pinku

Halloween wedding (plus weekend recap)

One of my SNB buddies, Pinn got married on the weekend and I wouldn't have missed their reception for anything. She's super talented and seriously one of the most crafty girls I know. She is now married to a really sweet guy, Seimi and they are a great couple. Really you can't go wrong when the bride not only sews her dress, felts her hat, knits her husband's scarf (clapotis) and hand sews her husband's silk shirt (her sewing machine broke), and not forgetting she carried a pumpkin instead of a bouquet!

Congrats you two!

After the excitement of Saturday night, we relaxed with our buddies C&J at the Inokashira Park Zoo on Sunday. Highlights were playing with the marmots, and watching the monkeys and the squirrels. I have finally gotten around to uploading some photos to my flickr account so you can check out lots of cute marmot pics there!!!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Weekly Pink Fix

ok, so the pink fixes certainly haven't been coming weekly (not even monthly) but today's pink fix was certainly worth waiting for.

Darin just sent me this email:

I saw this weird ass logo on a bus yesterday, so I took a keitai pic so I could look it up - boy am I glad I did!!!
http://mammastar.com/e-menu.htm

I borrowed this image of their website - I hope they don't mind!! Dude the star has stubble! Only in Japan. Click on the link above to read some hella funny Engrish!

Robo joins the family

I  had a really crafty weekend that involved finishing two knit projects (photos to come), baking oatmeal cookies, and I finished a collaborative art project that Darin and I had been working on since last year. Um, you see it wasn't a difficult project that took us a year, it's just that for some reason it took me a year to get around to finishing my part of the project.

So what's this project you say??!! Well Darin draws robots quite a bit and we wanted to work on a project together, so Darin drew up a robot and I made the robot out of felt. I finished sewing him together on Saturday night and those last few stitches were filled with lots of excitement and anticipation.

Here's what I started out with - the diagram. The first thing I did was work out the dimensions.

I have no progress pics, but his body with two legs and two arms had been sitting in a plastic bag for nearly a year - shame on me. To celebrate the newest edition to our family, we took robo on a trip around Tokyo on Sunday. Here's our baby!

Minding our post box

Hiding in the grass at the park

Hanging out with dad

Robo proves he's not afraid of heights. He came with us to a fleamarket on top of Parco in Kichijoji.

Relaxing with a Coopers at the park

Robo's first trip on a train

We travelled to Jo's house to hang out with her and Nico. We were very lucky because she made us a delicious lunch consisting of mediterraean soup and pecan pie. For most of us, this was our very first. It was delicious but the first piece didn't come out of the pie dish too well (that's my piece).

Claire's piece seemed to come out a little more orderly

And the final shot of the day goes to the boys in matching plaid (Darin and Nico)

Pinku is 2 years old today!

Wow, two years really does fly by, doesn't it?!

Thanks to everyone for visiting pinku, leaving comments, sending me messages and parcels, participating in my swaps, visiting me in Japan, meeting me in other countries, educating me, encouraging me, inspiring me, cheering me up, making me laugh, and being the best blog friends a girl could ask for!!!

To celebrate pinku's 2nd birthday, we have a fun new banner designed by coach darin (daz now teaches basketball once a week and the kids call him coach darin - cute, huh!) AND I am going to hold a contest. The pink fix portion of this blog has been a little slow lately, so I am going to hold a 'pink fix' photo contest. Prize to be determined (depends if you are a knitter or a non-knitter).

The contest will be open for a month starting today meaning that last entries will be accepted until November 21st. Then my three highly prestigious judges, Darin Bendall, Claire McNeil, and Tyler Ensrude (haven't asked you yet Tyler, but you don't mind right??) will select the winner or possibly winners. Enter as many times as you want. By sending me your photos, you agree that they can be published on this website (of course you will be credited). Your photo should have a pink theme, be at least 500 pixels wide and of high quality.

Send your photo/s, name, URL (if you have one) to pinkurocks at gmail dot com!

Media invasion!

You may remember faithful readers when I wrote about the knitting prince visiting our Tokyo SNB in late May. Just let me say from the outset, that visit was AWESOME and something that I'll never forget. Since then, we've been in Japan's biggest knitting magazine, Keitodama, been in both the Japanese and English version of Asahi Shinbun and this week alone, I have done an interview for NHK radio, and THREE (yes, three) tv interviews over the past two days.

I am so over it. BUT I want to thank ALL of the Tokyo SNB girls for all of your support during this craziness!

At first it was exciting, but now it is just tiring and a lot of these other tv stations are just hopping on the bandwagon. They read the Japanese Asahi Shinbun article and contacted me through that. The reporters they have sent have very little or no knowledge about or interest in knitting and ask the same repetitive questions. Is this really such a novelty? I realize that there hasn't been the same knitting boom in Japan as in the US, so for most Japanese people it is interesting to hear about what we do. As I said in the interviews, it would make me really happy (after all this press coverage) to hear of other people starting up their own knitting/crafty groups around Japan. I want to share the knitting love, but I think we've done enough interviews for now.

Anyway, it has been a truly educational experience about how the whole media thing works. Parts of it have certainly been fun - here are some photos of that fun at the NHK radio studios. There was actually a relatively big earthquake while we were on the 13th floor of the building and this horrible alarm went off.

Earthquake alarm

Darin proudly sporting his NHK pass (don't mind the spooky eye expression)

Me in the studio (you can't tell in the photo but I was super hungover - very unprofessional and indeed uncomfortable when you are about to do an interview in your second language)

Daz and I taking a photo of our reflection in a big silver globe (between Australia and NZ) very happy to be done.

Iris

Thank you for all the kind comments ladies. I'm loving having a bit of body and bounce in my hair, but alas curly hair is hard work. You see I am usually a wash and wear kind of gal. It's fun though for a change. Well excpet for when I burned my neck this morning using the curling iron - ouch!

So I have an FO for you. It is the Iris shrug from Rowan 35. I finished knitting the pieces and seamed everything before we left for the US in May, so I guess it has only taken me about four months to get around to attaching the sleeves to the body. I'd only done it a couple of times before so I was nervous. I pulled out every book I had with directions and the best one was one of my how-to-knit Japanese books - thank goodness for all of their wonderful illustrations. I am not convinced I did that great a job with the sleeves, but I still feel pretty accomplished. I finished weaving in the ends on the bus to the onsen yesterday, and I can tell you this, it is super warm and cozy. I used the famed merino worsted weight from handpainted yarns in Uruguay, and although all of the skeins differed quite dramatically colourwise, I don't really care. It's soft and perfect for the drab cold weather right now. Not sure what I'll do about the closure, but right now it's a piece of black cord. I did an impromptu photo shoot last night - no head as I was just about to go to bed.....

My first perm!

So I am currently relaxing on the third day of a four-day weekend. It's so great NOT going to work. On my first day off I went and got a cut, colour and perm. This was my first ever perm and I was nervous. I also hadn't cut my hair in over six months - it was time. Everyone in my family has dead straight hair and after my sister's disastrous shaggy dog perm during the 80s I swore I would never make the same mistake. Luckily nowadays perms can be a lot less curly and they add more body and wave. Wanna see the photos, click below.

Full festival update

I'll let my photos tell the Tokyo Knit Festival story. My highlights of the day were scoring some Brooks Farm Harmony (how could I NOT buy it after feeling it), hanging out and knitting with my Tokyo SNB posse, meeting Setsuko Torii of Habu Textiles/Avril fame, the vintage knits exhibit, and a cool crochet workshop.

So here are some dolls showing off their knitwear

Big barbie wearing a poncho/shawl with matching hat!

A knitted kimono - this thing was amazing and PINK of course

close up of the birdy shoulder

The ladies from the amigurumi kyokai

To see the rest of my photos, click below!!!

Tokyo Knit Festival 2005

The knit festival on Saturday was awesome. I was way too excited actually and gave myself a big headache.

Strangest knit design at the festival - a crochet hat with a fake hair piece. It was seriously freaking me out. That guy behind me thought I was trying it on because I loved it. He was oh so wrong. Full update tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!