Japanese Knitting Books, Finally!

Last night we went to Uwajimaya near downtown Seattle and the International District. We had dinner in the food court and walked around the grocery store looking at all the Asian food they have. I bought some sushi and and Udon noodle bowl for lunch today. I also bought some edamame chips which tasted somewhat like Bugles but not. They were good. I still have some shrimp flavored chips to try for a snack today.

Amy got some chocolate covered macadamia nuts which would kill me so I wasn't even tempted to have them. But there were a lot of interesting looking sweets. I had red bean buns when I was in Japan my last year in college for Xmas holidays and I was tempted to buy them. But they have sugar in them at the 2nd or 3rd level ingredient so they are off my list. I try not to eat anything with sugar in it but if I do then it has to be the 5th or less ingredient. And even then I don't often consider it. Oh well. I really don't miss sugar. For me, the less sugar I have, the less I want it.
However, the main reason we went to Uwajimaya wasn't for the food but so I could look at and buy some Japanese Knitting books at Kinokuniya. Therese had brought one she had bought last week to knitting group. It reminded me that I had wanted to buy some Japanese knitting books and ordered some from Amazon Japan but somehow the order didn't go through and it had been such a chore trying to figure out what books to buy, that I never went back and reordered them.

These are 3 of the many books I wanted to buy. I had seen the Guernsey and Aran Sweaters book on someone's blog last year but couldn't find it to order. I saw My Favorite & Mens Knit yesterday on a Japanese Book Site which has previews of pages from the books. And the last one with no English title was one that looks interesting because of the entralec cuffed gloves on the cover as well as some other great patterns.

 
The ABC's of Knitting site has several great resources for reading and using Japanese knitting patterns. The Basic Stitches, the How to Read Japanese Graphical Knitting page, and the Basics of Japanese Knitting are going to be very helpful for me to decipher the patterns because it all looks Japanese to me! ;)

I'm going to start off with a neck warmer from My Favorite and Mens Knits. It seems to have an easy cable pattern that I can figure out with my new knowledge of cables from my Cableology I class this weekend. I think the yarn that is used is a sock weight because it appears that you should have 32 sts per 10cm (4 inches). I think I have something in my stash that I can use.

I just found a Japanese Knitting and Crochet group on Ravelry and it looks like they have some more resources for translating patterns. Plus I'll be able to ask questions if I get lost.