made also uses a size 4, and she said she used a 3.5mm hook, which would be US size E. (complicated, yes?) The hard part is finding a thread to get the right gauge.



I made a test motif from this pattern, which is supposed to be 16cm across. First I tried with size 10 thread (the most common size, available in lots of colors) and a B hook. That one was only 10cm. So then I tried it with a D hook and got 14cm. Closer, but not quite right. I had some size 3 thread, too, which is thicker, so today I tried that with an E hook, but it was too big. 20cm. Sigh. So I need something thicker than 10 and thinner than 3. I'll have to see if I can get ahold of some size 5 thread. (This stuff might work, though I am somewhat dubious, given the range of recommended hook sizes.)

Add to that the fact that these patterns are sized to fit petite Japanese women, which I am not, and you can see where some additional tweaking might be required. But I'm eager to jump in and get started on something--as soon as I finish this painting that's sitting on my kitchen table. I should probably get that done first.

These are the books that I got:

Spring and Summer Crochet 9
Beautiful Crochet Spring Summer 16
Simple Crochet Lace

(Yes the series is called "Let's Knit." These books are all crochet.)