| Swahaste tvahastam (from my hands to yours)

Whatever next?!

June 26, 2006 in Uncategorized | Tags: Indian, Supplies | 5 comments

India apparently has a hobby and craft store! It's in Mumbai, called Hobby Ideas and is a venture of Pidilite Industries. I found this out by accident today when I spied a tube of fabric glue in a shop while looking for buttons. Now two of my bags which were languishing while I dithered over hand sewing are sporting linings (drying as we speak). Look ma, no needle and thread!

The tailor refused to sew them in and I was much distressed and girdling my loins to start the task, when I went in to buy buttons and just before I handed in my cash, I spotted the tube of glue. Whoda thunk it? So obviously I grabbed it and tossed over the extra Rs 15 (small price to pay for the pleasure of no-sew – no, not Mary-Sue). Came home and sat down with scissors, bags, cloth, iron and got down to work). Remind me not to keep more than two bags in line for lining. In other words, line as you go, sweetums, or liningless forever you shall remain.

Anyway, as I was saying, with my google fixation, once the gluing was finished, I tripped over to the net and looked up the manufacturer (whose products I use regularly, but hadn't thought to google before). And lo and behold, I find the said store has been in existence since last year. When can I go to Bombay, please?

The craft store has all sorts of things for candle making, glass etching, clay moulding (even has Fimo!) and a spool knitting kit. But that last product is as far as it goes, nothing else remotely related to crochet or knitting was advertised (except this book). Ah well, it's something to even have a craft store in the country. We might still progress.

Bad taste

June 23, 2006 in Uncategorized | Tags: Indian, Supplies | 5 comments

This whole thing is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Remember my rant about an Indian company selling wooden needles and hooks who wouldn't even grace me with a proper reply? Well, I'd written back to complain about (a) their rudeness (b) their illiteracy on June 5. After due consideration (of 17 days!!) I've got them to comment on my blog here, which more or less said the same as in this mail (which they sent me 3 copies of, kindly):

Hello MrsFife,

As per the comment on word express .com supplied on 5^th June 06.

Regarding DHL India Exports Our reason for writing in such a way is that last year an Indian had cheated on us and tried to spoil our business. A man from Delhi contacted us and asked for the details of our company product and samples, which we gave him. He took all the information from us and started contacting our buyers with the samples that we provided him at a cheaper rate.

And he also started spoiling our buyers market even. This is the reason why we don’t respond to Indian e-mail. And you also did the same thing to spoil our business you wrote a comment about us.

Best Regards

I am beyond grrrr now. It depressed me last night and still depresses me now. Constructive suggestions welcome (including and not limited to bloodshed).

Currently reading

June 21, 2006 in Uncategorized | Tags: Books | 3 comments

Well, the fabled bookstore did open as scheduled. Sigh. Not a single book on anything related to yarn. No knitting, no crochet. What few craft books there were, were nicely wrapped in plastic to discourage greedy browsers, probably, from getting their dirty noses into them.

Lots of Guides to Organic Chemistry, and Management though, and almost an entire floor taken up with tacky "gift items" for sale. What can I say, we are very studious and like storing our memories in garish photo frames flanked by artificial flowers that hurt your eyes to look at, which are anyway bespectacled because of hours spent poring over the aforementioned Guides.

As a consolation, I bought myself A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.

Oh, and they didn't have sofas and chairs to sit on, either.

Hey, I just discovered Bryson has a new book coming out in October. Yippee.

Question: Why does none of the websites have the cover for A Walk that my copy does? Strange.

Pink progress

June 21, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: Kids, UFOs | 1 comment

In case anyone was wondering (why would they?), this is how far I've come with my pink sweater (watermelon, actually):

Can't give you inches or centimetres. But it is now heavy enough to tire my fingers. That's one of the disadvantages of knitting something in one piece, I suppose. Wouldn't it be nice to have circulars to take the weight off?

Also, having to work the front and the back with two different strands, and having only one skein, I decided to burn the candle at both ends and use both the inner end and the outer end. This is fine, except as the skein got used up, it is now collapsing on itself and creating a mess. Besides which, it won't be enough to finish this thing, anyway.

The end product will also be good for some weirdly proportioned child, I think. The charts I find online are not very helpful.

End of lame excuse list.

Twisted purl

June 21, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: FOs, FOs - Knitting, Kitchen | 3 comments

Another cotton Sugar and Cream FO. This time it’s a facecloth from the Dishcloth Boutique. I decided to make one of the patterns without a picture, just like that. I’m quite happy with the result, except I don’t see any eyelets in the border. Maybe I knit too tight.

This finished the skein of the Sugar and Cream. So I got two ****cloths (dish, wash, face, whatever!) out of one 2.5 oz (70.9 gm) skein. Nice. I probably wouldn’t be able to crochet two full pieces, but knit is possible.

Details:

Yarn: Sugar and Cream in Cornflower Blue. The other half of the skein left over from the Round Dishcloth.

Needles: Pony 3.75 mm (UK 9/US 5) straights

Pattern: Eyelet Border Facecloth from the Dishcloth Boutique

Time: Overnight

Size: 8.5″ x 7.75″

Extra: #1 New stitch pattern learnt! And without a picture, too 😀

#2 I literally had less than an inch of yarn left over at the end. Gasp!

The Dishcloth Boutique is a great place to practise and learn new stitches. They have both crochet and knit patterns. Now if I could only arrange for an uninterrupted supply of cotton yarn or find a good substitute for it here.

Since I’m so pleased with myself about this thing, some more pictures of the neat marching rows of stitches:

Dang. WordPress isn’t letting me upload any more pics. Must be tired of faded blue knit pictures. Sigh.

Blue round

June 18, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: FOs, FOs - Knitting | 8 comments

S I saw these very interesting dishcloths (yes dishcloths) on my Flickr Knitting feed and hopped on over to the maker's blog and begged her for the details of the pattern. She kindly obliged, so I gave my weary fingers a break from the pink sweater (which is getting heavy) and turned this out overnight:

Close up:

Yarn: Sugar and Cream in Cornflower Blue
Needles: Size 4.5 mm (7) straights
Pattern: From Mielke's Farm (she's also got the crochet potholder that is made in one piece but ends up double-sided – Magic Square, I think it's called)
Time: Overnight
Size: about 10"
Extra: #1 First time making a circular piece in knitting

#2 Short rows again

#3 Too holey where I picked up the stitches, maybe it'll be better next time

#4 I want to be able to do this without the scallops and in different colours in the same piece.

What, me trendy?

June 15, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: FOs - Knitting, Patterns | 1 comment

It turns out that the famous "Ballband dishcloth" is the same one that I knit way back in December. The authors of MDK duly acknowledge it in their book. Wow! Never been ahead of the trend before. Probably will never be again either. Thanks, Sara and Noricum!

Oh, and Sara has now moved to WordPress as well, and you can get her feed here.

Pink sweater

June 15, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: Kids | 3 comments

Margaret Hubert sweater

Originally uploaded by MrsFife.

I really like how the Caron Simply Soft Brites is actually soft. I suppose all acrylics are not made equal. Using size 4.5 mm straight needles. The designer prefers to design patterns with minimum sewing. Just the kind I like. When this is done, the sweater will only need to be seamed up the sides and the underarms. From Margaret Hubert.

I’m confused here

June 12, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: Patterns | 4 comments

I'm probably committing as huge gaffe here. I probably shouldn't even dare to talk about this book, but my Flickr feed on knitting is regularly overrun with photos like this:

Dishcloth 2

Now these look eerily like the pictures here and here and here.

Now, the photos I have here are of a dishcloth I made in December last year for the CLBFX, using a pattern on the wrapper. While the photos I've linked to are all knit using the pattern from…dare I say it, the Mason-Dixon Knitting book (which came out in March 2006). My dishcloth used just the one skein, while I think the MDK ones use two different colours. So, my question is, was the pattern written for the makers of the yarn by the authors of the book and then included in the book? Or is it just a generic pattern from a stitch that the yarn-makers and the authors just happened to both publish independently?

Please, all of you lurkers, tell me what to think. I'm really confused, because this book has been gushed about all over the place, while the pattern is available for free (sort of) with the yarn. Can I find other patterns from the book on other ballbands (yes that is the name of the MDK pattern) or in free leaflets in US stores (sent me by friends)? Am I making any sense here? Or are the two patterns drastically different?

Poking

June 12, 2006 in Knitting | Tags: Techniques | Leave a comment

Question: How many inches of I-cord does it take to poke a hole through your left index finger with a 3 mm dpn?

Answer: Definitely less than the 45" required for the Self-lined bag I've almost finished knitting. Right now all we have is a small white blister after 4". I could use my handy French knitter (aka knitting knobby) but I wanted to prove I could knit an I-cord. The only change from the pattern I've made is to change to dpns from my circular. That means coming down to 3.00 mm from the 3.75 mm, but I have to use what I have. I only have 2 mm and 3 mm dpns.