11 July 2006

Japanese Boucle & the Heart Scarf



A dear friend of mine has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, proving once again that life is a bloody bitch at times. I'm making her a Heart Scarf (from Knitty's 2004 Breast Cancer Awareness mini-issue) using blue-green-aqua bouclé which was in my stash (as I can't afford to buy anything right now). I couldn't read the label though, as it's Japanese...

So I sent it off to a friend who can translate this stuff, and she said it's 100% acrylic, called "Off time Alicia" (go figure!), for needles 9 to 11; Standard guage: 13-14 stitches, 22-24 rows to 10 cm.

The care instructions read Hand wash, don't bleach, don't iron, dry clean, the twisting image has "weak" written on it, and the jumper image has "flat" written on it. Probably don't wring, and dry flat is my guess.

The lace heart pattern won't be very obvious in the bouclé, but they'll sort of be stealth hearts... I only wish I could do more, and make the bad things all go away :(

Here's the scarf so far... can you see the hearts?

11 comments:

  1. 22-24 sounds like a lot of rows for 13-14 stitches wide :/
    I guess that doesn't matter for a scarf though. I love the name of it! :D

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  2. It might be the other way around, the translator wasn't quite sure of the Japanese knitting terminology... that would make more sense, wouldn't it?

    I also have no idea if the needles are US / UK / metric or some weird Japanese sizing. Which is of course entirely possible!

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  3. Yes the japanese do have different sized needles - will have to go find my conversion charts and let you know.

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  4. OK, found it http://www.tata-tatao.to/knit/e-index.html. A Japanese 9 is 4.8mm and a Japanese 11 is 5.4mm.

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  5. Cool, thanks for that Taph. I'm using 8mm needles, but mainly cos I want the scarf to be light and lacy.

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  6. great name.. and yes. if theres any cure for cancer i suspect its got something to do with knitted love.

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  7. Sorry to hear about your friend, though I hope she has caught it in time for a full recovery.

    I'm told that Zhivago makes great chemo caps, if you need to know that - my SIL has knitted one recently for af riend of hers in the same boat which has been well received.

    Oh, the fun of translating knitting labels!

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  8. It's been caught early, so she should be OK - OK, that is, after surgery, chemo and radiation treatment :/

    Thanks for the tip about Zhivagol, l certainly look into that. Canberra winters are chilly at the best of times, and very unpleasant at the worst of times.

    I'll post a pic of the scarf soon...

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  9. It looks great and your efforts will be a help even if you can't wave a magic wand!!!Support and friendship is a wonderful thing!

    On another note,your beanie looks fantastic,I did something similiar for Kogo in the Aussie colours!

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  10. Looks great! At least in the boucle it won't curl like mine did. I love the colours too.

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  11. Thanks for all your comments - I've been away on hols for a week, hence my late 'approval' of your recent posts.

    Came back last night to discover my computer has been stolen by some f**king b*****d so am using hubby's computer, and trying to recover... NOT HAPPY JAN!

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