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– We will be moving by the end of May to Cochin. The husband’s been transferred. We came here in October 2004. So just over 2 1/2 years in Vizag. Cochin is exotic for me because I’ve never been to Kerala.
– Today I made a curry of the inside of a banana plant’s stem. We call it “doota”. The inlaws call it oocha, but they don’t use it (they don’t use a lot of vegetables we do). I have a photo of the fibre for you.
It is very fibrous. It is a peculiarly Telugu (or perhaps South Indian) delicacy. The photo is clickable to my Flickr photostream where there is another photo, with my forefinger for scale. I believe yarns made of the fibre are available in the West. I’ve also heard of banana fibre saris here. This particular banana plant (actually a plantain) was in my parents’ house in Hyderabad. It had fruited (!!! what is the right term for that?), and the fruits were harvested, therefore the plant was cut down. They only bear fruit once, you know. The inflorescence is also used in cooking, making a delicious curry.
– Yesterday I made Paatholi which is another Andhra specialty, made of chickpea/bengal gram paste and beans.
– I started making a baby sweater from Australian Woman’s Day Summer Handknits 1986, called Lotsadots, and finished one and a half sides before accepting it was turning out too small. It has since been frogged, but I like the pattern. I want to convert it to working in the round (it’s piecewise now) and use different colours. Will there be a problem maintaining the pattern in the round? I’m afraid there might be a jag. Yasmin will recognise the yarn, she sent it to me. It’s a mix of German and Taiwanese acrylics.
– Currently I’m reading Pico Iyer’s Falling off the Map and find it less funny than I’d hoped. Also he has some peculiar usages for words and phrases. Unwealthy. Commemorated to. Overbroods. I wonder if being a successful writer gives you the license to coin new things. No fussy editors standing over you, red pencils in hand. Or maybe it’s just me. I can’t claim to be an authority on the English Language.
– Today is a sneezy day. My phus-phus (nasal spray) failed again, despite two puffs per nostril last night. I’m giving up.
– Could someone help me place the pictures so that they are not all lined up military style one beneath the other?
I found out today one of my close friends has had a baby girl, just a little before she was due to. I’m hugely thrilled to hear of a girl, because it seems like everyone is popping out the other kind. I dearly want to make something for the baby, but the issue is that it is an Indian baby and will live mostly in hot climates (in addition to having been born in summer). What could I make for her? Suggestions please.
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 🙂
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!
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.
This is how I feel:
because the major knitting project I’m working on now is a baby blanket in Lion Brand cotton for a baby who will be living in Chennai. I *absolutely* have to make something for the baby, so I’m hoping this will be a good thing. I cannot see it wearing any sort of warm clothes ever. Even knitting with this sort of cotton makes me feel it would be too heavy. Maybe I can try making some wearables with some double-stranded thread or something. Hmm. Interesting thought. But I digress.
The pattern is mindless enough (a glorified dishcloth, really) and I was whizzing away in the beginning. Now I’ve hit the widest section (still getting wider) and man, is it slow-going! 😦
Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Not very informative, but it’s about 29″ each side. I have to get to 36″ for a decent size and it looks like never happening.
Also, I’m on my second skein and fast depleting. There is only one more skein left, which most probably will not be enough to complete the thing.
Two positive things, though. The Denise #7s are working through the yarn like butter through a knife er, a knife through butter. Smoooooooooooooth. And I really enjoy having the freedom to increase the length of the cable at will. I wouldn’t have been able to do this one on my local cable needles.
The other thing is this:
See those eyelets? Those are the kind of eyelets I was supposed to have on my Eyelet Border Facecloth but didn’t. The secret of my success this time was doing my yarnovers differently. Yes, as simple as that.
You see, I knit with the yarn in my right hand, throwing it under and around the right hand needle (makes me English or something, blimey!) to make my knit stitch; but! throwing it over and around the right hand needle for a yarnover. No idea why I do this, but this effectively made my eyelets disappear. For some reason, I decided to follow the same movement for yarnovers that I do for my knit stitch in this pattern, and voila! I have an eyelet. Epiphany.
Actually I think this might have happened because I’m also working on this pattern, where the instructions say yfwd instead of yo, but the effect is the same. Whodathunkit?
(Yes, I know it’s a bit blingy, but I recently was given two skeins of some eyelash that was begging to be knit).
(And yes, I am not very snobbish about novelty yarns, I’m afraid.) 😛
I made this cardigan for my trip to Hyderabad, to give my friend for her kid. The friend brought me a Denise set, a yarn winder and an Easy Tunisian set. Now I’m in the lap of luxury as far as supplies are concerned. Does that mean it’s time for me to lose interest in knitting/crochet? You know…gather all the materials and then pouf, there goes your attention. I’m a bit wary of that happening to me.
Well anyway, this pattern was from an Indian book, possibly a reprint of some older English collection. Can’t say. I was running out of the purple (it’s more blue actually) so I improvised with the greeny-blue for the sleeves. I magically didn’t have to change the pattern at all, except using rsc for the edging. Quick and easy, but would have been nicer if it were all done in one piece without the need for seams.
I think crochet designers need to concentrate on patterns without/with minimal seaming/sewing. Crochet being so versatile, such designs are more possible than with knitting, I think.
Yarn: Acrylic from all over the place, but Delhi and Hyderabad, I think.
Hook: Pony 4 mm
Pattern: From Indian reprint book
Time: Quite fast, can’t give exact numbers, but you could do it in a day at a pinch
Size: Seems to fit my friend’s kid (wrong season to try it on)
Extra: #1 Didn’t have to change the pattern at all, except I did rsc for the edging because of the two different colours
#2 Two colours because the purple ran out
Yup, still alive and going here in Wheredom. And that there above is my latest Finished Object. A crochet blanket from Golden Hands Baby Clothes: 50 beautiful patterns to knit and crochet, 1974. I made a baby jacket from the same book in January.
Yarn: Acrylic from Hyderabad, 340 gms
Hook: Crystalite 5, 5.5 and 6 mm
Pattern: From Golden Hands Baby Clothes, 1974
Time: About 5 days all told
Size: 45″
Extra: #1 Nothing much actually. It’s perhaps my second-ever baby blanket
#2 I was tired of trying to fit baby patterns to the limited yarn selection I have. I didn’t want to do it in pink, and cannot obviously find the right gauge anyway. Pffffffffbrrrrgh.
#3 Also bored trying to size baby patterns to fit 2-year-olds. This may be a bit small but should work as a useful tool to frighten babies into sleeping on time (or else the giant doily will come and get you!!) 😛
#4 Oh and the colour is actually a browny kind of pink, not the red it seems in this picture.
swakrta.com 