Buying is boring

Ah, a chance to show off our mantelpiece in the
background, in a blurry, subtle way

A niche I discovered last week: A class, maybe twice a week, that will help you make your own wedding dress. (Yes! I am still talking about wedding outfits! It is clearly the week of the Brautfit, a contraction of bride and outfit in German which amuses me endlessly. Be very glad that this is the English blog or there would be a lot more of such humor. German humor! Rarely spotted in the wild!)

I digress. I thought that it would be fun to make my own, except that this full-time job of mine would get in the way, and I would need some hand-holding from someone who has done it before if I were to assemble something that complicated out of possibly pricey material. 

There is no such class (not that I looked hard for it) and I think my dress is quite brilliant, but I still wanted to make something by hand. The project of choice is now a fluffy, light loop scarf (Mohair Bias Loop pattern) that is brilliantly simple to knit (good for long phone calls or mediocre Netflix movies) and will keep my shoulders warm even in exploration of medieval catacombs (which may actually happen on my wedding day). I'm halfway done already, so we'll see what other things I come up with. 

One obvious idea would be some kind of head adornment. (It may be a consequence of three years in Ireland that make me think a fascinator is a definite possibility.) When trying on dresses, I was a bit confused that a simple head thing that looked like something made with a cheap plastic comb, a cheap plastic flower, a bit of Russian veil netting and a glue gun should seriously cost €89. It definitely wasn't an advanced piece of millinery; in fact, it made me think that it would probably inspire a lot of comments à la "There's an unexplained fake flower stuck to your head! Why o why?" in pragmatic, sensible Germany. 

I think I can do better. After I finish the pink fluffiness, and find a source of ivory-colored fascinator supplies.

Hibernian hibernation

At this point, Ireland owes me three summers. As you can see in the eloquence of the WhatsApp message there, the sudden onset of wintery conditions hinders my ability to speak (or write), forcing me to communicate solely in emoticons and interpunction.
It has warmed up a bit since last week so that I feel more talkative again, but in the meantime, viruses decided to make a home of my respiratory system. I've spent a few days extremely bored, lying around at home and feeling a wee bit sorry for myself.
Especially because only the first season of Downton Abbey is on Netflix, and I finished watching it, and so I was suddenly left with cliffhangers and quite a bit of my sweater left to knit.

The sweater, slowly taking shape

I've been feeling very Irish about my choice of Donegal Tweed yarn and cabled pattern. I might even make some progress before it is summer again (well, "summer"). I do hope that it's not too baggy - should this end up looking like a sack, I'm not sure I'll feel motivated to re-knit it in a smaller size.

What else?

• I have the German theme song of Doctor Snuggles stuck in my head, for unknown reasons - I'm not sure I've watched this show since the 80s.
  
• I wonder why I always feel totally excited about the idea of taking up running when I'm in bed sick (maybe because that's a safe moment to consider it: no danger of having to act on those brilliant intentions).
  
• I want to play around with Instagram photos and make them into neat printed products.
  
• I've drunk about 4 liters of red chili, fresh ginger, lemon juice and honey in hot water. Good for sore throats, more interesting than hot lemon.
  
• I've also tried to make a brownie in a mug in the microwave. Hm. It turned out edible but not entirely convincing - it was a bit overcooked, and olive oil may be a bit too strong for this, but considering it does make some chocolatey goo in only 1 minute in the microwave (1:30 was too long!), it's still quite okay.
  

From autumn, with love

If you were to say: "Hey! You haven't updated in a year!", then I would still be in a position to disagree... for two more days. Maybe autumn makes me chattier. (Maybe I'm trying to talk the leaves back up on the trees.) Last year, I found the first ripe chestnut well before the end of August - this year has been more traditional: The first ones appeared this weekend, but then, after a bright and summery Saturday and still-okay Sunday, autumn decided it was now time to step in. Temperatures have dropped, and so has foliage.
Howth still looked like that on Sunday. One of the best things about Dublin is that when it's sunny, you can take public transportation for 30 minutes and end up somewhere like that. (In fact, I read recently that some Thai beach resorts stole pictures of the Scottish and Irish coast and used it to advertise their own beaches.) (Obviously, public transportation also runs on rainy days. But the view just isn't quite the same.) (It should be sunny much more often.) And then yesterday, Ireland remembered its core strength and brought on the gloom and the rain.

So I guess there was only one reasonable thing to do: Take some Donegal tweed yarn, and work on a sweater. I still find it surprising that there are so few yarn shops in a country with such a high sheep to human ratio. Where does all this wool go? It can't all end up in touristy Aran sweater shops?

Time flies

The mess from last blog entry has been mostly cleared, and Dublin has been good to me so far. Too bad that none of that made it into my blog! This has to change. Let's try my luck with a simple picture project for now: Virtual polaroids! Pictured above is tonight's knitting. The scarf has been on my needles for a long time and travelled with me quite a bit. Amusingly, now I even met its designer and saw the original when buying wool at thisisknit.ie (lovely yarn shop, especially after seeing only acrylic and cotton yarn in Poland. Their site has the pattern for free!). It's pretty long already. If I keep watching Lost, I might even finish it. The weather has been changing wildly from 12°C and rain back to 23° and sun, so I think woolly things will be useful throughout the year here.

My First Sweater

I finished my first sweater! And it fits! Perfectly!
And now I'm even glad that suddenly, it's cold again -- it seemed a little silly to finish this right after winter was almost over, but the evenings can still be cool.
And I will now be a bit more patient with spring. If it chooses to wait until it hits Hamburg, then that's okay with me now.

People seem to agree that it does not look selfmade, and much less like a very first attempt at something wearable that isn't a scarf, and I take that as a compliment (and agree). 

still unarmed

My first sweater is almost finished! After a very, very long time - I got the wool for my birthday two years ago, and happily made about a third of it, only that then, christmas was approaching rapidly, providing a deadline for all knit gift ideas. So the sweater-to-be went into a year-long waiting stage, what with the hot summer that didn't make thick wool a tempting element of your free time, and time-consuming new jobs, and so on.
But now! Over christmas, it finally took shape. Now, only one sleeve missing and it will be done! Done! Done!

almost winter

Winter in Hamburg may be considerably less freezing than winter in Berlin, but still the idea of something to protect my hands from icy ocean breezes seems quite excellent. So I completed the first Knucks glove (and I hope I'll make the second one before winter is over again because last weekend I also started a somewhat complicated, vaguely lacy scarf that will also keep me busy for a while). I kind of like the idea of decorating the fingers with some kind of eight letter (or two four letter) word(s), but alas, I'm still completely uninspired as to which word that could possibly be that I would not get tired of after a week or two. And I don't want to use anything that was already suggested in the instructions.

blue Hallowig

That's the second wig I made - my first, pink one inspired a friend to loudly announce her wish for her very own, Yves-Klein-blue version of it. And since the one that was made according to the pattern was a little small, this one is knit on bigger needles. And even months after the actual birthday, it was still welcomed happily.

The pattern can be found here.

illusion knitting

seen from above


seen from the side

Seeing this in the Stitch'n Bitch book, I couldn't really imagine it, so I tried it - but as a pillow case, not as a scarf, and without the poisonous-looking green. The only problem is that after sitting on it a couple of times, the effect is a little destroyed and difficult to fluff up again to make the alien reappear... washing might help but I did the seams so neatly that it will be difficult.