OLGAJAZZY

If someone told me in the past 2 months that I would have to make SO MANY decisions and follow up and then change them in order to adapt to a situation, I’d say they were talking about someone else’s life. Firstly, thank you to everyone for your immense support!!!

For the past month and a half I have been displaced from Japan as in “voluntarily departed” for the time being till the situation got stable. Such a funny work to think of right now.. stable, it would take years to see the damage from what happened. I have been blessed enough with many generous and kind friends who offered me shelter stateside. Not to speak of all my knitterly friends online who were “with” me till the moment I left. I can’t complain that I spent my nomadic “vacation” in Los Angeles, city I once lived long long time ago. I tried concentrating on the positive in every single little bit of the day – sunny weather, fact that I was in good health, delicious and missed foods, swam in a pool, even saw Taylor Swift shopping in Anthropologie, but not without that buzzing noise in the back of my head “what’s next, when can I go back home to Japan?” The worry and stress got to me eventually and I have been down with a nasty cold for 2 weeks, what else can top this cake… BUT (trying to look and stay all positive)..

It was so nice catching up with fashion and knitwear designer friends and finally meeting them in person, Wendy of Knit and Tonic fame with her wonderful family who extended their kindness to me. Many smiles and laughter moments shared while we visited historical Farmer’s marker and the Grove and food food food.. I must say, I haven’t grown that fond of most Japanese food as huge amount of it contains rice or noodles of some kind and it’s always hard to find flavors palatable to a Westerner. Oh I am sure you wonder if there was yarn involved.. Even better – yarn and button store in a very close proximity to each other!

I got to meet mia meraviglioso amica italiana Francesca of fluffbuff and have a delicious lunch at a mozzarella bar in Westfield mall, I believe I haven’t eaten mozzarella and prosciutto crudo that good since I lived in Italy. I really wish by the time I felt better I could do more and see more friends, but by some strike of luck, my fashion designer friend took me to Santa Monica one afternoon and we dropped by Wildfiber store unplanned and it was my luck to have met Grace, Terri and Natasha and their team who hosted Ori Ami Knits trunk show and book signing prior to my going back home.

Now I am back in Japan, with new digits in my year count, life seems restoring and sad to have missed “hanami” and so much to do. In fact I haven’t told you stories of 3 new designs that I have already published but all about them in upcoming week.

I gave myself a promise to blog more this year (yeah, right!) as my New Year’s resolution, only to get slammed in January with all these projects, this exciting work that I can’t talk about yet or show you my living room filled up with yarn.. where cat and husband can be spotted occasionally.