Anime in Progress

Knitting Therapy

This is Anime by Marianne Isager, from the book, A Knitting Life 3, Tokyo Tversted. I stumbled across the pattern on an a early morning IG browse and pounced on the rather expensive book and yarn immediately. It’s a complete departure from the sort of thing I’d typically knit, but I was looking for something mindless and fun. If you hadn’t noticed, the design is based on the Studio Ghibli character, Totoro. I’m not an anime fan, but I do love all things Japanese! I find the bouclé very soothing. Soothing is very much what I’m looking for these days. Unfortunately, the exorbitantly expensive pattern has failed in some regards. The translation is poor and not all the instructions are spelled out. I don’t want to play guessing games when I pay more than $50 for a book of patterns. I’ve since taken to restricting myself to buying things online before coffee. The last time involved ordering a pair of George Cox from the UK (too small) that would need to be returned at my full expense, at a 1/5 of what I paid for them. I still have those shoes. But I digress. I have not received a response to an email sent to Isager five days ago asking for clarification. I’m only the second person to start knitting it on Ravelry, so no help there. I doubt that I’ll give Isager my money in the future. I improvised and completed the front. I hope it works!

A lot of it was knit while recovering from the flu and watching Muslim Matchmaker. It was interesting to learn about the various muslim cultures and their approaches to courtship and marriage. It seemed like the season ended kind of abruptly though. I would have loved to have seen how some of the stories played out and whether they ended in marriage. I see more uncomplicated knitting and pleasantly distracting TV in my future. For now, I don’t have the bandwidth for more than that. It’s incredibly soothing to just knit and be entertained when one can.