Chances are if you've ever made true Japanese amigurumi you know about Pierro Yarns. If not ... Pierrot is kind of like the Lion Brand of Japan. They manufacture a wide line of yarns, ranging through nearly all materials and fabrics, from acrylic to angora to merino and silk. But where they are most prolific are in their free-pattern offerings; thousands of free knitting and crochet patterns are available, and they verily helpfully provide direct links to PDF files of the patterns on Ravelry for those of us that can't read Japanese.
Their patterns cover nearly everything you could possibly image knitting or crochet. Hats, homegoods, shawls, sweaters, toys, afghans, doilies ... all there. And all using the international charting standards, so that regardless of what your native language is you can follow their patterns.
As an example, I'll take you through one of their recently published patterns, the Beauty Silk Cotton Beret.
This is the Beauty Silk Beret, a lacey, top-down beret crocheted in what looks like a fine weight silk/cotton blend. We're fortunate that Ravelry has yarn and hook information, but we can also gather that information from the pattern itself.
The yellow underlines are where to focus for yarn and hook information. A really great way to get things started is to check and see what hook the pattern uses. Hook size general gives information about what kind of yarn is being used. 5/0 is a 3mm hook (inbetween C [2.75mm] and D [3.25] US hooks), and hooks of that size typically use lighter weight yarn, fingering or sport weight. How do I know that? There are a few great conversion charts on the internet; this one is my favorite. You'll notice a few rows above that there are weights listed: 30g in parentheses and 50g at the end. Usually yarn weights/measurements in parentheses are the weight of a ball, and afterwards the weight is the total that you'll need. 50g of fingering or sportweight yarn is about 200 yards/~180m. So one ball of fingering weight yarn that weights 50g will be enough to get this one done.
You can confirm the yarn weight by doing a gauge swatch. The very last row contains the gauge information. The ladder symbol 目 means stitches (a helpful one to remember) and gauge in Japanese patterns is given over 10cm (4"). So the gauge for this pattern is 26.5 sts by 9.5 rows in the pattern stitch.
Once you know some of the basic Japanese symbols and what the different numbers are telling you, deciphering a Japanese pattern is totally doable. Reading the chart itself? That's a walk-through for another day.
In the meantime, here are some of my favorite recently published patterns from Pierrot:
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Tsubaki Cotton Mini-Sweater"]
[/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Soft Merino Hood"]
[/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="549" caption="Foire Motif Mat"]
[/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Arles Patterned Mittens"]
[/caption]
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Seed Stitch Bowtie"]
[/caption]
Bowties are cool.
ek
Their patterns cover nearly everything you could possibly image knitting or crochet. Hats, homegoods, shawls, sweaters, toys, afghans, doilies ... all there. And all using the international charting standards, so that regardless of what your native language is you can follow their patterns.
As an example, I'll take you through one of their recently published patterns, the Beauty Silk Cotton Beret.
This is the Beauty Silk Beret, a lacey, top-down beret crocheted in what looks like a fine weight silk/cotton blend. We're fortunate that Ravelry has yarn and hook information, but we can also gather that information from the pattern itself.
The yellow underlines are where to focus for yarn and hook information. A really great way to get things started is to check and see what hook the pattern uses. Hook size general gives information about what kind of yarn is being used. 5/0 is a 3mm hook (inbetween C [2.75mm] and D [3.25] US hooks), and hooks of that size typically use lighter weight yarn, fingering or sport weight. How do I know that? There are a few great conversion charts on the internet; this one is my favorite. You'll notice a few rows above that there are weights listed: 30g in parentheses and 50g at the end. Usually yarn weights/measurements in parentheses are the weight of a ball, and afterwards the weight is the total that you'll need. 50g of fingering or sportweight yarn is about 200 yards/~180m. So one ball of fingering weight yarn that weights 50g will be enough to get this one done.
You can confirm the yarn weight by doing a gauge swatch. The very last row contains the gauge information. The ladder symbol 目 means stitches (a helpful one to remember) and gauge in Japanese patterns is given over 10cm (4"). So the gauge for this pattern is 26.5 sts by 9.5 rows in the pattern stitch.
Once you know some of the basic Japanese symbols and what the different numbers are telling you, deciphering a Japanese pattern is totally doable. Reading the chart itself? That's a walk-through for another day.
In the meantime, here are some of my favorite recently published patterns from Pierrot:
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Tsubaki Cotton Mini-Sweater"]
[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Soft Merino Hood"]
[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="549" caption="Foire Motif Mat"]
[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Arles Patterned Mittens"]
[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Seed Stitch Bowtie"]
[/caption]Bowties are cool.
ek
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