not as much fun as I wanted it to be

So, my exam is over. I am a bona fide historian with an MA degree (actually the direct translation would be Master of Philosophy). The exam itself wasn't very spectacular, which is why it's strange that the university is keeping the actual details of what happens in the exam a secret. Or so it seems. They finally have webpages where they tell you what forms to use and what formats your thesis should have and a hundred other things, but nothing about the actual exam. Anyway, it was even fun and afterwards I felt extremely happy.

Everything seemed to be going well. My room was clean and things were stored away better than when I first moved in. My guests arrived and helped me carry my 10 000 bags over to my mother's flat where I'll be staying until next Thursday or so while they're using my little shoebox as a base. We had sparkling wine and roasted vegetables and all kinds of delicious things and I went to sleep happy about my new status.

The next morning, I wondered whether my thesis had been entered into the university library catalogue yet. And it has! It's even findable in two of the important meta-catalogues. I took a screenshot as a souvenir.

Then I read the news that there had been a huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan and started following the news updates. I only watched one live report and had to turn it off after a couple of minutes. It was terrible and terrifying and I'm still watching the developments around the Fukushima nuclear plant and hope they'll be able to get the situation under control.

Why care about Japan? I'm an absolute nerd about anime (Japanese animated films and television series) and manga (Japanese comics) and I admire and appreciate many aspects of Japanese culture, even if I can't understand or empathize with all of them. And now that country that I am so interested in is in terrible trouble and I can't do very much except watch in horror.

So, not the best day. Then this morning I finally read the book that has been waiting for me for a month or so, about the last days of the Second World War in Berlin and the time immediately afterwards from the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl and that has also contributed to a rather depressive mood.

Then I fled. Outside, the sun was shining, the wind was warm and I had to buy catfood anyway. I went by my favorite silversmith's to see if she was already working and to see if maybe she had her baby son with her - three and a half months old now. I had dropped off a pair of knitted socks in February and wanted to see if she had received them. She had! And he was wearing them and she was really happy with them, since knitted socks were an item on one of the "must have" lists and she knew noone who could knit socks!

The yarn is Lang Jawoll Cotton Jacquard.

Anyway, that cheered me up immensively and a little detour through the Museumsquartier cheered me up even more. I've also found a new song to learn that has consoled me a little - a German folk song from the 16th century that Johannes Brahms did a litte work on. It's an incredibly gentle and romantic song from the perspective of a man waking his beloved in the morning and the melody is lovely as well.

So it's been ups and downs. Maybe the best time to finish my Herzblut shawl, which is eating yarn like a very hungry moth! But I'm getting closer and closer to the final row and can't wait to see it blocked and in all its glory. So much for now - the next post will be about my crazy camera settings featuring psychedelic pictures of knitted fabric.

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.

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.

uphill slog

Since the last post, my thesis has grown to a grand total of 20 pages. 20% or 1/5th done, not bad! I'm counting and celebrating every new page as a victory, keeps me from despairing. It isn't easy being completely insecure *and* a perfectionist. Right now, the weather is back to what it was a month ago, no light, no pictures possible, so in lieu of showing you pictures of my Herzblut shawl, which is on its second chart and growing slowly, I thought I'd show you some pictures of past shawls.

I actually love shawls, but don't get to wear them often. It's because in continental Europe you can't buy shawl pins for love or money and I'm not good enough at working with metal to make my own. I'm going to skip the shawls that I made for other people and just show you my personal favorites here. The one that I use most often - as the more fashionable substitute for my Lifesaver, which should have been a genius invention, but the execution was too flawed and I haven't wanted it since - is my Winged Black Sheep, which I can wrap around my hips, or around my back and front or around anything I want, really. Since it's dark grey, it hides dirt well (not that I get dirty a lot, I'm a nerd after all) and is most important for keeping my kidneys warm.

Right now it's waiting to be washed, reblocked and put away for the summer. The yarn for it is a handspun  then dyed black yarn that I got on a trip to Hamburg ... in 2008! Time is starting to pass too quickly for my peace of mind.

As I said, the Black Winged Sheep is the shawl that probably gets the most use. Another shawl that sometimes gets taken out of its little plastic bag is my beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Anna's Scarf (officially Ene's Scarf). Knit with vintage Swiss yarn that my father gave me, it's the perfect accessory for a visit to the Vienna Film Museum and the walk back home when it's a coolish night. Also perfect for over a nice coat or a nice dress.

Anna's Scarf is knit from the bottom up, so you start with those pointy bits. And what an endless slog it was until I finally reached the top. Maybe a better pattern for my thesis shawl, but I suspect Herzblut will be something of a slog as well.

Next up is my first foray into entrelac. I had had this yarn in my stash for the longest time, it's Lana Grossa Dasolo Stripes, and I just didn't know what to do with it. Then at some point the idea presented itself - entrelac! It's extremely easy and just a teeny bit tedious as well (is there any shawl that doesn't get tedious at some point?) and is actually a very good technique for striped yarn, whether the color changes are long or short. I think I might have worn this one ... twice? so far. I really need a shawl pin.

In my stash there is some beautiful, beautiful Lana Grossa Qui just waiting to be made into a similar shawl. It's been waiting there since 2008 as well.

Back to lace. One beautiful triangle scarflet - completely in fashion in 2009 - is the following Orkney Triangle. The pattern is called Shetland Triangle, but since I bought the yarn on Orkney in 2007 and it is exactly the color of the sea around Orkney, I think that name is more appropriate. I haven't worn it at all. It is a little scratchy, but the main thing is that I just haven't had the peace of mind to pick the outfit to go with it.

So ethereal. Just like the Ethereal Lace Lattice Wrap, which hasn't even been blocked yet. Blocking takes a lot of space! And you need lots of pins and sometimes even blocking wires or if you don't have such things (and I don't), constructions with pins and bits of string and all that. Tsk. The yarn is a mohair mix, fluffy and delicate and really hard to unravel if you have to. But soooo pretty!

I'll close here. There are plenty of other shawls that I made and haven't worn or blocked yet, some are in construction right now and some are sitting in the stash waiting patiently for me to finish the thesis and get on with life and knitting. I shall now print out over a hundred pages of citations that need to be sorted into my big binder of citations so that I can write five more pages tomorrow to make it 25.

To brighten your day, here's a video I found on Jezebel today:

playing around

So, new design.

Today I went to the World Wide Knit in Public Day Pickknit in the Stadtpark and it was a lot of fun, even though it was so hot that knitting or crocheting was nearly impossible. I puzzled around, trying to find a good pattern for the yarn I had, but am still kind of lost on it. I think multicolored yarn just isn't me. And it's really hard to find a pattern that will make it look good. I just can't think of anything else to do with it and I like it so much. Frustrating.

I did pick up a beautiful skein of merino lace yarn in one of my favorite colors (dusky rose) from Karlaa - it will become a beautiful scarf of some sort. Right now I'm not supposed to work on it, though. I'm not supposed to work on anything besides my thesis. There's only one piece of knitting that is allowed - my Herzblut shawl, using the lace Zauberball yarn. My first attempt with it looked like this:

That's Spanish Armada, but it just didn't feel right. Right now I'm still kind of torn between Lehtivihreä and L'Aux Anges. We'll see. I have two red lace Zauberbälle and I'm a little more tempted to do a rectangular shawl, but on the other hand, that ring effect is just too cool. It must be square or rectangular. Just not sure on the design ...

The best part about the picknick - apart from seeing so many knitters and their projects and their yarns and their techniques - was seeing my friend R., who usually lives in Budapest. Seeing her is always fun :D Sadly, the evening has been ruined about 10 minutes ago by a spider that first crawled over my naked leg (AAAAHHH) and then vanished. I really would like to know where it is so I can kill it. I mean, it's bad enough that I brought in a spider in my backpack two weeks ago, but I thought I was safe from spiders on the third floor, here! No fair! Brrrrrr.