two of many






This winter I knit a large amount of cowls, scarves, shawls and other neckthings. Yesterday and today I attempted to take some pictures, but mostly failed, since the sunlight and my camera didn't like me. I'll try again after my final exam, maybe I'll be more relaxed then. 


The above picture and the one on the right belong to a neckthing - a scarf that can be buttoned up to make a large cowl or one that can be wrapped around the neck twice or used as a turban, armsling or whatever strikes your fancy. This is my own pattern, but I was inspired by the many similar ones out there and by the Shippo scarf from the book Scarf Style. Due to the colors, I gave it the rather dramatic name Smouldering Storm. Yes, I have a thing for dramatically named things.

The yarn is Rowan Summer Tweed, 70% silk, 30% cotton, full of weird plant bits. I suspect Rowan of deliberately spinning in the plant bits to give it a "rustic" feel. I hate weird plant bits in my yarn. And then the buttons! Sewing on nine buttons ... I don't know what came over me.

This one is the Boneyard Shawl, dubbed Le temps des cerises, because drama. It's remarkably difficult to take pictures of yourself without a tripod, which is why in the far-off future, I will have a tripod of my own.

The yarn I used is Lana Grossa Biosoja, a sleek but soft mix of cotton, bamboo and soy. The yarn itself is a knitted tube, so when it snags, which it does frequently, it's impossible to put the snag back where it came from - annoying. Still, my favorite shawlette of this winter.

The leftovers have been turned into something I called "Little Ripple", which has refused to be photographed. Maybe I'll just have to bundle up all my knitwear, take a friend and have a photo session somewhere.

So far, so good. Studying for the final exam is still going on, only 4 more days and I'll be a bona fide historian with a title (kind of scary). I'll try to relax by looking at the moon ...

and here I thought 2011 was going to be different

There were supposed to be two major differences. First of all, 2011 was supposed to be a happy year. Not so. My best friend's father died yesterday. And just like M., who helped me during my father's illness, because she had experienced the same a few months earlier, I am now able to help him. It still sucks, though, and I really want noone else to experience this kind of grief.

Secondly, 2011 was supposed to be the year of knitting for myself. Ah well ... there is no such thing. I made two lovely things for a friend of mine and my brother's girlfriend. As a matter of fact, they turned out so cool that I almost regret giving them away, something that happens fairly often when I knit things for others.

These are the Mountain Form Slippers, a Japanese pattern, with modifications as developed by another knitter. It took me a while to get them right and I'm still not 100% convinced ... maybe I should have knit them even more tightly. The yarn used is Lana Grossa Bingo and a bit of Lana Grossa Nuvola for the skulls.

When I thought about what I could knit for my friend V., whose birthday was in January and who was my main support throughout the whole writing process and proofread many parts of my thesis, I thought about socks. Or slippers. And then inspiration hit me. I've always wanted to make a Yorick scarf, but the yarn wasn't available. Then Lana Grossa Nuvola came out and seemed like a good match. I just needed to test how it would felt. Ta-daa, felted skulls. Only now the winter yarn season at my LYS is over, so I need to wait until next winter to buy more Nuvola. I've also thought about embroidering the skulls to make them look like Mexican sugar skulls, but couldn't find my embroidery yarn. They're still extremely cool - I called them Mountain Goth, since she also is a capricorn and likes many things gothy.

These are the birthday fingerless gloves for my brother's girlfriend. I call them Lilac Butterflies. She loves cool purple and this yarn caught my eye at the yarn shop. It's Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 Melange, i.e. heathered. I absolutely love that Lana Grossa developed this kind of yarn, it adds such depth to the color and makes it a little less in your face at the same time.

When I saw the yarn at the yarn store, I already knew what design I would use. The pattern came from a sock pattern in the book "Socks, Socks, Socks", one of my first knitting books and is pretty simple to knit, except it takes up a lot of space (6st repeat).

And now it's time to stop knitting again. I'm supposed to study for my final exam, but got sidetracked today, cleaning up the chaos of finished projects, wandering yarn balls, tangled needles and knitting notions that had taken over my couch. The plan is to block something every day, so I can put it away. That means weaving in ends on a lot of projects, though - and I hate that so much. But since I have guests coming and the couch still isn't entirely cleared, I had to make some kind of effort. Tomorrow: studying.

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.

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 ...