Fendi

After pondering for months ..'to make or not to make' the Fendi bag..I finally took the plunge...but as usual life has ensured that I have to apply the brakes on what is presently tempting me.
It is our New Year's Day tomorrow..Vishu continues to be celebrated in Kerala with traditional fervour.... the fact that we are 3000kms away from home just makes us more inclined to hold on to the traditions.
So tomorrow will be spent in making the traditional feast "sadya" and then digesting it after an orgy of eating!
The food is totally vegetarian and served on plantain leaves...the only concession we are making is not serving it on the floor ... Venu cannot sit cross-legged on the floor and eat if his life depended on it!

Recycled Sari silk

After reading about all the discussion about recycled sari yarn, and trying to search for the yarn in India with no success, I finally decided to get adventurous and unearthed one of my old printed silk sarees which had disintegrated to a point where I could no longer think of wearing it.
This is the sari before I attacked it with scissors

I cut it up into 1.5" strips...and tried to crochet using different size hooks. I finally settled on a "I" hook as the most comfortable to use with the silk fabric strips.
I followed a very basic pattern, for a doily centre and ended it with scallops formed by 5 dc in st, sk next st, sc in next stitch.
This is the result of my experiments
I was expecting a soft, luxurious product, but the final result is a thick hot-pad. Now whoever heard of silk hotpads! the limit of luxurious living!

I barely used up 20% of my sari..so have a lot of fabric to play with, not to speak of the dozen or more silk saris languishing in a box.

Would love to hear your comments on this experiment..what do you all crochet-savvy people think of the end result? Is it worthwhile to painstakingly cut up the rest of the sari? Seeing the thickness of the final crocheted item, what else can i try to make with this?

my first post

I have been experimenting with hooks and thread with occasional forays into yarn. The one thing I have always missed is having a crochet friend to compare notes, to show off my latest triumph or sob about the current disaster.
So finally I have gathered courage to foray into the land of blogging..with very little hope that much traffic will flow this way.