FINISHED at last! :)

Here we have Tejas' (last-) Christmas vest, FINALLY finished! I knit it from DK weight on size three needles in the hope that very tight gauge would save it from destruction for a few years. It is all stockinette except the ribbed borders, and it nearly killed me. ;) Especially because it was an extremely fly-by-night pattern, made up by yours truly as I went along. With steeks. There's no going back with steeks. You have no idea how amazed I am that this vest actually looks nice! (Tejas has worn it every chilly day since, thereby ensuring I'll forget the horrors of endless red stockinette and knit him another one.) His thesis defense is tomorrow--everybody wish him good luck!!

Next up we have the collection I sent to Afghans for Afghans:
I saw from their statistics that they got fewer mittens and socks than anything else, so I'll concentrate on making those next time around. And guess what--they had drawings for prizes where you got an entry for everything you sent in, and I WON A PRIZE!! It's the kit for the Chantal sweater. I'm so excited! :) :) :)

I also FINALLY finished the gloves to go with my under-bike-helmet tam, just in time too--my fingers were getting numb riding to the lab in the mornings. They aren't heavy gloves, but they're just right for bike riding.

WARNING: If you don't want even a glimpse of what might be your Christmas present, don't read beyond this point. I won't identify what's for whom, but since I'm pretty much exclusively knitting Christmas stuff at this point, I am going to show it.

Marrakesh socks:


Monkey socks:

• I'm switching projects. This is both good (my advisor says my new project is a good solid bet that will get me a thesis, which should decrease my panickiness somewhat. My old project was interesting, but very new and very in need of troubleshooting, and I kind of felt like it would take me 12 years to graduate. If I ever managed it) and bad (because I'm the sort of stupid guilt-prone dork who thinks she needs to perfectly finish everything she starts. You'd think knitting would have taught me otherwise).
• I'm taking a Hindi class, which I probably really shouldn't (no time) but really wanted to (soooooo sick of going to parties and not understanding a word. Also, I figure the grammar is probably pretty similar to that of Marathi, and Marathi has me totally confused. This has to help). Tejas has been faithfully helping me with pronunciation and critiquing my handwriting of the script...and when he gets bored, teaching me to say off-color things. I'm trying NOT to remember them so my teacher won't smack me.
• I did two pull-ups in a row last week! Sadly, Tejas says I don't get a piece of cake each time I add a pull-up. That was only for the first one. So my motivation is suffering some.
• I'm also taking my advisor's class. It's going to be a hard quarter, what with the new project and all. Sigh.
• Particularly since the Hindi class is at night so I have to go to the gym in the morning. 6:45 a.m. = bad when you also run the tango club, aka "let's see how late in the night we can dance. Hey, you can't leave, you're the president!"
  
• I'm giving everybody socks for Christmas. This is because I have no imagination and also crave sock knitting, which I can do while reading mindless stuff like histories of Byzantium and Asterix comics and The Hobbit. The more science I have to do, the more I want to read mindless stuff and knit socks.
• And I'm going to post pictures of all of them on this blog too (though I won't tell you who they're for). Otherwise I shall have nothing to show except Afghans for Afghans stuff.
• This week I made Indian-style fried okra, stuffed eggplants, and bitter gourd, and they were all actually edible! Though not as good as Tejas' mom's. Our wedding present from his brother and sis-in-law was a food processor, and it is my new favorite toy. I played with it yesterday and was highly chuffed to find that it quietly, effortlessly shreds an entire daikon radish in about twenty seconds, thus removing a major hurdle in the path to making mooli curry, which Tejas loves. (All that daikon-grating...the mind is willing but the flesh is weak, y'know?) Not to mention chopping up garlic and fresh ginger and onions. And I made pesto sauce. Just because I could. Love you, food processor!
• Tejas kept telling me not to buy bitter gourd at India Cash & Carry because I'd never made them before and he didn't want them anyway (but I bought two because they're so cute. They look like dinosaur mice!). Then when I made them--both of them--he ate all but one teaspoonfull. I ask you. Next time I'm buying more! One can never have too many dinosaur mice. :)
  

At least we know the rain fly works!

We've been busy little bees the past couple of weeks! Besides working, we went hiking at Big Basin National Forest and liked it so much (all those redwoods!) that we decided to take our first camping trip there. Camping is something that we've been planning on for ages and kept putting off...for one thing, the initial investment is kinda high. Also, Tejas has only been camping once (with my folks and me) so he didn't want to do anything really strenuous or isolated--Big Basin was really good in this regard. So last week we headed off to REI and bought a little two-person tent, a little one-burner propane stove, and a cheap little propane lantern, and blew our target-giftcard-wedding-present on two sleeping bags (thanks, Aunt Jane!!). Fully equipped, we played hookey from the lab on Friday and got there just when check in started--so we got the best spot in the park! It was a "walk in" site, which meant that we carried all our stuff into the forest about 1/4 mile from where we parked--definitely worth it, in terms of isolation and splendor. The weather was lovely and overcast, and we had a great time cooking this and that on the fire. (No pics yet--Tejas took his film camera instead of the digital for fear of killing it. I inherited the "camera death" gene from my mom, who managed to ruin one every year at the beach.)

When we went to bed, we could hear some sort of animal walking around in the brush outside our tent, which freaked Tejas out a little. Then it started raining, and the animal went away. Tejas liked that, but I worried for a while about the tent flooding and whether we should dig a trench around it (we were halfway down a BIG hill) before realizing that it hadn't rained in at least three months. The soil could take a whole lot more water than a piddly little rain.

Anyhoo, it was wet. The next morning Tejas managed to get a fire going and we made a soggy sort of breakfast. I packed everything up (and let me tell you, the tent was pretty darn disgusting), we went for a 3 mile hike in lieu of the 11 mile one we'd been planning (we chickened out because we were soaked. or more accurately, I told Tejas no way was I marching around in dirty wet flannel pajamas and a sweatshirt for the rest of the day), and we headed back home right as the sun came out. All in all a lovely trip!

On the other hand, between camping and working, approximately zero housework has gotten done in the last two weeks. Couple this to Tejas' abhorence of a clean flat surface, and, well...the Hobbit Hole needs some tidying up. I should have done it yesterday but we went to India Cash & Carry and I was all enthused about cooking. I made Indian-style fried okra--it turned out good! I'm so surprised!--and stuffed eggplants--turned out less good, but Tejas liked it anyway--and meatball things in some sort of really heavily spiced sauce, from a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's autobiography--gross, but Tejas liked them too. Or said he did. (Smart boy.)

On the knitting front (pics coming soon)...I finished a pair of mittens for Afghans for Afghans, and knit a hat for them using the leftover yarn from my autumn hat (there was just exactly enough for an adult-sized hat. phew.), and finished the Marrakesh socks waaaaaay before their Christmas due date. Hurray! I don't usually do a whole lot of knitting with bulky yarns, but I have to say, mittens and hats and things go really fast when you do. Fun fun fun! And blasting out a couple of FOs also restores my gumption for knitting socks with skinny yarn on little toothpick needles, which sometimes suffers otherwise!

(I have a sad confession to make...a major part of my drive to finish things is currently being provided by Ravelry's stash feature. I really, really enjoy consigning balls of yarn to the "used up" pile--it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something in my yarn diet stash destruction. Of course, then I feel like I can't put balls of yarn in "used up" unless I really have used up every last inch. So I have to knit more!! Faster!!!)

Finished at last!

Actually these have been done for quite some time, but I was lazy about posting pictures. Somehow my picture of the Yellowstone Vest disappeared, too, so I guess I'll wait till it has buttons and then snap another. I've done barely any knitting the past week--working long hours at the lab really takes it out of you, besides leaving no time for anything else. Blah. But I did start a pair of socks in the Monkey pattern (from Knitty) using Socks that Rock lightweight in the "Nodding Violet" colorway (blues/greens/purples). I know a lot of people love this yarn, but I'm kind of ambivalent about it. Yes, it is nice and scrunchy, but it's kind of overtwisted, and it's thicker than I like in a fingering weight or sock yarn. The colors though--I can never resist the colors. They remind me of Art Nouveau stained glass, all deep watercolor shades and sinuousity (is that a word? It should be). Especially this colorway!

But before I show any pictures of my new socks, here are some old things. The melon shawl blocking on the futon (the stitch definition shows up in these pictures but you have to make them big. sorry), with my knees for scale:
Modelling the shawl (I just realized that this picture is wrongside-up but I'm too lazy to fix it now...sorry...)
And my Undulating Rib socks in Fleece Artist "Forest". Aren't they pretty? They're a little darker green in real life.

Grumpy day.

Nothing in the lab is working, and I have a ton of green card- and name-related paperwork to do, and I am getting very grumpy about it.

On the other hand, I've been getting a lot of stuff done--I love that little tingly feeling when you know you're completely done with something, even if it's kind of small and unimportant! After Aai left on Saturday, Tejas and I went into full-out cleaning mode. Now the bathroom and kitchen have been scrubbed (and bleached...I might have cheated on the all-nontoxic-cleaners diet a little bit, but it was under severe provocation. On the other hand, my kitchen sink is beautiful and you could probably eat out of it) to within an inch of their lives, and we have more clean laundry than we know what to do with.

Oh, and remember the melon stitch shawl? That I was supposed to send back with Aai to give to Tejas' gramma, only she moved her departure date up by 20 days? I was so close to being done last Friday that I decided it would be stupid to finish the day after she left. I knitted like crazy Friday night and Saturday morning, and by 1 pm Saturday afternoon I was ready to block. We were going to leave for the airport at 3:30, so Tejas helped me set up a super-quick blocking system: the shawl pinned out on the futon by a string run through every point (it took up the entire length), with two fans blowing over it full-blast. Tejas' brother was there to say goodbye to his mom, and boy did he give us some funny looks! Luckily it was a hot day and laceweight dries fast--by 2 pm it was ready. We snapped a couple of photos (to be posted soon...forgot 'em today) and shoved it into Aai's bag, and that was that. I hope its new owner will like it.

I also finished the Yellowstone Vest (pictures to come of this, too), though I still need to get some buttons for it. (Trace-trace! I want my button box back! I refuse to buy ten thousand buttons for charity sweaters if I keep knitting for Afghans for Afghans. Give me back my box, you button-thief! :) ) It turned out all right--not as much curling as I was afraid of after I blocked it, though the front edges still curl a little bit (should be okay when buttoned up). I still think there's got to be a better edge-finishing method, though...or maybe I'll make the next one in garter stitch.

And finally, I'm halfway through the foot of the second Undulating Rib sock (in Fleece Artist "Forest"), which means I can expect to finish sometime soon. This is very good, because I promised myself I wouldn't start another "complicated" sock pair till I finished this one, though it's actually pretty easy (I can read and knit it no problem). Next up: monkey socks in Socks That Rock "Nodding Violet," for someone who occasionally reads this blog, mwahahahahahha! I think they're going to be a Christmas present. After a month with no socks knitted, I'm feeling the sock-knitting instinct kick in again!

Adventurous, that's me.

My mother-in-law is really very nice and very tactful. Instead of, say, describing me as "certifiable" or "totally delusional" or "a few bats short of a belfry"...she just says that I'm "adventurous." I make stuff from Indian cookbooks in the wild hope that I won't ruin it! I come home from the lab at all hours of the night, or stay the whole night even! I knit fourteen useless complicated things at a time! And if you say it's all in the spirit of adventure, rather than insanity, it all sounds so worthwhile and desirable! Some politician should hire Aai as a spin doctor, I swear.

One adventure I had this weekend was dyeing my hair with henna (left over from the Hindu ceremony). Tejas egged me into this one. I've never dyed my hair before, so I was kind of looking forward to it...unfortunately the color didn't change much, though my hair does feel nice (Aai says henna is a natural conditioner). The henna was kind of old, and it was pure henna without chemical darkeners, and my hair is brown with kind of reddish undertones anyhow...sigh. I'll try again later. It'll give me an excuse to go to the Indian grocery store, which I love to distraction. Spices! Crazy contorted veggies! Icky-sounding sauces and pickles that actually taste really good! Forty kinds of lentils! It makes grocery shopping into an adventure, and me and adventure...well.

I also finished knitting the Yellowstone vest! It's blocking on the futon right now in the hopes that the edges will quit curling (stupid stockinette stitch, I should NEVER EVER trust patterns with St st and crocheted edging. They never work). Now I just have to sew up the shoulder seams, crochet all around the edges, and sew on the buttons. Woohoo! I'm hoping to get at least one more sweater or vest done, in a smaller size, before the due date in October. But my REAL goal for the end of August is to finish the horrible interminable melon shawl. I WILL PREVAIL! Then it will be time to start on Christmas presents!

My exciting agenda for today: work in lab, go to gym, go home and scrub tub (which briefly looked like an ax murderer had come to visit--thanks, henna--but now is just soap scummy), crochet border, write thank-you notes, attempt to manage tango club business, bundle up knitting and blankets for all-nighter in the lab tomorrow. It's going to be my first lab all-nighter without Tejas here with me...usually he comes and sleeps on the couch, but he's going to stay home with Aai. Waaaah!

(On the other hand, Tejas accepted the job offer with Big Prestigious Company today! And his advisor says he should be able to defend by the end of October! Hurray for my hard-working husband!!)

Wedding part 7

The two families seemed to get along all right. :)The next day, we took Aai on a tour of downtown Portland, including riding the tram to OHSU (it was a free transit day, woohoo! so we rode it both ways!) and the Rose Garden, which was looking more beautiful and bloomy than I'd ever seen it. Nice timing, Rose Garden!
But really, I think she liked the pets best. Even Kiki consented to sit on her lap and not attack her/scratch her/gum her wrist with toothless impotent fury.
We also went to the Clackamas County Fair, which was loads of fun, and had the biggest rabbits I have ever seen in my entire life (we have pictures, but you can't see the scale. You wouldn't get the full impact). My favorite part was the sign in the bunny barn: "Buy a rabbit, take home a rooster FREE!"

Tejas poses as an Oregonian:
He's one of US now! :)

Wedding part 6

It was cloudy during the ceremony, but while we were eating cake it started to rain. Luckily we had some canopies set up... Tejas' mom said it's good luck to have rain at a wedding (she is a kind and tactful woman). Shorty was too busy hiding under the table even to beg for cake.

Amber didn't beg either. She was too busy being adored.
We'd agreed that we were going to tango for our first dance...but we knew everyone was expecting a flamboyant stage tango, so that's what we gave them (for ten seconds). :)
Then we did the real tango, to the alternative song "Tango to Evora." (By the way, I made this blue skirt that I'm wearing here. It was my compromise between really wanting something that I had picked out to wear and The Budget. While I did like the other dresses I wore at our two ceremonies, and my mom's choice of one of my old dresses would have been okay for wearing here...this skirt, uglyish though it may be, is my small assertion of independence. I am an adult and I shall choose my own clothes! Fabric, pattern and notions from stash: $0 (original total cost ~$15). Time spent stitching/ironing: ~4 h. Asserting independence in one small detail: priceless!)
My (courtesy) Aunt Sandy and Tejas' brother, here all Oregonized before my dad took him off to play. (Only my family celebrates weddings by flame-toasting the weeds in the driveway and driving four-wheelers around the backyard. Now you see where I get my bumpkin blood.)
(To be continued...)

We had a recording of a hymn sung by my grandparents' church choir to walk out to. (Don't Tejas and his mom look nice? :) )

This is Rev. Beth, who was an extremely good sport about all the weird things we wanted in our wedding, and did a very fine job. Even my dad liked her okay, and he thinks most pastors are Satan's second cousins.
Tejas had his heart set on a shotgun wedding photo. (Dad and Thomas were only too pleased to humor him.)
My parents decided it wasn't so bad after all.
My aunt, uncle, cousins and grandparents...

(To be continued...)

Wedding part 4

The Christian part of our wedding was in Portland, though my parents wanted to know why we couldn't just elope. (We wanted an excuse to see the petses, and Tejas thought it would be unfair and lopsided if we only had a Hindu ceremony.) Shorty liked Aai a lot.

Shorty did not so much like Amber, my grandparents' dog, who came to spend a couple weeks with my parents while the grandparents take a big trip to Alaska. Amber is extremely cute and everyone adores her...until she chews up their dirty underwear. (On the morning of the wedding I tied all our underwear up in bags and put it on high shelves out of sight so Amber wouldn't drag it all over in front of our guests. I am vain, and also easily embarrassed.) Trace-trace pinned flowers to the dogs' collars so they'd at least look sweet and adorable.

Doesn't she look innocent?

I looked pretty stupid (me + dress-up clothes = lumbering disaster) but at least I was happy, right? (I'm not posting the pictures in which I look even more like a dressed-up country hick. I think I've got bumpkin in my blood. Also, you can't see it here, but I was tastefully shod in battered old black flipflops. Tejas nixed my slightly-nicer sandals on the grounds that the 2" heel made me the same height as him.)
Luckily, I wasn't the only one doing silly things. :)
We'd gone down to Sauvie Island the day before and U-picked flowers (one bucket for $10, wahoo!). They were gorgeous...and also extremely profuse. You can stuff a heck of a lot of flowers in a bucket. We had flowers EVERYWHERE.
(To be continued...)

Mrs. R. & finishitis!

The second half of the wedding is over (pictures to come later) and we're about as married as can be! I spent this morning running around everywhere changing my name (instead of working like I ought to have been)--getting all the forms and changes and things done is becoming a compulsion, like finishitis in knitting. I just want everything done! There's just a few more steps...have to apply for a new passport (stupid rules...it'd better not take forever to get it!); change my name on the bank records, etc.; and fill out/copy stuff for/send in Tejas' green card application with all its umpteen thousand proof-of-this-and-thats (I kid you not: we're even sending wedding pictures). And even if I am officially (oh so officially) Mrs. R. now, if you call me that, I'll think you're talking to Tejas' mom.

And Tejas got a job offer from a Big Prestigious Company! We've talked about it a lot and he's 95% sure he's going to take it...but he doesn't have to tell them till Monday, so it's still up in the air. And of course, he won't be starting till January, so something could still go wrong (cross your fingers). But he got an offer! A very nice one! The very first thing he said to me after he got the call was, "I think you're going to have a really big yarn fund." :)

I'm still plugging away on the Melon Shawl for Tejas' gramma. It's really not going to be done before his mom leaves, but it's not completely my fault--she moved the date of her ticket forward by about a month, so she's leaving a week from Saturday. We'll miss her...though I have to say, it will be really really nice having some time alone with Tejas. I've spent about one hour, count it ONE, completely alone with him since we got married. (She was going to go stay with Tejas' brother's family for a while after the wedding...but Tejas thinks she's more comfortable here, since we're a little more relaxed about things. They're nice, but extremely fussy. So she's here with us. On the upside, she's lots of fun, and she's a really good cook!)

CALLING ALL KNITTERS!
Afghans for Afghans has a major goal to meet by October 10th--filling 40 shipping cartons with warm clothes for schoolkids (I think they said ages 2-14, but I could be wrong). The clothes and blankets will get to Afghanistan just in time for winter. That's a LOT of wool clothes, folks. Which is why, if you knit (and I know you do, all couple of you who read this!) you should check out the Afghans for Afghans website and knit something for them. They have links to tons of free patterns, you can use leftovers from your stash, the wool doesn't even have to be superwash!, and a little vest or sweater is pretty quick. And you don't have to worry too much about the size if your gauge is a little bit off--it's not like it's not going to fit anyone! And you can have the doubly-virtuous feeling of having used up some stash to help out a bunch of kids who've seen a lot of things they shouldn't have.

I'm 3/4 of the way done with a size XL sweater vest from the In-VEST for Peace pattern (on the A for A website, free)--it went really quick and was fun and fairly mindless. Good movie/book knitting. The main color is lavender blue, with stripes of daffodil yellow and lettuce green. This color combo reminds me of a lorna's laces colorway called Yellowstone, so I'm dubbing this project the Yellowstone vest. I will put a picture here...but not yet. (I feel really stupid photographing my crafty stuff in front of Tejas' mom. Also in front of Tejas, but he thinks I'm crazy in a cute sort of way. I suspect she'd think it was more crazy and less cute.)

And last but not least...I have finishitis for sure!! I have two pairs of socks on the home stretch (second sock); Yellowstone vest 75% done; ladybug baby sweater 75% done; shawl just needs a bit more edging....I need to finish something!! Expect finished photos soon, or I'll be tearing out my hair with frustration.

Wedding (part 3)

We enlisted Tatsu and Tim to be my brothers; they gave me puffed rice with ghee, and Tejas and I offered it to the fire goddess and walked around the sacred fire, seven times.
Then the priest called up a bunch of married women from the guests. We asked for their blessings, and then one by one they whispered in my ear "We are also married." Some of them said it in Sanskrit, some of them said it in English, and the one right behind me in this picture whispered, "You are very lucky!"
First Tejas, and then his parents, promised my parents that they would love and protect me.
And then we were all done! (Isn't Trace-trace cute in her sari?)
We ate dinner and went home, and I kicked over a cupful of rice at the threshold for luck.
And that was that!

Wedding (part 2)

The youngest member of the family was more interested in the decorations than in the ceremony.
Meanwhile our sis-in-law (his mom) was helping me change into a green sari--green is the color of marriage in Tejas' family. My wedding sari is a gift from Tejas' grandma, so I love it to pieces. It's a kind of traditional Marathi sari called a Paithani, and it's gorgeous, but I felt kind of stupid and ungainly wearing it, especially with the jewelry store's worth of beads and bangles I had on. But a tiny little old Indian lady--I don't think she was even associated with the wedding, she was just there to pray--came up to me as I left the back room and said, "Oh, you look just like a queen! I love you!" and gave me a big hug. That made me feel a little better. :)

Then we got down to the real important stuff. Tejas and I each got a garland, and they held a veil between us. The priest chanted and rang a bell (Tejas tells me the last word of the chant means, "Beware!").
Then they lowered the veil and we put the garlands round each others' necks, and were married.
We blessed a black-and-gold beaded necklace (kind of like a wedding ring for Hindu girls) and Tejas and his mom put it on me.
We took seven steps to make seven vows.

Wedding (part 1)

(This is going to be a post in several parts, since Blogger doesn't seem to want to take more than five pictures at a time. And folks, this is our wedding. There are going to be quite a few pictures. :) )

Last Saturday we gathered up the hordes, made sure we had our marriage license, and headed for the temple in Sunnyvale, where we met Tejas' brother and his family. The temple wasn't quite ready yet--they had some sort of concert going on. So we dawdled for a while, then got all dressed up in a room in the back.
Good thing Tejas' mom and sis-in-law were there...I can put on a sari, but it doesn't look very nice. Our sis-in-law is the queen of making saris look really great! (Side note: don't tell my dad-in-law I put a picture of me semi-undressed on the internet, please. :) )

The concert was still going on, so we started in a little storeroom thing in the back. It didn't really fit all of us, and it was extremely hot. Now you know why, from this point on, all the pictures show us all with a gentle sheen of sweat. (It's not just cold feet!) First Tejas' parents asked for blessings.
They decked him out in all sorts of colorful stuff. All of it signifies something, but I'm not altogether sure what. The white beads around his face are supposed to be like ox-horns, since the ox is so important for farmers in India.
Then my parents went through the same thing with me. We were amazed that they actually did it! :)
Finally the concert finished and we got to go out to the main part of the temple (a small stage or dais). My parents had a part with Tejas--reading from my little cheatsheet courtesy the priest here, I see that they're supposed to be honoring and welcoming him.

Good little girls do not knit while cooking.

Our kitchen, while light and airy and equipped with a cute little breakfast nook, does not have a lot of counter space. In particular, the oven sits all by its lonesome against the opposite wall from what little counter we have. We've been intending all along to buy a kitchen cabinet thingy with a countertop top, to put in the corner next to the oven, but, well...we're lazy. And there is The Budget. But this weekend Tejas' mom put her foot down: she likes to cook, and she was sick of carrying things back and forth across the kitchen because there was nowhere by the oven to set them down. We made a foray to Ikea (never been there before...the place is huge! And it's evil how they make you walk through the whole store to get to the checkout line. It's an enormous one-way street!) and bought a very nice counterish thing, about two and a half feet square, with shelves underneath. Tejas' mom is happy, and we are happy, and the new counter has already seen lots of use.

Speaking of visitors being here, Tejas' dad is coming from India this afternoon, and my family is arriving Friday, so our little hobbit hole will be bursting at the seams. I'm very glad his mom likes to cook, because what with working in the lab and all the very firm, conflicting dietary preferences of his various relations, I would go crazy trying to feed them all. (As it is, I just feed Tejas, me, and his mom. She feeds everybody else.) Approximately zero knitting has gotten done in the past week, and even less is forecasting for the coming week...I spend all my time cleaning and cooking, or else talking to visitors. My family is evidently the only one that thinks knitting and talking or knitting and cooking is normal, acceptable behavior. (Hmph.)

Also, while I did finish a birthday present for Tracy (pictures after it's given) and am chugging along, albeit slowly, on the melon shawl and the forest socks, I have started to crave thicker yarn. Fingering and lace weight are my favorites, it's true...but sometimes you just want to see some more progress for your time, y'know? So I'm making a stashgan afghan, a mindless garter stitch bias square one, for Afghans for Afghans. This one has multiple goals: an easy source of mindless knitting; easy to carry along since it's only one square at a time; I can practice continental knitting, which I hate because it makes my hand ache but which I really ought to learn, because the pattern's easy and gauge isn't so big a deal; and it will hopefully use up a bunch of the annoying semi-skein not-very-useful leftovers hanging around in my stash. And it's for charity, so I move past go and collect my brownie points. Hurray!

It's getting to the point where Tejas stuffs pillows over his ears whenever his mom mentions the wedding, and the only reason I don't is that she's speaking Marathi and I can tune it out. No....more...wedding...details! So it's a taboo subject here for at least a couple days, until our nerves recover a little. (I have to mention one thing, though--Tejas took another look at the rings and decided that he'd condemned them prematurely, and they weren't actually that bad. Phew.)

One of the Ann Arbor tango folks moved out here and we promptly hired him and his new partner to teach our summer classes. Hurray! (It's so much more fun to dance when you have friends around. Though we probably still won't dance much for a while, what with weddings and Tejas' mysterious dancing-induced back pain. Sigh.) And rumor has it that Sandeep is moving here after he graduates. Maybe the entire A2 club is going to move here en masse! Double hurray!

Two weeks, folkses.

Well, two weeks till the Hindu wedding, anyhow. All Tejas and I have to worry about for that one (besides whether we'll trip on our dhoti and sari) is how much fresh flowers for our garlands will cost, because Tejas' family arranged for fake flowers and we both agreed we'd like real ones. Oh yes, and whether our families will get along or develop violent antipathies at first sight. And I need to alter the salwar kameez Tejas' mom gave me to wear at dinner after the wedding, because the only ready-made Indian dresses that fit me heightwise are XL, and...I am not. It's about two feet too wide for me. But don't get me wrong--I'm extremely grateful that I get to take off the sari before attempting to eat.

And then...there is the Portland wedding. The one for which I feel compelled to craft. And yet, I have sewn a grand total of NOTHING for it yet.

Wedding dress? No way. I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy. We're wearing the clothes from our engagement:
While I am maybe not the best model (I think it would look better on somebody a little, you know, curvier), you've got to admit the dress is fabulous. Tejas' mom has great taste, even if she does keep trying to get me to wear orange, yellow, and lime green. (They look great on her and Tejas. My skin is too pink though.)

Wedding hanky? Yes, because both Tejas and I always carry hankies, and besides I think it's a cute old tradition where you make the wedding hanky into a bonnet for the first child's baptism. I'm thinking this is where I will go crazy with the white-and-pastel embroidery and lace and flouncy flowers bit, since we're avoiding that in the rest of the wedding. I'll make Tejas a nice simple one with his initials on it or something.

Ring pillow? I'm highly tempted to attach the rings to my dog's collar and have her bring them, but I think it might be too much for Tejas' family. I wouldn't want them to be too scared about marrying into our family. So I might make a ring pillow. (Our rings--Tejas' folks had some gold coins melted down and made into rings by a local goldsmith. None of them had ever actually seen a wedding ring up close, though. We saw the rings the other day...they are passable except so incredibly shiny you could put on makeup with one if you'd lost your compact. Can you get rings repolished to a different finish? Tejas flat out refuses to wear his.)

Dress to wear after ceremony? I'm going to change out of the fabulous green dress right after the I Do's, partly because it's hot and heavy and scarily fancy and partly because, well, I want to be able to dance and eat and all that. So I need a more normal dress. Unfortunately my wardrobe runs mostly to very casual with a few dressy tangoish things thrown in. I have exactly one dress which I would be willing to wear on this occasion...it is pale blue linen and has a broken zipper and needs to be let out at two of the seams (I made it a couple years ago and it's always been a little too snug for my tastes). It's either this or buy something...The Budget is frowning at me, but I might cave. It depends on how cooperative the sewing machine feels like being.

I should maybe get started.

In which I feel inadequate in many ways.

I feel like I have done nothing useful for ages and ages.

Two Fridays ago, I stayed very very late at the lab and got lots of things done, and made my advisor happy. Then (Sat. night) Tejas and I took off for Michigan for a family reunion. I went back the lab last Thursday & Friday, and didn't get a whole lot done. Then I got sick. I'm still home sick today.

I am so antsy, it's unbelievable. I need to work, people! I have to get some stuff done!

In the meantime, as I sit here hacking and coughing and blowing my nose, let me tell you about my weekend. Tejas' mom came from India last Thursday and visited us on Saturday. We were ready:
(Tejas calls his mom and dad Aai and Papa. I am never sure what to call them since that's how they sign cards to me, but Tejas tells me I should call them Kaku and Kaka (Auntie and Uncle) until we're married. At least I only have another three weeks to be worried by this problem.)

We were hoping it would make the place look homey--other than this, we only have a couple of calendars (one lunar, one western) on the wall. Tejas' mom is loads of fun, even when they're talking in Marathi so I only understand a fraction of what they're saying, so we had a good time. We fed her chicken curry (she hasn't had meat in something like 15 years, but recently decided she needed better nutrition so is willing to give up the veg diet) with tons of spices that she brought for us, and we all chatted for hours.

She also brought all the stuff for our wedding: Tejas' clothes, my sari, the marriage necklace girls wear instead of wedding rings, beaded headdress things Tejas and I evidently have to wear for a little while (supposed to be like ox-horns), henna powder, green plastic bangles (for fertility), traditionalish sorts of jewelry like a thingy that hangs down over your forehead and something that hooks off the waist of your sari, matching necklaces and earrings for Tejas' sis-in-law and me, fancy hairpins for Trace-trace and me.... I'm not sure what Tejas was thinking as she unfolded all this, but I think I'm going to be afraid to move on the day of! What with the six yards of fancy fabric and the entire contents of a jewelry store heaped around me. She is really sweet, though, to go to all the trouble of trying to make a proper fancy wedding for us, and I'll do my level best not to step on the sari hem and go sprawling and spoil it. (Feeling kind of guilty here since I'm pretty sure the bride's family is supposed to be paying for a lot of the wedding expenses and doing a lot of the arrangements. Sorry!! I'll try to be a good daughter-in-law!)

Between our visitor and being sick and the reunion, I haven't gotten a whole lot of knitting done. I did finish a pair of socks:

Aren't they sweet and girly? I like the colors a lot. (The yarn was a present from Trace-trace.)

I also finished the baby bobble sweater, which only needs a button at the base of the hood before heading off to its new home (admire the tassled I-cord on the hood!):
Hurray!

Never trust your knitting.

I know you have to have a certain amount of dedication to be a knitter and all, but really, patience has never been my strong point. I always cast on a zillion things at once and knit on each one till I get bored--it's sloppy, but it means I always have projects in various stages of completion. If I start feeling the itch to finish something, I can usually manage it in a couple of days.

On the other hand, it also means I have projects that I get bored or annoyed with, which linger for months--years!--in the dreaded depths of the craft cupboard. Such as these socks:

(They've got more green and less blue than it looks like here.) I bought the yarn last summer (from sunset yarns on etsy) and cast on last fall. I knit the first one, got bored, stuck it in the cupboard with the kobolds and the gremlins, and forgot all about it till I was showing off my sock walk of shame (=orphan single socks) to Mom. She liked the socks I was making for her okay, but she REALLY liked these. (Who'da thunk it? They are tres bright, my friends.) So, all right, change of plans: I got the socks that she was going to get (her loss, I was almost done with those!) and I started knitting the second of these. They didn't get much knitting time till this week though. I go through sock modes and non-sock modes. I'm feeling the sock bug again now. Besides, I wanted an FO, and I was too tired to work on the fidgety baby bobble thing, even though it only needs another couple inches of hood, a neck edging, and some sewing-up.

The only problem is, I am the acknowledged queen of stupid knitting mistakes. The first sock had been sitting for months in the cupboard, but did I look at it before casting on the second? No way! I knit these with my own personal Plain Sock pattern, which I have memorized up down and sideways! Look schmook!

The first sock has a 1x1 ribbed cuff. The second has a 2x2 ribbed cuff.

F*%! you, knitting kobolds! I'm taking the leftover yarn with me to Michigan this weekend in case my mom notices. If it bothers her, I'll unravel the cuff, attach new yarn, and knit a new cuff toe-up style. If it doesn't bother her, or she doesn't notice, IT IS A QUIRKY EMBELLISHMENT. Got that?

(Come on. You can barely even see the difference in the picture.)

QUIRKY.

Countdown.

We're getting married in exactly one month.

(Eeeeeeeeeek! :) Just kidding.)

I always kind of figured I'd be one of those old spinster ladies who live in a gingerbread victorian house by themselves with about fifty zillion cats. I mean, boys can be nice and all, but I'd never met one I could put up with for more than a couple hours or at most a couple days, let alone fifty years. Also, I'm a recluse at heart. I like to have lots of quiet time reading or knitting or walking, I don't particularly like playing board games or sports or anything like that, and I'm sure as heck not a good-little-wifey sort of girl. (See: dusting twice a year if the house is lucky; being unfond of cooking, much.) I don't suffer fools or foolishness gladly, I never was very good at keeping my opinion to myself if I disagree with someone else, and I lose my temper over little things pretty often. And lord knows I'm not a paragon, but in these latter, less kindly years (aka anything past age 21) I would not put up with any boy calling me his for long unless he was the soul of honor and compassion. Crushes, smushes...it's fun to have crushes, but the funnest part is that one doesn't feel compelled to do anything about them.

But, you know....somehow I'm not too upset about giving up my crazy-cat-lady future. Tejas is just too nice to have around to trade for a bunch of furballs. :)

(Note: Since we're having two weddings and (Tejas' parents threaten) a reception in India, we're electing Oct. 13th as our official anniversary in future years. It was the day we first kissed, the day we got engaged, and it was when we intended to get married. The arrangements didn't quite work out, but oh well. Forget the welter of other dates; Oct. 13th it is.)

Thanks for the advice on tossing tangly yarn--I will toss it out! Just as soon as I finish the project and definitely don't need it. Otherwise, you know I'd figure out I needed another 10 yards of yarn just as it was slithering into the dumpster.

I was planning to go to a knitting night on Sunday, at a bubble tea place (!), but it turned out they'd had a last-minute change of heart and gone en masse to a local park we'd never heard of. So Tejas and I shared a bubble tea and went home, and I knit both sleeves and half the hood of the baby sweater. It was a nice little place though, and right over by where we do grocery shopping, so I think I can wheedle my way back sometime.

And that is all the knitting I've done in the past three days.

Monday I didn't leave the lab till 9:30 pm. When I got home, I just ate something and fell asleep. Yesterday I left at a civilized hour (5:30ish) but then went to the gym and tired myself out, and when I got home I ate something, spent some time with Tejas, and fell asleep. (Are you noticing a pattern here?) I'm determined that today I'll actually get some knitting down, because this is pathetic, and also, I think Tejas is starting to worry about me.

Also, I need to get this baby sweater done. I'm bored now. I want to go back to socks as my alternate project. Speaking of socks! There are so many sock patterns I want to knit! And some of them I even have the correct yarn for! (Some of them, alas, I have been drooling over for months and will continue to drool over until I go off the yarn diet. Then, my dears, we shall see the needles fly!) Right now my fancy socks are the Undulating Rib socks from the Favorite Socks book, knitted in Fleece Artist "Forest". I love the colorway, I love the way the socks are turning out, and these are MINE MINE MINE. I was going to give them away, but no. MINE! My plain socks are in Sunset Yarns (an etsy seller who, sadly, seems to have disappeared) "Rainbow Road", and they are for Mom, who oddly enough appears to like really really bright socks (she chose 'em over more muted ones I thought she'd like better). See, the way my sock knitting goes is, I have fancy socks--socks I have to pay attention to--for when I want complicated knitting, and plain socks--socks I don't have to look at much--for knitting while reading. I always have at least one plain pair going.

Since it seems like one person at least who reads this blog, and one more who might, are starting to knit socks, I thought you might like to know what became of my sock yarn survey. So here, for your edification and enjoyment (ha!), are the Sock Survey Results. (Drum roll, please.)

Sock Yarn Survey Results

• Knitpicks Simple Stripes. I used "Sunset," "Sweettart," and "Snapdragon." "Sweettart" was by far the prettiest. Decent basic yarn. Striping pattern is kinda on the boring side and not as well-printed as higher quality yarns, but turns out nice enough. Yarn is a little scratchy but will probably hold up well, due to the nylon content. This knits up at 7 to 7.5 sts/inch for me, a little bigger than most fingering weights.
• Lorna's Laces Shepard Sock. I used "Sand Hill" and also have one sock in "Happy Valley" completed. The feel of the yarn is absolutely scrumptiously soft and buttery; loved knitting with it except if one of my needles accidently punctured the yarn--then it didn't so much split as explode. The colors are kind of muted, but pretty, and the striping pattern is very nice (not much pooling). I LOVE this yarn and would definitely buy it again. Knits up at 7.5 to 8 sts/inch for me.
• Lisa Souza Sock!. I used "South Pacific." The color were fairly nice, but the feel of the yarn is kind of scratchy and blah--not my favorite. (The socks turned out quite lovely though!) It striped fairly well without much pooling. However, the widths of the stripes changed over the skein, so my second sock striped twice as often as the first one.
• Sunset yarns (etsy) superwash sock. I used "Rainbow Road." I think the base yarn for this, as well as most other etsy sock yarns, is Opal Gems Pearl, and I love it to death. Nice and scrunchy, takes color vividly and almost translucently. Also, it knits up the tightest of all the sock yarns I tried, at 8 sts/inch easily, and a much tighter row gauge. I wish this seller would come back so I could buy some more yarn from her. Not that I'm buying yarn at the moment.
  
• Fearless Fibers (etsy) superwash sock. I used "Kildare." See the sunset yarns entry for base yarn comments; the coloring was nice semisolid. I've had these socks for almost a year now and they're still fairly nice, though a little pilly (I'm hard on my socks).
• Regia. I used a red stripe and a blue/green stripe. It's also fairly scratchy, and the colors aren't as nice as the handdyed stuff, but it's very hardwearing. Tejas' blue/green socks have been through the washer and the dryer multiple times, and the socks still look new.
• Opal. I used "Schlange" from the new Rainforest Collection. I liked the dappled look of the colors, but I hated the feel of the yarn--it's like thread. I suspect it'll wear well, though.
• Lang Jawoll. I used "charcoal." HATE HATE HATE! I got a little ball of pilled wool on the yarn as I was knitting it, and I kept having to slide it along/pull it off. It drove me nuts.
• Sunshine yarns (etsy). I have two of the dragon colors, but haven't knit with either yet. Bad me. They look nice enough, though I think they were overpriced. Also, the skeins are wound really tight--don't like that much. She's very popular but I probably won't buy from her again.
  
• RubySapphire yarns (etsy). I have a semisolid blue, which I also haven't knit with. See the sunset yarns entry for base yarn comments. I don't like most of their colors (boring) so will probably not buy from them again.
  
• Twisted (etsy). I used "Secret" and have half a sock knit in "Exile." The stripes are fun but vary in width, so the socks don't match, and the stripes in Exile are way too wide for my taste. Nice yarn though, and I like the colors. Mom loves her Secret socks best of anything I've made for her. I would probably buy from this store again.
  
• Claudia Handpainted. I used "Pistachio" for socks and "Toast" for tam/gloves. THIS IS MY FAVORITEST OF ALL SOCK YARNS. The skeins are smallish, but big enough for normal-sized socks, and the yarn is somehow wonderfully scrunchy. The color combinations are really unusual, and yet somehow it all works out and looks lovely. It doesn't stripe really, nor does it pool--there are just little flecks of each color. Gorgeous.
• Fleece Artist. I used "Origin" and am using "Forest." LOVE this yarn too! Soft and somehow slinky, and very vivid, though I had problems with one of my origin socks being vivider than the other (grr). Flecks in the same way as the Claudia Handpainted.
• Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn. I used "Royal blue." I don't like so many of the colors, but the yarn base is unusual (contains silk and mohair) and lots of fun to knit with. Have to check with my mom on comfort and how well it wears.
• Socks that Rock. I used "Dreidel" and have an unfinished pair in "Farmhouse." I like this yarn for the colors, but I'm not as crazy about it as some people. It's too dense for me somehow--makes nice socks, but I don't really love knitting it.
• Sweet Georgia. I have an unfinished pair in "Berry." I didn't like this much (hence the unfinished pair)--it pooled horribly and looked much better in the skein than in the sock. Normally I like pooling just fine, but this sock has one side in one color and one side in a different color--blech. I'll probably finish the pair eventually, but I won't be buying more of this yarn.
• Sockotta. I am slooooooowly knitting a sock in some lavenderish color. I don't like it much, which is why it's going slowly. It's like knitting with twine. The socks will probably be decent summer socks, though, because of all the cotton content. Nonetheless, I have learned my lesson. Will not be buying more sockotta, even though the colors are pretty.

Did I forget anything? Hopefully not, but if I did, I'll add it in later. Hope this helps anyone who's making sock yarn selections!

Moral dilemma.

Just a quick question...is it wrong to toss yarn that's hopelessly tangled? Toss as in, trash can? I have 2 or 3 skeins that would take me HOURS if not TENS OF HOURS to untangle, and frankly, the thought makes me kinda woozy. And it's not like they're quiviut handspun my great-great-gramma from a muskox she raised herself, or anything. I have serious qualms about tossing yarn...but the chances of me ever using these couple skeins are extremely slim. Immoral? Or not?

(One skein is tangled from when I let Tejas frog it and didn't simultaneously wind it up, stupid me. But I don't think I'll need it to finish the project (if I do, I'll untangle just enough to finish). The others evidently just hate me and decided to spontaneously tangle beyond repair when moving or marinating in the bottom of the stash, or something. Well, I hate them too. Stupid tangled yarn.)

In for the long haul.

I think I mentioned that Tejas asked me to make a lace shawl for his gramma, who he's very close to, and who can't make it to our wedding. I had him page through a book of shawl patterns, and he picked out one he thought she would like, and then I showed him all the small-gauge yarn I had with enough yardage to complete said pattern. There was an moss-green skein, some teal stuff from Knitpicks, and a ridiculously bright redbrown-lime green-magenta singles skein that I'd bought off handpaintedyarn.com*, which obviously has some issues with color fidelity on its website (it looked pink and yellow when I bought it). He grabbed the bright one, saying, "This is PERFECT! My gramma LOVES bright things like this!"

*I know it sounds like I've bought a ton of yarn from there, since I've used two skeins of it since I started this blog. But really, it was only one order of about $40 worth of yarn: a few colors of bulky, plus a bit of laceweight. My review: The bulky is slightly lower quality than Manos del Uruguay but very similar and nice to knit with. The laceweight is CHEAPCHEAPCHEAP and really very nice, if you can avoid the ridiculously colored stuff. My moss green laceweight is also from this site, and I adore it.

Anyhoo, I'm knitting the Melon Stitch Shawl from Victorian Lace Today, which is a nice pattern (though has not yet been blocked, so looks kinda scrunched up and weird) but involves knitting seventy thousand repeats of the central pattern, then knitting on a border. Booooooring...I'm forcing myself to make this my main project because I know if I work on something else, I won't come back to this easily, and then I won't get it done in time. Blah. At least I have the central pattern memorized by now, so I can listen to booktapes and not really pay much attention (I do have to look at it though. No knitting & reading for me.) And the melon stitch, which comes once every 6 rows, is kinda fun.
The wonky red bit at the cast-on edge is sock yarn from Trace-trace's socks, scavenged for a provisional cast on. Also, the yarn is brighter in person.

The poor little bobble sweater is feeling neglected...maybe I'll try to finish the sleeves this weekend, to take the edge off the melon stitch monster.
Then, I was thinking...I have a couple of sock yarns in Harry Potter-themed colors (Welsh Green Dragon and Hungarian Horntail Dragon) and some Gryffindor-colored worsted weight. Anyone feel like a Potter project-a-long in honor of the last book? (I'm currently 81st on the library hold list for it--I need something to distract me until a copy trickles down to me.)