New Post - Really!

Please scroll down Dear Readers to the post below dated January 21st titled "That'sa Lotta Bull." It really is the newest latest post....really!

Can This Luggage Be Saved?

Okay, I admit it. I had to go out and buy another soft-sided bag. Things are bulging, things are straining. But it's all coming back - allovit!!!!

So on the last of the things I brought to work on - finished DH's red socks that I ripped out twice in disgust some years ago when they "didn't fit right." I ended up doing the cuffs and heel on 2's and the foot on 1's and amazingly enough, he likes the fit this way. Long as I don't have to start 'em again.... What's that rule of three thing that keeps cropping up!!!!



Since I was gifted with some acrylic fingering in various colors while I was here, I used it for hair scrunchies and baby hats. One of the drivers that takes David to and from work recently announced his wife gave birth very prematurely. The baby girl is 3.5 pounds and they thought she'd have to stay in the hospital for months. However, she is home and doing well now. I thought I'd knit a preemie hat, but half-way through I remembered reading on the KnitList years ago that in NeoNatal ICU the babies often have tubes on the top of their heads and that they have to take the hats off to check the tubes. The babies understandably get cross at this as there's a sudden cold draft and they were after all trying to sleep. This would be their first introduction to "There is NO sleeping in hospitals!" So the lister said she made the hats without decreasing at the top and made them like a drawstring purse so that they could be opened up and tubes messed with and then closed back up. This made sense to to me so I tried doing the same thing. I did decrease some and then put in a yarn over at each decrease point (6) and made a little I-cord drawstring. Looks pretty silly when all is said and done. More holes would have helped it gather evenly - 6 makes it turn into a weird triangle on the top. I Googled knitted preemie hats (after I finished - duh!) and no one seemed to be making them this way so apparently it's not a needed thing. The good news is the hat fit her perfectly so while she's still small I quickly made a second one to use up the yarn.





Temple Visit

On the weekend we drove down to Chidambarum to visit the very famous Nataraja Temple. We chose a very good day as Pongal was over, Republic Day is not 'til Thursday, and it was not terribly crowded. Our driver found a very good guide for us and we walked around learning all we could. Before the temple was built, a famous king came to bathe in the special healing waters on the original site and it is said that his leprosy was instantly cured. In gratitude, he built this temple and successive civilizations added on to it. It covers 40 acres!!! The temple is huge and is the site of one of the more famous Shiva temples in South India where Shiva came to earth personally to show the 108 different dance steps that are used in Indian classical Dance called Bharat Natyam. We were able to attend several outdoor performances of Bharat Natyam dance during the International Yoga Festival that met here some weeks ago. Some of the dancers were nine to twelve years old and yet they were already very graceful and knew all of the complicated hand movements that are particular to this style of dance. The Bharat Natyam school of dance takes much from yogic postures and traditions. Before the dances started we had to watch various yogis and yoginis transform themselves into human pretzels. With each demonstration the announcer would describe what the asana was good for and how if you mastered it there was no possibility of cancer or disease coming to you in your lifetime. Breathing correctly with each movement is an integral part. I think if I’d started maaaaybe 45 years ago it would be possible to do some of the asanas. DH calls them “bendy people.” I can see a practical use for yoga. If I could just twist into the positions, I could wring myself out like a wet sponge on a hot day and start over with a dry body and clothing. Barring that, it’s come back to the hotel, air dry, try and reassemble the sweat-soaked hairstyle and consider a shower and a change….the second shower and a change…

Here are pictures from the temple - a most incredible place. On festival days these huge chariots are pulled through the town by hundreds of people.


A close-up of the work on the chariot.



One of the smbuilding'sings's statuary. They repaint the figures on a regular basis and have changed over to chemical paints versus the older vegetable dyes.





A likeness of the temple's founder and his main administrator.



These statues are the temple priests - it's very old but the priests look pretty much exactly like this today - they wear their hair in a knot on the side of their head and wear exactly the same type of decorated cloth on their lower body.



There are four "gates" (North, South, East and West) onto the temple grounds, and each one is a 7-story building with painted sacred figures on the outside and carvings on the inside. We were told that it could be "arranged" for us to climb up into the buildings if we liked. We declined and apparently most foreigners do - the cobras who live in the buildings because the birds and rats are easy prey there seem to be the main deterrent! Plus, on a hot day, climbing narrow stairs with low ceilings.....nah!



Here is one of the other gates. Each building has different figures on it and various civilizations over time have added onto the base buildings made of stone.



A close-up of some of the building's figures. The colors are amazingly sharp and clear.



Carvings on the inside of the gate buildings show Shiva in some of the dance positions.









Goats and cows are donated and live on the temple grounds - the priests feed them. I was surprised to find this cat there too - I haven't seen many cats in Pondy.



With hopeful optimism I hope to post again tomorrow Dear Readers. Heaven knows I've got the pictures for it! I haven't heard from anyone that the day of smaller pictures was easier loading than the medium-sized pictures so feel free to give me feedback!

That'sa Lotta Bull!

Finally I have some pictures of the Brahma Bulls. Suddenly the other day they were everywhere. It seems people in Pondy only paint the horns for Pongal, not the rest of the body. All cows are sacred to Hindus and must not be killed or injured. Some are actually butchered for meat but this is done by the Muslim population. The Brahmas are the most interesting and attractive cows to me. They have lovely pale taupe-colored skin, or medium brown, or almost white, or really dark chocolate, and such sweet faces with those big liquid raisin eyes. Their horns are very long - some grow to lean toward each other almost like an elongated heart, some face outward more like a goat, and some hook back. They endlessly pull carts along the road and plows through the rice fields - eventually getting a nice bath in the river. They are an amazingly bony lot - especially from behind. You could use their pelvic bones to open letters with.





That rein through the nose thing doesn't look terrible comfy does it! No wonder they are so docile!


Other cows...



Demons and Scarecrows

Demon faces (to ward off bad spirits) are put in some creative places if there is no veranda on a building (a typical place for a demon head).



How about on the garage door?





Scarecrows are usually used in the rice fields. But sometimes there's a need to keep crow effluent off the balconies of nice new buildings-in-progress. Note that the demon head is already in place one balcony above the scarecrow.





Lakshmi has made some cute sounds the last couple of times I’ve visited her. She has her moods and doesn’t like being overwhelmed. A week before the Pongal festival there were lots of us lined up with coins, sweet grass and bananas to offer her. She got going too fast and started taking things from each person or family in an assembly line but then forgetting who to bonk with her trunk for the blessing. Her ears started flapping and she let out a little frustrated shriek to slow things down. When I say little and shriek, it was little for an elephant and very fast. It’s just amazing how much noise they can make. Definitely got our attention. We also went over on the third day of Pongal. Pieces of sugar cane are a popular snack here and a group of guys brought her four. Next to bananas (which are miniature here) she reaaaallly likes the sugarcane. She happily chomped down one and held onto the other three pieces with a death grip while still managing to accept coins and bonk until she could chomp down on the cane. After awhile she kept on with her duties but emanated a low continuous rumble while doing them. I’m assuming that was a satisfied snack sound as it wasn’t coming from her stomach. Amazing to me is how she takes the coins with the tip of her prehensile trunk finger and sucks them right in. The deal usually is that for folding money or coins she flips the end of her trunk over so you can set them on the grooved part of the underside – then she moves the trunk over to the mahout and he takes it from her. Now we know that if she’s on a roll she stores all the coins up in her trunk and after awhile you can hear them rattling around in there – a very unexpected sound. When she finally offloads them, she seems to clear the palate by giving out a huge snoof of fine spray from her trunk. DH has been baptized upon occasion. The stick the mahout uses in telling her to do things is basically a long twig. It just basically gets her attention and he speaks any commands to her. After all, what kind of stick would impress an elephant? A baseball bat? In the wild they rip up trees for breakfast without breaking stride!



You can just barely see her hanging on to cut pieces of sugar cane in the next picture. Looks happy, doesn't she?



And here is where you get the cane at the local market. It's very tall and the cane man cuts it down to size for you when you purchase it.





To close, meet my newest tortoise friend...

The Blogavad Gita

Too ambitious a title actually. I shamelessly ripped it off from "The Bhagavad Gita," a sacred Hindu text that many of you have heard of. I wish I could be that interesting. But first, I'd have to be able to stay on line for any length of time. Sorry about the lapse in posting. Very frustrating to say I'm going to post daily, have the chat and the pictures to do it, and then lose connectivity for so many days at a time. Connectivity has been so bad that even the hotel can't log in and get their on-line reservations to work. Then again, that has now gotten them motivated to fix it! The last post was not supposed to go out in the condition it did but I had such a short time between fixing, pasting from Word, and trying to get pictures in - that it was the only version I could get out. Sigh! I've taken enough pictures and been off-line so much that I'll be tidbit-ing this trip to India on the blog for awhile - saves me from having to own up to how little fiber work I'm doing. Although I have to say that felt ideas seem to be bursting forth here and there and I can't wait to try them out.

"What I Brought" Continued

So I believe I was up to hair scrunchies for the female hotel staff which was why I ran out of linen to make the round washclothes and yet started another project that I can't finish until I get back. I'm calling this the "Beebleberry Purse." Those of you who grew up reading Little Lulu will recognize the berry in question. I've been trying to come up with a purse that holds the digital camera, the cell phone, and has a pocket in the middle for I.D., a few cards and whatnot. Plus, I wanted it to be all knit in one piece. Picture tomorrow. It's done in Louet Linen in double moss.

I brought dresses I liked and sewed up the slits in the back, blouses with long sleeves that I could cut off and hem as short sleeve, pants that fit but were too long so I could hem them, and a few things that just needed a button to be wearable. I may not have upheld the image that the hotel wanted to portray of relaxed resort-y type leisure as I often sat out on the front bench near the front door to sew by hand. Got a lot done though. Here's a picture of a typical frustration in sewing. I know (having worked in the industry) that when pockets are sewn on, two small holes are punched in the fabric as a guide for the machine sewers to speedily line them up and sew them down. I hate pockets at breast level - they never contribute anything to a woman, they focus unwanted attention in an area we'd rather leave unattentiveized, and they are often a stupid shape. So I checked for holes, was happy there weren't any and proceeded to rip off the pocket. Alas, this blouse was garment-dyed. This means they made a few zillion linen blouses in unbleached linen, used off-white cotton thread, and then died them whatever colors they wanted after the garments were assembled. It has the benefit of the thread being dyed to match, but is not something you can cover up when you detach something and find out the dye rarely seethoroughlyoughly to double-top-stitched areas. So, had to cut a new better-shaped pocket out of the now defunct lower sleeve and sew it on. Rrrrrrrr.

I finished a pair of wristwarmers for DH - this shows the thumb hole on my hand since you can't see it when they are done. It's one of the great one-row buttonholes from About.com that is very neat and snug and won't stretch out. Who knew garterstitch grafting (see end of page on link) was not all that scary? I've renamed them "Trash Rifler Wristers" in honor of Dulaan. If you have to pick through trash for your meals as homeless children often do, it's harder to do with normal gloves with fingers. Not to mention getting the fingers glopped up with whatever substances you're pawing through. Much as I used to love fingerless gloves, I found I had a hard time typing with them - even that small bit of wool at the base of each finger made me clumsier and I ended up holding my fingers differently. These are made like pulsewarmers which I originally learned about from Arnhild Hillesland (see link) when the pulsewarmer book had just come out and she did a translation. I just added a sturdy immovable thumbhole because I found that pulsewarmers would slide around on my hand. I also didn't add beads in the traditional way as I'm hard on things and figured I'd smash them. The pattern is very easy and I'll be happy to mail a PDF to anyone that wants one - in about 3 weeks when I'm back in the USA.

I brought some lovely fiber to spin gifted to me by the incomparable spinner Dear Reader Sandi. It's camel and silk and amazingly soft. I'm still struggling with spinning too fine to retain the softness so I'm dragging my feet on it. The spindle is by Andrew Forsyth. He and lovely and waaaay talented wife Susan have a web-based business with incredibly beautiful and well-made tools for spinners and others. They sell through retails in Canada and the U.S. Go and drool.

While I was refinding their site I came across this great list of links for spinners on the Urbanspinner site.

I brought a small over-the-shoulder bag that I made from leftover fabric from a matching jacket that I wove and designed back in the dark ages when for a short time I worked on a table loom. Trust me, I have forgotten everything I ever knew about weaving except that warping a loom is just no fun at all. The purse has worked well for carrying a few non-pickpockety things when I walk around town.

Brought a scarf I finished not long before we left out of soysilk with beads on the edges. I knew this was the land of scarves and I had to have at least one! This is the land of BIG scarves (Dupattas) that really take up some space on the body and my little wimplet of a scarf has felt like wearing a string instead of a real scarf.

My Kingdom for a "Supercuts!"

How many weeks past a haircut can you go before being declared terminal? DH kindly remarked in the elevator yesterday that my hair was very square on top and had a kind of Frankenstein look to it. The fact that he thinks Frank is terribly cute notwithstanding, you can imagine my pleasure at hearing this from someone who usually can't tell when I've gotten a haircut - even on the day of... We're both looking a little ragged around the edges - but hopefully we can find a reasonable place in London. If we do it'll be the only reasonable place. London has always been a terribly expensive place to live in or visit. We're pretty amazed at what things cost these days, not having been there in 13 years. We'll be flying over on Sunday.

V&A (Victoria and Albert) Museum here I come! You can never do the V&A, The British Museum or the Natural History Museum in just one day each. They are huge places. What I love about the V&A is that they have wonderful libraries on every conceivable fiber art and will let you read up on your speciality (Brit spelling) in their special reference library. These books are brought to you at your assigned seat after you give them your first born as surety and don a pair of white gloves. Depending on the state of the book, they'll even make copies of pages for you. At least it was this way 13 years ago. This time I'll be reading up on all things felt since it's my latest Jones (remember "Basketball Jones" by Cheech and Chong?") Looks like I'll be able to look things up beforehand as it's all on-line!

If I just had a container ship standing by what a lovely bunch of things I could bring home. Cottons for a dollar a yard. Silks for 4-5 dollars a yard. Zowee! But, the luggage meter is in the red zone and I have to stop. The suitcases are making muffled pitiful noises and it's getting hard to sleep at night. I've looked at many Pashmina shawls and haven't yet bought one. Even though they demonstrate that the whole shawl can be pulled through a wedding ring, as a spinner/knitter that knows some AMAZING spinner/knitters, I've seen lace weight shawls that aren't cashmere that can do that. Some of these are not that soft, which must be why they go for about 3,000 rupees ($60.00). Dear Reader Anita, who has helped me so much in mentally preparing for this trip and is from North India herself, says that good Pashmina shawls start at around 8,000 rupees. The North of India has many different worlds of textiles and I need to compare before buying Pashmina that I can buy on the next trip - assuming we will get to come back the same time next year. Before I left Anita gifted me with a lovely wool and silk shawl that has saved my bacon so many times.

It's wonderful when you need a light wrap, black and beaded so that it's a little dressy and goes with everything. Since I'm not wearing the shawls I buy until I decide what to keep and which to give, I've relied heavily on this one. Anita and her husband Rajan own the Bombay Grill in Seattle - our favorite restaurant. I'm sure I may be embarrassing them all to death but run, don't walk, to their restaurant if you like Indian food! The service is wonderful too!

Here are closeups of the very cute goats that are hanging out everywhere with the street cows and the street doggies.

These babies must be only a day or two old. They still have a dried out umbilicus attached and are definitely not steady on their pins yet.

They're up!!!

Getting warned off by mom...

Attachment

As a lapsed Zen Buddhist I actually think about this a lot. Attachment to things and desire for more (and more) of those things. I believe I've made some progress over the last few years in letting go....until I hit a whole new playground such as India.

The Motherlode of Fashion Griping

My fabric stash has been reduced by more than half at home for years and I don't sew that much except on felt these days. I should have said all that in the past tense. I'm really falling in love with the whole Salwar Kameez thing now. Aside from being cool and comfortable (yes, I've bought more) it's a wonderful way to show off gorgeous swathes of fabric without having to put a ton of seams or darts in in them that break up the patterns. I've discovered that although XXL is possible to find in India - it's scarce - BUT - they leave you two-inch seams inside in case you need to let the side seams out yet a little more. Only took me two weeks to check out my side seams - sheesh! And that's because a storekeeper pointed it out. Did I really used to sew for a living? Just when we're ready to leave I'm ready to start wearing them all the time. Enter Joni Mitchell singing "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone..." This site shows endlesss varieties of them as well as other types of traditional wear, and this site breaks down the basic silhouettes for us Westerners. Most of the ones I see women wearing in Pondy are the longer versions that come down past their knees. The Indian Haute Couture world is using more glorious fabrics draped beautifully all the time. By the way, I beat feet, not feat down to the fabric stores in my last post. Sheesh!!!

Ever since my early 20's hippie days when I was skinny enough to let way more visibly hang out that should have been out, I've been a modestly dressed person. I prefer midi lengths in everything, higher necks, longer sleeves, etc. Now being a MUCH less skinny person, it is a style that has come in handy. Also, since I like to make pretty things for women to wear (jewelry, scarves, shawls, pins) but don't like to wear almost any of them myself (skin too sensitive) what greater alternative for looking nice and feminine than pretty and weightless fabrics (and less I be stoned upon reentry to the U.S. - KNITTED fabrics). Most of the visiting Caucasian women I see in town seem to adopt some type of Dupatta shawl immediately even if they change no other thing about their attire. And it looks wonderful! It's so easy too when they come skinny or wide, sheer or translucent, heavy or light, embroidered or fringed, tie-dyed or shiboried, ikat or plain weave... There is NO scarcity of beautiful women here believe me - but since most are dressed in the same style of garment and wear their hair the same way, the visual input (to me at least) when I firsts see them is soft, flowing, beautiful colors and fabric patterns. In fact, you would have to be strikingly ugly to outshine your own outfit and no one is! Women love gold in India and wear as much as they can afford. It's an investment for them through all uncertain times and a statement of their status. Plus, it goes so beautifully with their skin color. Even female beggars are never (truly!) without a minimum of one gold nose stud and usually they have one on each side. So, do you think I can convert Washington State to Salwar Kameez? Probably not. It changes my whole feeling about long straight scarves - which I was never crazy about in knitting. In a woven fabric it's a whole different feel, and when they are wide and long it's totally amazing the different ways you can drape or tie them around yourself.

Another area where I think both larger and older women are terribly left out is designer evening wear. Or ANY evening wear. Women who have big bucks and who are older but not larger are constantly seen in the fashion and society magazines in the same bust-baring little black dresses of the younger women with bucks. Joanne Woodward is a pleasant exception. There are women thankfully who know it's all about drape, cut and lovely fabrics as you get older. But, as someone who doesn't do parties and evening functions if I can possibly worm my way out of them, I think I'd just like to look better during the day!

Two other things I have to mention being attached to - and I didn't realize how much until we came to India - are ZiplocTM bags and Post-itTM notes - which very few people use here. How do you leave a note for someone if you have no cellotape under your arm, and how do you squish all the air out of things you are packing if you don't have a Ziploc? I know - buy one of those "As seen on TV" things with the vaccuum hose... No way. Luckily, I brought plenty of them with me.

What did I bring to work on?

First, knowing we would end up in London in winter, I had to pack GortexTM and wonderful wool things so we'd be able to make the transition from sweating through everything to steaming happily in everything. This is where fabulous friends come in...

From the hat in the center clockwise - beret made by me years ago from a Bonkers Originals pattern - easy and fun to knit - started at the stem! Fits a good head range although it's a bit short on my man's XL head. I'd do it roomier next time. Tracey of Bonkers sells her patterns only as kits - very economically priced, hand-dyed fiber, and now a new strange-looking art magazine called Tub Legs. Next, a pair of striped socks I finished before I left. Since going through the hotel laundry they are not actually those colors any more... At bottom, a pair of toastie socks by Rebecca that are worn in bed EVERY NIGHT to keep me from turning to a lump of ice in the total frozen air conditioning environment that DH insists on (when it works). And on the left, a wonderful pair that has some glitter in the yarn and a lacey clock knitted for my by the incomparable sock knitter Mary "B." There's an unbelievable pair Sister Nina knit me too but I was darned if I was going to bring those and chance losing them to the laundry or the world at large.

I brought 4 balls of Louet Linen which I've had steeping in the stash forever. I was going to make Evelyn Clark's wonderful circular washcloths - I've had such fun with round ones before -but since we only seem to get washcloths from the housekeeping people once a week I decided for speed to make scrubbie things rather than the prettier ones. They too are not the same color as they were in the picture. Wonder what they're using in that laundry in the basement!


Since I'd been also making hair scrunchies by request for some of the female waitstaff at the hotel, I didn't have enough left for a square so I folded it in half and sewing it into a bath loofah-type mitt. Scrubby enough to take your whooole backside off but I know it'll soften with washing.








I had enough for a single layer square washcloth for this one - it's sort of a grayish green now - and not in a good way.... Works great on the face except it's scrubby enough to take your whooole....you get the idea. From my "Stash acquisition is More Important than Life" days I have a TON of linen left so I'll be doing a lot of these - in the round next time!






Crocheted and knit several scrunchies with and without beads on the linen and the gift of acrylic yarn I was given when I got here...



Hmmmm, connectivity is definitely on the outs. Less diatribe and more fiber tomorrow!

Sunny Skies...Cup of Masala Chai...Fiber in the Hand

Of course I wish the skies were grey, but masala chai (spiced tea where the milk is boiled in the pan with the tea) is wonderful and I've found new fiber to drool over, even if it IS already made into a finished product - see Khadi below. There are so many great things about India, but with my Summer S.A.D. condition, I think I maxed out in heat tolerance at about the 4-week point and today we're at week seven. Not to say that I'm not still learning and having fun - it just is a bit like swimming upstream. I'm REALLY ready for cold grey weather.

Apologies for the lapse of days in posting. Sometimes I can maintain a connection and sometimes not. It's been several not-ing days now and even if I were to leave the comfort of our room and bed and get completely redressed (ugh) there's no guarantee I wouldn't find the same situation in the lobby even though it has a stronger signal. Rats! In fact, I've been abruptly booted off several times already so this will be relatively short for me. More apologies to anyone who is having a tough time getting pictures to come up. I know it's a very picture-heavy blog during my travel phase - so I'll go back to using the smaller sized pictures - just double-click on them to see them larger in a separate window. As for being Queen of the run-on sentence - that cure may take time.....lots of time....

PDAs

Hah! You thought I meant Personal Data Assistants like Blackberries, didn't you! Nope - I mean Public Displays of Affection, which are very much frowned on in India, and no less in Pondicherry, which in spite of having some unusual people and organizations here (Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville - more on them later) is a pretty traditional town. Dear Reader Ar asked why the women can't hang on to the men on the back of the motorcycles and this is why. No opposite sex public touching is the rule of the day except with children - pretty much EVERYone wants to pick up, hug, kiss and pinch the cheeks of all of the children available. Same sex affection is very much okay, so you will often see men holding hands, walking with arms around each other, lying with their heads in each others' laps, etc. Even though I dress as modestly as Indian women albeit in mostly American clothing, I have been ogled and the equivalent of "Hey Baby"ed by several groups of two or three guys holding hands as they walked by. It's truly not a gay thing, it's just not encouraged in America. Women also can be very affectionate in public but typically are much more reserved than the men. Most gays (in Pondy at least) live in a separate community and are transvestites. They are both scorned and feared for the evil they might bring, but also sought out to perform at weddings and a few other events to give their blessing and ensure fertility - for which they negotiate a hefty price with the families putting on the wedding. Sounds a bit like a protection racket in a way. Some of them are Eunuchs, but only a percentage. Parents of children who show any leaning toward what they think of as gay tendencies often take the child to the transvestite community and give them up at a young age. I don't know about lesbian culture in Indian life but it seems very underground compared to gay men. I was curious about prostitution as well as it seems to be in all big cities - regardless of how forbidden it is by religion. A non-Indian friend here in Pondy (the only one I dared bring it up with) said that you can only tell who is a "sex worker" (as the press calls them) by the fact that the woman will return a man's stare and hold it, and by where they live - for instance together in a brothel on the outskirts of town. There is no way you would know by style of dress and it is exactly the same salwar suits and saris. It must be a terribly difficult life for them - especially as many of them start out very young.

Fiber Breakthrough

Turns out I'm a lousy researcher Dear Readers because at dinner with David's coworkers the other night, one of the women told me about Khadi cloth and I had no clue what it was. This is well-known facet of the India textile scene due to Gandhi-Ji's stressing the importance during his life of spinning and weaving in all villages as a cottage industry and part of the freedom movement, and encouraging people to be independent by making and selling their own cloth. Khadi is basically any cloth that is hand spun and hand loomed - usually cotton or wool, but also cotton combined with silk. This site offers a fascinating glimpse into the spinning of different textiles in India. Why couldn't I find it in my many Googlings pre-trip? It just took the right word - which I didn't have. The fabric I bought has a more hand-loomed appearance like Tussah silk - in fact some of it looks JUST like silk - see the picture below. Some of the Indian designers are using Khadi currently in their collections. The Mace Windu character played by Samuel Jackson in the last Star Wars prequel is wearing a tunic of Khadi cloth. He do look good, don't he? Here is some of my new stash....




Needless to say I have beat feat several times since to the Khadi emporium to make purchases. DH's luggage alarm is on overload now and I have to iron the little extra frown lines out of his forehead before he goes to sleep at night.

Here is a picture of the weaving and this is obviously not in a village but still individually woven. I'm confused about the hand spun aspect - when I see the pictures, it is spun on an 8-spindle charka. One of the sites above says that this non-motorized charka can spin and fill 8 spindles at a time. Is it so that they don't have to waste time getting up for another batch to spin? I used to joke about getting catheterized at work so I wouldn't have to ache for hours and hours when I was just too swamped to get up and run for a pee. I figured if they gave me a wheelchair (since I wouldn't need to use my legs) and the catheter I could also fulfill their disability quotas and everyone would be happy! It's no joke though when you are tied to any machine for hours and hours without letup - and it doesn't matter if the machine is motorized or not. They speak on the same sight about how easy it would be to mechanize the entire process but that would take away employment.

A few more pictures and I'm off before I get booted Dear Readers - will actually show what I've been making while I'm here next post.

I haven't seen the cows in the streets decorated for Pongal so I'll show you a very cute statue with a fresh garland offering. The pictures on the link from the last post will have to do.



And around town...

The Cobbler:



The Fast Food Counter:



Da Fuzz:



The Florist:



The Sweet Shop:



The Girlie Girl Shop:



The Velvet-lined Taxi:



The Sari Shop:



Somebody stop meeeeee......

and the Laundry