Knittin' Crap: Amigurumi Groovy Fun Fun Fun!

So here's the story of why I wanted to visit the Japanese bookstore, as mentioned in today's Metro Journal post.

There are apparently some amazing and unique Japanese knitting stitch books, and the beauty of such things is that the stitches are graphed. So as long as one has the key to the graph, one does not really need to read kanji or hiragana or katakana (not that I can tell the difference). And isn't it nice of them to use Arabic numerals?

Anyways, as these books are moderately expensive imports, I wanted to see one in person before buying, so I finally got around to googling about them and came across this link, and I smacked myself on the forehead going, "You live 10 miles from Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, dumbass!"

So I went to Kinokuniya in Little Tokyo (see today's Metro Journal entry for the story of getting there). They had all kinds of wonderful amigurumi books, including a Hello Kitty one! (Sheesh, I paid much less than that site, but they have the most pictures of it.) In the basket. I also got a Japanese quilt magazine for my mother. It has a pull-out pattern, but I don't know enough about quilting to know if it's usable. It had some very pretty pictures, even if she can't use the patterns.

What I couldn't find were the knitting stitch books. Maybe they were out. I had forgotten to write down the ISBN numbers, but I will do that next time. I got enough to keep me busy. Following some of the amigurumi patterns will take guesswork, while others would require minor miracles. Most of the Hello Kitty looks vaguely straightforward, or will leave me at least knowing the kanji/katakana/whatever characters for body parts, but it's Hello Kitty or bust!