Roads to Safe Places

I finished my first ever cardigan, the Gyre Cardigan.

Even though I did cave and knit a swatch (I hate swatching. It seems like such a waste of time), I got worried at first and started out with thirty stitches more at the beginning because it seemed too small, and several larger things that I'd knitted turned out far too small. It was very difficult at first to judge whether or not the cardigan would when it was still on the needles.

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I should be doing several things for work at the moment, instead I'm learning how to do cable projects, starting with, what else, a scarf. It'll go well with my green hat, though.

Since we'd spent most of our first day indoors we had planned to spend more time outside on the second day and explore the inner city and the English Garden.



( Munich )

On the second day we explored Leipzig. I discovered that my cold was not quite gone and thus my head felt as though it'd been packed in cotton wool the entire day.



( Leipzig )

Look what I made for T., angie_21_237's little girl. Not that she's old enough to care, but I'm really happy with the result and am working on one for Crocky and me.

I used baby-appropriate wool that is washable and dyed in dye that does not threaten anyone's health. Well, and this pattern.

Of course I ran out of wool on the last legs of Crocky's broomstick lace (or rather: plunger lace) scarf, so that project is on hold for now. I did purchase some ... Bändchengarn. Ribbon yarn? I don't know, but it looks like this and completed a scarf with that. I'm quite happy with how it turned out, but it isn't very warming, albeit decorative:



I love this stitch, it's fun to do and looks quite fancy, especially with the new yarn (the above scarf is about 1,60m long and made of exactly one ball of the yarn mentioned above).

I also caved and started working on a project involving this year's version of the granny squares that is currently all the rage on Ravelry, a pattern called "African Flowers", though I don't really understand where the name comes from.



Currently I'm trying to work on a Heidi Bear's Happypotamus, though I can't join-as-you-go as required by the project and though I don't really have any of the stuffing material that I'd need yet, either.

Quite apart from the fact that I'm not entirely clear what I'm going to do with a Hippopotamus toy once I'm done. Crocheting does clutter up the place with stuff. Ah, we'll see how this one turns out. I binned some of my early projects already because I didn't think that they were salvageable and I couldn't unravel all of them, especially if they were made of fuzzier yarn.

I finished my crocheting project: I made it a neck warmer rather than a scarf, though. I'm thinking about making some fingerless gloves or gauntlets in the same pattern now that I'm done with this pattern. I actually bought the yarn to knit a scarf, but it looks as though knitting will have to wait a bit longer.

This is it. Front:


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Dear flist,

I hope you all have a happy, snow-free and relaxing Easter if you are celebrating or similar spring-related holidays!

It's a blessing to have you in my life. ♥

It's amazing how little I remember of my school French, and yet, how much comes back when I'm surrounded by native speakers. Because everybody speaks English I did not have to use my A2 French to full advantage, but it's still comforting to know that in a pinch, I can buy meringues in various flavours in French. Ordering food at the restaurant we had lunch at did not work as well and thus we switched to English, but speaking the language after such a long time was still a very nice experience. Today, we had a look at Notre Dame and the Operas. There is so much to see that I only have pictures of a fraction of the interesting things that we did see, and even those are too few.


( Notre Dame )


( Odds, ends, and the opera )

Crocky and I went to a local insect exhibition today. It was at a tiny community centre around the corner and the poster had promised all manners of exciting large exotic creatures and they charged a rather hefty entrance fee. However, we soon realised in the first room that it was two small and rather dingy rooms and most of the all insect exhibits and also most others were pinned, some already very old and discoloured, and therefore not all that exciting - even though the organisers had clearly attempted to make them look more interesting by arranging them in terrariums. 

The second room was a very pleasant surprise because the organisers had brought their pet reptiles, spiders and myriapods and were showing them to visitors. Espeially the boas and the tortoise petting zoo were a big hit, though was a bit worried for the tortoises in particular. But the owners always watched out for their animals, and especially the teen handling the snakes and spiders seemed to know what he was doing and always made sure that the visitors treated his charges with respect, so I suppose they were fine.  



( Spiders, insects, myriapods, and snakes. )

I want giant millipedes as pets. Crocky favours the boa we met today, but I think that these tiny plant-detritus eating creatures that don't grow to a length of 6m and don't live on live piglets are infinitely preferable. 

Bremen is snowy at the moment, the annual Christmas market is in full swing, and our house is becoming more Christmassy, too - all the other windows are blinking or light up at night.

To join in, I put up some decoration as well, though compared to the lavish display of our neighbours mine is half-hearted at best, but then, I never really know what to do in terms of window decorations. I don't really like things that blink or light up, and thus I went for red sisal stars. And there's our tree and wreath, too. 



( Close-ups of decorations. )

It's Sunday evening already? I don't want to go out tomorrow. Thanks to autumn the weather has become really depressing around here. Our car is in the shop, too, so I'm taking the bus, which means leaving the house at 6:45am, and due to various meetings and parents evenings and that type of nonsense I am usually only home after 6pm, which means that in the mornings I go out and at night I come home and the sky looks like this: 

  
It's always cold, dark, and wet. Thanks, Bremen! 

Mild the mist upon the hill Poem

by Emily Bronte

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And 'neath my father's sheltering roof
And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon's mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years.

Crocky and I went on a trip to Verden today. We were actually going to look at an abandoned ammunition factory in a village near Verden, but then found the entire area roped off and warning signs saying those going there were in mortal danger, so we opted out. 

I am now a bit sadder that the school in Verden that I applied with back in the day did not want me, the town is very pretty. 



( Touristy impressions of Verden. )

I am not even kidding. Having a balcony and autumn weather sometimes means that the creepy-crawlies we get are really big and interesting. This is one of them - a spider with eggs. 

Below are the resulting pictures - they're a disturbing if you don't particularly like spiders. Some of them are sadly a bit blurry. 

( Here be spiders. )

At the beginning of the twentieth century a Viking burial ship was discovered in a burial mound near Kerteminde.

Today, there is a a museum about the burial mound as well as a replica. They also have a shipyard in which they rebuild findings from the tenth century (with period tools!). 



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I was born in Hamburg. The city has a big harbour, and excursions to said harbour and prerequisite tours of it by boat are a school trip staple of all towns in a 50km radius. There is also the annua Hafengeburtstag a street festival celebrating the anniversary of the harbour, and plenty of other, harbour-and-boat-related activities. I get seasick and somehow never caught the any romantic ideas about a seafaring lifestyle. 

Thus at some point I did mention to Crocky that I am not, really, that interested in boats. She gave me a long look and said, "I may have bad news for you." She was not wrong. Still, the reconstructed harbour we visited was very nice. It's another living history museum and very much worth the trip. 

There were some boats. 



( This is Bork... )

( Modern Bayeux-style-tapestry on the history of the harbour )

Our journey was really relaxed and pleasant. We packed our car, drove to Hamburg to pick up our tent and were welcomed with a great breakfast my mother had prepared. We spent some time there, then left for Denmark. 

And arrived in Hvide Sande that evening. The camp site was alright, and the highlight of the trip were the gigantic moths which always came to the kitchen and bathrooms during the night, most notably the garden tigers (see the last two pictures under the cut).

Also, I'm marvelling at what the Danes think of the infestation of my country(wo)men every summer. There are more Germans than Danes on the campsite we are on, and most natives we've run into had a frightfully good command of both English and German. Of course, German must be easy to learn for speakers of Germanic languages as close to ours as Danish, but my Danish is not even good enough to get me through a casual chat at the supermarket, so I can't help but be very impressed, and feel a slight Fremdscham or some of my more noisy and impolite compatriots. 

Tonight at a tiny seaside restaurant the German family next to us, confident in the knowledge that we wouldn't understand their language, talked about us and then pointed out our meals and commented on it to each other. They did stop after a pointed look (and after we started a German conversation), but even without us being German, given the language expertise of the natives and basic human decency, I wonder what got into them. 



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stolen from lordhellebore :

Ask me to take pictures of any aspect of my life that you're interested in/curious about -- it can be anything from my favourite shirt over the inside of my fridge to my mobile phone. Leave your requests as a comment to this entry, I'll snap the pictures and post them as soon as I can.

Ever since we read this comic Crocky and I wanted to see how Dax would do on an intelligence test. We both never even knew that there was such a thing as intelligence tests for animals, and I'm still agog. What's the point? o.O I can sort of see it for service dogs, but for pets? Who cares?

Meet Dax, my mother's hunting dog.



He is a Pudelpointer, and we already know that he passed the German character test required to allow him in public without a muzzle or a leash in designated areas with flying colours, so I was not too worried about his performance.

But I was still curious how well ( he ) would ( do on the test. )

So he is still the smartest. ♥


My cat probably isn't. ( Sev. )