Adventures of a Desi KnitterAn academic juggles knitting, sewing, and other crafts in Kolkata

Neighbours

§ November 22nd, 2009 § Filed under Caps, Hats, Etc., Life § 5 Comments

In recent times, our neighbourhood has seen some dramatic improvement. A new coffee shop has come up right around the corner. It has a study hall atmosphere to it with small square tables and mostly has solitary patrons – students from our school – huddled over their laptops and lattes, but it makes great salads and coffee and has a wonderful staff with a sense of humour. We have a friendly building with lots of people with common interests and we do stuff together. A couple into gardening spruced up our backyard. The bus stops right opposite, and the deli store carries wine. Even the laundry is trying to double as an art gallery for local artists!

But nothing beats my newest friend in the neighbourhood, Sally Field:

Sally and her friend Becks belong to one of our neighbours in the next building, but they have come to prefer our backyard, and hang out there most of the time. Their owner moved their feeding bowls out here and leaves the food for us to refill from time to time. They are among the friendliest cats I’ve ever met. Becks is a little neurotic, and it’s practically impossible to photograph her at ground level – she immediately jumps into your lap and reaches for the camera. This is the best I could manage.

Every other day, one of them is waiting at the building door when I come home, and if I have a grocery bag or something, they promptly try to jump right into it when I put it down to look for my keys. Sally decided to imperiously follow me in one day and check out my flat. She sat in the sun for a bit and then went back out. They prefer the outdoors, which is just as well, because I am not allowed pets, and it would be a shame if they liked my sofa and I couldn’t keep them here. Sally is also my silent morning alarm, because at dawn every day she perches herself on that gate, and the quiet twitch of her tail causes the motion sensor light at the back to go on and off, on and off, on and off – it happens to be right at my bedroom window. If it had been anybody but her I would have done violence to them and to the light. Instead, I rubbed my eyes groggily and took a picture of her from the gap in the curtains.

Oh, so I finally started something else.

I have reached the uncomfortable and unenviable point in my red shawl where I have to decide whether:
a) I have enough yarn left for the last 4 patterns and the border.
b) to break the symmetry of the shawl and end it here and starting the border at once
c) to rip back the cast on edge (it’s provisional) and ripping back the 4 initial repeats to maintain the symmetry
d) this truncated length will be enough after blocking.

Momentous decisions, all. I took the only adult course of action out, which is to say I swore, rolled up the lace into a ball and flung it into the basket, had a cookie and then cast on for something else. I’ll decide later.

Taking a break from my paper on this gloomy sunday afternoon, my eyes glazed over with tiny, cursive nineteenth century handwriting from the archives, I am having fun both knitting and taking pictures of it from all odd angles. Is it a tent? A kite? You’ve surely guessed what it is, but I’ll tell you what it is once I’ve finished it, which will hopefully be soon.

Somehow, having the 5 DPNs go in different directions and collapse on themselves is better than hauling my ass to the yarn store to buy a size 1 circular needle.