Monday, October 6, 2008

Knitting Chronicles # 3

Knitting has now become a way of life. Its crept into unchartered areas of my life - during boring lectures, long bus or taxi rides and TV commercial breaks. Knitting mufflers and large  garments in simple knit and pearl  is easy in the TV breaks. My ruana ( see previous blog) is a TV break project while the mufflers owe thier beingness to the temporal nature of " wednesday morning talks" at our institute.
 
 I actually found that Hill stations may have these small knitting supply stores. In Conoor I found one shop with a whole wall filled with wool yarns in colours.  In the amazing old style bazaar, there was a button shop who had 5mm needles. Considering that I passed Pony industries on the way from Ooty to Conoor, I had a good mind to get off and ask them a few searching patriotic questions about knitting needles in India. But then I was knitting in the bus and felt very distant from all the fury of the early days. Also very smug with my bamboo needles from the US!
 All along the journey, instead of sleeping I knit. and my golden needles attracted a lot of attention from young girls who watched me . a little girl simply wanted the knitting needles. I quickly knit her a ring: k5, K5 , k1- k2tog-k2,k4, k2- makeone-k2,k5, close ( like a buttonhole) then she stopped her tantrum!

There are a few experiments I thought  I should share about:

I tore an old silk saree into tapes and have knitted a duppata/stole with it. Looks like a manish malhotra design if you ask me.

I have also become smarter at holding yarns together to knit. Holding two yrands from two balls together gives a very nice effect and also thickens the wool. 

I am wondering if we can knit our jute strings into bags.
 and  I am asking searching questions about crocheting!

 My ongoing projects:
 Cable vest, mufflers for brother and sis- in Law, a knitted hoodie, beret and a pullover!

2 comments:

Kalika said...

I came across your blog accidentally when I was searching for needle stores in Bangalore.
I can share one more experiment that I did albeit with crochet: cut strips of plastic bags (the kinds the grocers will insist on giving you whether or not you carry your own cloth bag especially if you shop for anything in Food World type places) and crochet mats and soft containers out of those. I did a no. of place mats, and some container type cylinders for putting small nick-nacks as well as small bags.
I wanted to ask you a question, I have this pattern from the US for a newborn baby cardigan which I want to make for a friend's son, it says use US size 8 needles. What size would they be in Indian size and also, approx what thcikness of yarn does one need for that?
thanks!

Meera said...

Kalika,
Us size 8 is luckily like size 6 UK so after a tension swatch you can use what we call " double wool" we use to knit cable. If you see my pics of the cable vest you can see it is actually only three strands not 6 like the UK double wool and its not wool, but acrylic yarn.
I know in Delhi you get lovely soft yarn that has loose fibre that would be soft for the baby.