Dang, it’s coooooooooooooooooooooold.
How’s the Weather?
One disadvantage of living in a small Indian town in the Himalayan foothills is this weather-related thingy called “winter”. We’re talking seriously low temperatures. Since buildings here are not constructed with any kind of central heating, the temperature differential between indoors and outdoors isn’t that large. This morning, for example, I got up and checked the temperature, which turned out to be 8° Celsius. Indoors. For you indjis on the other continent, that translates to 46° Fahrenheit. I can see my own breath as I write this. With a heater, we’ll eventually raise the indoor temp to a practically balmy 11° C, or 51° F.
Jumping jeeberin’ Jeezus, it’s cold here.
During the day, anyone who can do it stays in the sunshine as long as they can, where it’s warm. The average Rewalsar housewife will truck housework, knitting, kids that need looking after and all to her rooftop, where she can perform a woman’s usual multitasked duties and keep her core body temperature above freezing, all at the same time. Other folks spend their day in the street in front of the chai wallah’s, drinking glass after glass of hot chai while gossiping and enjoying the sun.
This is all by way of saying that both Joy and I have discovered the cold to be a marvelously efficient motivator for beginning and quickly completing knitting projects. The prospect of UFOs* is much less likely when that second sock or glove is what will allow you to retain all feeling in your fingers or toes. Joy, for example, made the happy discovery that a pair of size 12 socks made with wonderful wooly singles from Nepal can be made in four days:
Meantime, I learned that just above freezing temperatures will provide wonderful inspiration for completing a Fair Isle mitten in two days:
The Dreaded Fiber Arts
Making hats for people with dreads is something of a whole artform in itself. It’s not just a matter of “making a larger hat”. Whatever headgear solution is being concocted by the fiber artist has to accomplish some things. The brim has to fit the head of someone whose headsize is effectively 1/3 larger than normal while looking somewhat in proportion to the rest of the wearer’s body, and corral the dreadlocks causing the increased headsize problem so they don’t wander around and interfere with the hat while it’s doing its job.
I’ve been thedreadnyondo for about 8 years now. I’m not a real big fan of the Rasta bag-style hat, which is what most folks make, and had pretty much given up on the whole hat-wearing concept. Then winter hit Rewalsar, and I changed my mind in a hurry. There’s something about doing kora around a lake at about 7:00 in the morning in 30 degree weather that really provides a lot of instant motivation for the hat-wearing thing.
My good friend Ellen last birthday provided me with a stylish dreaded hat in bright yellow felt. As a bonus, its cheerful dreads were about the length of my own. However, it was a bit formal for those first few uncaffeinated laps around the lake, and I looked around for a solution I could wrangle onto my head while still half-asleep. So I turned to the needles and created this monstrosity…
The dreaded….tube!
And the tube in action:
If the color and cabled band style look a little familiar, they should. This is basically Knitty’s Coronet hat pattern, adapted for dreads. This bad boy accomplishes all the things a dreadlock-wearer’s head might require. It fits, keeps the hair somewhat constrained, and even can be pulled down aound the ears. It’s constructed out of cheap-o acrylic yarn (Caron’s Simply Soft, for you inquiring minds), machine-washable stuff that can be sent off to the dhobi-wallah with impunity. And it’s purple, colored like no other article of clothing I own. How cool is that?
Next up: things not to do with your Starbucks commuter mug
We went to the trouble of packing Starbucks commuter mugs and plunger pots to India, so that we could not only make fresh coffee, but keep it warm long enough to be enjoyed during the cold. While setting up our little room heater, Lena discovered that exactly how much heat-related abuse a Starbucks mug can withstand, and still remain usable.
Kids: don’t try this at home. The name of this site is “Blog-o-licious!”, not “JackAss.”.
*UFO: Unfinished Fiber Object. This is a pejorative fiber arts term referring to projects that have been started, and then set aside for easier projects/prettier projects/weddings/funerals/school graduations/dentist appointments. The most notorious generator of UFOs is SSS, or Second Sock Syndrome. Having completed one sock, the knitter fails to cast on and begin knitting its mate directly afterwards. If you’re wondering why most knitters consider this a problem, see this blog entry.
