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...