Japanese Yarn Store Report #1

Well, it was a fruitful day. And I do mean fruitful. The newest Japanese Craft craze appears to be making fruit (and other comestibles) out of fiber. At one point, as I wandered down an aisle inside the Yuzawaya craft store, I felt (no pun intended) that I had been transported inside a refrigerator from the Planet Zark, surrounded as I was by stacks of felted fruit and crocheted vegetable kits. At least ten feet of shelf space was devoted to Felted Food, including an awesome strawberry meringue cake and a rather fetching felted cheeseburger. I was getting hungry.

I gazed with considerable admiration upon a crocheted bowl filled with crocheted green peas, topped with a crocheted butter pat. But I was not inspired to whip out my wallet for either this kit or the the rest of the panoply of Fake Food.

The really bad news is that this summer in Japan, Crochet is the New Knitting. My perusal of Yuzawaya's knitting book section unearthed 20 crochet books, all lurking inside covers titled Let's Knit or Summer Knits. Clearly, there is some confusion on the part of the publishers about what constitutes knitting. Especially depressing though, was the total absence of cool stitch dictionaries to leaf through.

The closest thing to knitting I could locate were a few dusty Women's Day knitting mags from 1992. Guess the Yuzawaya worker bees were cleaning out their hive.

A visit to a nearby bookstore produced 37 crochet titles, two uninspired books of baby knits, and 6 books bursting with felted and/or crocheted food. Now I was definitely getting peckish from staring at all these inedible edibles. After I yanked yet another Felted/Crocheted Zakka volume out of the tightly packed shelf, causing about 150 slippery books to explode onto the floor, I figured it was about time to find some non-felted food.

I have nothing against crochet--I know how and used to do it. But none of the designs I saw made me want to grab for a hook. They were Truly Awful. There was one memorable black shawl that looked like a gruesome spider web draped over the poor model. The rest of the designs emphasized granny square sweaters or pineapple doilies.

The yarns at Yuzawaya were even less interesting than the books, which is to say, there was no sock or lace yarn, lots of knitting worsted, and some plain cottons in tastefully boring colors. Boy, did they have a big stock of crochet cotton, though.

I'll post some knitting pictures later tomorrow, but for now, please gaze upon a Chiba police station. None of our Public Safety officers have a sense of humor like this!