Swahaste tvahastam (from my hands to yours)
This time it was this one by Connie Willis.
Normally I am not a science fiction fan but I really needed a book. It was fun, very British (Willis is American), Wodehousean. But reading the blurbs of her other books, I’m not sure I’d read them. I’m not into science fiction (did I say that already?) Now I am once again new-book-less, except the Oxford Dictionary of Biography. Sigh.
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?
Sorry for the horrible pictures, but the husband is taking my camera to work every day, which means I can only get pictures at night. So either I use the flash or I have blurry pictures. The good news, though is that he’s buying a much more powerful camera for his department, so soon I should have mine back. And then we’ll still have bad pictures things might change.
Well anyway, that there picture says I’ve finished the giant dishcloth aka the diagonal garter stitch eyelet border baby blanket, a more or less generic pattern from Lion Brand, which stalled when I ran out of yarn (ho hum, so what else is new), but then Iwillloveherforever Samantha stepped in and mailed me another skein, which got to me in record time, although I still fell short but I substituted a close lookalike and here it is!!! Teddy bear for scale. Here are a couple more bad pictures, just to get your goat (no clue what I’d do with it, but it’d still be fun to get it, doncha think?)
The thing is quite large and expanded a bit after a wash today. I shall pop it into a bag with some of the dishcloths I’ve been making for my SIL’s new baby (I haven’t been making the dishcloths for the baby, but the dishcloths could be used as washcloths or wipecloths on the baby. If you see what I mean :D).
If you click on the pictures you will see that in addition to its giant size in reality, I’ve loaded the pictures in large size as well.
Here are the specs:
Yarn: Lion Cotton in Natural 4 skeins and a bit of TLC Cotton Plus (to fill in the final shortage) in Cream. (Why does a Google search for TLC Cotton Plus-or other Coats and Clark yarns-lead me to third party sales sites and not to the manufacturer’s site? Very odd. I think they should work on their meta tags or something. Also, I find navigating through their refurbished site quite cumbersome and there don’t seem to be helpful links to patterns from the yarn pages. Bad website design.)
Needles: Denise size 7 circular. 3.75mm?
Pattern: Lion Brand
Time: A——-ges. But at least the baby is still a baby (less than a month old as we speak).
Size: 37.5″ square (That officially makes it my largest ever knitted object. Or even crocheted, I think. Wow.)
Extra: #1 The Lion Cotton seems to shed in the washing machine. I had to pick off lint from the blanket as well as the dishcloths. No idea why the lint collector in the machine didn’t work.
#2 I can’t remember now why on earth I chose this pattern. Just before finishing, I read in The Knitter’s Handbook that garter stitch progresses slower than stockinette. Too bad I didn’t realise that before I began the project. Of course, my reasoning would have been (a) knit knit knit no purl (b) freedom to decide size depending on yarn position (HA!) (c) knit takes up less yarn than crochet so I could get more mileage out of my stash (ha!)
#3 I like the sensation of the yarn-needle combination. Like butter. For both yarns. Maybe I should specialise in cotton only.
#4 The bestest part is, I now have a cable free!!! Amazingly all my Denise cables are in some project or other, so it’s wonderful to have one free. Yippee.
#5 No edging required!
They say, don’t they (who?) that a picture is worth a thousand words? By that reasoning, I should at least write 2000 words in this post. But don’t panic, I won’t.
Actually I had two FOs last week, but both were patterns I tested and both designers have asked me not to share pictures until they hear from publishers. So two missing pictures (at least) should mean 2000 words…
Anyway, I can tell you this much: one was a pattern in thread I tested for Kathy, a beautiful creation as usual (her design is beautiful, I’m not saying my version of it is) and the other was in yarn, with knit, crochet and tunisian crochet elements in it for someone over at Crochetville.
Also, I see some light at the end of the tunnel that is the giant dishcloth baby blanket in cotton I’m making for a nephew. Yippee!
In literary news, I have been devouring the small mountains of the books I bought last week. Took a break from Kinsey Millhone to read some Archy McNally instead. I only had one of those, McNally’s Risk, so then I took a break from murder and mayhem to cruise through the soppy romances. I’m sending those off to one of my friends, who reads them and first enraptured me by sharing my jokes on them. Now I’m back on homicide. Just finished two by Martha Grimes (who, despite being American, brings such an authentic Brit feel-snow, rain, sleet, London and tormented Scotland Yard detectives-to her books), Help the Poor Struggler and Jerusalem Inn. I’ve read The Old Fox Deceiv’d and The Blue Last before. True Brits might find errors (what is the geographic equivalent of anachronism?), but I haven’t had a wrong note strike yet. I love British mysteries, they make me feel nostalgic, which is decidedly odd, since I’ve never even been to Britain. But I enjoy McNally, too, he sounds like Bertie Wooster (who I’m not very fond of) maybe because of his lifestyle. And all those descriptions of food (most of which I’ve wouldn’t even eat, being vegetarian-mostly).
Still in store, some more of Grafton’s alphabet series…I love books.
I went back to the book fair and struck it mildly lucky. I picked up a copy of this for Rs 495/-.
Not bad, eh? I’ve just skimmed through it and like the style.
Also got a few more murder mysteries…
And in waaah! news, how does one retract a unretracting retractable tape? I got one just this afternoon in a CAT PAC and enthusiastically stretched it out to its full length of 5 feet. Now it won’t retract! Waaaaah! Only a couple of inches in and that’s it. It’s made in China.
I don’t use dishcloths actually, but I find infinite satisfaction in having a Finished Objectâ„¢, and one, moreover, which uses stitches/stitch patterns new to me. And I find that cotton yarn has this wonderful definition in it, which makes the stitches stand out. Over at the Dishcloth KAL, they’ve announced prizes for the three top (as in most prolific, I suppose) dishcloth knitters. The top two are pounds of dishcloth cotton and the Mason-Dixon knitting book. Sigh. While I covet both wildly (imagine the miles of dishloth-y things that could be made with a pound of the stuff!!! and that baby kimono…on second thoughts, maybe the cotton is better.) Anyway, I fall way, way behind in the counts 😦 That’s ok, I’m still having fun putting off other work making just as many as I can.
So here’s two more.
The regulation details about these:
Yarn: Caron Cotton Tales (white) and Rio from Reynolds (pink), both 100% cotton. I can’t find websites for either yarn. Caron must have discontinued this cotton and perhaps Reynolds is one of those rarities, a brick-and-mortar-only company (Do they still exist in the US of A?). I just got to a Reynolds site and there is no mention of this yarn at all. The Rio yarn is made in Brazil. The Cotton Tales is plied and softer than the Rio.
Needles: Oh dear. I don’t remember now. But I think 3.75mm Pony straights.
Pattern: Kitchen Cotton Dishcloth and Woven Dishcloth, both from the Dishcloth Boutique
Time: I’m slow.
Size: 7.5″ x 8″and 7.5 x 9″ square
Extra: #Nothing, really. Oh yes, the imaginatively named Kitchen Cotton cloth is fully reversible. Which you have to love about a piece of knitting or crochet.
Ok, the eagle-eyed among you might have spotted that spiky purple thing in the background behind the pink dishcloth. That is yet another project I have started. It’s a free Bernat pattern and although I am making it for a boy, those are the colours in stash and that’s what I’m using. *insert mulish look* Using stashy acrylic, it’s coming out way bigger than I think it’s supposed to, but my friend says her baby is big, so that should be okay. I got to just after the armholes decrease and then inexplicably stopped.
What I find hard to understand is why this cardigan was designed in pieces instead of making it one piece up to the armholes and then splitting it up. Funny. Especially when you think that in crochet making things without seams is so much easier (and you don’t even have to resort to circulars/dpns etc) as you only ever have one stitch to think about. I read somewhere that having seams makes garments drape better or something. Is that true?
And then you could just pick up at the armholes and make the sleeve downward with decreases rather than upwards with increases. What a pain (working upwards, I mean). Of course, never having designed anything myself, I am not in any way qualified to comment. But I’d really appreciate not having a zillion seams to sew at the end of what is supposed to be a quick project. Not to mention the number of ends that will have to be woven in. 😦
Anyway, before I go, I’d like to clarify that the possiblity of yarn from Russia that I mentioned last time is not a continuous stream (I wish!) but a one-off offer. And I haven’t even written back to the friend yet.
Also, a confession of crime: I steal cats. Yes. All those photos of cats you see on my blog are stolen from their lucky owners. Well, the photos are stolen, not the cats themselves. But yes, Your Honour, I plead guilty.
To distract you from my nefariousness (I hope that’s a word), here is a picture of the nice spike stitch back:
which I might decided to undo and start afresh, this time adding in the front panel stitches to either side, which shouldn’t make that much of a difference, since we turn the work at the end of each round anyway, so there shouldn’t be a jog (jag?) of any kind. Let’s see. The idea is that the friend’s baby will have a sweater for this December.
I know, I’ve been a bad blogger and haven’t made any substantial posts in ages. But then that sort of reflects what’s been happening generally with my knitting/crochet in general…a kind of blah-y unfinishing dullness.
One exciting (possibly) thing: someone in St Petersburg Russia has offered to send us things if we want and they will reach in a ship’s container so although I will be somewhat older by the time they arrive, it should still be fun, no? (Meaning no issues with weight/volume) So of course, I’m thinking Y A R N!!! From a link at the knittyboard I found this blog and she has a list of yarn shops in St Petersburg (Petrograd, Leningrad-we don’t mind Lenin here in India). And a list of yarns she found there. I must confess, I am absolutely trembling to read about the baby silk, cotton and wool yarns she mentions. For someone in Europe and North America or Australia/NZ, none of that might be exciting, but as I’ve found no natural fibre yarns here, I’m dying to try these (they are partly imported from the rest of Europe, I understand). So, any suggestions on amounts I could ask for that would be sensible? What might make a full project? Too often nowadays I find my stash is full of single skeins of luscious yarns, which, having little need for hats or bags, I find it dispiriting to imagine what to make with. (Maybe that partly explains why my knitting/crochet recently has been so bitty 😦 Of course my notoriously short attention-span has nothing at all to do with it. Uh-huh.)
Yesterday we went to a Book Fair (again the “American Library Surplus” thingy. I’m all for American Library Surpluses, last time here in Vizag I got Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitting Without Tears for a pittance, and then in Hyderabad I picked up a whole rash of books for cheap). I didn’t find any knitting/crochet books this time, but the chappie said they were expecting new stock this week, so a return trip is in order. The same thing happens each time, but doesn’t necessarily lead to much. I did pick up a whole bunch of murder mysteries (including 3 [A, B, & D] of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet series from Sue Grafton and a couple of others, I think one Ed McBain, maybe a Patricia Cornwell and one new-to-me writer). Also some soppy romance novels. (Yes, I can devour those even at this age, so sue me 😉 )
And the Zadie Smith is also being read. It makes for a nice dipping-into leisurely read while eating lunch, while the murder books are for read-at-one-stretch fun. So all those books for about Rs 425/-. Lovely. And I already know who I’m going to pass them on to when I’m done.
When I stop bouncing around the country behind the husband bearing dinky tin trunks retire, I shall build a house with a library, and in my library shall be entire series of books of all my favourite writers. There will be a comfortable couch and some radio/music. A window with a view and wi-fi access. I don’t think anything else will be required, do you? Some chocolate, perhaps.
swakrta.com 