Hope chests, WIP wrestling & secret agent man

I've been crafty since I was pretty little, and when I was young and feeling unappreciated, I used to dream about making a hope chest for my (hypothetical) wedding. I swore I'd fill it with gorgeously stitched linens, a handmade veil and wedding dress, those fancy lace wedding hankies that you convert into christening caps for babies, etc. etc. ad nauseum. (Kindly ignore the fact that I have never seen a table cloth without spilling something on it. I was darn well going to make them anyhow.) Of course I wasn't expecting to meet Tejas and get married...so at my wedding I had NOTHING handmade, not a single stitch (except a hankie with an edging my grandma's grandma made. Nothing made by me, anyhow). I have no handstitched linens, not so much as a kitchen towel or pillowcase. Until this year, I had only a couple of handknit items. (What is wrong with me? I give everything away when I make it, that's what.)

When Tejas heard about the tradition of hope chests, he got all excited and thought I should start one...not for a wedding but for kidlets. (Don't anybody get excited. We do want them, but don't hold your breath.) So I did! Well, I haven't got a chest yet, but I do have stuff to go in it, and to whit: one very fancy stranded baby hat, one cabley baby jacket (needs a few more buttons sewn on), one soft and snuggly cotton baby blanket (needs ends woven in). I'm determined that by the time we get around to having kidlets, I'll have at least one sweater in every size, plus some hats and socks and pants and stuff. And lots of blankies, because I loved my blankies when I was little. This'll give me a chance to make really nice baby things, since we all know how long I take to knit anything complicated.

On the subject of slow knitting...not that I committed to anything, but I'm following along in the spirit of WIP wrestling, for a while at least. (I'm ornery enough that if I commit to it, I'll immediately lust after some new project.) In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll list my sad and sorry litany of WIPS in the sidebar (some are barely started, some just need ends woven in). But this weekend, I made a good start! I finished finished FINISHED Kashmir and finished knitting the crayon blankie (still needs ends woven in, blah), and made a big dent in a second sock that's been lingering for a couple years. Next up: more socks. Socks for all! (Socks for Christmas, anyway. I want some Christmas gifts done so I can go knit myself another sweater, hehehe. This knitting-for-me business is fun!)



In other news, we have a neighbor who likes to practice "Secret Agent Man" on his electric guitar. I have nothing against practicing. I also have played the same song 20,000 times in an attempt to get the darn thing to sound right. However, I did NOT play it 20,000 times using an amplifier cranked up to high so the entire city could hear me. (Also, when I sing, I generally try to sing in tune. Or at least, if I sing out of tune, I try not to do it on the microphone. Who practices on a live mike, anyhow? Crazy.)

First anniversary

"It feels like a lifetime--no, I don't mean that. I mean it feels as if we'd always been married."
"So we have--from the foundation of the world--"
--Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon

In the spirit of countless What I Did Over Summer Break school essays, here is What I Have Learned In One Year Of Marriage:
--You can strew any amount of yarn around the house and even leave needles on the bed and get nothing harsher than a fond smile, as long as you maintain an attitude of cheerful mischief
--Ditto for housework and not doing it
--Once the boy gets into the habit of eating homecooked lunch and dinner, though, they're sacred. Ignore the lunchbox at your peril. He will eat canned tuna and give you puppy eyes.
--If any flat surface in the house (coffee table, futon, dresser top...) is absolutely clean and unbesmirched by the presence of any object whatsoever, it will remain so indefinitely. But twenty seconds after you place so much as a single envelope atop that surface, it will be totally buried in clutter
--Only girls think bathrooms need to be cleaned or towels washed regularly
--But socks worn to bed are icky, even if you need them because it's winter and you're too stingy/green to turn on the heat
--If, when faced with a job of housework half-done by your husband and waiting pathetically to be finished (by you), you merely smile, do the other half and thank him profusely...he will eventually learn how to do the other half of his own accord. And he will swear to his friends and family that you are a very sweet girl with no temper at all (ha!)
--A boy (my boy anyway) will actually watch wildly romantic movies with you, and like them, as long as they are disguised as mysteries.
--Organic veggies and fruits are too expensive to consider at the supermarket, but if you take your husband to the farmer's market, he will happily buy them for you. And swear they're ten times better than the normal kind. Furthermore, he will sign you up for a CSA.
--Ditto strawberries, especially if you make jam.
--The more earnestly he protests that you don't need to learn how to cook his favorite foods because he can have them when he's visiting his folks, the happier he'll be when you manage to produce them.
--If you manage to break your (gold) mangalsutra on your anniversary after wearing it faithfully every day for a year, he'll tell you not to worry, you're sure to break lots more of them before you're through, he'll get it fixed next time he goes home, and maybe he should get you a couple of inexpensive gold-plated ones to wear for everyday so you don't have to get upset if you break one and can't find all the pieces. Oh, you found them all? Then it'll be easy to fix.
--Even if he only wears handknit socks around the house on winter evenings, he still wants a goodly portion of your sockknitting efforts. It's a measure of how much you love him (or something).
--A button sewn back on a shirt will count almost as much as a pair of socks, though. Especially if you iron the shirt afterwards.
--All your ideas about what sort of clothes are most attractive on you are probably wrong. That black dress your mom says makes you look slug-belly white? Perfect. And the folk dress with twenty yards of fabric that you wore for the dance performance? Sexiest outfit ever!
--The correct answer to "Am I going bald/gaining weight/snoring?" is "What?! Are you crazy?" :)
--He will politely admire each and every beanlet and baby tomato and pepper and squash growing in your little box on the balcony, but he'll only get excited when he gets to eat them. Pointing out the prices for organic cherry tomatoes will also produce enthusiasm, particularly if you can manage to get your plant to produce a pint of them at once (try forgetting to water it).
--No matter how mushy and sentimental you can get, an Indian boy can out-mush and out-sentiment you any day. It's in their blood or something.
--Once you're married, he won't bring you flowers anymore.
--But he will spoil you like crazy from day to day, and tell you that he loves you at the oddest moments, like when he's about to go to work and you're still curled under the covers with only your nose sticking out.
--If you don't formally declare that a trip is your honeymoon, then it doesn't count. Therefore, never declare that you're going on your honeymoon, and it doesn't have to end. :)

Vacation

Pictures at last! (Well, non-crafty pictures anyhow. MIL is still here and I still have qualms about snapping photos of crafty things in front of her, though I don't know why since she & FIL found the craft photo file on my computer and insisted on looking through the whole thing. And they didn't disown me for being crazy. :) )


Tejas is OFFICIALLY DONE!! Wahoo!! (I graduated too, but it was just my master's. Not nearly as cool. I prefer to bask in the reflected glory of his degree. :) )


The view driving into Yosemite valley. I swear we stopped every five feet to go "oooooh!" and pile out of the car and take pictures.


The bottom of Lower Yosemite Falls. We had a great time scrambling up the rocks to get closer (and the mist felt lovely on the 97 degree day!)


We particularly liked the lush green water meadows! At 4 pm on Saturday there was a big thunderstorm, and the temperature dropped more than 40 degrees in half an hour as the rain poured. It was lovely to watch the rain sheeting off the rocks and trickling into the meadows. I love how green things almost glow in the rain! (Picture from later, in the sunlight, alas.)


The picture postcard view of the valley.

In other news, Tejas' mom taught me to make bakri! (Little flatbreads made from millet flour. They tell me bakris are "farmer food," but I like them best of all the flatbreads I've had. Tejas likes them too.) Now it's my job to make them every night till I go home to Portland, to make sure the lesson sticks. :) I'm happy about this because I really need to learn to make rotis (flatbreads they usually eat, made from wheat) but Tejas has told me horror stories about how hard they are to make. I'm hoping bakris will be a good midway thing to learn so that I won't burn down the kitchen attempting my first batch of rotis!

Also: I so need a vacation. I'm really looking forward to going home for a few days, though I'll miss Tejas a lot. Travels to Yosemite etc. do not really count as vacation when one travels on a single weekend without missing a day of work. In fact, they kind of make things worse, because one still has to clean the bathroom/cook stuff for lunches/get groceries/do laundry/whatever, and the weekend is gone...it'll be really nice to go home and NOT BE RESPONSIBLE for anything. I'll do dishes or whatever my mom likes, but it will be completely voluntary and NOT MY JOB. (!) I'm also pretty fed up with labby stuff right now (hello, defrost of every freezer known to mankind, holding all our most precious irreplaceable research tools)--am hoping a couple days off will help me regain the will to work. (Productivity this week = not so much. Sigh.)

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.)

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.

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!