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! :)