Fringed Kimono
Hi all! Husband and I just got back from a vacation (wen went to Vancouver) and we had a really nice time! Full of yummy food and fun shopping! I scored some nice fabric at Spool of Thread too!
I can’t believe it’s almost December… This project I’m sharing today, I was hoping to finish it during summer/early fall but didn’t happen until recently. (Oh well, finished later is better than never.)
When I saw this Instagram post by Irene Lin (@irenelin1125) about her upcoming pattern, Fringed Kimono, I fell in love.
It’s so delicate and gorgeous! I knew right away that I wanted to knit this, and I had a lightbulb moment—this project was perfect use of the yarn I bought while I was in Japan about two years ago.
It was The Fibre Co. Meadow in Aster which I bought a skein of. I ordered a couple of more skeins for this project and I was good to go.
The yarn is an interesting combination of 40% merino, 25% baby llama, 20% silk, 15% linen, lace weight (slightly heavier than a typical lace weight). Never used a llama and linen mix before! It's beautiful tonal blue and purple colour, loooove this colourway.
The construction of the cardigan was straightforward. I love patterns that you knit button bands (or in this case it’s button-less so just the front bands) as you knit the front. No picking up stitches at the end!
Here’s the close up of the front bands.
I really like the chevron lace pattern on the hem! It’s delicate but not overly feminine, and looks fresh.
As the name suggests, it has Kimono sleeves. Relaxed and comfy!
By the way, being a Japanese, when I first moved to Canada, I was confused by the name “kimono” being used for describing a type of western clothing. (In case you don’t know, Kimono is a traditional Japanese garment. It’s a T shaped robe worn with the left side over the right, secured by a sash called Obi. Some casual every day kimonos are made with cotton, formal/special occasion ones are made with hand embroidered silk!)
I get that the word “kimono” describes these types of sleeves pretty well, since you don’t see this kind of sleeves on wester clothes often…But one has to wonder if it’s a cultural appropriation.
I don’t see a big problem calling this type of sleeves “Kimono-style (or kimono-inspired) sleeves” as much. Because the words like style/inspired indicate that the original idea for Kimono already exists somewhere.
However, calling this type of garment itself a Kimono, has some potential issues. If one is not aware that the Kimono is a Japanese garment, then they would believe that this western clothing IS the kimono. And that would result with taking the word Kimono away from its original culture and over-writing it with something else.
So what should we call this type of clothes? I’m not really sure yet. If you know some good ones, please let me know!
The yarn I used is light weight and breathable. I think I picked a really good fibre mix for this pattern!
It covers my shoulder with warmth but the linen keeps it from being too hot. Perfect for chilly spring/summer nights but I think it’s also wearable during winter since the indoor is heated well pretty much anywhere here.
For some reason, this took a lot longer than I expected (I even enjoyed knitting it too!) but it was totally worth it. I don’t think I have anything like this in my wardrobe so I’m excited to adding this to it!
Nov 29, 2018
