Adventures of a Desi Knitter

I miss knitting. I have this awful gnawing feeling inside me; first I thought it was my research, which is sort of stalled at the moment for various reasons. I’m having a hard time conceptualizing some of it, which makes it difficult to go look for specific stuff in the archives - and while randomly losing myself in the catalogues is providing unexpected joys, these aren’t enough to tide over my anxiety that I should be More Organized And Have Something To Show At the End of My Sabbatical. Then I thought it was just the usual exhaustion that comes from so much travelling - I just booked a whole lot of tickets for many more trips over the next few months, and just looking at my itinerary is tiring me out. But it’s not just all this. I’m a bit out of sorts because I haven’t knit anything substantial since May. Here’s what I have to show for my efforts:

One lousy sock, a foot of lace, and some cables. I can’t even bring myself to properly cast on for the second sock, even though the anklets my sister has asked for should not take more than 2 days to knit, really. The lace is, well, stalled, and the cables for the Tweedy Aran Cardigan are so not calling me to extend them even though I know they have the potential to look like Neither Hip Nor Funky’s gorgeous version.

It’s not like I don’t want to knit these. To paraphrase the great George Costanza, it’s not them, it’s me. It has been hot, to be sure, and not really wool-handling weather. But it has also frequently been quite pleasant, and it’s not like my work is keeping me too busy. For some reason, I’m just not picking up the projects and enjoying them. I have actually been helping my mum figure out a couple of simple baby projects, but she’s the one knitting them.

Any ideas on how to overcome this? I so want to get back to it, cause I do miss it. I haven’t been on Ravelry in ages. Sometimes the threads, knitting and non-knitting, seem so distant. Even apart from Big Issues Debate, so much of it is so totally removed from any non-US concerns that it depresses me. Surfing all my friends’ blogs and seeing the gorgeous stuff they are making or queuing on Ravelry is increasing the gnawing feeling, plus after having been off Ravelry for so long there was virtually a deluge of new patterns. I thought of junking the aran cardigan and making something simpler - like I need yet another stockinette hoodie, but maybe it will give me a sense of accomplishment. Any pattern suggestions? Anybody else in the same boat as me (trying very hard not to use the words “knitting mojo”…..)?

Tags: Life, Film, Uncategorized // 9 Comments »

Two posts in a week! Truth be told, I should have posted about this year’s Ganpati festival before my jewelpron, because the festival already came and went a couple of weeks ago. What can I say, the post on earrings took precedence, and as a lover of good things, may the portly deity forgive me!

This is the first year I am in Pune for the Ganpati festival in a decade. Neighbourhood groups or mandals host the god, who visits annually for ten days during the Hindu month of Bhadrapad, in elaborate themed decorations, around which revolve a lot of cultural activities. At the end of his visit he is immersed in water, after he has promised to visit again next year. A big part of enjoying the festival is to wander around the city at night, seeing all these themes brightly lit up. The festival itself began in the 1890s as a means of bringing anti-colonial politics into the public sphere, and these themes have always been explicitly political - about history, contemporary politics, social reform, etc.

In this past decade, a lot of my research has involved examining how this region’s (Maharashtra’s) past is invoked in the public sphere - festivals like this one included. This particular installation commemorates the escape of Shivaji, Maharashtra’s most famous king and founder of its independent state in the 17th century, from the clutches of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at Agra. Shivaji too got a festival for himself in the 1890s, but it’s really during the Ganpati decorations that a lot of the history of his times and its meanings are commemorated. A good deal of this historical imagery has very sharp Hindu nationalist overtones.

The festival, with its social history, has been in my consciousness mainly as an object of analysis, a thing. We also don’t properly celebrate it at home any more because of a death in our immediate family during the festival some years ago. Plus, all everyone does nowadays is complain - with justification - about how the loudspeakers and traffic and piped devotional music during these ten days are straight from hell. Remover of Obstacles Ganpati might be, but his annual sojourn spells chaos in the city. So I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it.

But after a long time, my mum wanted to go check out some of the historic Ganpatis in the area where she grew up, so I went with her. These historic ones are called “Maanache Ganpati” - especially respected idols that have pride of place in the city’s public immersion procession. (The term “maanache ganpati” is also colloquially used to refer to high-maintenance people, usually fussy sons-in-law!). Here is Kasba Ganpati, with pride of place # 1, in one of the 18th c. neighbourhoods:

Next is Tambdi Jogeshwari, # 2. This year, they featured women priests for all their rituals. Women priests are quite the thing now in Pune - a soft reformist move that has become very popular. Lots of institutes train women to take up historically male ritual tasks and become professional priests - some, I gather, are also open to women from all castes.

Women’s participation in this public festival is actually something worthy of more scholarly attention. On the one hand, as a classic public arena, it is heavily male, with female participation disciplined along national/familial lines. Personal safety, especially in the insane crowds at night, is always an issue, so “mandal hopping” or dancing crazily in the streets to the heady and insistent drumming during immersion, however tempting, is not always an option for women.

But of late, women’s participation seems to have swelled - not only through these priests, but through enormous public ritual chants before popular Ganpati idols that attract them in the thousands. It is tempting to immediately bracket this upsurge as part of the religious right’s reformist mobilisation of women for a very reactionary politics. But there seems to be, at least through an anecdotal glance, a wide variety of class and caste or even political backgrounds among the women who participate in this public devotion - certainly worth investigating the nuances of this “politics of piety.”

This one, above, is the Guruji Talim Mandal’s Ganpati, # 3. This one, also of 1890s vintage, was explicitly conceived as, and continues to be, a space where Hindu and Muslim folk from the city could participate in the public celebrations together, as a counter to some of the other more exclusivist and majoritarian ones. We wandered around some others that were open during the day. Directly below is the Dagdushet Ganpati, possibly the most popular one in the city, followed by the Mandai Ganpati (in the main vegetable market of the city), and a few random others that had nice installations.

My personal favourite is the Tulshibag Ganpati (the very first photo in this post), which sits amidst the oldest and best trinkets, crafts, cosmetics, undies, crockery and what-have-you market of the city. A place I adore. They had a beautiful installation about the temptation of the austere and angry sage Vishwamitra by the heavenly siren Menaka.

Much remains depressingly the same, especially the simplistic nationalism, now of course combined with a new flexing of consumerist and globalised aspirations. The scale of things has changed. Some big urban manDals are corporatised, their turnover running into millions. TV channels hook up with popular manDaLs to transmit their rituals, mobile phone companies issue fresh Ganpati devotional ringtones and a whole host of bad singers do brisk business selling off-key devotional CDs. I can’t tell if the overt religiosity on display is recent, or whether I just wasn’t that observant back then and more focused on the food and floats.

And yet, the public platform is not as politically homogeneous; the festival’s decentralized, neighbourhood format continues to allow irruptions of these large, bombastic, chauvinistic celebrations. Environmental themes seemed to be popular this year - there was a big drive to make soluble clay idols rather than harmful plaster-of-paris ones, the nirmalya (ritual detritus) was aggressively collected for disposal in large pots on bridges rather than people throwing them randomly into the river. Lots of installations about female foeticide, farmers’ suicides in eastern Maharashtra due to severe debt and agricultural decline, environmental awareness… it was most interesting to follow it in the papers and on TV. The ones we saw were mostly on mythical tales and religious themes, and it’s a pity I didn’t get to photograph these more interesting ones, some of which were in fairly far-flung places. But still, it was fun walking the crowded lanes - and down memory lane - with my mother, who hitched up her sari and biked all over the old town as a teenager many decades ago.

Ah well. When Ganpati comes back next year. Or when I do!

Tags: Life, Travel, Uncategorized // 2 Comments »

What’s that wrapped in shiny pink gauze?

On a recent trip to Delhi, a dear friend took me jewellery shopping. I am not a big fan of traditional desi gold jewellery, both for all the nauseating cultural importance it has in our society and for how literally hideous and excessive it can be. Like many Indian women of my class and generation, I have accumulated a lot over the years through various ceremonies, but have stubbornly resisted wearing it on a regular basis. I do confess to a severe weakness for earrings. But why go for gaudy gold, I say, when there is such superb, oxidised silver around?

I had long eyed the lovely jhumkas dangling on my friend’s ears over the years, and she finally consented to take me to this secret, favourite shop of hers, where she watched horrified as I went totally overboard and mopped up a good deal of it. Maybe it was the blistering, unforgiving September heat in Delhi, or our being rattled after the serial bomb blasts the evening before, but I got inordinately, obscenely fascinated by these earrings.

Before I knew it, I was practising my macro photography turning the lens love on them - for what’s a blogger to do if not to photograph something and upload it? I’m neither knitting nor cooking much these days - so here’s some stone-metal-pron instead, a few select pieces from the stuff I bought. I wish I’d taken my camera to the shop to snap the artisans deftly matching stone to pattern right in front of me. They are able to personalise your chosen pattern to a wide range of stones, and their intricate artwork is stunning.

Now I have a dreadful task ahead of me. This afternoon I have to give a few of these to my sister. She’s more fond of gold than I am - maybe she’ll just snort at these trinkets and say she doesn’t want any, you think (she asked, hopefully)?

What’s that you said about where I bought them? Alas, my friend (wisely, as it turned out) blindfolded me before taking me there. So excessive and proprietorial, I tell you! But, then again, maybe it was for the best…

Tags: Other crafts // 17 Comments »

Hi there! Recognize me?

This is standard issue traffic-head-gear for Pune’s women two-wheeler drivers, a result of the horrible vehicular and dust pollution in this madly expanding city. I used to madly criss-cross it on a scooty when I was in college, and I still take my father’s Kinetic Honda out occasionally, but don’t really enjoy it any more. I still love the city to distraction, but its traffic drives me insane, especially one thing about it. My friends who live here rib me about my “NRI meltdowns” (expat inability to handle rough local conditions), but with honking traffic it’s different. I always hated it, still do, and will never get used to someone blaring away behind me.

It is an old cliche that cows roam India’s streets. But the bovine irritants are nothing compared to the human ones. These too, incidentally, are distinguishable by their horns. The horn is the Indian road warrior’s most important weapon. With a loud horn, you don’t have to stop and look at crossings, you can just charge into them, finger pressed. You don’t have to glance into the rear-view mirror, but just honk as you change lanes, or honk back at the guy who just did the same and cut you off. Naturally, as horns grow more ubiquitous, nobody pays them any heed. So they get louder and louder, multi-toned and customisable, to frighten the life out of you, if not deafen you outright. The horn is not to warn about danger, or to signal extreme irritation. It is to doggedly get ahead in traffic, and, therefore, indispensable.

In true academic fashion, I shall attempt a typology of horns I hear everyday, in the hope that abstracting something into an object of study might render it tolerable.

1. The Bully I: Persistent, short bursts of two honks, usually in a volley of about fifty. A well-dressed man in a large SUV or shiny new car (like the blue one above, right behind the fruit-cart), angry that while the extra money spent has got him more room for his arse inside the vehicle, it has not translated into more room in traffic. Pissed off at the roadblocks around him, he hopes his horn will make them vanish.

2. The Bully II: Same as above, but louder and more imaginative and multi-toned. Usually on a shiny motorcycle. Often customised and enhanced to suit the young driver’s belief that he is immortal, and the road is for him to weave in and out of as he pleases and terrorise other drivers out of his way. This species is easily the worst scourge on the roads.

3. Perpetual Amazement: Random bursts of indiscriminate honking. Sub-species of aforementioned scourge. Usually male on motorcycle, often with something female and squealy hugging its back, just so thrilled that something large and powerful is throbbing between legs and carrying them forward. Look at me! Look at me!! I am so cool!!! Tran-tran-tran!!!! Shall I scare you by getting too close at high speed? Yayy!! Tran tran tran!! Nowadays, with increasing regularity, this species jumps red lights with impunity, disengaging from waiting traffic at the signal like loose boulders from a cliff and scaring the daylights out of those who have right of way. Guess what those guys do in anticipation of these lunatics? Yup - they honk pre-emptively.

Some of these guys now work while they drive - ie, they talk on the mobile phone, even as they are about to plunge into an already chaotic intersection:

4. Scared: Tentative, but very regular bleat, with touch of desperation. Mild-mannered drivers fresh out of the local driving school and terrified of species # 2 and #3. They rely on the horn every time they even see someone in their entire visual range. OMG, OMG, I hope I don’t hit him, they say, eyes firmly in front of them and honk in the hope that this will make everyone else jump out of their way. Car drivers who keep their side mirrors closed because someone can hit and break them use this horn, but so do the smaller two-wheeler ones terrified of the bullies. This terror, however, doesn’t stop these lambs from honking their way through red lights.

5. The Merger: Loud and authoritative, five-six longish sounds. This one is a beauty, and it is amazing that more people don’t die on the roads everyday because of it. It signals a two-wheeler driver merging into a main thoroughfare at full speed - like an arc of vigorous and long-shackled urine. Glance back at the flow of traffic before merging - whatever for? Are you deaf? What’s that about police regulating traffic? Pune’s finest, as always, are busy earning a hard day’s work -

6. Leap of Faith: Continuous, desperate bleating. Usually in snarls and gridlocks, when it becomes absolutely clear that nobody can move in any direction. That’s when the desperate driver thinks that full-weight-of-body-on-horn, amidst all the other cacophony, is miraculously going to air-lift him out of there and into his office on time. He is not upset or anything; he is genuinely puzzled when you tap on the window and ask him what’s the point. Whattodo, he will say. Have to do something, no?

7. Matter-of-fact: Short, functional beep.Used by highway bus and truck drivers to say “can I overtake?” or “I’m about to overtake you” as a courtesy on single lane highways. The guy in front, or his co-rider then waves you on. The old custom underlying the immortal phrase painted on to innumerable trucks on Indian highways - Horn OK Please. Nowadays, though, these large vehicles don’t trust your ears and install electric horns. Just in case. So you’ll jump out of your skin in fear and right off the road. Mild exposure to these ensures that if you do have any hearing, it won’t be for long.

Today is Ganesh Chaturthi, the big festival when we welcome the deity Ganpati into our homes for his ten-day annual visit, bringing good cheer and banishing obstacles and evil. Given the decibel at which we welcome our gods, or call the faithful to prayer, with deafening loudspeakers everywhere, I doubt he can hear very well any more. But if he could, it would be wonderful if he could silence horns and loudspeakers, and bring everyone some earplugs instead of good cheer, before we all go wholly and comprehensively deaf.

Tags: Life, Travel // 17 Comments »

Thanks for all the good wishes - and Karmic advice alike! - about my Macbook - it’s back! I must say I’m pretty thrilled with Apple’s tech support and warranty. All I had to do was call their India customer service, carry the laptop to a local authorised service station, and two days later, with a replaced logic board, it was back up and running. I suppose this is one of the upsides of living in an “IT city” or “tech city” or whatever corny journalese name that my hometown Pune now goes by. So what if this tech boom means rampant congestion, severe pressure on infrastructure, and hideous blue glass and concrete software gothic* office buildings and malls - it has the exalted status of having an authorised Apple service center. I’m never one to not count my blessings, what? And I’m totally buying another Macbook after this one is fully and truly dead. So there, you PC naysayers! And whoever just thought to themselves - haha, what’s she going to do if it starts randomly shutting down again? - don’t make me curse you, okay? Allow me to point out, instead, that my warranty is valid a while longer.

But thrilled as I am, I don’t have anything particular to blog about just yet, because I’ve been madly working at a talk I have to give this weekend, and have had absolutely no time to do anything else. (Will blog about the talk, but later). So let me introduce you instead to my newest friend. This is a stray that inhabits our housing colony, and has determinedly enslaved me. She is possibly the most ill-tempered and angry cat I have ever met; she has not a kind word or look for anybody. Naturally, I am becoming quite fond of her. She used to break in through the kitchen window and try to steal milk at night, and earned my mum’s ire. I decided to pre-empt that by leaving a bowl out on the window-sill twice a day. Since then, Her Highness has abandoned burglary, and commands the bowl at the window by meowing like there’s no tomorrow. She didn’t touch the catfood I got her from a pet store. All she wants is milk.

The other day she actually grazed against my legs a few times, and I seriously wondered if something was wrong. I would like to have her inoculated and spayed (she recently gave birth to a litter, but I haven’t been able to locate it), but she won’t even allow anyone to touch her (plus the little bastards who live in the colony like to harass her and she’s generally very scared and wary of people, I think), and this much friendliness is about all my pet-phobic parents are willing to take. Even though they too trot out like clockwork to feed her now and, gasp, talk to her! I’ve been thinking about giving her a name, but I have a feeling she would disapprove.

*If you’re reading this, A, thanks for the felicitous phrase!

Tags: Life // 9 Comments »

It is hard to feed your online addiction when you have a lot of power cuts. Even harder when your beloved laptop goes belly-up on you, after a sudden, but probably severe illness. It is hardest when you can hear your old and wizened PC snigger as you type.

So, things will be quiet chez Desiknitter for a bit, while we wait to see if the folks at Apple, with their much vaunted global warranty, work a miracle on my Macbook and bring it back to life.

Tags: Life, Everything else, Travel, Uncategorized // 8 Comments »

Been a while since we had some yarn pr0n, no? Here’s some New England highland worsted.

Some of you boiling over in August heat probably don’t want to look at a gorgeous, rough, red tweedy wool right now. But the weather here is gorgeous - windy, wet and cool. After a worrying dry spell in June, we’ve been having a lot of rain all last month, and hopefully things will continue like this till September. My plan is to whip up this yarn, before the October heat sets in, into the Tweedy Aran Cardigan. The pattern, signature Norah Gaughan, is beautiful and deceptively simple; I like the waist shaping and the jacket-y look with the collar. Since it’s worsted, it should go fast. But I have been stuck at a few inches for the last week, tweedy-ling my thumbs about the sizing.

Someone on Ravelry suggested that the sweater on this model has a lot of ease (the size shown is 42.5″). I usually like my cardigans with a couple of inches of ease - say, 40″-41″ - but I quite liked the slouchy-but-shapely look at first and opted for this size (the next one down is 38″, which means zero ease for me). But now as I get increasingly irritated and indecisive about which size to make for myself, she is looking more and more like a convalescing character in an early twentieth century English novel to me, with her sweaters getting too big for her.

Also, the stated gauge is 4.5 spi for stockinette on size 7. Usually this means I have to go down two sizes to get this gauge - but for the first time ever, my swatch on size 7s showed 4 spi at some parts and 4.5 at others. Aaaaaargh! Swatch with size 6 gave me 5 spi. More aaaargh! I finally started the 42.5 size with the left front with a size 7, thinking a bit more ease would yield e a nice, loose outdoorsy jacket, of sorts. I’m still inclined to continue this size, but all the neatly fitted cardigans on Ravelry are making me dither a bit. With such heavy detailing, it’s difficult to just do some arithmetic and figure out the final size with all the different gauges. What should I do?

I know, I know, knitting the whole left front will give me a sense of the finished dimensions and fit, and I just have to suck it up and knit it to be sure, yes? That way I won’t have to rip out the whole thing, no?

Tags: sweaters // 7 Comments »

So, a high point of the last two months has been the neighbourhood yoga class I found. 5 days a week every morning for 75 minutes. Soon after getting here, I went to inquire at a nearby gym about their rates and hours. While a really portly instructor tried to sell me their “figure control” package (talk about bad advertising!), one of its members quietly slipped me the info about the cool yoga class next door. I did not stop to wonder about why she was still suffering there, and hotfooted it next door. The class takes place in a ramshackle hall adjoining a local temple, and the space is shared with everything from dance classes to lectures to thread ceremonies.

I last did yoga here when I was in school, so it’s fun getting back into it here again after so long. Apart from the tremendous energy and lightness it brings for the rest of the day, I’m having quite a good time thinking about its similarities with, and differences from, my classes back in Berkeley - both in terms of the actual exercises, and its social world. In terms of the actual asanas, I guess it broadly follows the Iyengar tradition, but it’s really just a garden variety yoga class without any interest in branding itself or defining an “approach”. Ever so often, however, the power cuts unwittingly turn it into a Bikram class! This is the daily schedule:

1) A 15 minute pranayama session, doing about 5 different ones every day interspersed with neck and eye exercises.
2) A 10 minute general warm up as you’d do in the gym.
3) A couple of prayers, followed by eight brisk surya namaskaars (sun salutations).
4) Then, what in inimitable Marathinglish, the teacher calls spiDche vyaayaam (speed exercises) - that remind me of those Canadian Air Force exercise plans we used to do in college.
5) Then a spate of standing/sitting asanas - every day is different. I now know that if we’re doing vrukshaasana (Tree Pose), it must be Wednesday. But these are not in a flow. You do each one, stop, shake out, then do the next.
6) Then, on-the-floor asanas - sarvaangaasana (Full Body); halaasana (Plow); dhanuraasana (Bow); etc. - that we do every single day, mixed with basic calisthenics and ab work that are a lot like a pilates workout. Here we are in sarpaasana (Snake Pose, similar to Cobra):

My teacher, Mrs. Adkar, is a 4-time national yoga champion, who, as she tells it, wandered into a class one morning in her late 40s to see if it would help her with her weight, never having moved a limb before to do any exercise. A year later she was participating in local competitions, and finally went all the way to the nationals in her age group. She’s quite wonderful, and does a great job of egging us on. She is still not that happy with my headstand, because while I can do it without a wall or someone’s support now, I still cannot get ramrod straight. But I am working on it…

I like that she’s not at all obsessed with some kind of authenticity or purity of the yoga practice, and freely mixes it with other kinds of exercises. That way, it’s a lot like those “yogalates” classes, except it isn’t called that. But she gives a lot of importance to alignment and holding poses - again, like in Iyengar. I also like the extended pranaayama, which I’ve hardly ever seen in any of my classes back there. It’s not really spiritually focused - more of a nuts-and-bolts health-benefits approach. I believe there are classes in town with way more chanting than stretching; I’m glad I’m in this one!

One big difference that struck me right away is that there’s no emphasis on Downward Dog, which I’m sure we could call the iconic yoga pose in the US, no? It’s part of the sun salutations, and that’s it. Also, every lunge is runner’s lunge. For the first week I was all, like, WTF, what about the downward dog?? Also, no shavaasana everyday. Everyone just sort of rushes off to go to work. On Friday, before the weekend, though, she talks us through a long 15 minute yoga nidraa (sleep) which is fantastic for improving your concentration on your breathing.

You can probably tell from the photos that it’s also not a place where Lululemon Athletica would find many customers. No mats, blocks, blankets, no “yoga pants.” The class costs me Rs.150 for 20-odd sessions, a total of about $3.75 for the whole month (yes, you read that right) at the current exchange rate. The difference in cost is enormous; there are many fancy-ass yoga classes in posh areas, but this is mercifully very basic, lower-middle-class and uncommercialised. And it kicks ASS! Most women wear kurtas and slacks, some t-shirts and slacks, and there’s one thin linoleum mat for all. My first day - an older woman came a bit late, in a saree. I was a bit startled, and worried about how she was going to do a Plow or Warrior in it. Then, she shocked me even more by furiously disrobing in full view of the class. Like Draupadi, though, all was well - she had a t-shirt and slacks underneath. Like many women of my mum’s generation, she will not be seen outside in anything other than a saree, and this is her comfortable way to walk to the class and back home.

It’s the social atmosphere that is so different. For one, it’s not as solemn. No ritual namaste (which is anyway just ‘hi!’ in many Indian languages, namaskaar in Marathi); no invitation to center and ground yourself before the class, no getting in touch with your breathing. Interspersed with Mrs. Adkar’s instructions is continuous conversation during the asana sessions - recipes, speculation about why some folks have bunked the class for several days in a row, bitching about the power and water crises, anything. A couple of women just won’t shut up the whole time. The sheer unstructured informality was a bit unnerving at first for me, but now that I’ve made a couple of friends there it’s more fun also.

So some of us went last week to cheer two of our star classmates who had entered a local tournament and to just see folks of different ages strut their stuff. Some of the kids were truly, truly amazing. This whole world of yoga competitions is still a mystery to me, but it is clearly a well-oiled and diverse national network; I imagine it’s connected to certification processes and such. I’ve made a mosaic below of some of the tiny pretzels in action - there were many more who really inspired me to reach, reach and hold for just a few seconds longer.

Finally, thanks so much for all the wishes on the tenure news, everyone - I’ve had a really good time celebrating with family and friends, and it was very nice to be able to share it with all of you!

Earlier in this series: Twists.

Tags: Life // 15 Comments »

Last week I went on my first trip to a couple of new archives in south India, in Chennai and Thanjavur to be precise, for my new research project. (More about both these places later, when I visit again). A friend who knows them well and had to do some work there too, came along, and I met some other friends and family too. Somehow, when punctuated by train travel, gin and tonics, old school meet-ups and incredible coffee, work becomes quite tolerable, no? Look at us, so busy with work, hotly discussing intricate details of micro-history, palm-leaf manuscripts and power relations in the countryside (no, really, we got a lot of work done):

I have always been a bit of an Indian Railways fanatic, and I will do a proper railways post later in the year, after I take a few more trips and better pictures. But after a very long time, I did something I used to love about train travel when I was in college - sitting in the open door of the speeding train with your face in the wind, watching the country go by. Our parents would be furious when we did this, and I don’t know if it’s my advanced age, or the increased speed of the trains nowadays, that this seemed a bit more dangerous now than back then. But swaying with the rhythm of the train and hearing the tracks bark at you as you is unbeatable. Back in the day with the steam engines, you could catch a piece of flying coal occasionally in your eye if you leaned out. Now it’s the acrid smell of diesel that you have to battle, but at the crack of dawn that day, the fresh river breeze easily subdued it. Being in an unreserved women’s compartment, with all the sociality that it entails, was even better.

The views of the sunrise, and the changing light, over the Kaveri river delta and its paddy fields were stunning as the train sped towards Thanjavur:

Speaking of coffee, there is very little in the world that provides as much joy and satisfaction as a good south Indian tumbler, hot and frothing.

I’m sharing it all with you, with some good news - I just heard, with official papers and all, that I now have tenure at my department. Big whoop of joy and all that, people!! This year has been hard in many ways, but this news brings me a lot of relief and excitement for the future. I do have to dust the seat of my pants and get cracking in the archives, but hey, I’m going to have some coffee and lie back and enjoy a break for just a little while longer. It’s great to be with my family to celebrate, but my first thought was to wonder what big knitting gift to get myself - I’m thinking a new umbrella swift, or better still, some semi-solid fingering Koigu for a sweater. I can’t do any of it until I return to Berkeley anyway and in the meantime I did get sloshed, but any suggestions?

Tags: Life, Travel, Students, Work, etc. // 28 Comments »

Remember when this was a knitting blog? I actually have some updates to post, of new WIPs. I have been knitting a bit on and off, mostly on the sampler shawl from Victorian Lace Today. Surprisingly quick progress for the amount of time I have been able to devote to it.

So far it’s been smooth sailing, except for one major rip (hence the lifeline). It has faggoting on the edges, and I decided that I dislike faggoting. Not enough visual interest for the work involved. But now it’s there, so I’m going to continue it. The samples are a mix of knitted lace and pure lace (with patterning on both sides), with leaf motifs. These are simple patterns with just enough variation to keep them interesting. I think basic samplers like these are great to avoid the monotony of stoles. I am on the brink of finishing one major set in the pattern, but another travel stint is coming up, so it’s going to be set aside for a week or so. The red colour and the lace is very hard to photograph correctly (I don’t have pins and a carpet handy), so let me distract you with another blurry, artsy picture. The yarn is so fine I keep worrying about breaking it.

Here is something else I started for knitting while travelling, a pair of simple socks for my sister. Yarn is some Regia something. She wanted some multicoloured grey-blue; that’s what she’s getting. Right now, though, she can’t even bear to look at them, cause it’s nowhere near wool-sock-wearing weather, so they’re going to take a while. I also have to find buses with good suspension in which to knit them. Knitting is such a Nov-Dec activity here that it’s really unusual to see anyone knitting in public here outside those times. The fun thing about this project is that it’s a joint project; my niece Gargi shows up every now and then and knits a few rounds. This is her first project on DPNs and she coos every few minutes - such thin needlllllllllllles!

Finally, remember my yarn for the Cobblestone pullover? I had one 750 yard hank left over, and my mum has cast on for a Clapotis with it. Should look good in this yarn, no? I have a feeling she’s going to get bored with it once the increases end and both Gargi and I will pitch in, but right now she’s heroically at it. It’s worsted weight on size 8. Any suggestions about how wide to make it to get a long enough stole? I tried looking online, but was hit by an avalanche of Clapotis posts and suggestions.

I have a feeling all three projects are going to be WIPs for a while, though.

Tags: Shawls, Clapotis, Socks, Lace work // 4 Comments »