"Let's Knit"

I blame it all on Fleegle's Blog. There it was that I first became aware of this delightful pattern book (in this post if you want to read a nice comparison between the new "Lace Style"book and "Elegance Knit", a book in the "Let's Knit" series).



I couldn't resist. I tracked it down, I ordered it, it arrived today. There is just one small drawback - it's in Japanese. Not such a drawback for the Japanese speakers amongst you but I bit of a hurdle for me.

The main reason I bought this book was for this pattern:



Lovely. I really like the way the edging is an integral part of the whole design, rather than being something tacked on at the end because we have to finish this thing somehow.

The pattern itself gave me a bit of pause:



Maybe I should start with something I'm a little bit more familiar with? Like a shawl:



The pattern for this does look a little bit less intimidating:



I'm sorry to say the words "Oh yes, this looks easy." came out of my mouth. As any one of you who has invoked the wrath of the knitting Goddess will know, this is a prelude to cursing, swearing, loud yelling, ripping out and possibly sending the thing flying across the room. We shall see.

I am not attempting this with no help whatsoever. There is a page to help with the Basics of Japanese Knitting and more information about how to read Japanese Charts here.

If there does happen to be a Japanese speaker reading this blog, please consider yourself on stand-by for when I come shrieking for help with half of the hair torn out of my head. Please?

Let's Knit? Let's give it a try and see how we get on.