I can if I crochet and knit these tawashis! The boy has sworn that I've said the word "tawashi" over 1000 times in the past few days. I think he underestimated. (My apologies to anyone who has seen me in person in the past week, because whether you wanted to or not, you've had to listen to me yammer on about this. If this made you confused or just plain bored, do not read further.)
These pamphlets are full of specialized cleaners. Need to clean your horizontal blinds? There's a tawashi for that! Need to clean your computer keyboard? There's a tawashi for that, too! Need to dust your car or shoes? Well, you get it.
Where did I find these wonderful tawashi booklets?
Kinokuniya, of course! When I kept on mentioning tawashis and my quest to venture to Kinokuniya in order to peruse their Japanese crochet books, my friend thought we should go together so we could also visit
Bazaar Bizarre. Little did we know that the bigger event that day was the Cherry Blossom Festival, which meant that San Francisco's Japantown was full of snack booths. Yay! I snarfed down a strawberry and pineapple shaved ice. Japanese shaved ice is fluffy like snow, and you can eat it solo, or pair it with sweet red beans and ice cream. I should have taken a picture, but I was too busy eating.
I also have many non-tawashi FOs that I need to photograph and share, but tawashi fever still has me in its grips.
In honor of the boy turning one year older, I immortalized him in yarn. Behold "The Boy" tawashi!
I made a couple of them. Although tawashi are for washing things, he's not sure how to use it because it is odd, perhaps even disturbing, to wash yourself or anything else with an image of yourself.
Charted crochet patterns are so much easier for me to read than the written stuff, which is why these Japanese patterns are perfect. Well, they are perfect until there is some crucial note in Japanese... Luckily, I can muddle through most of it and come up with a FO that looks related to the original pattern, like the flower (pdf link).
This tawashi turned out like a distant cousin to the original pattern (pdf link). Those little bumps around the circles were tedious to crochet since you have to go down a few hook sizes, and they didn't really show up very well in the outer, white circle. I'm sure I did something wrong because I couldn't figure out how to do the bumps and the HDCs in the same round. If anyone can figure it out, please let me know!
I also crocheted some more flower dishcloths. So far, 7 of them have flown off the hooks.
Wendy Bernard is a sweater designer genius. I love all of her patterns because they are so wearable and timeless. This sweater, The Somewhat Cowl, is a little retro, but still fashionable enough to wear right now. For my detailed notes, you can check out my page on Ravelry.
Don't mind Mingus. He can't keep away from the camera. Silly, camera hogging dog.
