Pretty Thing: Vintage Crocheted Shawl

  

Whew!  I've been making a lot of progress at school (and some at home, too - I finished the second Ondrea sleeve this morning), which I'll share soon.  I'm hoping to get at least one skirt finished save for hemming this week, possibly two.  Hooray!  Hooray!

In the meantime, here's a very pretty thing that I received in the mail last week from Etsy seller vintagefindsetcetera.

A little over a week ago, a friend linked me to a list of gorgeous crocheted shawl patterns.  As usually happens when I find websites devoted to yarn and/or crafty things, I fell down the rabbit hole pretty hard, and in my wanderings, I found a picture of this vintage shawl.  It was listed on Etsy, and I popped over figuring that it would be long sold.  But it wasn't.  So, of course, I bought it (at one am, on a weeknight, because I have priorities) because it's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

I sort of want to design a little crocheted sweater with this same motif and beads - it has such a lovely drape because of the heaviness of the crochet thread as well as the beads, which I think would be really well suited to a fitted v-neck top with swingy sleeves.  I also may want to plan my entire wardrobe around its color palette.

In other news, I've decided to try to design a shawl and knit two versions of it in Prairie for the fashion show.  Because I'm clearly not busy enough.  Hah!  Hah!  Let's file this under "things I think are reasonable past 11 pm while hungry and exhausted and completely out of touch with reality," shall we?

You can't go Home (but you can knit socks out of it)

Fall is coming to Kansai. Today it was chilly enough for a sweater, for the first time since I've been here. A few days ago it flooded in northern Japan, and we got enough rain that the river outside my house started rising. Appropriate, since last week I was flooded with midterms! So far I think I did pretty well. Some friends and I went out to an izakaya on Friday for beer and munchies to celebrate, and even though we were going to go to karaoke afterward, we ended up getting some cake from Starbucks and calling it a night.


In the last week, I've knit an entire Swallowtail shawl out of Handmaiden Sea Silk, which was a quick and gratifying project. I had less than 5 grams left over after going up a needle size and freaking out and knitting like crazy for 2 days to see if I had enough yarn to finish. I also started a second sock on Saturday, but found out after knitting 4 inches of it that I am an idiot and I had knitted it on US size 1s instead of 1.5s. Argh. So, that got ripped. Then another sock got cast on, only to be abandoned because the yarn and pattern (super cute Vilai, super cute but super splitty Panda Wool, which has since been discontinued) did not play nicely together. In fact, I think I saw Panda Wool gnawing on Vilai's ankle. Poor thing.

I haven't cast on with this gorgeous Madelinetosh Sock yet, but it's calling to me. It's ok, right, since the other socks didn't work?


The colorway is called Home, which is also weirdly fitting. I've hit the halfway point in my Japan adventures, and although I still love it here, I also miss a lot of things. My stash is one of them - I chose pretty well when selecting what yarn to bring with me, but sometimes I lust for things that are packed away in boxes in Ohio. Ah well. I've probably already waxed poetic about missing my friends enough, but I think it bears repeating. I will thoroughly enjoy the rest of my time here, but I will also be very happy to arrive in the glorious Northwest on a jet plane. Preferably with shiny new socks.

There's this bank of juniper trees on my way to school. When it rains, the water clings to their branches and makes the whole street smell like Seattle. Every morning I drink coffee and watch tv with my host mother and I hope that for just a second, my morning walk will smell just a little like home.