Japan and Jerome

I just finished filling out my travel registration for Japan!

As I was filling out the personal information form, there was a question about personal interests that might make a particular city a good place for you to go during the "prefecture" - when we are in towns all over Japan and which includes the homestay. Ichinomiya is a city that has a lot of textiles, and is where Noro yarn is made (if you go to the site, click on "yarn pictures" - amazing) I wonder if Habu is made there, too. And I wonder if Japan has a version of an outlet store. Anyway, I mentioned that I have an interest in textiles and so would like to go there if possible, but added something to the effect that the scheduling had to be a pain and I wouldn't cry if it didn't happen. Only I made an attempt to sound like an adult, so I didn't use those actual words.

Anyway.

I also just got back from Jerome, AZ.

I drove over to Flagstaff yesterday afternoon (in remarkably bad weather, I might add) to see Mom and go to Bookman's - the world's most wonderful used book store - in order to sell a ton of books and magazines. If I could have taken store credit, I could have gone nuts in there! Instead I took the cash and traded for a book and a magazine. (An aside: I have a friend who can find sample-sale designer dress pants in her size at a Goodwill in Gallup. Me? I can find rare knitting books in used book shops. Sigh. Anyway.)

Jerome is a former mining town -I think it was abandoned at one time. Totally on the side of a mountain - it is a little disconcerting to look at, actually - southwest of Sedona coming down from Flag. The drive was beautiful, but I learned the hard way that knitting in a car - particularly on a twisty-turny road with major altitude changes - can have the same effect as reading in a car. Ugh. (I did manage to finish the body of a sweater before the ick set in, though.) It was really, really pretty. (the view, not the sweater. But that is pretty, too, I guess.)

In Jerome, I went to a lovely little yarn shop - Knit 1 Bead 2 - which is filled with more loveliness than the pictures on the web site indicate. The lady who owns it wrote the first pattern I used for something other than a garter stitch scarf - a garter stitch shawl. But it had increases! And stitch markers! Anyway, the lady was very nice. It is one of those yarn stores with lots of "fripperies", which is kind of nice to look at and touch. Afford? Not so much. But there were some basics and some things I thought were really reasonable.

To celebrate Japan, I bought a yarn from Habu - a bamboo yarn that is so shiny and pretty and even the YARN itself drapes well. Love. And the nice lady gave me a major deal on it - woo! (Like, major. But she helped wind the slithery stuff, so she HAD to know how much of it there was, right? Anyway.)

I took a bunch of pictures, but really, if you aren't there, most of the time one rock formation looks like any other. Let's leave it at there were rocks and they were dramatically beautiful. Seriously. And there was this:



Says it all, really.