Earning 60,000 yen a month through knitting alone was an impossible challenge for me at the time, so I decided to cover that amount by taking a temp job doing data entry three days a week. I worked in a high-rise building in Roppongi Midtown. Since it was just a temporary job, I treated it casually, simply enjoying the novelty of working in the big city.
Even while attending knitting classes, I spent my days seriously thinking about how I might eventually earn that 60,000 yen purely from knitting. My first idea was to sell finished items I had knitted. Back then, there were no large events or online platforms for individuals to sell handmade items. The main options were small exhibitions held by groups of individuals at galleries or sales through rental display boxes. I tried making small pouches and accessories to sell at such places, but of course, they didn’t sell much at all.
While I was still searching for a viable path, my husband was transferred to the Kansai region, and after two years in Kanagawa, we moved to Kyoto. Because of the uncertainty of how long we would be there, my husband told me I could spend my time in Kyoto however I liked.
I decided to pursue spinning, which I had been interested in, and attended spinning classes for a year. At that time, I did all sorts of wool-related work: knitting hats with handspun yarn, dyeing, and more. However, I soon realized that spinning took away the time I could spend knitting.
Of course, my 60,000-yen challenge was still ongoing. I joined various events, trying to sell my handmade items, but the more I tried, the more I realized how difficult it was. And yet, I couldn’t find any other way to earn money. I was completely stuck.
During that period of searching, a friend told me about a wonderful yarn shop in Osaka that carried foreign yarns. The shop was called room amie. The yarns I encountered there and meeting the shop’s owner, Ms. Kikumori, became the turning point of my life.
Back when I was still attending knitting classes, I had designed a round yoke vest because I wanted to wear something in my own size. After moving to Kyoto, I finally uploaded the information about it to Ravelry. Soon after, I received a delightful message from an American woman named Sara, who wanted to knit it for her daughter’s wedding. She asked if I had plans to publish the pattern.
With that memory in mind, I visited room amie. Confronted with all those beautiful yarns, I thought about reknitting the vest with the yarn at the shop and writing up the pattern. Ms. Kikumori was even so kind as to even offer to sell it as a kit once the pattern was complete.
First, I had to tackle the task of writing the pattern, something I had never done before. Since I didn’t yet have the skills for size grading, I simply wrote down exactly what I had knitted. I didn’t own any software to create Japanese-style charts, and besides, I needed to create a written pattern for Sara. I decided to produce both an English written pattern and a Japanese translation.
At that time, you had to directly email the system administrator to request to register as a designer on Ravelry. On top of that, even though my English wasn’t very good, I had to write an English-language pattern. In the end, Sara agreed to proofread the pattern in exchange for receiving it for free, which was a great relief.
I wrestled with English every day, and somehow managed to complete the pattern, which I named the Dot Yoke Sweater. But the struggle wasn’t over. Uploading the pattern to Ravelry didn’t go smoothly, and I struggled with the process for quite some time. Looking back, I think Ravelry itself was still in its developmental stage back then.
One day I was determined to get it done and finally finished the upload at 2 a.m. Exhausted, I took a bath, and when I came back to check the computer, I discovered that three copies of the pattern had already been sold. I remember dancing with joy in the middle of the night.
It was February 3, 2010. That day marked my debut as a knitwear designer.