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!