Martharani Stewart

It's Sunday morning and the last day off Alex and I will have at the apartment before we come back in early October, so I'm going all domestic diva on this place's ass and doing laundry, ironing linens, etc. When we come back we will be bringing Ms. Robin with us, so I am making sure the third room is all ready for her. I've also already made pancakes and washed dishes this morning, even though strictly speaking we can leave our dishes for Mangal to do. I'm a little prissy, though, and frankly speaking I get the dishes cleaner than she does.

I'm really looking forward to having another chick at the Linguist Pad. We'll be able to give each other pedicures and gossip about boys and...wait, did I say "give each other pedicures and gossip about boys?" I meant "drink lots of vodka and make lewd jokes." I'll be adding Robin to the contributor roster soon, so that you'll be able to hear about her India exploits first hand, if she feels like tellin' ya.

Last night was a going away party for Priya at the Bandra apartment, which is called Sea World, by the way--have I mentioned this? Like, literally, the building says SEA WORLD on the outside. (The Linguist Pad building is called Avalon, and the building next door is Verona. Whatever.) Anyway, we hung out with some coworkers and drank Indian beer and ate Indian snacks, many of which were some form of dough wrapped around some form of potato.



Yesterday was Ganesh Chaturthi, so the city is being all festive and welcoming Lord Ganesh into town and stuff. It will continue for something like 10 days. This was in the lobby at Sea World:



For the knitters out there: I have busted the shackles of the heel flap style of sock construction I usually use and teach, and I'm trying short row heels and toes. I have not yet figured out how to not get tiny little holes at the turning points, so that's irritating, but I do love the zigzag toe bind off I learned yesterday:



Ok, people...that's all I gots.

MEOW kitty shout out!

Some of you may remember that DAT cat has a little tuxedo print pal named MEOW kitty. What I didn't tell you is that MEOW kitty is the mascot of my online knitting posse, the MEOW knitters. (All 14 of us have a MEOW kitty and we take him along when we travel and then take photos--the trip to the Taj Mahal was quite a coup.)

So today Punit, one of our office managers, came over to my desk with a huge box that had come in the mail from the MEOWers, and when I opened it I found THIS:



My friends, this is what is known in the textile business as a boatload of sock yarn. It is all so BEAUTIFUL!! And then to top it off, Steph also made me a tiny little felt dachshund wearing a tiny little leopard print jacket. (You can see him down at the bottom left of the photo.)

I love my MEOWers.

lazy weekend

Those of you who know me as the loquacious extrovert I am can probably imagine that our whirlwind recruiting trip to another city in a developing country to interview nine people whose native language is not English did a bit of a number on my social energy stores. Even a bubble bath and a very relaxing-looking chaise longue at the hotel in Delhi had done little to help.



I didn't realize how drained I was till this weekend, when the thought of leaving the apartment for anything beyond an hour's run seemed about as attractive as dirt.

Both Saturday and Sunday when the cleaning woman showed up, Casey and I were sitting in the exact same places on the same two couches in the living room--him with his computer and me with mine, and both times with me also knitting and listening to music on my headphones. I am pretty sure Mangal thinks we didn't move for 24 hours. I did get up once in a while to cook some comfort food--vegan pancakes for everybody both mornings, and today also some sheera, which is an Indian semolina pudding with nuts and raisins and banana. Needless to say, Casey did not eat any of that one. BANANA!

There was so much nonstop knitting action these past two days that I finished another pair of socks. Normally I don't worry about my yarn being vegan (technically wool and silk are not vegan, but those of you who have been to my apartment know that purging it of wool yarn would take six burly movers a full day, and at least one of them would suffer a hernia in the process). But the stuff I used for these socks (Tofutsies) is SO not vegan that I actually feel a bit weird about it--it's made with chitin, which comes from shellfish. It's supposedly naturally antibacterial or something like that. The bulk of the fiber is wool and soy silk (hence the name--which, hello, how misleading is that? what could sound more vegan than tofu yarn??).



And the yarn is actually so awesome (and you know how we feel about awesome) that I ordered enough for 3 more pairs of socks. I'm such a bad vegan. But damn I have cute socks.

UPDATED TO ADD: Casey just jumped off the couch, lunged and pointed at me, and shouted "Who's a dork?!" Then after a two-second pause he said "Remember that time, just now, when I said that?"

Good god, I love my coworkers.