Fall hasn’t  properly started yet, and already my knitting to-do list is getting out of hand. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been working away on my very first sweater (if all goes well, I’ll be posting more about that very very soon – fingers crossed!), and I’ve already bought the yarn for a pair of legwarmers I want to make. After that I have an idea for a multicoloured textured cowl, and somewhere in there I should probably try to whip up a few Christmas presents.

And as if things weren’t already ambitious enough, the other day I picked up this glorious little book.

This is my very first Japanese pattern book, so I’m super excited to dive in! I don’t know what it is about Japanese patterns, but they have this tendency to be super cute, chic, and very well designed. I’m going to make the cardigan featured on the cover (the model is wearing it backwards here). I’d like to do it in a yellow merino, but I’ll have to see if I can track down a nice shade. All the yellow yarn in my town seems to be either pale or mustard, and I’d kind of like something in between.

Anyway, before I get ahead of myself, I feel like I should point out the obvious: since this book is Japanese, everything in it is in Japanese. Everything.

My Japanese is decent enough to understand a few instructions, but this thing is chalk-full of vocabulary that I’ve never ever seen before. For example, I’m used to “CO” meaning cast on, but here, in the crazy world of Japanese knitting, the pattern tells you to cast on by throwing “一般的な作り目” in your face. Um, what?

Luckily, the road to Japanese pattern understanding is well traveled, and the kind souls that have gone before me are more than willing to share what they’ve learned. The most useful resource that I’ve come across has been ABC’s of Knitting‘s Japanese graphical knitting charts instructions. If you’ve never read a Japanese knitting chart before, they break it down really well. The site also has a great guide to Japanese knitting basics (think needle  sizes and yarn weight) and a glossary of Japanese knitting vocabulary. To quickly reference chart symbols, I found Fleegle’s Blog really handy. Google also lead me to this really comprehensive PDF from needleartsbookshop.com. It has some pretty detailed instructions and a list of other resources at the bottom. Aside from that, I relied pretty heavily on my iPhone’s Japanese app to translate a lot of the written instructions. With these tools and a couple of hours, I was able to break down the cardigan pattern in its entirety. I’ll have to wait to start knitting to see how successful I actually was, but I really think it’s going to work out!

This will also be my first time stitching together five separate pieces into a single garment, so I’m a little nervous about that. Anyway, I’ll post more as I go. Wish me luck, I’m going to need it!!