Geisha Crochet

Discovered two Japanese crochet books for sale at knit pixie and ordered both of them. Got my order fast, too! I chose kpixie because they are very Crochet me -friendly and have lots of indie yarns.

I first learned from Kathleen Power Johnson how awesome Japanese stitch dictionaries are, and are easy to use if you know symbol crochet. I wish ALL of my stitch dictionaries spoke symbol crochet. Then a friend I met at a Chain Link conference, Dora Ohrenstein, brought some Japanese crochet books with her from NYC when she visited me and I decided at that point to just buy them whenever they crossed my path! I even went to amazon.jp to order crochet books, and got them, but I don't remember how I did it (my friend from Japan helped me at the time). Anyway here's the one from kpixie called Crochet Adventures that I'm really pleased about:

And here's only 1 of many reasons why:


Maybe this seems like nothing to someone else, and maybe I should have shown a photo of the unique 3D bullion-puff cushion instead (or see it at kpixie); but it just happens to be the first time I've ever seen fanned-out grannies-as-u-go. Since granny squares remain crowd-pleasers, this design gives me hope that I can join in the fun because it's probably the only kind of granny square-based pattern I would want to try. What is this called? Entrelac grannies?

And then there's the styling that only a Japanese book can do well:

Geisha Crochet! Ok, so it's not a new technique or stitch, I just like how crochet is involved in the whole look. Historic and modern at once.

The other book I bought at kpixie is lovely from a styling POV, but I will probably give it away. Over half of it is knitting projects and most are more for beginners I'd say. It does have lots of Japanesey things to say about the yarn being all organic and who knows what else, maybe plant dyed or color grown? I'm only guessing.