My trip to Tokyo was fabulous, but quite a whirlwind. I took the overnight bus there on Saturday night, stayed one night in my favorite ryokan, one night in the five-star hotel where my conference was being held, then took the Tuesday night bus back home and was at work at 8:30 on Wednesday morning. I did SO MUCH that even the misery of the overnight bus doesn't seem so bad. On Sunday, I met up with the lovely Stefana, and we wandered the streets of some cool neighborhoods that I had never seen before. We really weren't thinking--no pictures for the blog. Sorry, Mum!

My work conference was fun and energizing, and I am not feeling as draggy about my job as I had been before. It ended on Tuesday afternoon so I dragged my bags (one small bag for my clothes and one giant knitting bag) to Shibuya for Tokyo Stitch 'n Bitch that night. I was so happy to see everyone--some new faces and some people that I already knew--and really wish I could go more often. But it was fun while it lasted!

The reason that I had an absolutely huge knitting bag is that before leaving, I decided to bring 13 balls of yarn to work on my new log cabin blanket squares. Let me just say that this is not the most mobile project, unless you are willing to haul all this stuff around. But before I left, I was feeling really enthusiastic about the new project and wanted to work on it so I made the sacrifice. It wasn't so bad, and the knitting bag turned out to be a good pillow for the bus journey!

When I was there, I also found some Puppy Soft Cotton that is a good yarn for Trellis, which I decided will be my baby knit for the fall. I'm making two, for two cousins, so I started with the bigger of the two last night. The pink might be a bit much, but Japan is all about super-girliness so I think it will fly. It's so fast and fun to knit!

After SnB I had a few hours to kill before I caught the 11 o'clock bus home. At this point, I was feeling exhausted and just wanted to get on that bus, but managed to do some damage at Book 1st before I left. Book 1st is a big bookstore with all sorts of great treasures, so even though I exercised restraint, there were a few things that I couldn't resist.

This book is called "Order-made skirt" (ISBN 4-579-11006-4) and it has patterns for a bunch of different skirt styles. As I have some really nice fabric that I've been meaning to sew into a skirt for a while, I thought it would be a good investment to have some kind of structure and direction, rather than just winging it like I do with all my other sewing projects. No doubt, I'll have to edit the pattern a little bit, but I hope this will help me to get just the right amount of poofiness in my skirt rather than having a lot of trial and error. We'll see.

Of course, I couldn't resist this book on bags, especially with the cute striped one on the cover! The bag that really caught my eye, and that I WILL make, someday, is a great striped bag that has this panel of woven strips of fabric on the front. I'm not sure if you can really see in the pictures (ISBN 4-391-13146-3).

Finally, I also got this fun book about everyday kimono (ISBN 4-7572-1273-9). I had to get it for the amazing color and pattern combinations inside (forgot to document that part, but I will soon). Even though I have gotten kind of jaded about wearing kimono lately (blame my childbearing hips--made for childbearing that is, not experienced, my mom would like me to point out), this was a must-have. And hey, I can practice reading Japanese, so I'll kill two birds with one stone!