You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Chandra’ tag.
The whole of June was dry. In terms of rains in Mumbai as well as words from me on this blog. The rains have finally arrived here with a vengeance and I decided to come back and talk.
My stash is in a garage, corrugated cardboard wrapped and clingfilmed. I spent one month working on the little I’d packed for that chimeric granny square bedspread, then I was one month haunting the Weavers’ Centre in Hyderabad and learning about floor looms. After returning to Mumbai and limbo-land, my fingers got itchy. So off I went to the LYS (there is actually one, more a Local Craft Store, and very near by this city’s standards) and picked up some thread to knit a doily. I forgot my half-formed resolution to use thicker fibre for lace, and got the usual #20 equivalent.
Got a few rounds into it and then decided my daughter and I needed head gear for the sunny walk to and wait at the bus stop. So off I went and got some acrylic yarn and matching thread. That turned into this:
But I realised my gauge is much looser than the LYS owner thinks, and I ought really to have bought a hook a couple of sizes smaller. So I quickly went off the second hat, but miraculously, perhaps because I was making sun hats, the monsoon settled in. Now I don’t need a hat anyway.
Then I forget how, but I got itchy to crochet a doily. This time I made sure to get a thinner hook, and double the thread. I’m happy now and have got about 33 rounds done of a Japanese pattern, despite having to undo several rounds and redo them. I’m thinking this might turn into another parasol, which would be about as much use as a doily in my house. Not that I have a house at this point.
Today I gave my daughter a small synthesiser that my father brought me back from a trip to the US in the 1980s. She has her own toy piano, but I haven’t brought it with me to Hyderabad. We got her batteries, and she enjoyed playing with it. Picking out tunes and notes.
Since the advent of Ravelry, I’ve been using it for notes on all my projects, so there is something for me to refer to when I get around to finishing a project, as well as notes for someone else who might make something similar or use similar materials. Sometimes I feel almost like a pioneer, since not everyone who’s gone ahead of me has left notes.
Sometimes it’s nice to be able to hand down notes.
I fell in love with this pattern when it first appeared on Ravelry, so you can imagine my joy when it came up for testing. No matter that I’d never done stranded colour work before or duplicate stitching, I jumped to volunteer for testing. I sent up a desperate appeal for India’s only cotton yarn (we’ve never heard of any other than threads) and a friend kindly volunteered to send me some. Which she duly did to me in Hyderabad and I set out to make the dress.
As you can see, the idea was a good one. Only, in the execution, user error crept in and the project was a fail. For several reasons, including: my first colour work, and it shows; it ended up too small even though I made it 6-months and Chandra was around 5 months old then and she is a small baby; I’m mortal afraid the red/maroon will run, so I’ve not even washed it; I don’t like the long floats from the duplicate stitch.
Pattern: Paisley Baby Dress by Mimi Kezer of Pastiche Knitwear (a Ravelry shop). There’s a matching hat. In addition to colour work and stranding and duplicate stitching, I also did my first picot edge hem.
Needles: 3.5mm
Yarn: Laura (the only cotton yarn sold in India for handknitting, as opposed to thread). It’s DK-ish. It’s fine, but not a luxury cotton, while not quite a dishcloth one either.
Time: About eight days, so it’s fairly easy, considering I’d never done a colourwork pattern before.
Size: Too small for Chandra
I have this now and don’t quite know what to do with it. For one, it’s small, for two, the colour might run (I know I should have tested for fastness before I used it, but I needed it in a hurry and was getting it from another city sight unseen, plus I needed it in a hurry!), for three I don’t like the long floats and finish of my duplicate stitching on the bodice and for four the stranding and the cotton make it a dense thing. I’m half tempted to sew up the bottom and turn it into a bag. Or maybe when my doll has a doll of her own she will use it for her wardrobe.
I’m thinking I might make it in acrylic, which would make it lighter and the elasticity of the yarn would make better looking stranding.
I knit both colours with my right hand for this project, but have since started using the left for one strand and knitting it continental, scooping the yarn with the RH needle in a motion which is very similar to crochet and therefore quite quick. I haven’t purled with it yet, so I cannot say how fast I’d be that way. I do not appear to have tension issues either. Much happier with the two strands kept apart than forever having to detangle (disentangle?) them.
I’ve never seen Fall (Autumn) myself, though we are supposed to have, in Indian tradition, 6 seasons (Vasant, Grishm, Varsha, Sharad, Hemant and Sisir), it’s usually only, mild, hot and hotter. Or damp, damper and dampest if you live in Kerala.
However, I do believe the colours I just chose for two projects are Fall colours, the colours of the foliage as it prepares to drop. I’ve wanted to break out of my comfort zone of inoffensive pastels and typical choices, so when I decided to make a couple of covers for the new TV at my parents’ home and the DVD player, I took my courage in my hands and chose these. I wasn’t sure how they’d work, but I think they do fine. (My mother did tease me though, “Would you wear a saree in these colours?” The answer to that I think would still be NO.)
I also took the opportunity to try two patterns I’ve had my eyes on for a while. The first of those was the diagonal box stitch (also called crazy stitch, I think). I found a good tutorial at Crochet Cabana here. Then there was the popular Wooleater blanket from Sarah London (who always has such gorgeous colours on her blog).
Yarn: Unnamed acrylic in sport weight, 5 different colours, about a hank each. The whole batch cost me Rs 88/-. Cheap!
Patterns: The Diagonal Box Stitch for the TV cover (above) and the Wooleater pattern for the smaller DVD player cover. I can now tick both of them off my list of crochet-to-do. Both are easier than they look and once you ‘get’ them, you don’t have to look at the instructions again.
Hook: 4.00mm
Time: The pieces themselves were quick, but the ends, oh my. There were around a 100 ends on the TV cover which I finally wove in while watching the Winter Olympic coverage. The DVD player cover had a few less, mainly because I used less yarn (the leftovers from the TV cover). The DVD cover ended up scrappy since I focused on using up the yarn rather than making sure the rows had only one colour. No problem, I wanted to use up all the yarn anyway. Great value for money.
Size: Didn’t really measure, but they are good for the purposes they were meant to serve.
Extra: Had teeny amounts of yarn left, some of which ended up in this:
It’s a hairband I made up in an hour, and it is adjustable. And yes, the baby is wearing a handknit, more of which later. Let me leave you with a link to Rima’s blog. Her use of colour inspires and amazes me.
Motherhood might be supposed to confer serenity on the mother. Not on this one, sadly. However, that’s not something I want to dwell on in the blog, given that I blog so less as it is.
I did achieve Serenity, though, in the form of this blanket.
Pattern: Serenity (direct pdf download) by Laura Wilson-Martos (Rav link here). I think it was my largest knit lace, one that had been on my queue for a while (in my mind if not on Ravelry). It went very well, with only one or two unimportant typos (such as a misplaced bracket). I only flagged slightly in the eyelet section, tiring a bit of the endless-seeming yo k2tog, yo k2tog. Otherwise I like the pattern and wouldn’t mind a re-run. My project page is here. I like working lace from the centre. It gives you better control over how big the final product is, especially when your yarn is limited.
Yarn: Aslan Trends Class, a cotton-acrylic blend which has worn well in use and two handwashes. The yarn was a gift from a Rav friend who I met when she visited Kochi with her husband. White may be seen as foolhardy for a baby blanket, but we are using it as a show blanket, only used for public occasions. I like the feel of the yarn and the stitch definition but was not enamoured of the way the shiny strand causes the other strands to twist around it, creating what is called worming, I believe. Also, I had an issue with my stitch markers snagging on the yarn (for which I am close to a solution now, having found some neon-coloured smooth rubber bands; they are rather large, perhaps I will find some smaller ones at some point). I used nearly all of 4 skeins.
Needles: 4.5mm. I believe I was supposed to do the first few rows in a smaller gauge and then move to the larger, but I couldn’t be bothered. It doesn’t seem to have made a difference.
Size: 44″ square. It’s a good size for swaddling.
Time: Thick yarn makes for fast lace! About 3 weeks, perhaps because of the eyelet zone.
Extra: I’m proud of this FO. It’s gotten me several compliments as well.
I’m considering a crochet blanket but cannot settle on a pattern. I have this one and another knit blanket and feel my other craft should be represented as well. Either regular crochet or Tunisian…I have a sportweightish cotton which I lugged back and forth to Hyderabad a couple of times already. The days of travelling light are far behind me, I fear. The last two times I paid enough for excess baggage to almost buy another ticket.
Oh yes, I’m now at home in Hyderabad. Anyone dropping in?
I’ve been making baby stuff for years now, as you will know if you’ve been reading my blog for a while. Rarely do I get to see the things I make on the intended recipient. Indeed, I have no way of knowing if they fit or are useful, even. But now I have a model for any knit/crochet objects I make in the future.
She’s called Chandra and was born on November 10th, as most of my Internet friends know by now, via Facebook or Ravelry. She’s wearing Pebble, which I made a couple of months ago.
Pattern: Pebble (and on Ravelry). Easy, quick and satisfying. I used some of the Russian cotton I still have and ended up with this size, which I could call newborn, I suppose. (My project page here.)
Yarn: Kamtex Khlopok (khlopok meaning cotton) from St. Petersburg. I got 6 balls of it with a lot of yardage and still have odd amounts left. Other projects from it include my Chakra purse, a Fat Bottom Bag, a cabled baby bib, another bib I find I didn’t blog about that I used the crochet trinity stitch for and improvised, and yet another baby bib that I made up from a pattern I saw somewhere (again unblogged). This yarn is a bit splitty, but looks fine when worked up and the yardage is enormous. Pebble’s been washed a couple of times and has worn well in the handwash-with-hot-water-and-Dettol plus dryer cycle.
Needles: 3.5mm (I use circulars whenever possible, my straights are mostly decorative now, I’m afraid.)
Time: Overnight.
Size: My newborn (who is on the petite side).
Extra: I learnt garter Kitchener to graft the one shoulder seam and was quite happy with the outcome. Not that I remember how to do it now, but it’s not scary any more.
I made it in blue, because well, the cotton yarn I had was blue, also, a teeny weeny bit of superstition in me, I suppose, that if I made it in the western boy tradition, I’d not jinx my chances of having a girl! It seems to have worked anyway.
I leave you with a picture of the unmodelled Pebble so you know how it looks. There’s another photo of Chandra in it on my Ravelry page or my Flickr stream.
swakrta.com 