eight hands and four brains would be nice

Don't look at me like that. I've been sick with a horrible cold that refused to leave for two weeks. I've been busy working. Not only am I responsible for daily tasks at the library, I also am a crucial part of thinking up strategies and composing posts for their facebook page, so much of my urge to express myself has found a new channel (oh those poor people).

Yes, I'm at work here. It's a picture from one of my facebook campaigns.

And when I'm not at work, I go and play. Sometimes at the movies. Sometimes I just stay at home and have fun talks with my flatmates. Sometimes I go to other people's libraries.

Reading comics at an early Halloween night at a friend's library in another part of Austria.

And when I'm not playing at other people's libraries, I enjoy the return of my cooking and baking mojo (yes, there might be a recipe post coming up). I've acquired some essential ingredients for making Japanese food and have been successful in making not only edible, but actually pretty delicious lunchboxes (or bento) when I can be bothered to get up early.

Onigiri!

My first proper bento - isn't it awesome?

And after all that, there's still my PhD (got my first book for that), my broken camera, the grey weather resulting in lack of light and I had to wait for an opportunity to go yarn shopping to continue my projects.

Raspberry Broadside is one of those projects. I started out not knowing whether I'd add a second skein, but since the yardage of the Zitron Unisono is about a hundred meters shorter than your average sock yarn, I came to the conclusion that I simply had to add another skein. So I had to wait until I could go yarn shopping. But the wait was well worth it, since now I can use this as my commuting knitting again. It's not like I have a very long commute, but every minute I can spend on knitting counts!

Another project that needed a second skein of yarn is my Stripester. I haven't even started it properly yet, because the blue yarn gave me such a tough time and I didn't know what it wanted to be. I had been bitten by the long stretchy sideways triangle scarf bug and I couldn't stop. But Lace wasn't the answer for this one.

Then I thought it could be a Destroyed Cowl, but I just wasn't feeling it. For the Destroyed Cowl, I had to do a provisional cast-on, which I did in some black merino yarn that I had left lying around and looking at it, I noticed what a striking combination the black and blue made. So - a long, stretchy, striped sideways triangle scarf it would be. And yet I had to wait to go buy the black yarn and now that I have it, I need to finish my other scarves first.

But I couldn't *not* knit while waiting for yarn. And while playing around with the yarn that would become Raspberry Broadside, I hit upon a pattern I had always dreamed of. I think you might have noticed my great love of flowers, particularly roses. And maybe you've also picked up on my obsession with dark (or dusky) pink. And then, I really like lace.

I've had a beautiful dark, dusky pink lace yarn since last summer, but other than knowing I wanted to do something with lace and roses with it, I had no clue. I had collected a couple of rose-inspired lace patterns, among them the Travelling Roses scarf and so I simply started knitting a shallow sideways triangle scarf with that lace pattern. The Zitron Unisono wanted to be Raspberry broadside, but the pattern would be perfect for my pink lace yarn. I started knitting and currently it looks like this:

Of course it's called Rose Brocade. Once the main body is done, I will add a gentle ruffle. It will be gorgeous, I'm sure.

I've done something else as well. I started blocking some things. Like ... this:

My Cool Copycat shawlette from last winter - apparently many of my knitted things need at least a year to mature before they get blocked and worn. I've been wearing it a lot recently and even got a compliment on it yesterday. Maybe that will motivate me to block some more of my things ... but recently I've been wondering how many more cowls, scarves, shawlettes and shawls I really need. Maybe I should give away those I never wear or unravel them if I still want to use the yarn ...


Something else that got blocked was my beautiful bunny dragon scarf. Now I just need some backing and then some time to sew it together ... (and you can catch a glimpse of my terrible chaos here).


















Finally as an end to this incredibly long post a little teaser. After all the lovely lace and ruffles, this project will go into a much punkier direction:

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.