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Yarn Stores in India

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As always on my travels, I keep my eyes out for yarns stores.  Normally, if I’m traveling to the US (or even Europe or Canada), I can look up on the internet the location of Local Yarn Stores, or at least whatever form they take in different countries.  For India, I really didn’t have the capabilities to look up local yarn stores, both because of the language difference, but also because directions can be rather uncertain in India, with none of the streets being labeled in any way that I noticed.

Still, I lucked out one particular time in Shimla, when we were wandering one of the Bazars.  I came across a yarn store.  Well, actually Michael saw the yarn store and pointed it out to me.

Inside was one of the most interesting yarn stores I’ve ever been into.  It was just wide enough that my hips passed between the shelves in places, and contained two rooms: A front room where yarn was on the shelf, and a back room that you entered by passing through a narrow opening crowned by a clock.
There were just bags and bags of yarn lying around.
As for content, the yarn was mostly acrylic and acrylic blends – much more on par with what you’d find in a big box store like Michael’s rather than a Local Yarn Store.  Not bad stuff, just rather lacking in things that weren’t acrylic, nylon and rayon.
Once I got back home I did some digging to see if I could find out more about Vardhman.  They’re an Indian Textile company that does a little bit of everything.  They mostly cater to India, but they do export yarn to Japan and thread to the United States, among other things.  They’ve got a whole listing of their yarns here.
What struck me the most about the store (and the fabric stores I went to)?  Yarn stores have just yarn.  Fabric stores have just fabric.  No tools.  Now, it might be that it was just the stores I went to, but could you imagine going to a yarn store and picking out your yarn, only to have to go to another store to get your needles?

Encountering India’s Textiles

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India has a strong textile history, and is currently the second largest producer of fibre in the world.  So it’s no surprise that it was one of the major reasons I wanted to go to India.

Perhaps it’s a little bit of a bias, and it’s definitely perpetuated by movies and media, but Indian fashion seems to always have some of the brightest colors, and daring color combinations.  I wanted to walk into a fabric store, and immerse myself in the colors and sights.

What happened in regards to finding Textiles in India was both what I expected, and much richer and different than my expectations.  To frame the story, I have some pictures to help me organize my thoughts.  Most of the textiles we encountered were cotton, silk, and wool.

In Delhi our driver (Raj, who was amazing) brought us to this great and wonderful store.  It had different rooms with different vendors, and Michael and I thought it was going to be a brief stop, only to find we emerged 4 hour later.  First, we were brought into a room filled with rugs.  We were invited to sit on a couch, And given chai.

Then, this most amazing salesman (and I mean that as a compliment, not the way I mean it when people complain about car salesmen) and educated us about India made rugs (the knotting style, colors, patterns, everything).  Then, his helper began rolling out the rugs, and this is where it gets magical.  The room was perhaps 18 ft by 18 ft, and wood floors.  The assistant knew exactly where he had to stand in the room so that when he rolled out the rug, he could flick the edge with his wrist, and the rug would unravel, ending just at our feet.  Real showmanship at work.  Though we had talked about buying a rug, we weren’t planning to take one home with us that day.  Despite that?  We came home with TWO rugs.
It was worth it.
We did other textile shopping while we were in India, of course, but one of the other standout experiences was when we got to see a silk weaving factory.  You can see below that the looms they used, the mechanized ones, still used punch-cards, really long punch-cards,  to dictate the pattern.

While it was really cool to see the the weaving and the results of the weaving, and see the vibrant colors and how the textile industry employs so many people, it bothered me a bit about the level of noise in the factories.  It was deafening, and there wasn’t much in the way of ear protection.  
Still, the colors and weaves of the silks were gorgeous.
And between everything?  I was knitting on my own.

Isis Wings

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by Jennifer Raymond

Published by: Three Irish Girls
Craft: Knitting
Category: Feet / Legs → Socks → Mid-calf
Published: September 2013
Yarns suggested: Three Irish Girls Glenhaven CashMerino Sock
Yarn weight: Fingering / 4 ply (14 wpi)
Gauge: 9 stitches and 14 rows = 1 inch in stockinette or lacework
Needle size: US 1 – 2.25 mm
Yardage: 350 – 420 yards (320 – 384 m)
Sizes available: Women’s Small (3-6), Medium (6-9), Large (8-12)

This pattern is available for download for $5.95.

Isis Wings was created almost three years ago, on a porch in North Carolina. It was summer, which was sock time, and I wanted a pattern that was easily memorize-able while still being interesting. Isis Wings is the result. The socks are worked toe-up with an afterthought heel– one of my favorite ways to work socks. The little fun challenge lies in the yarn overs. Instead of working them like the rest of the stitches, whenever you come across a yarn over from the previous row, you knit it through the back loop, creating a twisted stitch. This pattern is written using the magic loop, though it could easily be worked with dpns or two circular needles.

For More Information, Go Here

Knitting as a Language

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One of the highlights of Michael’s and my trip to India might not have happened if Michael’s phone hadn’t died when we arrived in the country.  You see, We had been planning on using internet access and Michael’s phone to make most of our travel arrangements, as it was turned on to function internationally.  But inexplicably when we arrived in country it didn’t work, which meant that we needed to use an Indian Travel agent to book out travel.

Which turned out to be a very good thing, aside from the fact that he mentioned that there was a “toy train” that went to Shimla.  Now, at this point you all know that Michael Loves Trains.  The chance to see a small gauge train in action, winding it’s way through the Himalayas?  We couldn’t miss it.

So shortly after we arrived in India, we were taking off from Delhi to Shimla, first taking a regular train, and then switching to a small gauge train.  The small gauge train in India is an experience.  With no AC, all the windows are open (something hard to come by in the US), and so are the doors in and out of the train.  It’s switches are operated manually, and it functions with a manual system to keep trains from running into each other (which involves the passing off of symbolic keys).
 Like the days of old, the trains connect together with a pin system, which means there are people that have to get between each car and drop a pin into the latching mechanism in order to connect them.  Very dangerous.  And because it’s a narrow gauge train, it can make tighter turns and and climb steeper hills than an normal train.  So you occasionally got glimpses outside your window that looked like this:

Our Train to Shimla.

Michael was beside himself with excitement, and spent the whole time with the camera in the train door, looking at everything. Now don’t get me wrong, seeing Michael happy is a lot of fun, but not being quite the train affectionado that he is?  It got a little boring.

Michael looking out the window.

So I pulled out my knitting.

And very slowly I became aware of this wave of… awareness that was focused on me.  I saw a woman who was looking at what I was doing very intently.  So I smiled and gestured her over.  Very soon, with very little words between us, we were talking knitting.

Talking Knitting.

Pretty soon, another woman had joined it (the mother of the seatmate across from me in the picture above), who had a little more English than the first woman.

I was told that they didn’t realize that people from America knit.  I got advice on how to wear a Saree, which I had attempted to wear that day and was falling off of me by 2 pm in the afternoon (I was so close to a serious wardrobe malfunction).  I got teased about my husband, shared Indian cake, and attempted to explain American copyright (in relation to my work).  It was amazing fun.
Having fun with my knitting friends.

And the amazing part was?  We were coming together over a common handicraft.  We had very little language between us, but we had the language of stitches, of knits and purls and yarnovers and decreases.

Back from our Honeymoon in India

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Michael and I got back from our honeymoon in India Friday night, and spent the weekend recovering in different ways.  I had some classes on Sunday, but otherwise we recovered from jet lag and reassured the cats that we were here to stay.  Three days later, I think the cats have almost forgiven us for leaving.

I’ve got a whole rash of blog posts planned sharing the highlights of the trip – of which there were many.  But for now, it’s good to be home.  Isn’t it funny?  No matter how enjoyable traveling is, there is a certain relief in coming home, especially after long journeys.

So, for now, a list of reasons why it’s good to be home from India:

  • Driving on the other side of the road.  Several times while in India, I’d look up and panic, thinking our taxi driver was on the wrong side of the road.  He was not.  Silly me.
  • Being able to drink tap water. (Some parts of India, it’s not so good of an idea for people out of the country to drink tap water).
  • Cereal. I loved the food in India. It’s one of the reasons I went there!  But I’m really really happy to have my cheerios in the morning again.
  • Reliable internet. There’s internet everywhere in India, don’t get me wrong, but that doesn’t mean I could always access it.  I’m a bit of an addict, and it was good to come home to my email again.
  • My kitties. I missed them.
  • Cooler weather.  It was VERY hot while we were in India, and it wasn’t even the worst of it. I ‘m so happy to come home to Fall and COOL WEATHER!
What makes you happy when you come home from a journey?

Post Mortem: Devil at Crossroads

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Sockupied design calls can sometimes be hard if I don’t have a design already burning in the back of my brain.  In the case of Devil at Crossroads, I’d been fooling around on a train ride back from North Carolina.  I’d read about helix knitting on TECHknitting.  Naturally, when I learn something new, I like playing around with it to see how far things can go before they “break.”

The result of this brainstorming was this small little swatch.

So I put together a design proposal for Sockupied.  A little hint here: Sockupied when they give you the spec sheet (the document that tells you how to format your patterns), have a page where there are these little “mini-prompts.”  If you choose to fill them out, they’re meant to be used as inserts or marginalia for the main pattern.  After I finished Totem, I started thinking about the prompts.  One of them asks if you would like to write a mini-article on a technique in your pattern.

I thought, why don’t I write a full article to go with the pattern?

My sub looked like this:

But when I attached it to my email, I mentioned that I’d be willing to write a technique article to go along with the proposal.  Anne, the editor at Sockupied, liked this idea.  They asked for both the pattern and the article.

What are some of my thoughts on this proposal?  Well, I was pretty proud of my new layout for design submissions – the new logo, the boxes with the different color.  My swatch has a rather glaring mistake in the cable – I missed a shift and had to compensate.  I figured that the editor’s could overlook the mistake, which seems to be true.

In the proposal, the cuffs at the top of each sock are a different color.
 In the final piece, I chose to keep the helix stripping going up the entirety of the sock.  I think it was a better choice, simply because I didn’t have to write in the final pattern that each cuff would be a different color.

And on a final note: I didn’t name these socks.  CPAAG, a group on Ravelry, is a wonderful resource for coming up with names.  I’ll be using the benefits of their collective genius for time to come.

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