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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…
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 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.
Remember when I joined the Dishcloth KAL a few aeons ago? I finally decided to actually make something to show for it. So here’s #1
And #2
Details, if you must:
Yarn: Phildar Lin-Coton 50/50 sent me in a CATPAC. The colour is actually a faded blue. I used two strands together. I had two balls of it and after two dishcloths, only a small amount left.
Needles & Hook: Heide‘s Boye aluminium circulars, size 4.50 mm/7 I think. The needle is silver coloured.
Pattern: Checkerboard Dishcloth and Short Rows Rectangular (!!!) Wash Rag, both from the Dishcloth Boutique
Time: About a day each. What can I say, I’m slow.
Size: 8″ x 8.5″ and 9″ square
Extra: #1 I’m really pleasantly surprised by my experience with the Boye needles so far. I find their crochet hooks are very heavy and even crudely made, with prominent ridges. Can someone explain the difference to me?
#2 I don’t know why the pattern is called rectangular, I got a square out of it. The pattern is slightly oddly written. Not enough dotting of the i’s and crossing of the t’s. I like being spoonfed.
This is again for the CAT PAC I’m donating. Skip said she likes green, so hopefully she’ll like this.
Don’t you like it when you can make something which is of practical use and not merely beautiful? I love it. (Perhaps that’s why most of my FOs are plain ugly-I’m looking to make something functional fast and don’t care what colours I throw together, or about the finishing so much :()
Here are the specs:
Yarn: Acrylic from Hyderabad. Not very nice.
Hook: Boye G/6/4.25 mm metal
Pattern: Natalie’s Econoshopper Mesh bag
Time: 3-4 hours (should take less but you try to surf blogs and edit stories and crochet all at once)
Size: Hmm, didn’t actually measure it. It isn’t crucial I think.
Extra: #1 For this pattern, it would be helpful if you marked your corners before embarking on the bag-shaping bit. Otherwise, it’s a nice toddle.
#2 I made another of these almost a year ago (and gushed about its practicality) and bought this green yarn at the same time! How’s that for coincidence? :-O
WordPress now has a “HTML” tab to its editor for the geeks, I presume.
It is so quick and offers immediate gratification. Also I can create 3-D objects so nicely. Here are two of my latest FOs.
First up, this crochet hook caddy:
I finished it a couple of nights ago. It holds about 40 of my hooks now (I have a few more, scattered here and there in WIPs). Here are the details:
Yarn: Longtime readers will recognise the GUM (Sending you to my old blog site because I’m being lazy)
Hook: Boye G/6/4.25 mm metal
Pattern: From Priscilla Hewitt
Time: Overnight
Size: 3″ x 4″
Extra: Nice and fast and a great way to use up the horrible yarn I don’t know why I bought. My hook stash now looks very organised. The hooks are now all colour-coordinated and arranged by size. I like being organised on a small scale.
This month I am donating a CAT PAC for Crochetlist CAT, and my donee is Skip. I made this hotpad for her, after she assured me she doesn’t mind acrylic hotpads and is very careful when using them. Never tried this pattern before. Mind the colours.
It gets thickness from having those petal thingies folded over. Details follow.
Yarn: Sundry bits of Rs 6 skeins from stash
Hook: Clover Soft Touch F/4.00 mm metal/resin
Pattern: From one of my favourite sources for instant gratification, the Dishcloth Boutique. This is the Ten Point Hotpad
Time: One day
Size: 11″ across from point to point
Extra: The pattern could have been better written and/or illustrated. As it is, I think I might have done one of the final rows on the wrong side (Wrong Side when I should have had the Right Side facing me). The picture wasn’t big enough to see clearly how the folding worked.
Tell me honestly, do you think it looks ugly? Don’t hold back.
I shall leave you with a closeup of my caddy. The red thing is one of a pair of stitchmarkers given me by Cordelia almost a year ago (or is it two?).
swakrta.com 