Rangoli Swatches
I charted one of the Rangoli patterns and started knitting one of them over the weekend, while watching Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Nizhalkkuthu (Shadow Kill) a fine Malayalam film by one of Kerala’s (and India’s) finest filmmakers. The film was good, excellent performances and an interesting look at (the lack of) choices available to people in traditional settings. The most interesting, and yet disappointing character was not the hangman protagonist with hang-ups (sorry) about his occupation (a wonderfully drawn character), but his Gandhian son who tries (somewhat unsuccessfully) to escape tradition by embracing Satyagraha. The film did well to show how nationalism creates these possibilities but often doesn’t deliver on them, but the son’s character was not complex enough to carry the theme through. 
Anyway, I knitted up a small swatch of one rangoli pattern in Knitpicks’ Wool of the Andes, in the colour Asparagus. The pattern is only a quarter done, and the swatch will eventually be rectangular an long in shape. I’m happy with the way the yarn shows up the cables, but I need to work on my closed-cable increase/decrease method. So far I know two: one is Elsebeth Lavold’s method over four rows (used on the botton oval) and another improvised one on the other two, over two rows.
The rangolis, drawn by hand, are rarely perfectly symmetrical and I would ideally like my cabled ones also to have different shapes: some oval, some round and so on. I also need an increase/decrease method that will work for even-numbered increases. I used This increase method described by Jenna Wilson for her Rogue pullover, but that one was over an odd numbered cable of 5 stitches. Does anyone know of any other increase methods that will allow me to increase 4 stitches in the middle of the fabric, but without the stretched look that Lavold’s method gives? It’s really neat and tidy, but not as rounded as I’d like it to be.
The Wool of the Andes, incidentally, is supple and stretchy, great for cables. A tad rough on the hands, though.
Oh, and I knit about 20 more rows of the Russian stole. Pictures to follow soon!