Still two weeks away / the season’s official start / but temperature tells a much different tale / of a winter weary day.
Winter is coming.
I spent a little time with the instructions for the hitoe trying to piece together what the seriously bad translation gives me, and it’s just no use. The diagrams mostly make sense. I’ve pretty much narrowed one character that translates as “twist” to be a rolled hem. But I can’t be positive. There’s still that line that says glue and twist… There’s no way around it, I need to learn Japanese.
Of course I’ve known that for years and just haven’t done it. Maybe this will be the final push I need to get serious about it. There is only so far I can go with my research without it.
I did reread the diagram for sewing the sleeve bottoms, and wow. The stitch length is .8cm or about 5/16 inches. That’s essentially 3 stitches per inch. That’s quite a departure from the 10 stitches per inch I’ve been doing everywhere else. I set the sleeves aside and started working on the collar. I was incredibly lucky to have a scrap that was big enough. I cut the length down by only an inch and a half and the width of the scrap at the narrow end was exactly the 7.5 inches I needed it to be.
I’m not looking forward to all the rolled hems I have to do still on the collar and the back of the sleeves. This is quickly becoming my least favorite stitch.
