Tuesday, January 30, 2007

A quick hello

Just popping in today... I've been busy preparing some snacks for the office, because I have my last day of work tomorrow. No, I didn't poison the snacks.

Today I've read a very interesting blog post over at Crazy Aunt Purl's that touched my heart. Laurie wrote about fellow blogger Allison and her son Evan who's 3 months old and who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He is such a cutie!
Allison happens to own an online yarn shop, so whoever isn't on a yarn diet right now might want to go over and have a look at her range. I can tell you, if I had some extra ca$h for yarn right now, I'd be all over the place!

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Munich musings

My parents came over for a visit today. Despite that it was freezing, we took a walk in the city. The New Synagogue had opened in November 2006 with a lot of media attention, but I hadn't been there before. My parents were interested too, so off we went.


synagogue, originally uploaded by d.knit.

The weather was quite dull, but the building was impressive anyway. When I saw the first pictures of it I didn't like the architecture at all. It's so... cubic. Plus, it seemed so huge in all the photos. But when we were actually standing in front of it, it wasn't gigantic at all. And I really like the colors.


synagogue_door, originally uploaded by d.knit.

We wanted to go inside, but unfortunately the portal was locked. I guess that when the Jewish Museum - which is next door - opens in March this year, the Synagogue will be open too.


synagogue_door close, originally uploaded by d.knit.

The portal was made in Budapest, Hungary, and the signs are the initials of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew Letters, all according to German Wikipedia. It looks quite impressive!

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Crochet Dude

I just found this one on the internets, on gringa's blog.



Knitters and crocheters should have a lobby.

ETA: Just decided that thursdays are going to be Video Day. Enjoy!

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Snow

Remember yesterday?
Well, this is what it looks like today:



The Weather Gods must have heard my prayers.

Outside

Remember last year?
Well, this year winter took some time (yeah, like when we were having coffee outside in the sun around Christmas), but it finally has arrived!


This is the first snow in 2007 for Munich and the forecast says more snow tonight and tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they're right, we've had a spring-like winter for way too long now. Yay for snow! And it's finally cold, so time to wear some nice knitwear! This season I've bought quite a few nice woolen sweaters, and for the first time in my life I've ruined one of them. Yes, I know, I'm a knitter, I should have known better... but I was using wool detergent! To tell you the whole story: I washed a pillow (not the case, the whole thing) the other day and as there was some room left in the machine I put a few more things in. One of them was my favorite sweater, a perfect blueish-greenish-turquoise 100% woolen v-neck, and I thought the easy-to-clean-cycle wouldn't hurt. Well, I changed my mind when I took everything out of the machine.

The sweater had shrunk (and no pulling into shape would help) AND felted even though the temperature had only been 30°C! (that's 86°F) That's not even body temperature, so I thought it was safe as I had washed other woolen items at that temperature before (in the wool wash cycle though - where everything came out just fine). I guess that's my piece of advice for today: always wash woolen stuff in the wool wash cycle, just wool detergent on another cycle isn't doing the job. Unless you have a giant sweater at home that you'd like to felt, or you want to shrink some jumpers so your kids can wear them. Those kids would have to be quite skinny though.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Something else, for a change

The back and front of the K_sweater are done! I didn't take pictures though, because the sides roll up so much, and I didn't have the time to look for my fixing pins yet.
Before I start the sleeves I wanted to do something else in between though; I promised a colleague of mine who's having a baby in spring that I would make some baby booties and a little hat for her. That's what I wanted to knit in my "sweater break", but then I remembered something that was buried deep down in my stash:


Crochet pot holders! Simple yet efficient, and essential for everybody. Well, if they have a kitchen, or a stove.
When I moved to Munich three and a half years ago, it was K's and my first apartment and although I had collected a few kitchen things, I didn't have pot holders. I didn't see the point of buying some, as I had learned to crochet about a zillion years ago and I thought it couldn't be so hard. I made a few pot holders and an oven glove. However, some of the pot holders turned out to be too small so I frogged them a few months ago and put the yarn in my stash box and closed it. Well, until Saturday. Friends of mine just moved house and I thought an oven glove and some pot holders were quite a nice (and practical) present. Plus, I only have two pot holders left and one of them is in our wok when it's not in use (this place is very small and for the last 3 years I've been the queen of piling things) to keep it from being scratched by the glass baking dish.
I've got some more yellow and orange cotton yarn, leftover from some more frogged pot holders... looks like I'm gonna crochet for a bit.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Knit&Dish

Yay, Knit&Dish is back! I missed the first round, so I hope to be in the second one. There's a traditional Austrian dish that I had a craving for lately, so I might hand in the recipe for it... might make it for myself tonight (it's a sweet dish and K doesn't have much of a sweet tooth, so I can have it all to myself). Mmmmh!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Weirdo...

Elemmaciltur tagged me.

Six weird things about me

THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘6 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

  1. When I drink coffee or tea from my favorite (giant) mug at home, I always leave the spoon in the mug. I don't do this when I'm going out though.
  2. When I started to knit, I made knit stitches a bit different. I always inserted the needle through the back of a stitch, instead of the front. (And I did know that I wasn't doing it "properly") I knit like this for a few years, until I changed it.
  3. At the age of 17, I began modelling. Now, this wasn't runway modelling but modelling for a sculptor, and it was in the nude. Before I did it I thought I couldn't possibly stand naked in front of a man I don't know well, but in the end it was easy-peasy. (It wasn't sexual, that's why)
  4. Through modelling, I learned to be self-confident about my body. Plus, it was only then that I found out that my ears aren't sitting at the same height. One ear is sitting one finger's breadth lower than the other.
  5. In primary school, I once kissed a grapevine snail. (Oh come on, my best friend did it too, and there's people who eat those snails. THAT'S gross!)
  6. Twice a week, I lie on a couch and talk to someone I don't know well about intimate details of my life, and I've been doing this for a year and a half now. (They call it Psychoanalysis. Does this make it weird or normal?)
Let's see, who am I tagging... amanda cathleen, Carola, Julia, Christine, Karlie, and whoever wants to do this meme.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Thank you Deepa

Over the past few days, I've worked on the "new" layout of my blog to make it look like the "old" layout, before I switched to the post-beta Blogger design. It was quite a bit of work, and I'm still not where I want to be, but at least my blog looks alright at the moment.

I'd like to thank a lady from India who helped me quite a bit. Thank you Deepa! When it comes to hacking the new Blogger in order to customize the designs, she absolutely rocks!

Many thanks Deepa.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Aw crap!

This is what happens when you upgrade your layout on Blogger, after you switched to the new Blogger... you basically have to start again.

So please excuse this blog building site, I hope to get everything fixed soon!

Monday, January 08, 2007

Raging for nothing

Just before, I talked to my work colleague who's email was cause for all my rage and anger on the weekend. It turns out that everything was just a misunderstanding; she was informed that the babybreak-lady would be coming into the office on Tuesdays, but apparently, she wasn't up to date. Information does not flow freely in this company at all (hence my out-of-the-blue sacking), so this makes perfect sense to me. This means that I can finish my job on the already set dates and don't have to look for a new weekday. It would have been ridiculous anyway, because you can count the remaining Tuesdays I have left in the office on 3 fingers. I really am a patient person, maybe too patient sometimes, but there's a point where my patience ends.

Yesterday, I took pictures of the K_sweater in the bedroom, double-checking with a store-bought sweater that fits him well. The light wasn't so good anymore, but I think you can see enough. Due to the stockinette stitch the sides of the sweater roll in, but the width of the bought sweater and the knitted one are the same. The only difference I noticed was at the arm decrease; here, the knitted sweater is smaller. I need to double-check this with the instruction but I couldn't find my pins and I didn't feel like a long search, so I'll have to do this some other time. Preferrably before I start the arm decreases at the front.


Sunday, January 07, 2007

who cares for titles?


It's been a while since I last posted a picture. The one above is the Christmas tree at my parents' place, always decorated in the same style with real candles (my parents even used real candles when they lived in the US).
We didn't have any snow this year, but in the mornings there was lots of hoar frost, like on the apple below (when K and I took a walk, we passed the same apple tree as last time).


K's sweater is growing, I'm well into the front now. It's funny, knitting the back felt so slow, but the front feels much quicker.

The office is troubling me again, I got so angry before. To give you the background: After they fired me, I made appointments for my last few work days. My usual day in the office is on a Tuesday, and it's been tuesdays for about a year and a half, or even two years now. Every now and then I came in the office on a day other than Tuesday, depending on my schedule or if the company asked me to - just like this coming week, when I'm scheduled to work on Thursday as I need to go to Uni on Tuesday. Well, today I checked my office mails; there was one from my colleague asking when I was coming in the office next week (although I had told her personally, emailed her, and made her mark it in the calendar) and telling me that I needed to find another work day different from Tuesday, as the lady returning from baby break would be coming then. They hadn't told me this earlier, I only learned it from this email. Maybe you can imagine my anger... I was totally mad. Who do they think they are? I know my colleague didn't come up with this by herself but that our boss probably told her to tell me (this is his usual way. I'm probably too low for him to talk to me directly).
I'm wondering, why do they do this after we set my remaining work dates in early December?? Do they think I'm so stupid that I let them do everything what they want? Well, I basically let my colleague know that it's either the dates we set, or not. Which would mean that my last day is Thursday. Well, I'll know for sure on Monday, I guess.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to everybody!

Over here in Germany it's legal for everybody older than 16 or 18 to buy fireworks, so you can imagine people going all crazy and having their own private firework display... multiply that with a few hundred thousand households in Munich, and you get one giant explosion that starts well before midnight and doesn't stop till 1 am.

Do I have good intentions for the new year? Well, sort of, I guess, but I don't sit down and write a list or something. It's too easy to break them, plus, I'd rather start doing something or quit doing something (or at least try to) when it comes to my mind, instead at a certain date.

In 2006, I promised you that instruction for baby booties, remember? I always had lots of other things to do, but last week I finally managed to finish the translation, the pictures, and the whole thing. So, I thought I'd start the new year with making you a present. Please only use it non-commercially! The instruction was handed to me in German by my friend Christine; all I did was translate it, and I added a little part because it seemed to make sense to me. You're invited to do the same, this instruction isn't engraved in stone, you know.
It would be lovely to get some feedback from you, if you liked the instruction (it's my first, you know!), if you found any mistakes, if it worked for you, how your booties turned out. You're invited to send me pictures of your booties! I could make a gallery of them, and start a bootee count.
The instruction is in pdf form, so you'll need the Acrobat Reader or the Adobe Acrobat in order to open it.

Here you go:

Download PDF here