poor blog

Abandoned for weeks, while I go off to have fun at work! Abused for facebook testing! A blog's life is hard.

I have tons of knitting to show you. I finished beautiful things. But now that my work is taking up a lot of time in my day, the amount of knitting I do has gone down of course. Not that anybody would see and I don't think most people would mind if I knit at work - but it's just not done. So I knit on my way to work, I knit in the morning before work, I knit in the evening after work.

The week before I started working, I celebrated by yarn shopping. I went to the yarnshop that is just around the corner from work - the wonderful Laufmasche and bought lots of yarn. And then I cast on immediately. ITO Sensai, a Japanese silk/mohair yarn, just can't be kept waiting. I picked up one little yarn cake of Blackberry and one of String and just knit whatever came to mind. Stripes, lace, cables, stockinette, garter stitch, on and on until I felt it was long enough. And it turned out beautifully, as you can see on the left.

The purple is such a beautiful, rare shade, the silk adds luster and depth, and the soft mohair just feels heavenly. The "String" colorway is not exactly grey, it has a subtle brownish touch, which adds warmth to the cold purple. I simply called it Blackberry String.

 
After I was done with this beauty, I somehow felt the urge to start a project I've had in mind since last fall. One of my favorite yarns, Lana Grossa Nuvola, has been discontinued and replaced with an updated version. The updated version is fine, too, but just doesn't have the same beautiful heathered colors that the original used to have. Good thing I bought plenty of Nuvola for two pairs of mittens and two jackets. But back to that project.

Back in 2009 I picked up some yarn at the medieval market happening every year at the Army History Museum in Vienna. It's kind of like a Renaissance Fair, but with a more military aspect. Anyway, there was a dyer who dyed with natural dyes that were available in medieval times, too. So I bought some yarn dyed with madder and some that was dyed with walnut. And ever since then I've been in love with the combination of light brown and bright red, with some white added to it, for good measure. Last year, Nuvola had those exact colors.

All that was left to do was pick some medieval patterns and start knitting. But I let the yarn rest. And rest. And rest. Until two weeks ago. Then inspiration struck.

This summer I bought a red shirt with little white bunnies on it. You can see it on the right, with the matching earrings. I love that shirt. And I quite like bunnies. So I looked at all the patterns I could find that seemed medieval to me and when I saw a bunny pattern, I knew I'd put it in my scarf.

In the end, it turned out like this:

I added some fairisle patterns I had copied from a book in Scotland for good measure and a much more medieval dog pattern, did some math (many times), cast on (many times) and knit. In the round. Yes, there was going to be steeking.

In the end, Le lièvre et le dragon took almost exactly the three balls of yarn I had, one of each color. For the white parts of the fringe, I needed a tiny bit of yarn from another ball, because I had used the white ball of Nuvola for Totoro eyes, Totoro stomach (twice) and skulls.

Isn't it gorgeous? I still need to even out some of the stitches, sew the steeked endings a little more tightly to the scarf, and once it is blocked, I need to see whether the scarf needs backing, but I'm already incredibly proud of it.

But what now? I have three big projects from last spring that need completing, two of which I actually want to finish, lots of small projects that need finishing, and little knitting time. But since the large projects are too large to lug around and the small projects need too many bits and pieces to carry with me, I cast on for yet another scarf, because I don't have one million billion kajillion scarves already. But who could say no to this color?

My Raspberry Broadside, made with the incredibly soft Zitron Unisono - the first sock yarn I've held in my hands that is actually soft enough for a scarf - is a bit of an experiment as well. I'm currently undecided whether I want to add a second skein, so I'll be weighing the rest of the skein to see how much yarn I still have left over.

There is lots more yarn waiting for me. There are many, many patterns in my queue. But I signed up to start working on my PhD and we'll see how it all goes with working, studying and knitting. One thing is sure: there will be no knitted Christmas presents this year - for the first time in ages.

what am i doing?

Recently I read another knitting blog that raised a lot of questions for me. What am I doing with my blog? What are my intentions with it? What am I showing and why am I showing it? How am I writing and why am I writing this way? What could I do differently? What does my blog say about me? When I started the blog, I intended to write "a knitting blog, although I guess I won't be able to keep out my opinions on movies, books, comics, music and other things out completely. A knitting blog that will hopefully not only cover the projects I'm working on, but also my thoughts on knitting, new patterns I've discovered, things that are going on in the knitting world and so on."

Ha! Considering the blog started to turn into THESIS BLOG in June 2010, it now seems a rather lofty goal. But up until then I had talked about my knitting, mostly, with a bit of music and anime thrown in for good change. And then I started with pictures of flowers. I worked so much in July 2010 that I had no time to knit and the computer broke and the thesis ... and I started illustrating my blog with pictures of Vienna and Scotland. Before going completely silent in September, I posted pictures from Switzerland, the Czech Republic and, once again, Vienna. Then I finally returned to blogging in February 2011, after I had finished the thesis and started posting pictures of the sky and the moon. And a few knitted items, too. Then, more pictures of flowers and of places I had been to - Hungary and Germany.

After reading the other knitblog, I'm now feeling uncomfortable with my pictures of flowers and earrings and the moon and the places I went to. I feel like I'm bragging. I feel like I'm being twee or posing as a hipster. I feel ... pretentious. The other knitblog had a lot of pictures of stuff - buttons, mugs, cloth, cutesy things. I thought of Bezzie and her views of another knitblog with beautiful (but extremely pretentious) pictures of knitting. I thought of all the other knitblogs I read - most of them feature either the knitter's life as it is or they feature lots of knitting. A very few - one or two - feature photography that I would call ... show-offy. A very few - one or maybe two - feature photographs of things other than knitting. I don't read the show-offy ones very often and I don't read the ones showing lots of cutesy stuff very often, either.

So why the heck did I post so many (pretentious, show-offy) pictures of flowers, the sky and the places I had been?  I mean, sheesh, for my travels, I actually have albums on facebook. Why here? I'm not even using the pictures to illustrate how certain colors of certain places INSPIRED me (caps because pretentious). My inspiration doesn't work that way. The rhododendrons in the last post made me think of underwear, not knitting. Maybe it's because I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing. The other blog was eloquent, if at times infuriating (because trite, wrong or pretentious, also some elements of the writing style got on my nerves very much). I feel like my posts aren't eloquent at all. I feel they're short and matter-of-fact and there's a lot of "-" and "...".

The knitblogs I like to read the most are eloquent and funny. And they make the daily life of their writers sound interesting. One of my favorite blogs doesn't even have pictures - or only very rarely. I don't trust my sense of humour to come across very well, it is weird, nerdy and obscure. My daily life isn't very interesting, either. I could rant away about the person playing saxophone in the other room (who is leaving in a few days, I'm glad to say) or about the lack of a shower curtain or the brothel or whatever it actually is (officially a swinger club/sauna ... yeah, right) in our house or the weird owner of the hotel in the house behind us who screams at people who put their trash in the trashcans because sometimes there are people who don't live in our house who deposit their trash in our trashcan, but while I love reading about such things on other blog, I, myself, don't feel like writing about them.

I could show you pictures of my room, of the flat I share with two other people, of the house and district I live in - but I'm shy about posting pictures of my own self and I wonder if my readers (I do have readers, the blog stats say so) actually would find it interesting to see where I live. I'm also afraid of looking pretentions in the way of "ooooo, look at me, I live in VIENNA in a house with JUGENDSTIL windows on the TOP FLOOR in one of the HIP DISTRICTS". But why did I post pictures of Vienna and other places I've visited, then? Nothing else to say or show, I guess. And the idea that a blog post without pictures is a bad blog post (I think I read that somewhere). Well, maybe I should take pictures of my chaotic room ...

Where is that line between pretentious and "oh look, I went here and saw this neat thing"? Where is the line between twee and "these are the buttons I'm going to use for this cardigan"? Showing you pictures of the two bowls that I got last week from a jumble sale - is that pretentious? After reading the other blog, I guess the answer is: yes. Showing you my grandmother's soup bowl that I use in place of a yarn bowl - that wouldn't be pretentious, I hope. It's not like it's a superduper expensive treasure or something. It's just a soup bowl.

But the other bowls aren't either. And they aren't even from the 19th century or anything. Googling has revealed that they must have been produced between 1939 and 1945 and inspection has revealed that I scratched the surface of one of the bowls during transport (bad porcelain, I must say). Showing you the earrings my mother gave me for my birthday - pretentious, I guess (really?). Is showing you the earrings that I recently bought from a place that sells cheap jewelry and repainted with nailpolish pretentious or a useful idea?

I do know that I feel jealous of bloggers who post pictures of the beautiful places they live in and the places they visit and the knick-knacks they own and the things they knit, always photographed against interesting backgrounds, in great clothes and neat shoes and headscarves and makeup. Actually, when I see the things they own, I want to own them, too. And I am jealous of their lives, too. Heck, I, too, would like somebody else to take pictures of me in my knitting in nice clothes and makeup in beautiful locations. I'd love to be married and have children, too. But I already have plenty of twee knick-knacks and buttons and live in a beautiful place and I have opportunities to go to beautiful places and knit beautiful things and I can take pictures of flowers and the moon and whatever else strikes my fancy. And marriage and children will come (hopefully). And why shouldn't I post these things on my blog? It's my blog, after all.

But I now feel just as pretentious as those bloggers. Displaying my privileged life and the stuff I own was not one of my intentions when I started this blog and now it's even less my intention. But it's so easy to hide behind beautiful pictures. It's easy to say "I went to Bonn and to the country and killed millions of dandelions" and not talk about the things that I should be doing (looking for a job, among other things). And damn, whining about the loss I feel after finishing my thesis is pretentious, too, which is why I haven't done it here.

I also find the pretentious blogs boring. There, I said it. Yes, buttons, yes, knitting, yes, whatever. I'm curious about your life, not your buttons. Well, I'm definitely a voyeur, heck, I see nothing wrong with what Jimmie Stewart did in Rear Window. But then, I am a historian, a professional voyeur of people's lives in the past. I'm immensely curious about the way people lived and continue to live (a convenient excuse), so I want to know how the knitbloggers live, too. Otherwise, show me your knitting and plenty of it.

But all this makes me wonder - what the heck should I write about on this blog then? Well, maybe I should write more about my knitting and take pictures of me in it, even if I'm not wearing makeup and the background is chaotic! I've also come to the conclusion that writing about knitting itself can be pretty pretentious, too, but still, I haven't done a post about "what knitting MEANS to me" yet. Maybe I should do that (don't worry, it won't be about CONNECTIONS or CONSUMERISM). Maybe I should just write what I want to write and show what I want to show and concentrate on my own life instead of looking at all the others and wondering why they seem to have it so much "other" than me. Of course other people lead different lives and write different blogs, duh.

Maybe it's time for a new job it totally is.

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.

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 ...