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I went looking for an embroidery frame at a craft shop and I struck it lucky, finding these bamboo bag handles. The upper ones were Rs 50 a pair (about a $1.10) and the lower ones were Rs 40 a pair (about $.90). Now all I have to do is make some bags. But you know, I prefer my bags to be shoulder ones, so that my hands are free. Time was, all my trousers had pockets so my wallet could be in them and my keys, and I could swing my arms freely around. Alas, now all my trousers are pocketless and I am laden with a handbag with my cell phone, keys, wallet, pens and things. Sigh.
Now I want you to cast your mind back to when you were younger, the world was friendlier and everyone loved everyone else. Remember the last time I showed you some respectable crochet? It could be this or this, neither of which were truly respectable, actually. Anyhow, I am now showing you some work in progress:
This is a baby blanket using the Offset Shells stitch pattern from one of my Harmony Guides. I seem to remember Cordelia told me the yarn is Lionbrand Woolease (she sent it to me via my uncle in Houston whom my sister visited on her way back from Hawaii). The skeins are label-less, so I haven’t a clue what colour it is supposed to be. It’s about 40 inches wide and I’m close to the end of the second skein, with one more left to go. I shall make this as big as it gets and then pop it off in the mail to one of two friends with small children. There’s another one being made, also from a Harmony Guides stitch pattern and it’s a bit er, unorthodox, shall we say? I haven’t got a picture of it yet, but I shall soon.
I am happy to report I successfully used the Russian join on this one which leaves me with two less ends to weave. I’m not quite sure how exactly to manipulate the yarns when you’re trying to join two different coloured ones, though, so as to get the join exactly at the stitch you want it.
In happy book news, a branch of Crossword has opened in this town and it’s walking distance from my house. I visited it the first day and bought Pico Iyer‘s Falling off the Map. I’ve never read him before.
But currently I am reading Alan Clark‘s (colourful chap) Diaries and it’s an interesting experience. I bought it at a discarded books sale at the British Council Library in Hyderabad, along with a bunch of Reginald Hills that I haven’t blogged about. My sister has a deep fascination with Maggie Thatcher and this book has several insights. And I’m learning things I never thought could be true outside books about how British politics work. Also Clark met George Courtauld (Travels of a Fat Bulldog) at an airport in Latin America. Now I want to go back and see if Courtauld refers to the meeting. Except I don’t know where to look for the book. I think my sister had borrowed it from the BCL on one of my Hyd trips. Sometimes it all sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Things like the Queen’s Messengers, and tea parties are actually true!
One of my favourite pieces of dialogue in Alice:
“Whose job is it to answer the door?” (Alice)
“Why, what questions has it been asking?” (the footman, I think).
Oh, and I bought a so-called bamboo cotton sari the other day at a craft fair from a persuasive Jaipuri salesman. I wonder how authentic it is. It qualifies as a party sari (for naval parties where Kanchi and Venkatagiri would be too aunty-like). Don’t know how long it will last. All glamour and glitter.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to throw a whine-fest and vanish. My internet gave out on me on Wednesday afternoon and was only restored last evening. I had to reprogram my wireless router after a year and that took me some figurative hair-pulling before I managed to hit just the right keys. We changed our internet plan from dead-slow unlimited to promised-fast limited. Let’s see how good that is, and whether having a limit on the downloads will reveal just how much flotsam I accumulate each month.
Thank you everyone for your comments on my last post. Ordinarily I would respond by email to each commenter, but this time since it’s been a while, I’m doing this wholesale. Thank you for all the offers to swap. Let me hasten to add that most of my swaps have been excellent and deeply satisfying (for me). Even the ones on Knitty where people haven’t bothered to comment on the swap satisfaction thread.
Also, I think I might have, even with my comparatively measly stash, reached SABLE (Stash Accumulated Beyond Life Expectancy) status, purely because I often sit on my bed (which is my knitting/working on laptop spot) and just stare bemusedly at the general one-skeined, rainbow-hued, variedly-weighted and grossly-mismatched collection.
If it were all cotton, for example, I might open a store for handmade dishcloths (this might not be such a bright idea, because my aunt whom I bestow my works on thinks they are way too beautiful to be used as intended and instead drapes them on her telephone or in the showcase. There’s a limit to how many surfaces can be draped).
If it were all wool, I could neatly pack a few essentials and get myself admitted to the nearest mental hospital for thinking of wool and this climate in the same breath.
I have such things as two skeins of this yarn, two of this one, assorted Indian fun fur and acrylic, two disparate skeins of “Jiffy” and so on. What could I possible make that would reduce this stash? I do like just possessing these things, but in the interests of space and marital harmony, I’d like to diminish this stash before acquiring any more. As it is, the husband makes snide remarks about my “handiworks”. Mustn’t give him any more fodder.
We are waxing really eloquent once again today, aren’t we (and how often, Mrs S, do you find yourself unable to stop this verbal diarrhoea, he asked kindly as the tape recorder whirred in the background and she lay on the black faux leather couch in the sound-proofed consultant’s office. The brown fan had lashings of dirt, she noticed and worried it would affect her allergies. She’d have to weigh the benefits of the weekly shrink visit against being rattled by sneezes the whole of the next day, she decided.)
I thought I’d show you some bright things today. More dishcloths! In yellow! So here goes.
Click through for more views of the lacy diamonds and the cables. The dishcloths are both from the Monthly Dishcloth Yahoogroup. In my forays into these and other patterns, I have rediscovered Judith Prindle. She used to be active on one of my crochet mailing lists. She now has a collection of free patterns for dishcloths and other things up. Nice stuff.
Here’s something a little bit different.
That, me darlings, is a swatch of Crochet on the Double (or Croknit), with standard issue acrylic and a double-ended hook. I love the drape of this, so different from the can-stand-up-by-itself nature of my other Tunisian trials. I must see if the drapiness will transfer productively to a garment or a slip-on potholder or something. For garments, nothing less than thread will do, I should think.
I have lots more to tell you, but I shall spare you for this post and come back later. The ‘more’ will involve screwdrivers, sewing machines, ugliness, books and cats.
Check out this link for one (my) interpretation of “All this and Heaven too”.
Just about a year ago, I made a hexagonish doormat/rug that was more pie-like than anything else. I remained unhappy with it, but being the lazy sloth I am, I’ve been using it folded. Finally last week I got up enough energy to frog it and remake it. Originally, a wise person suggested if I made it with one section less, it might be more semi-circular, and I was planning to follow that advice. However, trying to modify the pattern was too much for the state of mind I was in, so I simply made an sc hexagon using the same yarn, but a smaller hook. It looks much better now, even if it’s a half-hexagon rather than a semi-circle.
Details:
Yarn: Frogged from the previous avatar of the rug, hence the same yarn, probably RH SS, in a dusty rose and an aran fleck. Dusty and fleck are good for floors, don’t you think?!
Hook: I think a P hook. It’s grey plastic and a friend brought it for me from the US along with a blue Q. She couldn’t think what I’d do with such a gigantic hook. :p
Pattern: Followed the directions for the semicircle from this Crochet Me pattern. I cannot even create a simple shape without having my hand held.
Time: About 4 hours. Began it at home, but took it to the radio studio and finished most of it in between announcements.
Size: 16″ x 37″ (Shouldn’t it have been something like 16″ x 32″ for perfect symmetry?)
Extra: #1 I’m now loving it. The P hook wasn’t as bad as my memory of the Q hook was, but perhaps this was because I was careful to use the knife-hold almost throughout, only switching to pen-hold when I forgot.
#2 I have a rubber mat under it so that it doesn’t slip and slide.
#3 I’m thrilled I shall be able to wash this thing.
#4 Yay for redux!
——–
On a bookish note, I finished my Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club, an Isabel Dalhousie mystery, the first time I read one. You must understand that reading the Scotland-based books of McCall Smith is more for the language and literary moments than the actual mystery. So it will be a slow read, as this was, being my bedtime read for the past few days. However tired I am, I feel unable to sleep without reading at least a few pages of something. I resort to re-reading old favourites if I cannot find something new. This leads to clashes with the husband, who cannot sleep with the light on. Now he’s got an eyeshade from the hospital, so everyone’s happy. 🙂
I brought back from Hyderabad the copy of Anne Fadiman‘s Ex Libris that I had given my sister for a gift. It’s a wonderful book and I can’t recommend it enough to Readers. There’s a lot to agree with and to spark one’s own memories. She writes of how her family is a family of Readers and so apparently is her husband. The chapters are actually different columns she wrote. One of them is on difficult words, and coincidentally, I was reading a Reginald Hill which had several sesquipedalians. I shall have to reread that one (or at least skim it) and then I shall hold a mini-quiz on this blog. Someone (sorry, my brain forgot) said she likes to show a picture of what she’s reading, so you know what to look for. I seem to find, however, that most of my books have different covers which are not easily available to show. This might mean that showing the cover doesn’t really help someone not in this country. And some day someone is going to sit me down and explain why books have to have different titles and covers in the United States than they have everywhere else in the world.
Some day, also, I shall figure out how to make the text in my posts flow around the pictures so we do not have a school project type of post to read.
Wipe your feet as you leave, please.
Julie has a sort-of-meme going about where she learnt knitting and when and what she did with it. Here’s my story.
I sort of learnt to knit from my mother while in school (class 6 or something). We had a subject called Craft and we did one of everything for that. That’s where I learnt crochet (my mom can’t crochet). There were assorted embroidery and sewing projects and things made with crepe paper, ribbon, spangles, plastic dolls and umbrella frames (not the lifesize ones, there used to be smaller toy size ones – I always think, ‘What a bonanza for the small shop near the school gates where we always bought these things!’) and things with sponge and cardboard and matty cloth and embroidery floss and yarn…you get the idea. Anyway, in one of the classes we were supposed to make baby booties. In actual fact, my mom made them for me, from the Fleisher’s book I referred to in my last post, in a nice shade of yellow. I wonder what happened to them. I’ve made the same ones since at least a couple of times.
After school, I didn’t knit much until I reached JNU in Delhi and had the cooler winters. Plus my sister had a baby (my niece). So I got the Fleisher’s and needles from my mom, and bought my yarn in Munirka and made a drop stitch shrug which was supposed to be for a toddler or older child, but given my materials, turned out ok for a baby. That might also have been the time I made the cardigan I showed in my last post. Or wait, I think I made the cardigan first, and then when my mom went for my nephew’s birth I made the drop stitch shrug. Shrug. My sister alleges I made my nephew another sweater, in grey and white, but I can’t remember. As I increasingly feel, my brain is turning to mush. I am not able to remember what I did less than 10 years ago.
Apparently I also made a sweater for a cousin’s baby. There was also this horrendous (with the benefit of hindsight) yarn that I bought to try and make something for myself. One product of that was a bulky vest (I doubled the yarn and shrunk the needles to what I had available). I shall dig it up one of these days for a bad photo shoot.
Then I took a hiatus again from knitting, but stayed with crochet in Bombay, turning out lots of doilies and runners and things, including a set for a neighbour’s new baby (actually that was a knit set, again from Fleisher’s). But in Bombay I also had the distraction of libraries, so I had other avocations, as my mom would say.
We came to Vizag in October 2004 and finding precious few sources of books here, I’ve taken up knitting and crochet with a vengeance, and been building my yarn and pattern stash madly. Also this blog. Here ends the first lesson.
Seeing as this is such a dull and pictureless post, I shall direct you to this YouTube video I was sent to by Debbie. (I tried embedding the video here, but my credit with the WordPress guys doesn’t extend that far). Enjoy! It’s a good thing we have a slow internet connection, or I’d spend all my time watching other people’s cats. Thank you Debbie, it cheered me up.
ETA: Trying embedding this again.
ETA!!!: I misguidedly and mistakenly have given the impression that the video above is mine. I must beg everyone to please forgive me, the video belongs fully to its creator, TerriShea at YouTube. I’m sorry for the deception, but regular readers will know I have little compunction about “stealing” cats! This will get me into serious trouble one day. (Not that I don’t wish this particular kitten was mine… and a million others).
Well, sort of. I took some very bad pictures (are there any other kind I can take?) of a cardigan I made for my niece when she was born, as well as a UFO I finished and gave her in my recent trip to Hyderabad. (Yes, I’m back now in Vizag.) First up, we have the cardigan:
And here are the details.
Yarn: Acrylic from the Munirka market in Delhi. Look at my list of yarn stores in India for the exact address. The link is over on my sideboard.
Needles: Who remembers? I made it in 1998! Probably 3.75 or 4.00 mm
Pattern: Fleisher pattern book from the 1960s, it was my mom’s but I have had it now since 1998 (or earlier) since she stopped knitting.
Time: It was a labour of love. I don’t have the faintest idea now how long it took. As usual I didn’t have the time to find nice buttons for it.
Size: Totally forgot to measure it
Extra: #1 What a pathetic set of specifications I’ve given! Might as well not have written anything down. I have better (somewhat) specs for the next project, I promise!
#2 This was in the days when I used to twist my knit stitches (by knitting them through the back leg). I found the mini-cables hard going, I remember.
Next up we have the bag I finished from my mountain of UFOs.
Specs:
Yarn: Mainstays from Walmart (I don’t remember now who sent it to me). Two strands held together.
Needles: I am growing old. But perhaps they were my favourite size, 4.5 mm (or should that be 3.75?)
Pattern: Coats & Clark free pattern (Mine is supposed to be the blue bag)
Time: It was a UFO! The longest part was actually making the handles (strips of hdc) and deciding on and sewing the zip for closure. I’d actually bought the zip ages ago.
Size: 9″ x 9.5″
Extra: #1 I wish I had better options for handles than the tacky round plastic ones (or the tackier odd-shaped steel ones). I should have explored stores in Hyderabad, but what with the auto strike and the absent driver and various other distractions, I didn’t. Thankfully my niece isn’t very discriminating in her taste yet.
#2 The bag isn’t lined either.
#3 If you click through, you’ll find a couple more pictures of the bag in my Flickr photostream.
Right now I have no mojo. I badly want to have something going but have been in a sort of depressed state the past few days. Let’s see.
Next up, I’ll do another post rounding up the books I’ve read between my last book report and now.
Fun fur and four hours, and we have a purse for a feisty 3-year-old. That is why I never despise fun fur. HDC around a base chain without increasing, as long as you like it, then crochet on the handle. The yarn is from Vardhman (held together with Knit Ezee also from Vardhman and I picked up in Shillong) that Jaishree sent me. Simple closure with a loop and button. I gave her elder sister the blue bag I made last June. Girls are fun. You can actually make things for them.
Books
I’m still in Hyderabad and bingeing on books whenever I can. Finished Donna Leon‘s A Sea of Troubles (which I found less enjoyable, maybe a bit grim) and Ruth Rendell‘s End in Tears (no disappointment there, I actually watched the BBC(?) Wexford series before I ever read any of hers). I also finished Reginald Hill‘s On Beulah Height. I realised I’ve read Hill before, didn’t register at first. It was the book told in first person or has he written more than one?
Bought a Lawrence Sanders (not Archy McNally, but something else) The Case of Lucy Bending. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I’d been expecting and I’m leaving it unfinished. I do like the McNally ones, they seem like a combination of Wodehouse (Wooster-like character) and Blyton (food descriptions).
Yesterday I had to fall back on re-reading one of my favourite writers, Georgette Heyer, a hardback omnibus with Arabella, Bath Tangle and The Nonesuch. Most of my Heyers are secondhand paperbacks and in dire condition. But this one (although secondhand) is in good condition. Unfortunately, my hardback omnibus of Dick Francis got eaten by termites in Bombay 😦 All of his books are secondhand ones, too, picked up at the Abids Sunday market, Daryaganj on Sunday or Vasant Vihar any day in Delhi, Churchgate in Bombay (alas, the hawkers have been kicked out now) and any other likely place.
I washed some stuff I made for my sister’s kids yesterday and might have one or two previously unseen objects over the next few days.
I’ve come to Hyderabad and am going to meet some friends. There’s a kid’s birthday party today, so I finally added buttons to the spike stitch cardigan, as well as a bottom and seams to the self-lined purse that was mostly done last year, begun in June! That’s a couple more UFOs down. I’ve promised myself my luggage going back to Vizag will be lighter (got a few more things to make on my list).
Pattern details:
Yarn: Local acrylic, partly from Begum Bazaar in Hyderabad (purple), and partly from Shillong (white).
Hook: Dang. Crystalite orange…5.50 mm
Pattern: Bernat
Time: Not too long, actually, might add up to a couple of days.
Size: 28″ around and 14″ long. I’m hoping it will fit my friend’s toddler.
Extra: #1 The pattern has you make the back and the front pieces separately. I started off that way, but decided to frog and redo the entire body in one piece up to the armholes, then finish the back and fronts individually. That sort of ensured I’d actually finish the thing. I just added the different stitch counts together.
Now the other UFO (this is more of a UFO than the cardigan, really). The self-lined bag had been finished bar the seaming and sewing the button. So naturally I dawdled. Now I want to give this to the same friend with the birthday kid, so I finished it last night. I hope she likes it. It looks a bit homemade…
Pattern details:
Yarn: Unknown acrylic, probably RH or Mainstays, that I got in a recycling contest from Crochet Partners.
Needles: 3.75 mm Pony circulars
Pattern: Lion Brand
Time: Six months? (ouch!)
Size: 6.5″ x 3″ x 10″ Pretty much close to the size in the pattern. Wow!
Extra: #1 Used plastic canvas to line the bottom.
#2 Seaming is horrible, as usual.
#3 In a masochistic mood, I decided to do the I-cord on DPNs as recommended by the pattern, rather than use my trusty knitting knobby. Shudder. Unsurprisingly, it took me ages to reach the target of 20 miles 45″.
In book news (I always go berserk reading when I come here), I bought myself Alexander McCall Smith’s The Sunday Philosophy Club, my first Isabel Dalhousie book. I’ve read his 44 Scotland Street and The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and liked both. But I’m saving this book up to read on the journey back or in Vizag. Instead, I’ve been reading some books borrowed from the British Council Library.
I read Donna Leon‘s Uniform Justice and found a gem in it about mothers-in-law. Unfortunately, I forgot to jot it down, but it seemed so apt. I find the attitudes of the Italians as described by Leon very similar to Indian attitudes. The way corruption is tolerated, accepted as a fact of life, the view taken of policemen and politicians and the inter-city prejudices. I’ve always liked the Italians for the two-governments-per-year policy they appear to have 😀 They’re fun and goodlooking! And I found Italian easiest to learn of all the foreign languages I’ve learnt. Plus I admire the ancient Romans, too (for their engineering and architecture). No idea why an American writer living in Italy has books in the British Library, though.
I finished Ruth Rendell‘s To Fear a Painted Devil, which is a murder mystery (as opposed to some of the psychological thrillers Rendell has written). Vintage, although not an Inspector Wexford story. Nobody can beat British women writers of mystery. In English, anyway.
Now I’m reading another Leon, Death at La Fenice. It’s taking me somewhat longer to read these books than it used to, because of so many diversions and the crafting and shopping and things in the background (like kids being shouted at, the TV and radio). Ah well. It isn’t a race 🙂
Well, not really, but this here post will have a few of the odd FOs I always have. The first photo up there shows three handtowels I whipped up with some terry yarn I swapped for at the knittyboard. No idea of the content of the yarn, but it has a thread chain with the fuzzy bits hanging off it. If anyone recognises the stuff, please do tell me. ETA: The yarn is the discontinued Lion Brand Polarspun. The blue yarn was less substantial than the pastel multicoloured. I got both yarns as four handrolled centre-pull skeins (rewound by the swapper, I’m thinking, but not in the square format the yarn winder would give, so I’m curious how that was achieved.)
Dirty details:
Yarn: Unknown terry-like yarn, four skeins of each. Lion Brand Polarspun
Needles & hook: 4.5mm Boye circular (I think, it’s silver coloured and Heide sent it to me) and 6.5 mm Boye crochet hook (again, would someone tell me why the crochet hooks are so much heavier than the knitting needles?!!)
Pattern: The single-coloured ones were knit from the long side up, plain stockinette stitch with a 4 row garter stitch border (3 stitch garter border on either side), bound off when I thought they were broad enough. Then I improvised a crochet topper for each, with my favourite flower closing, thus eliminating the need to sew a button. Voila! The patchy one is crochet, since I had less than two skeins of each colour remaining. I think you could call the technique intarsia. No? Also worked from the long side up and totally done by sight (as in, “Isn’t that wide/high enough?”).
Time: About 4 hours each?
Size: Oh dear. About um…whatever. Big enough to be hand towels. I refuse to go measure the things, since it won’t change the course of history whether I do or don’t.
Extra: #1 Intarsia! Intarsia?
#2 Someone please tell me why Boye knitting needles are lighter than Boye crochet hooks!
#3 For me!
Now those things up there are very green. No, not in colour. But I used old dead CDs inside and the yarn is the final remnants of some I won in a Crochet Partners recycling contest. We present the CD Coasters (could be a rock group, right?)!
Yarn: Unknown terry-like yarn, four skeins of each.
Needles & hook: 4.5mm Boye circular (I think, it’s silver coloured and Heide sent it to me) and 6.5 mm Boye crochet hook (again, would someone tell me why the crochet hooks are so much heavier than the knitting needles?!!)
Pattern: From here, here, here and here (darn, I can’t find a link right now and I have to go watch CSI: Miami). For the unseen sides, I just did a strategic decrasing circle. All four went to my mom.
Time: A couple of hours each, maybe??
Size: Just bigger than the CDs.
Extra: #1 Finished off the aran fleck. Thought I’d finished the purple also, but found another half-skein or so. Sigh.
Right. CSI beckons. Must go.
Yes, I’ve been horrible about blogging recently. I don’t even have any decent excuses to make, so I shan’t waste your time and mine.
One shabby FO to show off, this tunisian crochet dishcloth, pattern from the Harmony Guides, for the Dishcloth KAL, where I shall shortly be claiming the prize for the slowest dishcloth knitter 🙂
We’ve been to Chennai to see my latest nephew (for whom I knit the diagonal blanket and the –shcloths). The first thing I did in the metropolis was to hit the bookstores. So we went to Odyssey, Landmark and Crossword. I only found knit/crochet books at the first, and I promptly bought up the Harmony Guides. So now I have 5 of the seven. I think I shall do without the Aran stitch volume and the basic knitting technique volume.
While in Chennai we made a short trip to Pondicherry and I went on a shopping rampage, buying up vials of “mitti” (smells like the first rain) and peppermint, and orange-scented soap, and handmade paper and marbled fabric (marbling is a technique where oil paint is swirled on water and the surface to be dyed is laid on it and lifted away. Each time you get a unique pattern).
I did precious little knit/crochet while in Chennai, except that thing up there. I met Viji again and marvelled anew at her work. She’s made some gorgeous drawstring bags with the silk thread, but says she cannot find a good place in Chennai to have them lined.
Now back in Vizag, I am working to finish the spike stitch cardigan I blogged about a few weeks ago. I decided to rip out the back and start afresh, working the fronts and the back together in one piece. I’m through with the body now and have begun one of the sleeves and shall probably take it in with me when I go for my radio duty this evening.
In Chennai I read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, one of those Dan Brownish medieval/modern mythical stories. Why everyone picks on France for these medieval tomes is something I don’t understand. Do mysteries of faith sound better in medieval French?
Also read G (is for Gumshoe) and I (is for Innocent) of the Kinsey Millhone series, as well as my first Reginald Hill (A Pinch of Snuff) (What is the logic behind pronouncing D-a-l-z-i-e-l as Dee-ell???) and Mary Daheim (Bantam of the Opera). Regularly swimming in intrigue I’ve been.
On the other hand, I also finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith. It was an uncomfortable read (no happy endings a la murder mysteries – not that the victims in the murder mysteries have happy endings, but you know what I mean) and reminiscent of EM Forster’s Howard’s End (but only just, but then it’s been ages since I read the latter).
Enough of a ramble…
This is for any of my readers with experience of buying thread in Pune. One of my online crochet friends wants to know the prices of the following:
1)the cost of a 100gm ball of thread from RED HEART, (size 20)
2) the cost of the Knitting cotton by ROSE (size 10 or 5-don’t know?)
3) the cost of ANCHOR 100gms (little thinner than the size 20)
She wants to know if she is paying a fair price where she buys them. “Jita” left a comment on my old Blogger blog telling me that Galaxy overcharges, but she didn’t leave me an email address or an alternative shop suggestion. So we’re looking for information. Anybody know where you get the best prices for thread in Pune? Please?
swakrta.com 