Japanese patterns

There are a lot of great online sources for free Japanese knitting and crochet patterns. Here are the ones I find most useful. Most are charted, so you don’t need to know Japanese to knit or crochet them. If you need help figuring out the yarn, hook, and gauge info, though, a great place to ask for help is the Japanese knitting & crochet group on Ravelry.

• Pierrot Yarns (Gosyo Co., Ltd.) – crochet, hand-knitting, machine-knitting (esp. prior to 2003), weaving, and a few odds & ends (weaving, knotwork, etc.)
  • main index here (by publication date)
  • categorized index here
    • winter 2009/2010
    • Amikomo vol.4
    • scarves (mufflers)
    • fall/winter vol.3 (2007-present)
    • fall/winter vol.2 (2001-2006)
    • fall/winter vol.1 (1996-2000)
    • baby & kids’ clothes
    • men’s patterns
    • hats, gloves, and mittens
    • items for the home
    • bags
    • corsage / flowers
    • amigurumi & tawashi (dish scrubbers)
    • motif crochet (items made with granny squares)
    • shawls & stoles
    • (weaving patterns)
    • “high-class” patterns
    • spring/summer (2008-present)
    • spring/summer (1996-2007)
      
• Clover Japan
  • note: the patterns on Clover are scattered all over the place. There’s sort of an index here, but it doesn’t seem to list everything. Some of various patterns can be found on these pages:
    • Tezukuri no hiroba
    • Air Series
    • Komaneko amigurumi
    • summer crochet
    • cotton items
    • Irish linen patterns
    • 2006 bag patterns
    • Live in Clover
    • 2004 patterns
    • dog patterns
    • amigurumi patterns
    • colorful crochet 2
    • colorful crochet
    • 2002 casual knit
    • Topping Muffler
    • Hirose Mitsuharu summer crochet
    • Valentine’s Day his-n-her’s scarves
    • 2001 sweater patterns
    • Nicola stars scarf, mitten, hat set
    • petitseven stoles
    • “zipper”
    • “zipper 2″
    • Live in Clover ZAKKA
• Hamanaka
• Mainichi Amimono
• Daruma
• Yukiya
• Omura
• Passage
  • easy knits (mostly women’s sweaters)
  • women’s sweaters (apparently not easy ones)
  • men’s sweaters
  • children’s sweaters
• Konemizuya (mostly tawashi)
• Nikke Victor
• Tezukuritown (free patterns from various Nihon Vogue publications, as well as some supplemental patterns that haven’t appeared in print) – log-in required
• Atelier – these are user-submitted tutorials. Some are charted, some are written out in Japanese.
• Woolmark
• Furachi no amimono zanmai (不埒な編み物三昧)