Schildkröten am Abend

Bald reise ich in die Schweiz zu meinen Niblingen (die Kinder meines Bruders und meiner Schwägerin), für die ich wie im letzten Post erwähnt, Pullunder gestrickt habe. Auf dem Weg dorthin mache ich aber in Vorarlberg halt und besuche eine Twitterfreundin.

Diese Freundin hat sich eine Schildkröte gewünscht, also habe ich mich umgesehen. Die gestrickten Schildkröten, die ich so unauffällig in meinen Favorites auf Ravelry habe, waren alle ein wenig zu aufwändig, mit viel Nähen usw. Dann fand ich das ideale Häkelmuster: Tiny Two-Tone Turtle - die kleine Zweifarbenschildkröte von Lucy Collin. 

In diesem Häkelmuster wird nämlich nichts angenäht, sondern die Beinchen, der Schwanz und der Kopf entstehen aus Popcornstichen. Ich habe das Muster ein wenig verändert, da ich sonst die Übergänge bei den Mustern nicht so schön fand. Ich häkle also in der 3. Runde zuerst den spike stitch, dann die 2 sc in den nächsten st. In Runde 4 häkle ich zurest 2 sc, dann 2 sc in next st, dann sc in next 5 st, usw., bis am Ende dann noch 3 st zu häkeln übrig sind.

Die Popcornstich-Beinchen haben mich ein wenig verzweifeln lassen. Zuerst habe ich die Kommentare gelesen, dann auf Ravelry geschaut, ob irgendeine andere Person damit Schwierigkeiten hatte. Aber gefunden habe ich nichts. Dann studierte ich die Bilder von anderen Projekten und probierte ein bisschen herum, bis mir klar war: Wenn die Häkelnadel aus der Masche gezogen wird, muss ich von vorne in die 1. dc (also den oberen Teil der Masche, als würde ich dort gleich eine sc machen), dann ziehe ich die Masche durch, gehe dann mit der Häkelnadel nach hinten und mache eine sc in die nächste Masche. Wahrscheinlich hätte ich das fotografieren sollen. Hm. Nächstes Mal.

Nach der ersten Testschildkröte holte ich meine Lace-Reste und meine ganz dünnen Häkelnadeln und schwitzte Bäche, aber die kleinste Zweifarbenschildkröte ist ungeheuer niedlich geworden. Bei ihr habe ich schon etwas ausprobiert, es dann aber wieder rückgängig gemacht: Mir gefällt nicht, dass der Schildkrötenpanzer so wenig Rand hat. Da die Beinchen etc. alle an das hintere Beinchen der Häkelmaschen (BLO = back loop only) gehäkelt werden, habe ich das vordere Beinchen dazu benutzt um einen Rand aus slip stitches zu machen.

Aber das ist bei dünner Wolle eine ziemliche Quälerei und sah bei der kleinsten Schildkröte nicht so gut aus. Also habe ich es bei der mittleren Schildkröte probiert und da sieht es gut aus, finde ich. Ich habe ihren Panzer um zwei Reihen höher gemacht - wahrscheinlich würde ich für eine weitere Schildkröte an die 5. Reihe eine 6. mit sc in all stitches machen und dann meinen Rand aus slip stitches machen.

Den Mund habe ich mir bei der großen Schildkröte gespart und bei den kleinen gleich Augen und Mund, ich finde die auch nicht unbedingt nötig. Die Tierchen sind schnell fertig und wenn sie nicht zum Spielen gedacht sind, müssen die Fäden auch nicht sehr sorgfältig vernäht werden, verknoten reicht völlig. *pfeift unauffällig*

Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass sie als Broschen, Ohrclips oder Magnete sehr hübsch aussehen. Ich jedenfalls darf mir jetzt den Kopf über das beste Reisestrickprojekt zerbrechen. Also außer den Pulswärmern für meine Patentante.

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.