PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I started a knitted purse on Saturday night, and all I did was BITCH BITCH BITCH. It's a kit from Habu Textiles & you carry one strand of linen (tight, twisted little bitch of linen, but I like it) and one strand of linen PAPER (crazy, insane, keep thinking it will rip) and you create a very unpleasant fabric if you were wearing it as a shirt, but since it's a purse, it's fine, rather interesting, and threatens to be gorgeous.

So it's clear I'm having a nasty Angelina-Jolie-Flirtation with this yarn, so let's talk about the directions for knitting. They're done in the "Japanese style" with numbers and dashes, and you read them from the bottom up.

8-1-6
5-1-4
1-1-1
(+11)

This means you're increasing a total of 11 stitches. The first row, you increase one, one time. The next is every FIVE rows, increase one stitch, do this a total of four times. Next is every eight rows, one stitch, six times. Sure it makes a shitton of sense now, but Saturday night I was cursing a blue streak. And then? Apparently drawing hair-thin arrows pointing to both sides of the diagram meant "INCREASE ONE STITCH ON BOTH SIDES YOU IDIOT" which means 22 stitches, DUH, why don't you intuitively read the Japanese instructions, Jennifer? So I ripped out my crazy dangerous yarn and did it correctly.

Knitting with wool is just so much easier. This is going to be my "interspersing" project while I work on other things. And? The song in my head for THIS project, of course, would be "Turning Japanese" ...... every few rows a little chorus in my head goes, "I really think so.... da de da daa da da " Got me a case of The Vapors, I do!