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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!
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.
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.
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?
Last week, a friend and I decided to escape the city and visit the Konkan, the coastal strip that stretches all the way from Bombay down to northern Kerala for a few days. One aim was to travel everywhere by the available public transport, so we picked a few small coastal villages and beaches within a few hours of Pune, and gave ourselves over to the red and yellow STs, the State Transport buses.
Well-heeled folks tend to shrink from horror at the STs, and there is undoubtedly much to sneer at – they can individually rattle each bone in your body, and the state of public facilities at the bus stations strains both the imagination and the bladder, particularly for women. The recently instituted, disastrous and utterly short-sighted, car-friendly policy of the Indian government has enabled more and more middle-class people to withdraw from such public spaces into their own cars, leaving them to the ever-surging numbers of poorer folks. Private Volvo buses nowadays compete with the STs, boasting better suspension and seats, if not superior driving skills. Both on popular highways and on small link roads, vans, 4×4s and the ambitiously named ’six-seater’s also eat into the STs’ revenues.
This harmless-looking six-seater is a marvelous python. It swells incredibly several times a day to swallow eight, ten, twelve, even fourteen people at once. It charges just a bit less than the STs, and its flexible metal body and equally flexible passengers allow its driver to pickle them in and make his ends meet. The buses thus find themselves in the unenviable position of having to ply loss-making public routes, with caps on fares further eroding their profits. Having grown up travelling in STs to go visit grandparents and other relatives, we were keen to take them once again on this trip. I don’t want to tell a trite (expat’s) tale about how this mode of travel allows one to see “the real India,” whatever the hell that is. But I have to say it was eye-opening to see how amazingly resilient and good-humoured these public services and their operators are in the face of remarkably trying work conditions, and how deeply and critically embedded they remain in daily life on and off the highways. If you have never ever been in a vehicle without a seat-belt the STs might not be for you, but hey, they also keep wonderful time. Only downside: too much rattling for any knitting.
Okay, enough pontificating. The Konkan is incredibly lush, especially in the monsoon when the whole landscape turns a fluorescent, shameless, almost golden green.
The Konkan is home to the magnicifient haapus or Alfonso mango, but it also has lots of other varieties of mango, jackfruit, arecanut, paddy, coconut palms, and lots and lots of chameleons, kingfishers, egrets, storks, kites and butterflies….
do click to make the thumbnails larger.
The region has a rich and diverse history, and is dotted with forts, temples and mosques, many of the religious structures newly refurbished by successive generations of locals who have migrated nationally and internationally for better prospects. The Shiva temple at Harihareshwar, with a rocky and surging seaface, is considered by many to be Dakshin Kashi, or the southern avatar of the holy city of Benares:
Some of the seafaces, like the one at Harihareswhar, are notoriously dangerous, but we were also lucky to find some quiet and unspoilt ones like those at Karde, Murud and Diveaagar, from where you can literally see the oncoming monsoon spells, thick shafts of grey from sky to sea along the horizon, heralding the lifeline of the subcontinent.
We walked for hours in the warm rain and swung across streams from long banyan ropes. By a happy coincidence, I happened to be reading Rathachakra, a famous Marathi novel set in the Konkan whose author, Shripad Narayan Pendse, was from Murdi, one of the very villages we visited. While Rathachakra is grim and often savagely critical of social life and human relationships, the landscape and our cavorting around also brought to mind other, prettier representations of idyllic rural life in this area as well – classic migrant narratives of the paradise left behind. All in all, it was all too real and fictional at the same time.
(Thanks so much for the comments on the gunpowder, friends – in the next few months, rather than reply individually to comments, I’m going to respond here on the blog, so do check back in the comments; if you asked a question to the last one, the answer is here.)
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Bangalore to meet a few friends I hadn’t seen in some time. It was a whirlwind trip, but just what the doctor ordered for me. Gorgeous weather, good friends, yummy food, and a mad trip into the countryside to see some sights, singing old Hindi songs all the way. Really, what more does one need, ever? I took some photos of the new, shiny Bangalore, all glass and concrete malls and traffic like you wouldn’t *believe*, but that rant is for another day. This time, it didn’t dampen our spirits at all.
We took a trip in a large van to an old medieval temple dedicated to forms of the lord Vishnu at Somnathpura, built in the 13th century by the Hoysala kings of Karnataka.
Hoysala architecture is more famously represented at Halebidu and Belur, temples with stone carvings of an incredibly rich and detailed texture. Somnathpura is not quite as ornate, but it also doesn’t assault your senses and leave you gasping with the sheer intricate detail of the stonework at these two temples. It is quietly stunning, and is smaller and off the beaten track. Quite literally. Getting there from Bangalore is a challenge, with the ground sullenly arranging itself into a road at some points, and defiantly disintegrating into mud at others. But the quiet temple makes up for the bumpy journey, as does the gorgeous, gorgeous countryside dotted with palm trees and small ponds, especially in the monsoon. Having loony friends along for the ride smoothens it all out. The temple walls tell many stories, of battles, dynastic ambitions, the Dashavatara (Vishnu’s ten incarnations), and feature various gods and goddesses. In and around the temple complex, stone pillars seem to whirl endlessly in place, like potters’ wheels gone nuts.
The inscription at the temple detailing the land grants for its maintenance, in the beautiful Old Kannada script: (click all the small photos to enlarge them – it’s worth it)
It’s funny how you stumble upon an interesting question and then suddenly realise that it’s been buzzing around you for years without your being aware of it. I saw the goddess Lakshmi holding what looked like an ear of corn in her left hand, and was puzzled, because the temple is pre-Columbian, dating to the 13th century. After idle speculation about local grains like bajra and ragi, we left it at that. Googling and chatting with friends later revealed a whole controversy on this, as some scholars have held up these very sculptures as strong indicators of pre-Columbian migration of plants between the Americas and the old world, while others strongly dispute that it is corn/maize at all. Botanists, historians and anthropologists seem to be battling it out, as it has larger implications for our understanding of native American cultures and those of premodern Asia. I confess I don’t know much about the natural or cultural history of that period and have to read up more on the matter; Lakshmi too continues to stand uncaring and resplendent in stone. Any readers here know more about it?
The temple has other unusual representations, such as Narasimha (the half-lion, half-man avatar of Vishnu, fourth out of his ten incarnations) with his consort. Usually we see him emptying the demon Hiranyakashipu of his innards, but here on the photo above to the right he is calm and poised with Lakshmi on his lap.
I could stare at these friezes for ages. But we bundled into the van and headed to Ranganathittu, a nearby bird sanctuary. Lots and lots of storks, pelicans and cormorants in a lush, green park -
and plenty of ghariyals looking supremely bored and unconcerned with all the hoo-haa. We were in a boat much like the one you see in the background and despite the guide telling us they preferred fish to humans, we kept a safe distance from its gleaming teeth.
While we were in the boat, the clouds suddenly descended into a short and powerful rain shower that made everything an even lusher shade of green. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the other boat passengers as two of us burst into spontaneous song, even as we ducked under our dupattas – garjat barsat saawan aayo re… .
We came back to Bangalore tired and hoarse, but clean!
Hey, all! Thanks so much for all your good wishes for my trip – here I am, on the other side of the world, recovered from jet lag already.
Plane travel is exhausting, disorienting, annoying and many other things. It also infantalises travellers like none other mode of travel. It’s not just the security staff who speak to you slowly but loudly as if you were either deaf or retarded, barking out orders in elaborate legalese-politese and processing you on a long and complicated assembly line from dangerous unknowns into government-deemed safe travellers. It is also the feeling of being strapped into the small, uncomfortable seat for so many long hours, with food brought to you every few hours. You sleep, you eat, some sort of entertainment hovers in front of your eyes to keep you diverted, and then you sleep and eat some more. This is how babies must feel – slightly out of focus and irritable and trapped. The flight attendants also treat you with a combination of firmness-laced-with-nice that parents whose patience is about to snap use on kids running wild. If the airlines provided diapers with the headphones and acrylic blanket wrapped in plastic, I imagine our regression to infanthood would be complete.
Speaking of actual babies travelling, there seemed to be many more than usual on this flight. Or maybe my claustrophobia was conjuring them up all around me. They wailed and howled throughout – sometimes in unison, sometimes in harmony, but always in dreadful cacophony. It occurred to me that anyone unsure about whether they want children would do well to travel on a transcontinental flight surrounded by infants and toddlers before they make a final decision. But I do feel bad for the parents, who always have this hunted, apologetic look about them. It must be awful to juggle discomfort and disorientation with a shrieking baby and dark looks from people all around you. I was virtuous, though – in keeping with the whole kids theme, I took refuge in The Sound of Music. (Btw, these are the Regia socks I began on another transcontinental flight in February – 64 stitches on size 0 needles, very plain and simple.)
That’s one point for Continental, I gotta say, even if they do, rather horrifyingly, charge for alcohol on international flights (WHY do American airlines do that?) – they have a whole set of very diverse films for you to choose from on your own little individual screen. Along with Julie Andrews, I also indulged in Jane Austen, with the wonderful, smart Emma Thompson adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, and the godawful Keira Knightley adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. If you permit me to rant about this for a second, I wonder what Austen herself would have made of some rather odd moments in this adaptation. I didn’t mind that it took liberties with the dialogue – the S&S adaptation did too, but the ones in P&P somehow didn’t work as well, mostly because they seemed to turn this elegant narrative of manners into a faux-historical teenage drama. “Don’t you dare judge me, Lizzy!” Charlotte Lucas says (after choosing calmly to marry that horrible Mr. Collins), and that wooden Darcy, who looks like a confused, drowned rat with that oddly dishevelled look, unpardonably blurts out “I love you” instead of the glorious “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” to Elizabeth Bennet. She, in turn, yells “Leave me alone!” to her family, slamming the door and running upstairs. WTF?? Ah well. At least the von Trapps were as familiar and saccharine as ever.
It is hot here, and very erratic and strong thunderstorms are allowing the electricity department to cut power even more than usual. But it’s also cool and breezy and deliciously overcast in the evenings, and I started a longue duree lace project to keep me company on my equally long research project. It’s the Beginner Sampler stole from Victorian Lace Today, in Jade Sapphire Lacey Lamb, in tomato red, on size 3 needles. I am already loving it, but expect an FO only sometime around December, I think. My mum is convinced that my eyes are going to get worse from squinting at the tiny yarn and needles.
Oh, and I’m eating a lot of Alphonso mangoes. Mmmmmmm.
Thanks, everyone, for the comments on the Ribby Cardi! I have been wearing it everywhere, even though it has been quite warm here during the day. The Eco+ is unfortunately already showing a tendency towards pilling with all this wear, and I hope that will not be a continued problem.
It will soon be too warm to wear all the wool sweaters, and I am packing them up. I took this picture for Swapna, who recently commented about imagining my cupboard full of handknits – they are not quite enough to fill a cupboard, but they are a decent pile and do nicely! I’m surprised that I don’t have more reds. Have to remedy that.
It is also that time of year again, when I go home to India and this blog features more food and travel than knitting. Except that this time, I am going not just for the summer but for a year’s research trip. I have waited six long years after graduating for some time off from teaching, and this is some hard-earned leave to do archival research for a second project. I am eager to get my hands dirty in the archives again and start working on relatively uncharted territory. For many reasons, it’s not the trip I had hoped for and looked forward to, and am anxious about how it will turn out. But one big plus, other than being able to spend so much time at length at home with my folks, is that the project will most likely take me to places I have never visited in the south and east of India. So I am excited!
All this is a preamble to saying that I will be blogging from India over the next year. Some of it will be about food, some about travel, random observations about lots of things, and some raving and ranting about work. Even though initially it will be too hot to knit, I will have lots of time and opportunity to keep the fingers flying, and so I am trying to estimate how much yarn I should take with me, which is easier said than done.
I plan to buy some acrylic yarns locally while I’m there, Swapna has most wonderfully arranged to get me some Pony rosewood needles, plus my mum already has all the notions I will need. But it’s not stopping me from trying to take my entire stash with me, and clothes and books and yarn and patterns are already overflowing out of my long-haul suitcase. Planning for that long a time away from my set up here is inducing tremendous anxiety as it is; tossing some knitting into it should be easy, but of course it’s not. Believe me, I am usually a light traveller and am taking this opportunity to freecyle and donate lots of things in the house, but am also suffering from an acute case of “but what if I need it?” syndrome, and an insane wish to pack books that have remained unread on my shelf for years. Also, all the patterns I want to knit right now seem to be, strangely enough, in thick, hardback pattern books.
So see you all soon on the other side of the world. But in the meantime, do tell: if you had to plan for a year away from your usual knitting routine, or even your usual non-knitting routine, what would you take and what would you leave behind?
Oh, and finally, did you see the cool “Ravel it” buttons on the left sidebar above each free pattern link? Ravelry offers a nice little html code to the pattern page and tells you the number of people making it – 118 people have made the Rangoli Hat! Okay, so it’s not Clapotis, but I had never imagined that so many people would knit it. It is most thrilling. I updated the pattern recently to correct some errors and suggestions people had pointed out, so if you downloaded it before May 22, do download the fresh 3.0 version.
This post is for my friend Aparna in Bangalore, who I thought of a lot on a last-minute trip to Los Angeles this weekend.
I went down for a special event and to hear a dear friend and colleague speak (some of you might recognize who all that hair in the foreground belongs to!).
But it was also a lazy day of walking on the beach as the afternoon cooled down, exchanging gossip with friends, eating wonderful food, and getting a bit dizzy and nauseated in the famed LA traffic.
Apoos, you were sorely missed!
(I got some knitting done, about which more later. For now, can you spot two recently finished projects in the pictures above?)
I had a long and ponderous post about an exciting and exhausting week in Lisbon, full of Serious Observations. In many ways this was a difficult trip for me, with old bittersweet memories and new challenges. But I read it over and yawwwwwwwwn, people. Never mind all that. In keeping with the low-on-text and high-on-pixel approach of the last post, therefore, I’m attempting a simpler recipe.
Take some red roofs in bright sunlight:
Add some history (an old Moorish castle, a few medieval lanes, and the irony of capturing the monument to Portuguese global power at sunset):
Blend in a generous helping of old and new friends, fresh seafood and red wine, and the delicious melancholia of fado…
…and I do believe it will all taste very good indeed!
I did lots of knitting, and will show detailed progress (or more accurately, lack thereof) in a couple of days once I have some photos. Strong winds delayed my flight back by a day, about which I was really annoyed at first, but then thankful after seeing this video. So I have a ton of work to catch up on. But hey, in the meantime, here is a yarn store right in downtown Lisbon, in Baixa-Chiado. The euro prices for the mostly acrylic blends kept me from buying, but the colour selections were to die for.
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