Snow in Texas!

We went up to Corsicana for a medical function (that ended up cancelled). 1 inch of snow was predicted; we got 7! Here's a few shots of the snow, the little snowman I made outside of Gander Mountain (so glad they were open! Gloves were purchased!), and the big snowman outside Collin Street Bakery.  I can't get the snowman photo to be right side up on my phone... sorry!

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Top-down short-row socks

(Pictures forthcoming!)

Back from New York (with the bride cross-stitch not yet finished...), and we went to a yarn shop in Tarrytown:  Flying Fingers

Got some nifty sock yarn and a teensy 8" Addi Turbo needle (I've been converted... there's a real reason they're more expensive; unlike Lantern Moon where I feel you're just paying for pretty, Addi's quality is worth it), and, as I have what I've recently seen described as "startitis," I just had to start my socks right away. 

Problem is, I didn't have a pattern.  I looked in one of the books they had for sale to get a concept of gauge (I don't know off-hand the circumference of your average sock), and I cast on 64 sts on my little size 1 needles, ribbed 1x1 for a while, then realized I didn't want to do any of the patterns I had in my own sock book (using to make something fancy for the kid brother) when I got back to the hotel.  I'm not a huge fan of heel-flap socks, and I agree with Himself that short-row socks "look like real socks," so I had to use my memory for a short-row pattern.  I really do prefer toe-up (use 2 balls, stop when you're finished, and you don't have to worry about running out of yarn -- if you've got too little yarn, you've got short socks!  Rather than having to have a different-colored toe...), but I'd already started, so had to go on from there (hate frogging unless something's become unusable).

So, here is a very generic short-row sock pattern, designed for the experienced knitter who understands the concepts of sock knitting:

co 64, join.

Ribbing: rib 1x1 for as long as you like ribbing.

Top of sock: stocking stitch for as long as you want the top of the sock. 

Short-row heel: k 1/2 a round (32 sts), turn; sl 1, p to 1 stitch short of the beginning of the round, turn; sl 1, k to 1 stitch short of the previous last knit stitch, turn; sl 1, p to 1 stitch short of the previous last purl stitch, turn; continue until there's 16 sts left on what you're working through.  Now do it in reverse: k to the first slipped stitch, k it, sl 1, turn, p through what you just did to the next slipped stitch, p it, sl 1, turn; repeat until you've worked across all 32 sts.

Body of sock: k around until your foot starts to taper.  (I never do the "2 inches before desired end of sock" thing -- it never works for me.)

Toe:  k until 3 sts before halfway around (29 sts at first), k2 tog, k 2, ssk, k until 3 sts before you reach the beginning of round, k2 tog, k1 (end of round), k1, ssk; continue, either alternating with k-all rounds or just repeating this decrease-four round (depending on how quickly your foot tapers!) until 6 sts remain.

Cast off with kitchener stitch. 

Wear your sock!

(Or, if you're not me, weave in ends and make the sock look pretty first, then wear it!)

One nice thing about top-down socks: they're easier to try on mid-sock than toe-up socks!

Spinning

A few weeks ago, I was in Austin for a conference, and I was taken to Hill Country Weavers. The store's an amazing experience -- very hard to limit yourself. I bought some excellent yarn for a sweater for myself, and then I saw this. Fool that I am, I was too impatient to play with it to take a picture when it was nicely braided up, so this is all you get. It just looked like candy...

I got a drop spindle once, from a woman in Bolivia -- I bought a woven guitar strap from her, then some yarn, then was so interested in the spindle she was using that she sold that to me as well. I couldn't find it just now, though, so I watched some videos on youtube and then made my own temporary one out of a hook, a pencil, and a circle of cardboard, and spun away! It wasn't that hard.

First, after spinning it all, relatively evenly, I decided to ply it. Ended up a bit bulkier than I would have liked, so it went back to singles. More pictures to come.

Right now, I've done something to my wrist, so I can't knit, crochet, or even type much. Machine sewing seems ok, though...

New Fiber Arts Shops on Hwy 290

Hello all!

We went to Austin earlier this weekend, stopping by my grandparents' place in the little town of Carmine halfway there (claim to fame: the bank was robbed by Bonnie and Clyde -- they even have a plaque commemorating it). Along with gingerbread pancakes at the Magnolia Cafe, I wanted to try out a new weaving shop in Brenham I'd heard about at Winedale a while back.

Driving up to Austin, passing through Paige, I as always looked left and saw the little sign for the Paige Historical Museum and thought it might be nice to look in... and then I looked right and for the first time ever saw a sign for a business! On the way back I had to stop, and I easily found what may be the only business in Paige:Yarnorama! I wish I had an interior picture, but had no camera this weekend (the above is from their website). It's a lovely and exciting store, with roving, weaving materials, spinning wheels, masses of sock yarn and handpainted yarn and silk yarn and anything fancy you could ever want. Friendly people, too.

Having spent all my extra money at Half Price Books in Austin, I couldn't buy anything, so I went on down to Brenham.

There, into Fibers (sorry, no picture at all). My 6th grade art teacher, Mrs. Fowler (who it turns out is nationally known as an inkle weaver and has written articles on the subject), had us all use inkle looms to make belts. I bought the loom afterwards and loved it. When I saw someone at one of the Winedale historical events with an inkle loom, I told them about Mrs. Fowler, and the weaver knew of her and told me to come to the new shop in Brenham. It's a lovely shop, very big and open. It's certainly central Texas -- there were people in there with the same accent as my grandparents' German (actually Wendish, but who's telling?) farmhand, who's been in this country for generations, so the German modified itself beyond easy recognition but left its traces in the accent. It has tons of weaving, spinning, knitting, crochet, and probably other stuff as well. (I think I saw some scrapbook supplies.) The help desk/check-out counter is made from display cases showing lovely antique tatted and other fiber arts items.

Both certainly worth a repeat visit; both like nothing we have in Houston (If we do, Houston people, please tell me -- I've heard that the nearest weaving shop is in La Porte, and I never go that direction).

Star Blanket

Himself's cousin is having a baby, their third. I've learned a bit about babies and blankets with each one -- after the first, I learned that ribbons threaded through eyelets, while pretty, get torn out as soon as baby can manage to tear it out. After the second, I was told that baby really loves corners, so could I possibly manage a blanket with more corners?

So, from The Diva Crochets, here's a star-shaped afghan. Her pattern really pulls when you make it (although apparently, from her picture, it comes out well with lots of blocking), so I made it in a way that seemed a bit more rational (and fit with one of the two ways she explained to do it), and here's pre-blocking (because I'll never remember to photograph post-blocking):



I used Lily's Sugar and Cream, 100% cotton, which was much fun to work with. This was begun as soon as they announced, before they found out what the upcoming baby would be -- it's a boy, and I think the colors will work well. I enjoyed seeing how it pooled -- always a fun experience with variegated yarns.

I also made an Emmeline apron out of a pair of cotton saris -- they're fun, because they come with their own border material, the red with a green and gold border, and the green (which you can see at the corner) with a red and gold border. The saris are very cheap (175 Rs -- about $3), and made out of thin cotton, the kind I used to wear all the time when living in India, but that wouldn't be appropriate for the only time I wear them now, to fancy events.

And just because I was near it when taking pictures, I bought this Tudor Rose needlepoint kit at Liberty's in London (but produced by English Heritage, I believe, or some similar organization) somewhere in the early 1990s, and it took me about 10 years to finish it. Never been much of one for needlepoint! Found that such kits are no longer sold, unfortunately -- it's all dinky cross-stitches of stately homes and abbeys. Which is nice, but not what I wanted!

What's the project that's taken you longest to finish?

Paris

On our way back from India, Himself and I stopped off in Paris. His family is from India, and his first name is very common there, so we were always looking around to see who was calling him. (Aside: I always found it amusing to shout out "Mommy!" in a crowd, just to see how many mothers would look my way to see if I were theirs.) For equality's sake, then, we found my name in many places in Paris.

(You may have to zoom in on that one.)

We had fun doing the 1976 Michelin Guide (picked up on my parents' honeymoon) recommended 4-days tour of Paris in 2 days, with the third for Versailles -- walking about 8 miles a day, which is very salutary, I'm sure, but does make your feet tired after four days of climbing stone temples barefoot in India.

We caught some examples of fine French design, which my French-Antiques-Saleswoman Aunt I'm sure would appreciate, such as the chandelier in our little hotel:

And we saw all the general sights, as well as, of course, some very exciting bookbinding examples:

at the Hotel Cluny, Museum of the Middle Ages:

Also managed to stop by Relma, a fantastic bookbinding shop. I'd never been to a real bookbinding shop before, only booths at the Guild of Bookworkers Standards meeting, so it was a great experience. Bought some cheap leather (that would fit in the suitcase) and some headbands -- some of the leather's already gone to make Himself a book, which should be my next post, if I remember -- either that or the bird that's moved into my parsley!

The last night, febrile under the Eiffel Tower, was not quite as fun, but I'm all recovered and well, and at least the pneumonia didn't really hit until the last night!

India!

India

As long promised, here are some of my pictures from India.

At a Hindu wedding, there is fire.
Also flowers.

Afterwards, we went on a trip to a temple important to Himself's family; no pictures at the temple itself, but my Picasa album (first picture in this post should take you there) has pictures I took along the way.
That's my favorite car -- the Ambassador. The British were making a style of car when they were in India, and they left, and it seems not to have occurred to anyone until about fifteen years ago that there would be any reason to change the design. They come in any color you want, so long as it's white. They're quite comfortable (think British taxicab -- same concept, really), but everyone in Himself's family thinks I'm silly for loving them, except his father, who's tickled and indulges me by requesting them from the chauffeur company.

The billboard (aka "hoarding") behind the car? Political ad. You have to see the hand-painted portraits of everyone in the whole party! My favorite candidate from the region, purely because of his name, is M. K. Stalin -- yes, named after Uncle Joe. (Naming's different there -- the "last" name is your given name, functionally your only name; initials before the name might point to your father's name or place of origin, and you might mention your caste at the end of your name. M. K. Stalin's father is the breathtakingly skilled orator Karunanidhi, hence the "K." Why I'm so hot on Karunanidhi? Tamil is an excellent classical language, but most people speak it in a nasty nasal manner dropping syllables all over the place and using compressed grammar; when he speaks, you can tell how beautiful it really should be.)

Of course, if you haven't got a driver, or even a car, you can fit the whole load on your scooter. Didn't get any pictures of it, but they do that with families too -- family of six on one motorcycle, with only the father in a helmet -- which is still an improvement over the last time I went for any period of time (2003), when helmets were almost unknown in this region.

It's a land of caste and economic distinctions, but most people overlook one or the other. Sometimes both.

Here, a fine house is next to a pretty low-end one (there's more pictures in my album of true huts, made of twigs -- there's very little true homelessness in this region, as you can always drag some sticks and palm fronds together and make a very basic shelter). In the towns where I've lived, that could mean either that the person in the low-end dwelling (who has a shop affixed to his house, and has sold a wall for advertising -- people everywhere are enterprising!) is high-caste but in reduced circumstances, or, more likely that the person in the fancy house has come into money, but is low-caste or "scheduled caste" and will not be made to feel welcome in a nicer part of town. (You can see that a bit in Houston -- I've gone out in some odd areas on Google Street View (I always like to check out where such-and-such a murder happened, mainly), and there'll be no sidewalk or curb, mostly abandoned houses or trailers, and then what would be a million dollar house in the middle of town, but has a tax value of $100,000, due to the $10,000 lots nearby.) Less common in the smaller towns, but more in the bigger cities (like when I was living in Madurai, or especially this time in Madras/Chennai), people, especially the younger generation, won't care about caste (sometimes even overlooking it when it comes to marriage, although that's less frequent), and will hang out with and live near people of the same economic standing, education level, and job type.

In any case, people today are more likely to live like this:
than like this:
But I suppose some things do have to change over time.

One thing I'm glad has changed? Medicine -- levaquin is nasty while you're taking it, but pneumonia, even when young and otherwise healthy, is no fun. Just don't want to do anything for a few weeks; without the medicine, apparently, it would have dragged on for months. But I'm all better now :)

Pneumonia!

So, I had a great time. The wedding was exciting, and I did get half a day to do some very rushed shopping in. I've been to India several times before, twice for 3-4 months each, so I'm familiar with the area, and know what shopping to do. (It's like when I go back to London, where my family lived for three years when I was in high school -- it's a shopping trip, not so much a sightseeing one, although, with London as with India (to a greater extent, as changes are more massive), it's also a "look how much things have changed!" trip.) Photos to come, when I get around to retrieving the camera.

Paris was a blast -- the Michelin guide my parents picked up on their honeymoon was printed in 1976, before the Louvre had pyramids and when the Orsay was still an abandoned train station, but it's really excellent. (I took a Let's Go guide (I won't get Lonely Planet, as they're Let's Go's main rival, and Let's Go is written by my old classmates) for things like modern opening times, etc.) It has a guide to how you can do all of Paris really fast in four days. I thought, "Great, we'll skip Montparnasse and Montmartre, and add in the Musee d'Orsay, and moving quickly we should be able to make it in three days."

That's until Himself says, wistfully (he's never been to Paris; I have, twice -- once with family, doing the full tour, and once on a one-day hit-the-Orsay-and-the-Eiffel-and-the-restaurant airplane layover), "can we go see Versailles?"

Ok, so we skip the Champs d'Elysses, as well (it's just the view down to the Arc de Triomphe, really -- we saw that in the shuttle back to the airport and while walking through Tuileries, anyhow), and do Michelin's Paris in Four Days, adding in the Orsay, in two days! And spend a day at Versailles, which was actually quite fun -- since I went (in 1995), they've added audioguides, which were most informative; and, we got to go out to see Marie Antoinette's fake hamlet where she could pretend to be a peasant, which I hadn't seen before.

We've walked about 8 miles (by Michelin's approximations) a day for two days, after several days of standing up barefoot for several hours in India, and spent a day doing a lot of walking at Versailles, and we get back and are sitting under the Eiffel Tower (it sparkles now -- didn't do that back in 1995 either!), having french fries and hot spiced wine (that's the good stuff), when I finally feel completely miserable and give in to miserableness. I've been coughing (in India, you can see the little black particles dancing around in the air -- never a good sign), and my throat hurts, and my feet hurt, and I'm finally losing my voice ... and then I get chills and am just feeling awful. We walk back to our lovely hotel, Himself kindly having given up his lovely and so-sweet idea of getting wine and cheese from little shops along the way and having an in-room picnic, where I try to check out with my French (Rosetta Stone was good -- helped a ton, and especially made me confident), with no voice, and feeling like I'm burning up -- turns out I have fever, too.

The next morning at the airport we get some cough syrup ... on the plane home, I feel like I'm dying -- turns out codeine's over the counter in France, and it's the only medicine I'm allergic to. So we didn't think to check the bottle... that's one miserable flight! After two days home from work sick in bed, I go back to work, just coughing a ton and feeling so tired, but not really thinking much of it (the pollution in India has had me cough for six months once before -- although then it may actually have been pertussis, I've since learned). My mother finally made me go to the doctor today ... turns out I have pneumonia! So, that's why I haven't made a thing, haven't read anything except one mystery novel at the doctor's today, and haven't had the energy to post.

Not to make it picture-less, though, I'll put in a few of the Margaret Bag from Oh, Fransson! that I made for my sister at Christmas. She loved it, and Himself said I should quit work and just make bags :)

The outside fabric is scotty argyle, and the inside is little scotties on brown fabric. Very cute.

(My skinny sister ... used to be a model, eats like a horse, 5'10" and 117 pounds or so... she got the Irish side (including the red hair), and I got the stocky German side!)

Didn't it turn out nicely?

Now back to resting... I'll be doing a lot of that for the time being!

Traveling

I'm off to India and France on Friday. (The above is a picture of me on my birthday in 2004.) Himself's cousin is getting married, hence the India; and we didn't want to spend the entirety of his only week of vacation that way, so we're rejoicing in a three-day stopover in Paris on the way back. Staying here. Have a list of book-arts-y places to go in Paris, as well as the Orsay and the other tourist spots (I've been a few times, but always quite quickly, and he's not been much if at all), and my uncle's favorite restaurant.

I've been doing Rosetta Stone French through the library (free!), and have learnt to say such useful things as, "my husband has drunk much and has fallen down" :) -- hardly likely! But we'll have a grand time, I'm sure.