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:

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.

the end of waiting

Oh jubilation! The time of lounging around on my couch and knitting baby clothes is at an end. *sniff* Goodbye anime! I guess I'll spend a little less time with you now, but I'll be so much happier.

Today I signed my contract to work at the Chamber of Worker's library for a year, starting this Thursday. I interned there last summer and loved it, so I am extremely happy to be back and to be able to mix things up there. I'll be partly responsible for their facebook feed, so it will get really interesting, I'm sure. And since I love bringing cakes to work, I'll be baking a lot more ... lucky colleagues!

But I said baby clothes in my last post, didn't I? Yes, sometimes I knit clothes for a non-specified child. No, not to give away. Or maybe yes, after I have stopped being capable of bearing children. But for now, some of the baby clothes I knit are for my own still non-existant children. (Note to self: good first step in that direction? Get a boyfriend.)

Most baby clothes for the Child of the Future happen like this: I go to my favorite yarn shop, see some yarn, note that the color combination is gorgeous and I'll have an idea of what to make. Sometimes I won't have an exact idea, but often I will. .And then I either start knitting right away or the yarn waits. And waits. And waits. Until I am struck with the need to knit something small but not too involved ...

Something not too involved? This little baby kimono? Oh ... whatever. I had the pink and black Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 for a while and wanted to do something with it ... something cool. What's cooler than a kimono? I looked up some of my favorite flowers and a fun fairisle pattern in my hand-drawn book of patterns where I keep everything I copy from somewhere else (occasionally, I design my own patterns, too).

For the actual kimono pattern, I used the Latte Macchiato pattern I found on Ravelry. I called mine Pink Punk but maybe Fluorescent Sakura would have been good, too. My camera can't handle this shade of pink ...

The back features this lovely rose you can hardly see and on each shoulder there's a little flower as well. It is very punky, but now there's thousands of ends to weave in, blocking and all that to do. I guess I'll institute a knitting morning in my work week. I can do this because I'll be working from noon to 8pm.

This is another creation for the Child of the Future. This time I thought up my own pattern and constructed this very randomly. I used a provisional cast-on and knit the fairisle band. Then I undid the cast-on and knit the orange part at the bottom.

After that, I started on the top part but unraveled it about four times to get the neck placement right, I wasn't sure whether to have more buttons on one shoulder to have more space for the head, I noticed I had enough yarn to make the sleeves a little longer and so I kept knitting and unraveling until I was quite annoyed with myself. In the end, I decided to only allow one button in the neck band and made the whole neck opening larger than before.

This one is called Arrow, knit in Lana Grossa Bingo and I must say, I am very happy with it. I just wish I could try it on an actual human child to see how it fits.

I do have a lot of Lana Grossa Bingo slotted for children's clothing. There's some purple and green waiting for something stripey, some pea green waiting for a pea jacket ... but this dark blue and light blue combination (inspired, I must add, by my Classic Baby Shirt, which I also knit for the Child of the Future) made it to the knitting process this time. It's actually pretty big, 80 stitches, if I recall correctly, maybe even 88. And I still have a bit of yarn left over, so I could have made it bigger.

But then I couldn't have added this incredibly twee collar. Yes, this piece of knitwear is called Sailor. Sue me for crimes against ... commonsense taste (or whatever the opposite of twee is called - the internets suggest unrefined, but that isn't correct, really), but I had to make this when I noticed that I really had lots of yarn left over.

A few more details: the front straps will be buttoned to the back as soon as I have proper buttons (must find something nautical). On the left, you can see some of the traveling jogless stripes in the round as taken from the excellent TECHknitting blog (link goes directly to the post on jogless stripes).

 

Finally I made this little number for the baby girl of an ex-boyfriend, but I'm starting to fear that she won't be able to fit in it anymore.

The Spirit of Lutin - the yarn was supposed to be a fairy doll - was made to fit a number of sizes, but I probably didn't make it wide enough.

After all, the main thing that makes all my baby knitting a somewhat risky investment is that I have no access to a real live child I could force to dress in the things I make. I bet if I ever have children they'll hate me for making them wear handknits all the time. Or they will always be the right size for all these pieces when it's summer ...



And with this the baby clothing streak is over for now. I've started two scarves for myself ... but the camera is still broken, because while I did buy superglue, I lost the piece of plastic I was supposed to reattach to the camera. Maybe I'll find it. Until then, a piece of tape will have to suffice. Let's see if they'll let me knit during work - maybe in the evening hours!

more sunlight please

Sadly the place where I applied for a PhD position doesn't want me. Ah well. If at first you don't succeed, etc. etc.

It's actually been cold enough here for knitting. I've finished knitting the most beautiful shawl for a dear friend of mine - as usual, I just need to weave in the ends and block it. I hope she likes it. It went surprisingly quickly, compared to the first time I knit that pattern. It's Ene's shawl, my own being pictured above. The first time felt like it was taking forever, those endless rows, but this time around, the pattern flowed better.

As a pattern, I've enjoyed Ene's Shawl very, very much, which is why I knit it a second time. But it's also a bit risky - what if your yarn runs out? Still, I had enough yarn for the second shawl, a beautiful green Lonco Solid from Araucania that my brother brought me from Wisconsin.

But if you want pictures ... there are none yet. While it has been cool enough to knit, it has also been too dark, on the whole, to take good pictures. Otherwise I'd show you the beautiful striped dress I made for a little girl and the cute light blue legwarmers, but noooo ... not enough sunlight.

On the other hand, I recently discovered that sewing isn't as much of a pain as I remember (crazy!) and I'm starting to think of either knitting or sewing a garrison hat, after I saw that one of the shops close to my house is selling them for 80 Euros. Maybe the cold is getting to my brain.

summer break

Oh boy. Ooooooh boy. I'm having a super-hectic July again. And this time my main workplace isn't climatised.

First of all, I am currently doing research on a somewhat forgotten composer of operettas. I can read the old handwriting style that was popular in German-speaking countries up to WWII and so when somebody calls the Austrian National Library and says "I can't read these letters from Grandma, please read them for me", they say "Uh, no, but we have someone on call who does this" and they call me. This happened again at the end of May and I got to transcribe over 300 letters and when everything was done, the woman actually writing the book asked me to help her with the historical research on the guy. So about three months after graduation, I am doing what I have been studying for the last ten years, my name will be in the book and I'm even getting paid! It's too bad we don't really have enough time, since there is a deadline from the publisher, but I have found all kinds of interesting things, so we're doing well. That's one thing. I have to go to archives, libraries and next week I'll be visiting cemeteries. Well, it's definitely educational and good experience.

The second thing, which I thought I could handle alongside the research, is a course in how to properly apply for jobs. I've wanted to do a course like that for a while, so I thought it would be ok, but there's this guy who talks allllll the time and is making things really miserable - dunno if for the rest of us, but certainly for me. But oh well, I'll learn some useful things and by the end of the course I'm sure I'll have a bit more confidence when it comes to applying for jobs.

And then there's the third thing. On Thursday during that course we had to work on the computers, drafting up a little paragraph that should advertise our greatness. I was bored and started looking around this job search engine for positions in academia, when I came across one that fit me perfectly. I got very excited and started researching and thinking about what I would need and today I already called there to ask about some details (like how many references I need and whether to send a picture or not and things like that) and emailed my professors about letters of recommendation.

With that, my July has entered crazytown. Added to that is the fact that I have committed myself to go to Berchtesgaden and see the Eagle's Nest on Monday and Tuesday - July has left crazytown and is heading for parts unknown.

The only thing I can do is do what I need to do and go with the flow. That means only little knitting (it's too hot, anyway), very little anime and a blogging break until at least two of the three things are over. I do wonder why these insane periods always come when it's hot outside which makes everything about 100 times worse, but eh. It's an exercise in Zen ... or perseverance.

it's getting very near the end

Last weekend there was a much-needed break with *nothing* happening, except light cleaning and baseball anime which would have lead to the thesis being completely abandoned, if the main character hadn't put me off at the end of the second season - Goro you moron, you can't leave Toshi alone! (not a link to second season - that's the 6th season there, wait a minute, there is no Toshi in the 6th season ... nooooooooooooo!).

Bishies and baseball, a deadly combination to the anime nerd academic. Now I'm back to the grindstone and my thoughts are finally starting to work again, the quotations are starting to turn into pieces of text and the end can't be that far off.

The best thing that has happened is knitting - finally. I almost forgot how nice it is to watch something and knit or go someplace and take the knitting along with you to pass the time. I'm working on a little cowl with some of the reward yarn I got this summer. But no pictures yet, because I'd first have to figure out how to get the card into the computer (or look for the cable).

Znaim/Znojmo in the Czech Republic.

And today my mother and I made a little run to Ikea, because Ikea has these lap cushions with a hard plastic surface for laptops. Genius! Especially since my touchpad is a touch too touchy for precise work, so I need my mouse. Now I can finally write with my computer on my lap and my mouse by its side - I'm sure the thesis will grow much faster. The other thing I really needed was a breakfast bowl of my own. Now I have one. And then there are always some things that you want and kind of need - new, colorful bedclothes, a new large cushion for the couch, a little plastic set thing for the couch table ... but I did not get the measuring cups, because my old ones are better.

Fotographed straight down

I hope this will be one of the last thesis posts ... I've finally recovered from the "so tired of my thesis" part, but I still want it to be over and done with. Which means - back to work, I guess!

and it's turned into something entirely different now

Losing my computer seriously threw me off. I had been doing so well, writing at least something every day and then suddenly I couldn't write. Writing a paper by hand only works when you're writing out bits and parts, but not whole paragraphs with citations. I was still reading books on the way to and back from work and at work waiting for library patrons, but then came the lectorship crunch and I only got back into writing when I finally had my new computer in my hands. It's taken me two weeks to get back in the state of mind where I actually have analytical thoughts.

In the meantime, I am sleeping next to piles of paper and about 10 or 12 books that need to be petted and cited and cursed at. The page count is increasing ever so slowly and everything is all over the place. Instead of turning out perfect paragraphs, I'm writing bits and pieces of thoughts and wonder where I can insert them. One procrastination maneuver is of course filling in all the spots marked with red which need more citations and another is checking the citations in the books to see if the pages are correct.

Add to that the beautiful Vienna weather with its nightly thunderstorms and torrential rainfalls. My head hurts almost constantly, even though I really try to get a lot of water and sleep. One success, though: my diet doesn't completely consist of chocolate pudding and coca-cola yet. I'm limiting myself to two puddings and two cokes a day and I'm having plenty of vegetables and some meat to make sure my vitamins stay up-to-date.

On the whole, I feel somewhat strange. My work obligations are almost almost over (three day break while the graphic designer finishes up the catalogue) and I am spending my time in bed with my computer on my lap and the books around me. I haven't talked to some of my friends in ages and feel definitely recluseish.

Somehow my benign little Operation Sonnenstrahl has turned into D-Day (must get inspiration where it lies) and Band of Brothers helps with motivation: Gimme three da-ays and three ni-ights of hard fightin', and you will be relieved! I can't even say at what percentage the laser is, since I haven't done a page count and it would probably be very off with all the bits and pieces.

Monday is the last library visit - there are still citations that need checking! After all, I can't use third-hand citations, it's bad enough that I have plenty of second-hand citations in there already. That's the problem with doing a European topic, the literature is all over Europe and Vienna sadly doesn't have the greatest university library in history.

On the whole, though, I can already see various carrots dangling on the other side of the thesis - the master's degree for one and the prospect of spending my time as I wish without guilty feelings. Movies. Knitting. Books. It will be wonderful.

Gratuitous Scotland pictures all taken while on a weekend trip with the Edinburgh University Folk Society in Inveraray in October 2006.

Bond has destroyed the laser

It is a sad fact that supervillains are never safe from heroes. Heroes (and heroines) come and blow up the stuff we lovingly build, expensive stuff, I might add, and things that might be useful or fun. Then they come, destroy it all and then the world wonders why we hold it to ransom for a million billion dollars.

My laptop's harddrive has given up the ghost in this wretched heat and decided to contract a case of surface and reader head damage. Thankfully I listened to the internets and did not attempt to save it with the help of my computer wiz friend, but delivered it to a data recovery service the next day and the day after that they had already been able to save all the data. All that remains is a very expensive lesson about backing up your data - if I had made a backup of the thesis and the most important other data (like my pictures from Scotland), I would have simply bought a new computer, but as the half-written thesis was on it and only some parts of it at my professor's, I had to save it all.

Why not simply write it again? Because I am working two jobs at the same time and trying to finish the thesis, too. I only have time to do dishes on the weekends. The red nailpolish on my toenails is growing out naturally, because I don't have time to remove it. My fingernails need to be cut. And even though the main job will be finished by the end of July - which I'm rather sad about, because it's basically paid fun - that's when the thesis should also be finished. So I just don't have time to write 20 pages again (my professor has about 30).

A few things have gone well, though. The university has accepted all the paperwork I could give to it before actually handing in my thesis, so now I am just waiting for the mills to spit it out again. My internship at the library is the best ever and today I shushed a patron - for the first time I had the right and the duty to do so :D I'm CRAZY with the power (as befits a villainness).

In the meantime, I haven't given up on Operation Sonnenstrahl. Currently I'm working on the beginning of it all, which is fun, because it doesn't need as many citations and I can just let the words flow freely and I'm writing on paper, because my mother's mac has the world's worst keyboard and I dislike macs. AKA, I still have the plans for the laser and I am making sure that it's being rebuilt, while I hold the world to ransom for a million billion dollars and chocolate pudding.

if i seem to have left the building, it's because ...

I'm insanely busy. From 8 to 4 I work at a library, catalogueing and making sure that patrons have someone attending to them during the lunch hours and then I head over to my second job, which is proofreading data entries for a medical catalogue. Then I get home, eat something that I prepared the evening before and half of which I already ate for lunch, do the most necessary housework and then work on my thesis. In between, I take naps. I take naps at lunch, I take naps in the streetcar on my way to the second job and I take a nap after I eat, before I do chores and thesis.

Which leaves me with about zero time for knitting. I'm lucky if I get a page done a day, yesterday, I even got to 50 pages, so I could start warming up the generator for the laser ... but I still don't know what I want to write on the moon. I'm sure everything will come back once July is over and the thesis is done :)

I did get good news today, apparently they're already done with the silly piece of paper I had to submit, but I can only pick it up between 10 and 12 in the morning, so I'll have to do that and stay at work longer, which means staying at my second job longer, which means getting home later, which means ... and so on. But I shall persevere! I found a postcard in one of the books I've been catalogueing and it said: "Work and don't despair!" and since these books are from my father, my grandfather, my grandmother and their parents, I'm taking it as a message from beyond :D

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 ...