In which we see that college is a good investment.

Kim is going to Kawacon in St. Louis next weekend, so she will be cutting short her visit at home to go back to school early. She told me about this last week while she was still at school, and I asked her what she was going to wear this year.

Last year she wore her Japanese schoolgirl outfit, but this year she was planning to wear the Scarlett costume that Diana helped make. (She also has a kimono, so she is prepared for any anime convention occasion that might arise.)

She said she was thinking about wearing the Scarlett outfit, but I really think the schoolgirl skirt and sailor top are cute, so I was encouraging her to wear that one, and she reminded me that we didn't have the right socks for it last year, and when we realized it, it was already too late to buy any, because we had to order them online.

This year we were planning (slightly) ahead, so I told her if we ordered them immediately she would get them in plenty of time! I immediately started searching the internet for superlong knee socks, because the thing is, to be a stylin' Japanese schoolgirl, you need to have long, long, knee socks that you can scrunch down around your calves in a fetching way.

There were superlong kneesocks available, yes, but the first ones we found had to be ordered from the UK or Japan, both of which places take some time to arrive - it took two months to get my Pogues CD from the UK!. Then I remembered what used to be one of my favorite websites - Sock Dreams , and yay! They had the socks, although not in our first choice of color, and shipping was free!

So Kim ordered the socks (and they arrived today, thanks), but in my searchings I had also looked on Ravelry for a pattern to maybe make the socks myself, and I had found not socks, but superlong legwarmers, worn with the uniforms the same way as socks, all scrunched down around the calf.

I looked at the patterns, but either there was no pattern, or it was in Japanese, and anyway, I didn't need to make legwarmers because Kim had already ordered the socks! But what if they didn't arrive in time? Also, the thing about looking at knitting patterns is that sometimes a project catches your eye and even though you have several other projects already on the needles, filling baskets and knitting bags around your house, and listed on your whiteboard, waiting to be crossed off as you finish them, sometimes that one new thing gets in your head and you keep thinking about it and you just have to make it!

So there was the pattern for the legwarmers and I had a ball of cream-colored WoolEase up in the yarn room, and I really needed to start those legwarmers! I could wing it, I could just cast on what looked like the right amount of stitches and just start making ribbing, because that's all the pattern was, just ribbing, going on for miles, but I really like to have a pattern, all figured out and written down that I can follow! And there was such a pattern, right there on the website, but it was in Japanese! A language that I do not speak!

But wait! I have a son, a son who is a linguist, and he always laughs off his degree in linguistics, and his graduate classes, also in linguistics, as though they are of no worth to anyone, although that is how he got his job, and it's a cool job!

So I called Scott and he said sure, send him a link, and if he couldn't do anything with it, he works with other translaters who could! I sent the link to Scott, and went to bed, thinking about those legwarmers, wondering what kind of yarn they were made of, and what size needles I would need...

The next day I was sitting at Rachel's, and I don't know why, because I wasn't there to do chemistry (for once), but while I was there, Scott called, and he had been looking at the pattern and figuring it out for me!

Scott's Japanese knitting vocabulary is minimal non-existant, but he had asked me what were the essential pieces of information that I needed to make the legwarmers, and from what I told him, he had been able to make a decent translation of the pattern!

Scott says that the pattern refers to Front and Back instead of knit and purl, and instead of saying stitches, it says holes, or eyes. So it tells you to cast on a number of holes to start, and there was a little chart he gave me for the ribbing. He could tell me how many to cast on, and how long to make the legwarmer in centimeters, and you know with my amazing chemistry-related math skills, I can translate from centimeters to inches - I'm kidding, of course, because every knitter knows that 10 centimeters = 4 inches!

I cast on immediately after that phone call, and later I went to the store to pick up more of that cream WoolEase, which turned out to be the perfect yarn to get the gauge for the pattern. The only thing better than knitting your new project is buying yarn for it!

I finished the first legwarmer this morning just before my shift ended, and in case you are wondering, it takes three days to knit a 24-inch tube of ribbing. I just started the second one tonight.