Knitting a hat of Eriko Aoki's pattern

Hi knitters,

A few months ago, I've been knitting a hat, on and off, from a pattern of Eriko Aoki.  (Yeah, on and off, as I was quite busy changing my life. ) Eriko Aoki is a famous Japanese designer who has been contributing her patterns to many Japanese publications.   The pattern is from a book called House Knit, Outside Knit. 

 And I used knitting needles US #6 instead of the suggested on.  The the hat is smaller and suits children of 6 to 9 year-old.

Knitting this hat is a good exercise of cable knitting and learning Japanese knitting symbols.  I found that the advanced you want to go, the more you need to learn. And my reference book wasn't informative enough. 

Therefore, I sought help from YouTube again.

Here is one I recommend.  It is a YouTube channel called Keiko no Puppy, and it is official of the Japanese Yarn Brand Puppy.   You can find some instructions on how to knit and crochet.  The good thing about this series of YouTube tutorials is that you don't need to know Japanese at all.  The demonstration is in clear and done in slow pace.  You'll see Japanese subtitles at the bottom of the screen.  But you don't quite need that.    

And you can just look at the right top corner of the video and see the symbols.  

Here is a demonstration of k2tog.




Although this is a great help.  There are still so many symbols that I couldn't find.  I guess I need to find another reference book that contains information for rare symbols if I want to keep advancing.  I DO NEED THAT!  Please let me know if you have any recommendation.  Thank you!

So at the mean time, I finished another hat from a pattern of Japanese designers.  Will tell you more about it next time. 



Happy knitting!