commence creation dance

An example of a culinary creation dance.

The most beautiful children's film that I have ever seen is Hayao Miyazaki's "My Neighbor Totoro". If you haven't seen it yet, watch it, if you have children, show it to them.

A spirit, the "keeper of the forest" named Totoro playes a big role in this film. Actually, there are three of them, the big Totoro (O-Totoro), the smaller Totoro (Chu-Totoro) and the smallest Totoro (Chibi-Totoro), mirroring the humans in this film, the father, Satsuki, the older sister, and Mei, the younger sister. I think ultimately Totoro is supposed to be a Tanuki, but that's not very important.

There are many, many, many fans of Totoro and there are many knitting and crochet patterns for making one. I won't list them all here, just do a pattern search on Ravelry for "Totoro" and you'll find a multitude of things, from stuffies to mittens to dresses to sweaters. I always wanted to knit one, myself. But toy knitting is fiddly, involves sewing and is definitely time intensive. And while there are many Totoro items on my queue, while watching anime it's just easier to knit a big lace shawl (at least to me).

Then a dear friend of mine wanted to get rid of one ball of super bulky yarn. It was bright blue, with turquoise and purple variegations, very pretty. And since I'm a collector of single balls, I took it and knew I'd figure something out. I don't remember exactly how I got the idea of making a Totoro out of it, but that's what I did.

The construction wasn’t difficult: magic 8 cast-on, 14 stitches on each side, keep knitting back and forth on one side until you have a rectangular patch, then start knitting in the round, picking up 8 stitches at each side. Keep knitting in the round for a while, then decrease 4 sts per row on the sides (paired decreases). Decrease 16 stitches overall (I should have timed them better, but who cares), then knit straight up.
 

Once you’ve knit enough, do shortrow patches on the sides for the ears. Over the spot where the decreases are located, do shortrows on both sides, first with five stitches between the wrap and turns (I used Japanese shortrows, because I like them best), then with three, then bind off. Originally I wanted to felt the body, but although the yarn says handwash, it didn't felt - even with a pair of jeans. Probably not enough agitation.

For the eyes I took inspiration from my Mountain Goth slippers and knit two out of my trusty Nuvola and handfelted them. But with the stomach I ran into trouble. I did knit it out of Nuvola as well and handfelted it, but it seems that larger pieces of Nuvola will not felt as well and develop icky scratchy fuzzy knots! And a Totoro with a scratchy stomach is not good. So I knit another stomach patch out of Nuvola, this time on 2mm needles and let it be like that.

Now I had all the ingredients, but hit the roadblock of sewing it all together. Things got incredibly busy and poor Totoro stayed like this for a while. Then I bought a shirt that needed altering to bring out its full potential. So I altered it and in the process discovered that sewing maybe isn't so bad after all. I just needed to do it while either listening to music or while watching a film I already knew.

So I took up Totoro again and started sewing on the stomach patch, which came out slightly off-kilter. Never mind. Then I searched for yarn to do the markings on the stomach and took apart some of my purple super-bulky alpaca for those. I sewed on the eyes (one slightly higher than the other, but this I did correct) and used the alpaca for the nose as well. I faced the problem of the mouth, which is rather distinctive and did manage to make a mouth shape that pleased me, but he just looks better without it. Finally, I needed the right color for his whiskers - originally I wanted to use leftovers from the butterfly fingerless gloves that I made a while ago, but couldn't find any, so I found some light blue yarn, which worked just as well.

 And here he is!

 

 That's my Totoro.

 

For the stuffing, I unravelled an old project made almost entirely of plastic yarn, took an old pair of blue tights, put it inside Totoro and stuffed him, distributing the yarn to make the ideal Totoro shape. He's actually quite heavy, so he's able to stand on his own without a weight at the bottom.

Here you can see the decreases quite well - I should have made them higher, so that the illusion of arms comes out more, but on the whole, I'm very pleased with him as he is.


 



He's definitely the new star of my collection - and stands out quite a bit. When I think of all the fun places I can take him, I'm getting giddy ... and ok, maybe a little embarrassed to be telling you this. But since there are no comic or anime conventions to go to in Vienna, I must find my anime nerd outlets somehow :)

Japanophile

Sakura in Bonn - you already saw those

That's me. Not an entirely uncritical one (#not a weeabo), but there are many things I like about Japan and Japanese culture. And what do you get when you mix pink cotton yarn, summer weather and a Japanophile knitter? Something called Sakura - after the cherry blossoms that are revered and celebrated every spring in Japan.

See, Austria is currently experiencing a draught and the weather is too warm to knit with wool. 250 and Quittez are languishing. The Rose-Colored Edge shawl is waiting for a different yarn for its edging. I also have about a bazillion summer scarves, but no summer shawl. And when it gets drafty, a scarf protects the neck, but not the upper back.

What to do? A stash crawl revealed some pink cotton lace yarn (Lang yarns Marisa, to be exact). Five balls of it, a little more than 1000 meters. Great! Its color is quite reminiscent of cherry blossoms, so why not design a lace shawl that looks like cherry blossoms?

Most common depiction of sakura petals

But that's easier said than done. The first obstacle is the fact that cherry blossoms and their stylized appearance are difficult to translate into knitting.

Cherries belong to the genus of Prunus and their blossoms have five petals like almond, apricot, peach and plum blossoms. While the blossom as a whole is still symmetrical and an image of the outline can definitely be expressed in knits and purls as in this washcloth, in lace it's much harder.

To get an accurate sakura blossom in the easiest way, you'd either need to start at the center or from the outside in, that way, the five petals can be expressed accurately. But even then, the shape of the petals is tricky, since the most common depiction of the petals shows them as having a dent at the top.

Unblocked Hanami

Crochet actually manages to replicate flowers of all kinds much better than knitting (see crocheted sakura here and here), but I didn't want to crochet a shawl.

There are quite a few sakura-themed knitting patterns out there. There's the beautiful Hanami Stole by Melanie Gibbons, the first knitting pattern I ever bought. I had to wait for years before I could lay my hands on proper lace yarn for this (got it from KarlaA).

Some more patterns: Grace Mcewen designed a Sakura scarf by focusing on the twigs, rather than the blossoms. And then there's always the possibility of knitting something, making little blossoms and attaching them like in this pattern by Sara Parelhoff. But I wanted lace sakura blossoms!

 

So far, I've tried two different approaches. The first one was inspired by the Vinca shawl by Miriam Felton. Starting the shawl at the center with a sakura blossom - why not? I used the wrong needles (4mm is too large) but it turned out pretty well, I thought.

The finished shawl was supposed to look something like the incredibly crappy drawing on the left. But the blossom at the center of my shawl isn't that large.

To make the blossom larger, I'd need to figure out the increases, but all the math in my brain has been replaced by anime history. How to fill in the rest? More petals? The petals and their increase and decrease ratio are also tricky and I haven't found a pleasing solution for further petals yet. You can see that I tried, but it just didn't work out that well.

So I started a second try. Conventional shawl architecture, triangle shawl, top down, garter stitch. And I discovered that the violet pattern (at right) that I put to good use in my Tegami Bachi cowl looks quite nice when it's done in garter stitch. By virtue of the shawl construction, it becomes tilted and so more like sakura blossoms than violets (see below).

Well, *I* think they kinda look like sakura ...

Ultimately, I think a combination of these two patterns might do the trick. Starting out at the center with my sakura blossom, I could then do garter stitch or actually stockinette and use the violet pattern and random lace-overs to add random blossoms and petals.

Once the shawl is done (I'm already afraid of the decrease count for those two triangle bits), I'd add a garter stitch border on the top and a lacy border on the bottom (leaves, I think). That way I'll get the Sakura Shawl I wanted, unless the part of me that is thinking "pink ... lace ... flowers = frill overload" wins and I chuck the whole thing.

andy warhol knitwear

Last week I finally hit upon the setting which is probably most appropriate for taking pictures of knitwear. It's the "food" setting. The thing is, even though it has 12 megapixels and a billion gajillion settings and whatnot, my camera still can't pick up the nuances of colors. That lovely cowl up there (photographed in the most unimaginative manner) is a most beautiful shade of lavender mixed with blues and lilac and certainly 50% more beautiful than seen in this picture. Although this is the picture that portrays the color most accurately, the others were miserable failures.

This is a shot of my Tegami Bachi cowl made from the wonderfully soft and addictive Malabrigo Yarn Lace in "Violetas", food setting, reddest option, macro option. It's closest to the original shade, just like the shot of the whole cowl above (also food setting, reddest option). Seems my camera has the problem of turning everything too blue.

This is still food and macro setting, only a little less red. It's turning blue! Although there is really not too much blue in the yarn.

This is the default and apparently "neutral" setting. See how blue it is? How can this be? Is it the light? No direct sunlight at the time, no flash, everything should have yielded a "normal" shot.

Have a look at this! Food, macro and the first actually "blueish" setting. It's a whole new yarn, one apparently named "Antarctica" or something similar.

Finally, the bluest setting. It looks like an Andy Warhol print. I wonder what food actually looks like photographed with this setting. I guess I'll be testing that soon. But isn't it crazy? For comparison, the reddest setting right below.

No, it isn't photoshopped. It's just my camera! 

Some more examples. That's a view of the sunset taken from my window (forgive the reflection of the actual camera). Setting probably the generic "landscape", colors pretty accurate.

The same view, only with the "dusk" setting. Notice a pinkish tinge that wasn't actually there? That's actually the automatic "dusky" setting. Why?

A view of the night sky one day past the new moon. Notice a pinkish tinge? Yes, the "dusk setting".

And that's the "night" setting. More like the real thing, but apparently, it adds a bit of a greenish tinge. 

I wonder ... is it me? Is it my computer? Or is it the camera? I never had such problems with the old analog camera. Ok, I couldn't take pictures like this with the old analog camera. But even the old digital camera only had color problems with intense purples and pinks - seems like it's colors with an ultraviolet component that are the trouble. But I have lots of blue knitwear, the loveliest being my new Cartouche Fragment. Lots of variegation in that one, greens, blues, purples, grays - and my camera can't pick them up. I'm going to do a few more experiments. Maybe it really is the light in my room. And I guess further experiments as to the veracity of the "dusk", "sunset" and "night" settings are needed. But how annoying ...

And if you think I'm not still watching the news from Japan in horror ... every morning I don't want to get up because the news is worse every time. I hope when I wake up tomorrow, Japan is still there. A bit worse for wear, but without the nuclear catastrophe that seems to be on the horizon.

not as much fun as I wanted it to be

So, my exam is over. I am a bona fide historian with an MA degree (actually the direct translation would be Master of Philosophy). The exam itself wasn't very spectacular, which is why it's strange that the university is keeping the actual details of what happens in the exam a secret. Or so it seems. They finally have webpages where they tell you what forms to use and what formats your thesis should have and a hundred other things, but nothing about the actual exam. Anyway, it was even fun and afterwards I felt extremely happy.

Everything seemed to be going well. My room was clean and things were stored away better than when I first moved in. My guests arrived and helped me carry my 10 000 bags over to my mother's flat where I'll be staying until next Thursday or so while they're using my little shoebox as a base. We had sparkling wine and roasted vegetables and all kinds of delicious things and I went to sleep happy about my new status.

The next morning, I wondered whether my thesis had been entered into the university library catalogue yet. And it has! It's even findable in two of the important meta-catalogues. I took a screenshot as a souvenir.

Then I read the news that there had been a huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan and started following the news updates. I only watched one live report and had to turn it off after a couple of minutes. It was terrible and terrifying and I'm still watching the developments around the Fukushima nuclear plant and hope they'll be able to get the situation under control.

Why care about Japan? I'm an absolute nerd about anime (Japanese animated films and television series) and manga (Japanese comics) and I admire and appreciate many aspects of Japanese culture, even if I can't understand or empathize with all of them. And now that country that I am so interested in is in terrible trouble and I can't do very much except watch in horror.

So, not the best day. Then this morning I finally read the book that has been waiting for me for a month or so, about the last days of the Second World War in Berlin and the time immediately afterwards from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl and that has also contributed to a rather depressive mood.

Then I fled. Outside, the sun was shining, the wind was warm and I had to buy catfood anyway. I went by my favorite silversmith's to see if she was already working and to see if maybe she had her baby son with her - three and a half months old now. I had dropped off a pair of knitted socks in February and wanted to see if she had received them. She had! And he was wearing them and she was really happy with them, since knitted socks were an item on one of the "must have" lists and she knew noone who could knit socks!

The yarn is Lang Jawoll Cotton Jacquard.

Anyway, that cheered me up immensively and a little detour through the Museumsquartier cheered me up even more. I've also found a new song to learn that has consoled me a little - a German folk song from the 16th century that Johannes Brahms did a litte work on. It's an incredibly gentle and romantic song from the perspective of a man waking his beloved in the morning and the melody is lovely as well.

So it's been ups and downs. Maybe the best time to finish my Herzblut shawl, which is eating yarn like a very hungry moth! But I'm getting closer and closer to the final row and can't wait to see it blocked and in all its glory. So much for now - the next post will be about my crazy camera settings featuring psychedelic pictures of knitted fabric.