too quiet here

Yes. Suspiciously quiet. That's because work on the thesis has ground to a halt. All my anxieties have not been miraculously healed, after all. I shouldn't have expected them to be gone just like that. The idea of finishing my degree after about 10 years of studying has created all kinds of sad and anxious feelings. Going out into the world! Finding a job and a place where they'll pay me to write a dissertation! No more classes! No more student jobs! Something to look forward to - scary as hell at the same time.

I'm still scared, but I decided to accept it. It's okay to be scared, that feeling won't go away for a while, so I might as well finish writing. I finally went outside again today after staying in my cave for the last three days and it's been ok. Maybe I was just waiting for the rain - strangely, right now I prefer going outside in the rain.

I also had a dream, haven't been dreaming in a while what with my screwed-up sleep schedule and it told me that things will be ok. I dreamt that we were still clearing out the old flat (my father's flat where I lived for +20 years) and we got in a whole lot of furniture, beautiful furniture. I was going through my two rooms, thinking about where I would put it all, rearranging everything in my mind. Then the dream changed, I was walking with my mother, crossing a street in Vienna with cars and streetcars (weird, because I avoid jaywalking whenever I can) and there were people singing a stupid song on the streetcar. The streetcar had a handwritten label "EMO" - apparently, people got on the streetcar to sing emo songs? The dream changed again and my mother and I were in Edinburgh and people on the street were singing a sea shanty and we discussed how different those two cultures were and how much better it was to sing a sea shanty than some stupid song. That's when I woke up, remembered that I didn't have to clear out the flat anymore, that I had no space for furniture (no matter how beautiful it is), that I want to go to Scotland and I felt a lot better about everything. (To be fair, I also talked with one of my best friends about my anxiety and had a little "say goodbye to uni" ceremony.)

Instead of writing I have been knitting. Finally. It felt really good to get back to something that I'm actually good at, something tangible, something beautiful, a kind of work that lets me see its quality right from the start. Writing into the void with a bare minimum of feedback is hard for approval-seeking me, although writing a blog isn't all that different, except nobody grades it and you don't get a degree for bloggery.

Where is the evidence that I've been knitting, you ask? Oh well, on Ravelry. I have taken no pictures yet, because that would mean having to figure out how to get the card into the new laptop and I don't quite know how to do that. I *could* possibly get the camera usb cable from the box that is over at my mother's. But I don't feel like taking pictures right now. So you'll have to keep looking at my other pictures. It's all part of an evil plan. Now it's back to work on that thesis of mine.

it's getting very near the end

Last weekend there was a much-needed break with *nothing* happening, except light cleaning and baseball anime which would have lead to the thesis being completely abandoned, if the main character hadn't put me off at the end of the second season - Goro you moron, you can't leave Toshi alone! (not a link to second season - that's the 6th season there, wait a minute, there is no Toshi in the 6th season ... nooooooooooooo!).

Bishies and baseball, a deadly combination to the anime nerd academic. Now I'm back to the grindstone and my thoughts are finally starting to work again, the quotations are starting to turn into pieces of text and the end can't be that far off.

The best thing that has happened is knitting - finally. I almost forgot how nice it is to watch something and knit or go someplace and take the knitting along with you to pass the time. I'm working on a little cowl with some of the reward yarn I got this summer. But no pictures yet, because I'd first have to figure out how to get the card into the computer (or look for the cable).

Znaim/Znojmo in the Czech Republic.

And today my mother and I made a little run to Ikea, because Ikea has these lap cushions with a hard plastic surface for laptops. Genius! Especially since my touchpad is a touch too touchy for precise work, so I need my mouse. Now I can finally write with my computer on my lap and my mouse by its side - I'm sure the thesis will grow much faster. The other thing I really needed was a breakfast bowl of my own. Now I have one. And then there are always some things that you want and kind of need - new, colorful bedclothes, a new large cushion for the couch, a little plastic set thing for the couch table ... but I did not get the measuring cups, because my old ones are better.

Fotographed straight down

I hope this will be one of the last thesis posts ... I've finally recovered from the "so tired of my thesis" part, but I still want it to be over and done with. Which means - back to work, I guess!

headlong pitch into another world

I'm still writing. Currently I'm on another section that just needs a lot of compilation and I have to finish working with this one book, because I have to return it tomorrow, so I am slowly sucking it dry of information and then will go over all my written parts again to see if I have missed a place where I wanted to insert some information from that book. I'm also waiting for my mother to return for a day. I've cleaned and swept and vacuumed and done all the dishes.

Last week I fell into the folk pit on youtube. I love folk music and its many different qualities. I happened across a couple of especially hypnotic songs and my brain has already picked up the easier ones. I guess it needed a break from writing. But now I'm back on it, even though I am extremely unwilling. Gritting teeth and bearing it as we speak, though.

Pictures courtesy of a beautiful expedition with my Scottish History class back in the spring of 2007. Uppermost is the garden of Falkland Palace in Falkland, Fife, then there's a window in Linlithgow Palace and lastly a tree in the vicinity of Rosslyn Chapel. I'll just leave you with the song that is gently inspiring me today, it fits perfectly with the rain and the cold: Sadly, the video was taken off youtube, but if you ever should find a recording or video of Dick Gaughan singing the "51st (Highland) Division's Farewell to Sicily", give it a listen.

coming up on week three

It's the third week of thesis writing - or maybe the fourth already. For a historian, I'm really forgetful about things that happen in my life and I can actually make myself forget them, too, leaving more space for "real" history. But it is a fact that this is the third week of me cooped up inside, unable to meet with friends, unable to move around much, unable to do anything without strong feelings of guilt.

Oh well. It will also be the last week, if I have anything to say about it (and unfortunately, I am the only one who has anything to say about it).

Today it's yet another trip to the library (ha, and I thought last Monday was the last one), two libraries actually, just to make sure that I haven't got too many second-hand citations in my text. My friend V. is bringing me another book from Linz on the weekend and I am milking the internet (JSTOR and Google books) for all it's got. Without the internet, I could chuck the whole thing, anyway. I'm really looking forward to the day, when I can have access to all the texts I need without having to pay large sums of money. Just to illustrate: to borrow a book from the Munich University Library via the Vienna University Library, it costs 14,90 Euros. I don't know if it costs that much per book (one would hope not), but even if it doesn't, that's just too much.

Working on the thesis, I'm going back and forth between "so bored!" and "ooh, fun!" It's a very strange life. The myth of the scientist needing absolute quiet in her (more often his) room and lots of service is a little truer than I thought. I also see why my dad always did his writing in the night, which I do, too, but it's starting to wear on me. Work gets done, though, even if I'm not generating text. Yesterday (or actually today at 1am) I finally whipped all my footnotes in shape.

Time to hit the libraries. Gratuitous Scotland pictures taken at the beach in North Berwick and at Tantallon Castle. I'm leaving you with a hypnotic song by the great Karine Polwart, which I've already learned how to sing, seeing as it's so simple.

and it's turned into something entirely different now

Losing my computer seriously threw me off. I had been doing so well, writing at least something every day and then suddenly I couldn't write. Writing a paper by hand only works when you're writing out bits and parts, but not whole paragraphs with citations. I was still reading books on the way to and back from work and at work waiting for library patrons, but then came the lectorship crunch and I only got back into writing when I finally had my new computer in my hands. It's taken me two weeks to get back in the state of mind where I actually have analytical thoughts.

In the meantime, I am sleeping next to piles of paper and about 10 or 12 books that need to be petted and cited and cursed at. The page count is increasing ever so slowly and everything is all over the place. Instead of turning out perfect paragraphs, I'm writing bits and pieces of thoughts and wonder where I can insert them. One procrastination maneuver is of course filling in all the spots marked with red which need more citations and another is checking the citations in the books to see if the pages are correct.

Add to that the beautiful Vienna weather with its nightly thunderstorms and torrential rainfalls. My head hurts almost constantly, even though I really try to get a lot of water and sleep. One success, though: my diet doesn't completely consist of chocolate pudding and coca-cola yet. I'm limiting myself to two puddings and two cokes a day and I'm having plenty of vegetables and some meat to make sure my vitamins stay up-to-date.

On the whole, I feel somewhat strange. My work obligations are almost almost over (three day break while the graphic designer finishes up the catalogue) and I am spending my time in bed with my computer on my lap and the books around me. I haven't talked to some of my friends in ages and feel definitely recluseish.

Somehow my benign little Operation Sonnenstrahl has turned into D-Day (must get inspiration where it lies) and Band of Brothers helps with motivation: Gimme three da-ays and three ni-ights of hard fightin', and you will be relieved! I can't even say at what percentage the laser is, since I haven't done a page count and it would probably be very off with all the bits and pieces.

Monday is the last library visit - there are still citations that need checking! After all, I can't use third-hand citations, it's bad enough that I have plenty of second-hand citations in there already. That's the problem with doing a European topic, the literature is all over Europe and Vienna sadly doesn't have the greatest university library in history.

On the whole, though, I can already see various carrots dangling on the other side of the thesis - the master's degree for one and the prospect of spending my time as I wish without guilty feelings. Movies. Knitting. Books. It will be wonderful.

Gratuitous Scotland pictures all taken while on a weekend trip with the Edinburgh University Folk Society in Inveraray in October 2006.

new laser new luck

Or, how I held the world to ransom over a million billion dollars and bought a new laptop. It is very sleek and shiny and fast and pretty. Have I written anything on it yet? Yes, a little. Tomorrow I shall write more. Actually, I have some handwritten pages which I really should type in, but I need to do a couple of tests first to see how I can use the laptop *and* the mouse in bed first, because the touchpad is annoying me very much. It does do some rather nice tricks such as bluetooth, so I connected it to my cellphone and got three years' worth of pictures off of it. Pictures such as this:

It's the Natural History Museum, some time in early spring, I think, and one of my favorite times of the day. My fun internship is sadly over, but it was a lot of fun and I've returned twice to use their scanner and their airconditioning. I might head over next week to write, but it depends on the weather. The second job is still ticking along somewhat, but finally winding down as well.

That's between the Natural History Museum and the Art History Museum, it's a statue of Empress Maria Theresia, mother of Marie Antoinette. She also birthed 15 or 16 other children. I just liked the sky and the contrast.

That's the back end of the Belvedere with a rather awesome cloud above it, taken two or so weeks ago. Anyway, there has been some knitting going on to relax my head, a summer scarf as a birthday present for my mother and some work on Herzblut, but now work on Herzblut is stalled, because the second ball of yarn is in the other apartment. I shouldn't put too much work into Herzblut right now, anyway, since the paper needs to be done done done.

That's Schwarzenbergplatz, which I used to go by with the D tram every morning, but this picture is actually three years old. Finally, I found what I want to write on the Moon. It is a quote from Dorothy L. Sayers' novel Gaudy Night and I think it should be quoted to every female scholar. Harriet Vane, the protagonist in this novel (usually the main protagonist is Lord Peter Wimsey) is anxious about meeting all her old university friends again, because a lot of things happened in the books before this one and calms herself by thinking about her achievements. "They can't take this away, at any rate. Whatever I may have done since, this remains. Scholar; Master of Arts; Domina; Senior Member of this University (statutum est quod Juniores Senioribus debitam et congruam reverentiam tum in privato tum in publico exhibeant); a place achieved, inalienable, worthy of reverence. " The Latin bit says: "It is decreed that Juniors will show to Seniors appropriate and fitting respect both in public and private." (not my translation).

It's long, but it will fit on the moon, I'm sure. Otherwise I'll just write the citation and people will have to look it up.

Bond has destroyed the laser

It is a sad fact that supervillains are never safe from heroes. Heroes (and heroines) come and blow up the stuff we lovingly build, expensive stuff, I might add, and things that might be useful or fun. Then they come, destroy it all and then the world wonders why we hold it to ransom for a million billion dollars.

My laptop's harddrive has given up the ghost in this wretched heat and decided to contract a case of surface and reader head damage. Thankfully I listened to the internets and did not attempt to save it with the help of my computer wiz friend, but delivered it to a data recovery service the next day and the day after that they had already been able to save all the data. All that remains is a very expensive lesson about backing up your data - if I had made a backup of the thesis and the most important other data (like my pictures from Scotland), I would have simply bought a new computer, but as the half-written thesis was on it and only some parts of it at my professor's, I had to save it all.

Why not simply write it again? Because I am working two jobs at the same time and trying to finish the thesis, too. I only have time to do dishes on the weekends. The red nailpolish on my toenails is growing out naturally, because I don't have time to remove it. My fingernails need to be cut. And even though the main job will be finished by the end of July - which I'm rather sad about, because it's basically paid fun - that's when the thesis should also be finished. So I just don't have time to write 20 pages again (my professor has about 30).

A few things have gone well, though. The university has accepted all the paperwork I could give to it before actually handing in my thesis, so now I am just waiting for the mills to spit it out again. My internship at the library is the best ever and today I shushed a patron - for the first time I had the right and the duty to do so :D I'm CRAZY with the power (as befits a villainness).

In the meantime, I haven't given up on Operation Sonnenstrahl. Currently I'm working on the beginning of it all, which is fun, because it doesn't need as many citations and I can just let the words flow freely and I'm writing on paper, because my mother's mac has the world's worst keyboard and I dislike macs. AKA, I still have the plans for the laser and I am making sure that it's being rebuilt, while I hold the world to ransom for a million billion dollars and chocolate pudding.

if i seem to have left the building, it's because ...

I'm insanely busy. From 8 to 4 I work at a library, catalogueing and making sure that patrons have someone attending to them during the lunch hours and then I head over to my second job, which is proofreading data entries for a medical catalogue. Then I get home, eat something that I prepared the evening before and half of which I already ate for lunch, do the most necessary housework and then work on my thesis. In between, I take naps. I take naps at lunch, I take naps in the streetcar on my way to the second job and I take a nap after I eat, before I do chores and thesis.

Which leaves me with about zero time for knitting. I'm lucky if I get a page done a day, yesterday, I even got to 50 pages, so I could start warming up the generator for the laser ... but I still don't know what I want to write on the moon. I'm sure everything will come back once July is over and the thesis is done :)

I did get good news today, apparently they're already done with the silly piece of paper I had to submit, but I can only pick it up between 10 and 12 in the morning, so I'll have to do that and stay at work longer, which means staying at my second job longer, which means getting home later, which means ... and so on. But I shall persevere! I found a postcard in one of the books I've been catalogueing and it said: "Work and don't despair!" and since these books are from my father, my grandfather, my grandmother and their parents, I'm taking it as a message from beyond :D

six flavours of icecream and three pairs of earrings

The heat of summer has arrived in Vienna. If you have nothing to do, it's great. If you have to work or think, it's torture. It only gets a little cooler in the evening and if there's a wind, it might be a bit better, but it can also be like a giant hairdryer. But I need to make the page number rise, after all, I'm starting an internship on Monday and I'll be insanely busy all July. The perks of that internship are great, however. I'll get to do something I really, really like - work in a library, putter around in their stacks, help out customers - and they have a terrace, air conditioning and I can dress normally and not too office-like.

However, I'll have to take a shawl to work. The highest stack room has a temperature of 18° Celsius, the lowest floor is colder than that and there is a constant draft. So a shawl and a scarf! I think I'm going to take Anna's Scarf (the grey one I showed a couple posts ago), because it clings to itself so nicely. But which scarf? Should it be Pink Champagne?

This was my first try of a Finnish scarf pattern. I just looked at the pictures of the original pattern and then made up my own numbers, since it's a really easy pattern. I actually made six more of it, all with different trims. Five of those I gave to friends. The sixth I kept. It's not a giveaway item. It's my Raincaller Scarf and noone except me gets to wear it.

Have I actually worn it, you ask? No ... not yet. But I will! Just like I'll wear my Summer Stream in the Shade scarf, it just needs to be blocked first ...

It's made from Lana Grossa Asia, which is 50% bamboo, 50% cotton and feels very nice. Even nicer is this one, though, the Asphodelus Aestivus. I have yarn to make a woolen version of this, but I haven't gotten to it, yet. I really love the blue color and the fringe, but it's so easy to pull a little sling of yarn out of it and then it's hard getting it back into the scarf.

On July 14th, I should probably wear my Lace Ribbon Scarf, which I've christened Vive la France! It's made with silk yarn (the blue and red) and silk and linen yarn (the tan) that my dad brought me from Japan. This one was a pain to knit, it never seemed to grow and I couldn't pick up dropped stitches like I usually can and had to unravel rows more than a few times. The first part I knit was super-tight, so I had to pay attention to keep the tension that way and it didn't always work out. And I added the crochet trim, because fringe wouldn't have looked good at all. The blocking turned it from something very scrunched up into a beautiful scarf, though.

The last one is a crocheted scarf again. I bought the yarn to make a birthday present for a friend (one of the stringy scarves like Pink Champagne) and managed to have enough left over to make myself a little Crocus scarf, since the color is just like those pale white-purple crocuses.

This one still needs to be blocked, too. I guess if I had proper blocking tools, I'd do it more often, but I have no immediate access to proper blocking pins or blocking wires and the most important thing I lack is space. I used to have about 4 beds on which to block at my disposal, but now, I only have the one and my couch is perpetually occupied with layers of paper, clothes, yarn and many other bits and pieces. Maybe I'll be able to block more this summer.

And to finally get to the tantalizing promise of six icecream flavours and three pairs of earrings. I met up with one of my very best friends today, who I love very much and first we had some iced drinks and sandwiches, then we headed over to my favorite icecream place, Bortolotti. There's three Bortolottis on the Mariahilfer Straße, which is the most popular shopping street in Vienna. I live closest to the uppermost one and that's where we got our icecream. Here in Vienna, you don't get a ball or two or three of icecream on a cone, you get a spatula full of icecream and the basic cone has three of those, so, I had a cone with nocciolone (chocolate-hazelnut icecream with bits of hazelnut), maroni (sweet chestnut icecream with bits of candied chestnut) and a new flavour, cola-fizz (coke icecream with coke poprocks). I just wanted to try the last flavour, it's definitely something for the kids.

Then we went earring shopping by chance. We came across a new store and all those earrings called out to me. I finally settled on some that looked like buttons, six of them, in all the colors of the rainbow except dark blue (the one opposite the yellow button is purple) - always wanted to have some like those.

Then I found the perfect earrings for my serious look - fake pearl earrrings, fake diamond earrings and larger fake pearl earrings with a flower design on them. Heh. I'm really looking forward to wearing those.

And to top it off, I finally found the perfect disc-with-design earrings. I'd been seeing them with flowers and other patterns, but nothing had called out to me. These are perfect, with the sparrow and the flowers ... love them!

And after I had said goodbye to my friend, who went and sang opera in this wretched heat, brave her, I had more icecream. Because we had just hit the middle Bortolotti and they had new flavours, too. Mojito (lime and mint and a vague alcoholic taste) and caramel, which was quite good as well. To go with those, I had raspberry as the third.

Now for washing my hair and then work ...

stars and flowers

I'm at 39 pages and need to convince myself to get to 40 today. It's the last week before I start an internship at a library, which I'm looking forward to, but there are lots of things that I have to do this week, because next week I'll be on standard work time for the first time in a few years (2006 actually) and there are some things that can only be done in the mornings in Vienna, such as visits to the university offices to straighten out all the red tape hoops - or would that be red tape skipping ropes? - that I need to jump through to get my thesis on the official tracks. I hate red tape. Thank goodness my mental directions finally reached the history department and they put together something of a checklist, which looks fierce and dreary. So tomorrow I shall gather alllllllll my university papers and on Wednesday I'll go visit the hopefully nice people at the student service office to ask them what papers, signatures and whatnots I'll still need.

Gee, that was a lot of text! Would that my thesis would grow whilst I blog. But let's talk about flowers. I love flowers. I love taking pictures of flowers. And if my dinky little camera from 2004 was a little better at taking pictures of particularly vibrant flowers, I'd be overjoyed. It still takes pretty good pictures of roses, though. To wit:

That's my favorite rose in the whole garden. New Dawn. A climbing rose with a wonderful, not too overpowering smell and it blooms from May to September. Then there's Constance (Constance Spry), who after a few years of growing without any blossoms is now always full of them:

It's no wonder that roses would also inspire my knitting. I made up this Rose Mitten pattern on the go with a chart I found somewhere, the curlicues are part of a fairisle design. The yarn is Lana Grossa Mood Print, which is soft and squishy with a little silk to make it extra-nice. I finished these in September 2009 and haven't even woven in the ends yet ... tsk. Maybe in September 2010 so I can wear them.

Here's the palm ...

The thumbs are a bit of a weak point, design-wise, but overall, I'm pleased. Apart from the roses there are plenty of other flowers in that garden. Like peonies, which I also love very, very much. The light pink ones actually have a bit of a minty smell.

And an intriguing visitor ...

Here's the darker variety of peonies. Funnily, when I was searching for project pictures, I came across pictures of these same peonies and roses that I had taken in May 2008. I'm really glad these flowers decide to delight us again every spring. To be honest, I'd love to plant even more roses and peonies and all kinds of beautiful flowers, since they mostly take care of themselves, unlike vegetables.

Strangely, even though I love flowers so much, I don't actually have many knitted items that use an explicit flower design. I have a few with leaf lace, but flowers, not so much. This is one of the few items, the Plum Blossom mittens - frogged, sadly, because the yarn needs smaller needles. But I have the yarn still and will remake them at some point. I love the design of these so much and there are so many things you can do with the idea. The yarn is Lana Grossa Baby Alpaca, soft and lovely, but not very stretchy, hence the need for smaller needles.

In that garden, there's also a tree that my mother calls Japanese Lilac. I have no idea. It's from the botanical garden in Frankfurt, planted probably a hundred or so years ago, since it's rather large. This year the spring was so cold that it's blooming only now and the bees are all over it and making a lot of noise.

Funnily, the bees entirely avoided the following plant, I have no idea what it's called in English, we call it jasmine, but it isn't jasmine (I know, I have real jasmine here in Vienna).

I made a yellow spot on the kitty's forehead with that pollen. I like doing that, since all cats are yogis and he looks cute like that. Too bad I didn't take his picture. Overall, this blog really does lack cat pictures, I must say. Like the bees, I have avoided the following project. It's crocheted and actually very simple to make. I only made it because it looks like a flower. And I made it in those colors, because they were available, I have no excuse, really. Never wore it. Still love it. Just don't know what to do with it. The Chrysanthemum Tea Shawl by Doris Chan has been redesigned by her into a skirt as well, so maybe I'll try my hand at that at some point in a different color.

Now I'm definitely more in the mood to write. The star that I mentioned in the title is the evening star. I've been watching it every evening since the weather has cleared up. I know it's actually a planet, Venus to be correct, but it's still my favorite.

Operation Sonnenstrahl

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? A friend told me that a friend of hers had christened her thesis "Project Sunshine" instead of calling it "the damn thesis". But my thesis needs a much more nefarious name. After all, it is a laser that will be directed at the moon ...

Right now it is at 25.5% of its operational power, i.e., some of the structures needed have been built. At 50% I think we can start warming up the generators which power the laser. At 75%, the laser will be programmed and adjusted with the correct coordinates. At 100% the laser will write something pretentious in Latin, Greek or Japanese on the moon. Yes. *evil cackling*

So right now it's a little like this weather below, since I received so much praise from my professor that my insecurities have been dampened down quite a bit.

I guess I need to produce more pages (and sleep more, lack of sleep is really not helping). That's why I'm once again repairing to the country to cut myself off from the internet for a little while.

Meanwhile, as I may have already mentioned, Herzblut is my only allowed knitting project. Funnily enough, its original name Lehtivihreä means chlorophyll in Finnish, but mine is blood red.

I'm using the Schoppel Zauberball Laceweight in Cranberry for this. My favorite yarn store got in a shipping of lace Zauberbälle in winter and I snagged up two, thinking they'd be sold out in a rush. No such thing! Even though I posted about their availability on Ravelry. Maybe there is a secret source for laceweight yarn in Austria that I haven't discovered yet.

Speaking of my favorite yarn store and yarn - I already got to see some of the winter yarn and it's gorgeous! Another reason to finish the thesis - unlimited knitting time! And the time and qualifications to look for a paid dissertation post or a proper job, which lead to more yarn money. The colors were simply incredible. And there is no on the other hand here. I might have a large stash (by non-knitter standards), but there are some yarn opportunities that just won't come again.

We'll see at what operational evel the laser is when I get back from the country.