Friday, June 27, 2008

100% handmade with love :)

Yosemite is lovely! (Pics to come soon..have to sort through the eleventy billion snapshots we took. :) ) This was Tejas' and my first time there, though his mom had been once before. Love love loved it, despite the hordes of daytrippers. It's the sort of landscape that makes you want to pack a bag with necessities and hoof it into the mountains, headed for the glacier in the distance, and to heck with civilization. Luckily we managed to quash that urge, but Tejas and I decided (foolishly?) that we HAVE to go back in the fall or late summer and camp, and hike up Half Dome. Wahoo! :)

In other news, I have officially corrupted his mom. She used to do all sorts of sewing and embroidery (much much finer than anything I can do. I take off my hat to anyone who sews her own sari blouses--those things have no room for mistakes!) but gave it up when her kids were in school. When she came this year, I gave her a couple of embroidered hankies that Tejas had asked me to make, and she was reminiscing about what she used to do...so I hauled out the ol' embroidery thread box and some fabric scraps and left them strategically on the table, "just in case." Before long she was stitching little bits when we were away working, "to see if I remember the stitches"...it snowballed. By this time she's filled a whole quarter yard of cloth with pictures, decorated a hankie for me (I'm the lucky one, lalalalalal! have to gloat a little :) ) and asked me to rummage for more fabric. Then last night she happened across one of my iron-on patterns and I showed her how to use it, and five minutes later she was gleefully pressing small kitties onto scrap fabric and letting herself be persuaded to take some iron-ons when she goes home next week! Until yesterday night she always said that she wouldn't have time at home to sew and she didn't want to take any thread or anything home. Last night, Tejas convinced her (didn't take much convincing ;) ) that we should pay a visit to JoAnn's and put together a little kit for her...just in case there's anything she needs that she can't get from my stash, and if she wants more press-on patterns. Mwahahaha...looks like my work is done! (She's also said she wants her mom to teach her to knit when she goes back, so I'm going to get some of those kid's needles with one red and one blue for her, and send her back with a couple balls of lovely soft handpainted wool from my stash!)

The other crafty thing I did last night was to make her a little sachet of lavender to put with her clothes in the rainy season. She loves the little lavender plant on our balcony--every time we go out there she crushes some of the leaves to smell them--and has asked if we can find some seeds so she can try growing one back home. So I've been clipping and drying little bundles of lavender all summer, and last night I sewed a little bag out of scraps of fabric and ribbon, then stuffed the dried lavender inside and sewed it up. Our whole kitchen smelled lovely and cool while I stuffed it--I'm so proud of that fat, lumpy little sachet! It's 100% homemade.

(We've had a total of five cherry tomatoes off my sungold tomato plant now! And there are blooms on my beans and tiny little peppers on my hot and not-hot pepper plants. I'm proud of them too! It almost makes up for my research going kinda badly. I'm trying to convince myself that I don't care--I have a wonderful husband and fun domestic things to play with at home, and it's not like I want a high-flying career anyway, so there's not a lot to worry about. I'm still kinda depressed though, even though my advisor SWEARS to me it will all be all right and he'll make sure I graduate in a reasonable amount of time and get a job and all, and I pretty much believe him. Think I'll go home and plough through some knitting to cheer myself up.)

Monday, June 9, 2008

Zoo animal

Tejas' graduation is this weekend! He's been out of school and working for a couple of months now, but it's still exciting. There are only two reasons I'm not really excited about this weekend:
1. I have to meet the members of my reading committee (profs who will judge my thesis, if I ever have one) on Friday and next Tuesday. They are scary people and have schedules such that they will not be here at the same time as my advisor for more than a year, so I have to meet them alone, without my advisor to tell them to leave me alone if they get nasty. shiver I'm telling myself that my advisor is happy with me so there's not much they can do other than make me feel bad for an hour or two, but still...
2. Either Tejas' brother and sis-in-law will not come to graduation, in which case he will be sad, or they will come, and either get into a huge argument with his parents, or his sis-in-law will spend the whole couple hours cutting us dead and making snippy remarks. (I don't know why she has decided to hate us, but she apparently has.) It's not so much that I can't take the drama as that I lose patience with them fast and really want to smack them upside the head and say, You're grown adults! Act like it for once!

All my results in lab are weird. My advisor is really excited about this--something weird might mean something new, right?--but I'm at the point where I really just want something to work the way I think it should. Anything. Come on, flying spaghetti monster!

To retain my sanity while Tejas' folks are staying with us--well, let me say first that I really like his parents, I do. They are very nice folks and treat me like their own daughter, and his dad is amazingly openminded about having a crazy American for a daughter-in-law, considering that he's pretty conservative--to retain my sanity, I have spent a fair amount of time lately petting yarn and staring at the stash and knitting. The problem is not that his folks are visiting, but that they are visiting for a long time (mom = 2 months, dad = 12 days), and that his dad is the sort of person who can't amuse himself for even five minutes. His mom is pretty good about recognizing that occasionally a girl needs some quiet time. His dad, though... I go home with my brain all worn out and get poked at in Marathi and sometimes (if I'm too tired or stupid to understand Marathi, which happens pretty regularly) in English. Poke. Poke. Poke poke poke poke poke. His dad is an old-style patriarch and expects constant attention and deference. He is very very nice....but I am beginning to feel like a zoo animal. Or maybe a circus bear. Aaaagh!

(I have to say, though, I baked a cake for him special--he likes sweets--the day after he got here, forgetting that he doesn't eat eggs (the list of what-not-to-feed-who in this family makes me slightly woozy), and he ate it anyway. Even though he saw me putting the eggs in.)

My little garden on the balcony is coming along nicely! I'm pretty amazed that it hasn't shriveled up and died. My tomato plant has tomatoes!! In my earthbox I have: one sungold cherry tomato (she of the bountiful amounts of small unripe green tomatoes. I am fond of my sungold), one supersweet 100 cherry tomato (blooming), one Thai hot pepper plant (lots of flowers. I have high hopes), one Hungarian slow food international heirloom pepper plant (one baby pepper and one blossom, meh), several pole bean plants (mostly tendril so far. don't they need leaves??) and cilantro in various stages. Tejas says if I get useful produce this year, next year he'll buy me another box, hurray!! (I mostly just like messing about with dirt. Yup, still three years old at heart.)

Currently quite annoyed at my Kashmir sweater, though underneath I really still love it. (It's so pretty! And so complicated!) I am 1/2 of the way through the sweater, and I'm pretty sure I'll run out of both contrast colors at 3/4. I'm going to have to order more yarn. Grrrrrrr! I even ordered the recommended amounts! But it was spendy (colorwork sweater, y'know. and superwash) so I didn't get the extra ball of each like I usually do. I think I'll get TWO extra balls of each, and one of the red I'm using for the edging, and have MORE THAN ENOUGH! I'll knit a hat or something out of the extra. Or really warm socks for my Alaska relatives. Grargh. (Thank goodness for my yarn fund. Tejas, I love you. :) ) On the other hand, the sight of the enormous pile of Falk yarn transmogrifying into sweater is very gratifying.

I'm feeling a bit restless and annoyed with knitting recently. I think it's because I've been knitting-to-order: the Kashmir sweater is based on a borrowed pattern, so I have to give it back in another five or six weeks, which is a bit tight; I have requests from various family members for different objects, so those are pressing on my conscience; and I started a big Afghans for Afghans project that I need to send in in July. Meanwhile, I think what I would really like to knit is socks. Big, colorful, complicated cable and lace socks. I've been taking the edge off by winding sock yarn, inserting small quick stash projects when I get sick to death of my other knitting, and trying to knit up some UFO fancy socks and plain socks, and just in general clean up the stash. I've promised myself that when I finish a couple of big things, I can buy some Really Nice Sock Yarn and make myself a pair or two of really pretty socks. And actually keep them instead of giving them away! My plan of attack for the give-it-aways is to buy a pair of mary jane shoes. Then I will need pretty socks to show off, no? :)

(I also--sneakily--made a scarf from my sister's extra special handspun and started a pair of knee socks from swap yarn & pattern. A girl has to do something when she feels like a zoo animal. Do not speak to me of project monogamy.)

P.S. I meant to post pictures of Kashmir, my spiffy new scarf and the glorious veggie tub, but lost my nerve in front of the in-laws. There will be pictures...eventually.