I feel the Earth move under my feet

Do you know like we were saying, about the earth revolving? It’s like when you’re a kid, the first time they tell you that the world is turning and you just can’t quite believe it ’cause everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it – the turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go… That’s who I am.

These days I barely realize how fast time flies by, until another week has gone by and I’m going square dancing and barbecuing and doing yarny stuff over at Annelie’s and taking guided tours around my neighborhood and having business lunch with my friends and climbing up church towers and saving our little grill from the sudden downpour. My Ravelry project page certainly reflects that – I just updated it with a shawl I finished on April 4th, but other than that I just have a ton of half-finished projects flying around. I did finish the socks I started when I needed something to knit for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I back in, uh, November, and I’m almost done with a precious little baby set in red and yellow – it’s funny how Elizabeth Zimmerman’s patterns totally work if you actually follow them.

Also, this week Annelie and I finally got around to dyeing some yarn, with easter egg dyes, Kool-Aid and onion skins. There was a whole rainbow of little skeins of wool that she’d inherited from her great-grandmother, and then five big skeins that we met up to untangle and wind into balls just yesterday.

(from top to bottom: kool-aid, easter egg dye, onion skins first skein, onion skins second skein. yes, I am aware of the fact that these are only four skeins; Annelie had already started winding one)

I love winding yarn into balls, or in my case flat yarn cakes that don’t roll around quite so absurdly. It’s a very social thing, absolute teamwork, with one holding the skein and the other one winding the ball, and while you’re connected to thousands of years of history, you have tons and tons of time on your hands to just talk. And with five 130 g skeins of fingering-weight yarn, that’s quite a lot of time. Good times. We split the onion skeins fraternally (or sororically) and are planning on a glove KAL; the blue-and-green skein is mine and mine alone, yes yes my precioussss, and Annelie promptly cast on another Baby Surprise Jacket with the Kool-Aid skein.

I cannot stress how heartbreakingly gorgeous the first onion yarn is. The second, paler one is still quite pretty, but the first one… It’s like spun gold. Which quite frankly I hadn’t expected from onions. Of all things, really.

And so, life goes on and on. Down from the road where it began. (speaking of which, today is the first day of Sherlock shooting in Cardiff. I can’t wait for the second season!) There are two weeks left until the Wollefest, two months minus one day until I have to hand in my Bachelor’s thesis. And before I’ll know it, summer will be over and done with, and the leaves will turn to gold, and nothing gold can stay. I feel the earth move under my feet…

EXTERMINATE

(a TARDIS-blue sky, people. a TARDIS-blue sky)

**

So, I might have mentioned in passing that I’m a bit of a geek.

And also, the astute may have noticed that sometimes, I have just the slightest tendency to knit geeky stuff.

Ahem.

There may be just the slightest possibility that… I’m knitting a Dalek vest.

I swear, it started out as a joke! I was reading a fanfic that had geek!Jensen own a Dalek costume, and Saskia and I were talking about how awesome it would be to have one, and how I should knit one, and… and then I kind of immediately ripped back the slightly, subtly geeky Ghostproof sweater, wound the 4-ply yarn into 8-ply, and started charting, and here I am, with the first of three rows of circles finished and only stopping because I have to study at some point and also I need a breather from intarsia.

Seriously, intarsia! Holy crap. This is my first intarsia project, and while it’s kind of fun, I haven’t yet figured out a technique to get rid of the tangling. As of now, I’m using two little balls of yarn to freezer bags with the corners cut off, and it’s working moderately well, but it still kinda fries my brain. And I still get tangled up.

I had to pick up the front of my cardi a couple of times to do some calming down (especially before I got the freezer bags), but, you know. I’m thinking it may be kind of worth it, though it’s definitely a long way off from becoming my favorite technique ever. (Then again, nothing will ever beat lace, so…)

That’s already a lot of Whose Line episodes right there! I just try to keep calm and carry on, and I chant ‘With great effort comes great satsifaction’ under my breath a lot. It’s a good thing to make those things round-ish, I needed 14 center stitches instead of 9, so I’ve already finished a third instead of a quarter of the lower body. Right now I’m just trying to decide whether I should make the dots in the other two rows the same size or have them get smaller as we go up. I’ll mull that over a bit, since I really need to get to that studying I’ve been pushing back to get some knitting in. oÔ

Hot blooded

Summer’s picking up speed, all I do all day long is sweat profusely, and my brain works only sluggishly – which must be the reason for this insanity: worsted weight. merino. cardigan.

Yes, in what must have been a momentary lapse of reason, I started Girl Friday last night, and I already have a good six inches. It’s kind of ridiculous, I’m so used to hundreds of stitches that I laughed out loud when I saw the back was only 107 stitches in the 2XL, which I’m making. 107 stitches! The front parts are slightly smaller than a round of a sock!

So, thanks lace knitting for putting things in perspective. I guess. Still, the pattern is ridiculously easy to remember, makes for great TV knitting. I basically looked at it, knit the first half repeat, and had committed it to memory. Very nice. TV choice last night: first two or three episodes of ‘Pushing Daisies’ until Chuck annoyed me too much to bear, then as a contrast ‘Shortbus’, which I hadn’t seen in ages.

Also, despite the utter annoyingness that is Chuck, Emerson Cod the PI is hilarious AND awesome. He’s this big, burly, black dude who… knits. Which explains my squee. In stressful times, he apparently finds the stockinette stitch especially calming, and he also freed himself, the Pie Maker and Chuck from a rather precarious situation involving body bags, wrist ties, and a car running on dandelions – with the help of a straight, purple knitting needle. Yay!

He also has a drawer full of money cozies in a lovely shade of light green. And he says things like ‘I’m gonna do XY… once I’ve finished purling this row.’

Working vigorously on the cardi means I’m abandoning the Garden shawl (aka the DicksWithWingsShawl) a bit, but that’s okay, I guess. I still have all summer for that. I should be concentrating on the Swallowtail anyway, that thing’s due in a month and a half.

Sadly, the warm weather also means the Tilting Tardis Cowl hasn’t seen any action yet apart from me camwhoring a bit.

And here, exclusive photographs of the socks I cast on the same day as the other pair of socks:

It’s the old song-and-dance with the SALT line where I’m the only one who can actually read it, plus the dark blue has some lighter spots that make it even more hard to read, but I still find it highly amusing and don’t give a damn if I’m the only one who thinks so.

Now, one of the few good things about summer that I’ve discovered… I can pretty much live off fresh fruit and vegetables. I’ve had this for the past three days:

Never mind that it was my side for biscuits and gravy today. *facepalm*

Ooh-wheeeoooo, whee-oo-ooooh…

While at my parents’, I caught up with a lot of friends, drank a lot of alcohol, got sunburned, drove around in my car a lot, started the Garden shawl for the SPN #dickswithwingsshawl summer KAL, and last but not least, bought buttons for the TARDIS cowl.

They’re little time vortexes!

And, needless to say, I’m pretty in love with the whole thing.

Pictures of the KAL shawl once my camera batteries are charged.

I’m TNT, dynamite!

After finally getting around to buying darning needles, I’m on FIRE finishing stuff.

I finished knitting and blocking the TARDIS-cowl I made for the KAL in the Who Knits? Ravelry group. Like I’ve said before, it’s made from butter-soft, light, teal alpaca, and while it’s a bit big, it was a joy to make and I can’t wait to find buttons for it. I want very light mother-of-pearl ones, and I hope I won’t have to wait another half year, like for Tempest.

And then… Haruni. I don’t know how exactly, but the edging just flew off my needles. Contrary to what the pattern said, it took only a quarter of the yarn, and that despite the middle being larger: I have eight pairs of leaves on each side instead of six.

I finished it yesterday afternoon, with a bind-off that took almost exactly two hours. Two hours with a crochet hook in my hand – not my favorite way of spending time. But it did give me opportunity to listen to a Horrible Histories audiobook, and start with Lois Lowrie’s ‘The Giver’ again.

Blocking took another very cramped half-hour, and by the end of it my thighs were trembling uncontrollably. But… it was totally worth it.

It’s Zitron filigran Lace No. 1 in a wonderful denim blue, on 3.5mm needles. It’s also slightly bigger than the TARDIS cowl.

I also finished a sock last night, nothing extraordinary, just a high-shaft 1×1 rib sock for cold days, and I’ll probably try and finish the first Tadpole sock tonight. Man, I started the Tadpoles in March, it’s been such slow going with my knitting recently. Half a step before the finish line, I somehow lose interest.

Like the Swallowtail Stole: I’m done with the Lily of the Valley motif, I have been for a while. But there’s some mathematical inconsistency, the number of stitches I have isn’t divisible by 8, but I can’t get myself to calculate how many stitches I’d have to add, look where I could put them, and do that whole shebang. So the poor thing’s just languishing there, in the corner of my desk, and sometimes I feel bad.

Which isn’t stopping me from participating in the Rav SPN group’s loosely wing-themed Summer KAL. I’m doing Garden of Alla for it, I just need to decide between yarns: fingering-weight Kauni or laceweight Drachenwolle.

They’re both gorgeous. Ah, decisions, decisions.

Oh the weather outside is frightful

After a beautiful April and beginning of May… the weather has been terrible recently, which kind of drags down my motivation as well as my mood. Which, after my last post, sounds ominous. But never fear, dear readers! Things got better before they got worse. There was a barbecue in my kitchen, chocolate fondue, drinking and fraternization with my Spanish teacher, who assured me I had absolutely nothing to worry about regarding the oral exam – even though I’m still periodically undergoing phases of cold, crippling terror – and lots and lots of therapeutic knitting.

Also, the third Leipziger Wollefest is this weekend, and I’m so glad I decided to skip the SPN con. It would’ve been a great opportunity, but… it’s all good. I think part of what dragged me down before was the uncertainty of not having a room down there, and… just everything.

Instead, I’m doing the Doctor Who TARDIS cowl KAL, and I’m doing pretty much fabulous. The yarn I ordered is a bit too teal to be a true TARDIS blue, but it’s still got that comfy feel to it from the color alone, plus teal goes better with my wardrobe. Adding to the comfiness is of course the fact that the yarn’s 100% alpaca, handdyed by Drachenwolle. Same stuff I made the Perfectly Cromulent hat out of, just a different color.

It’s pretty spectacular, if you ask me. The color, I mean.

Speaking of spectacular, I made chili today. Knitting alpaca, eating chili, bundling up in an oversized hoodie and sweats after a hot eucalyptus bubble bath… yeah, it’s that kind of day.

Also, I have a confession to make. It’s no secret I like photography, even if I hardly have the equipment for anything approaching professional. But…

I love photographing boring things.

The other day, I spent the longest time photographing my grey stadium blanket. I played with contrasts, aperture, color and saturation, and I had the grandest time. Photographing a grey blanket. And I’m really quite in love with some of the photos I got out of the possibly most mundane photography session in the history of the world – I like to think they exude a wonderful sense of minimalist calm. Which… I don’t know. I’m not big on minimalism, or any kind of stripped-down modern art, but I really do love these.

I know. It’s a grey blanket.

Don’t judge me.

*

Oh, also? My Spanish teacher has a blog… with this layout. Which was disconcerting, to say the least :D

I have waited so long

Today is a day I’m catching up with stuff I’ve been putting off for a while. Like darning, changing my sheets, upending my hamper and looking what’s what, studying vocab, organize away all the random half-balls of yarn I have hanging around everywhere, vacuum… all those little household chores I cannot fucking stand.

However, with the hamper-upending came the discovery that I have about 10 pairs of handknit socks more than the five or six I wear on a regular basis, they were just sort of forgotten in my big ol’ hamper. Also, I own more underpants than I can remember buying, ever. I need to do more laundry.

Another thing I also need to do is stop procrastinating when it comes to darning. After sleeping on it for six weeks or so, the teeny tiny hole in my bedsheet got so big there’s now a two-inch seam in the middle of the sheet. It’s a good, sturdy one, but damn.

The second life lesson of the day is that I am really, really awesome. Anyone remember the Wilf’s Hat that I did? Well, I made another one, widened the cables, shortened the intervals between cable rows, and did some perfect crown shaping. Usually, that’s my weak point, I can’t figure out how to incorporate it gracefully into the pattern. But I charted a bit while watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and laid a lifeline I didn’t end up needing, and I’m pretty damn charmed by what I whipped up.

Excuse me while I go sit in the corner all smug about how the small cables run straight up all the way and the big cables cable one more time before gracefully running into a point and then there’s only one more row before the whole thing is done. Truth to be told, I’m pretty much insufferable right now.

I’ve already charted everything out, but I’m still waiting on what the girl who did up the first chart says before I (hopefully) wrestle it all in a nice, tidy PDF and put it up here.

The yarn is Lang merino something-or-other. I don’t like it quite as much as the Lana Grossa merino, and I don’t like the color quite as much as the bright red, but it’s still an okay yarn and I don’t need two bright red hats. (Not that I need any more hats, period, but… y’know. At least none of those turned up in the hamper.)

Also, this little thing also makes me feel very smug and crafty, even though technically it’s a travesty, because, a crochet holder for DPNs? There’s gotta be some law against that. Still, it’s kinda handy.

Now, more cleaning and darning and folding laundry and possibly even some cooking, to wear down that damn smug smile in my face.

Plus, Grey’s Anatomy is starting back up! And next week, SPN too!

Oh the weather outside is frightful

So, I didn’t go back to Leipzig. My grandmother passed away two hours before the new year, just when it started snowing. Today was her funeral, and I’m going back tomorrow.

We always have terrible funeral weather. My grandfather’s funeral three years ago, it was raining like crazy, this time around, it was snowing even more. But the way and at the age people die in my family, it’s usually a pretty upbeat occasion once the actual funeral is over and everybody goes to eat together. It’s a way to get the extended family together, after all.

Anyway, I bought some yarn the other day so I wouldn’t have to lug around a sweater on the train… unsurprisingly, it’s knit up already. I have no self-restraint. The merino also felt really really good on my hands after all that cotton.

What did I knit? Well, anyone see the Christmas/New Year’s episodes of Doctor Who? With Wilf’s awesome red cables-and-bobbles hat? A visual reminder:

Well, I was very much enchanted by it, and so was Anushka who charted the cables-and-bobbles design, and I volunteered to test-knit it. What a sacrifice.

And if I may say so myself, it’s looking pretty damn good! I only changed a couple of minor things. Oh, and the bobble count and position. And the stitches cast on, because a DK hat with 60 stitches? Is not, under any circumstances, gonna fit on my head. I think I’m gonna knit this one again, though, with a pretty major difference: the width of the cables. It’s okay now, but with the widely spaced cables, the single-stitch cables look kind of cut-off, so I’d do it with a two-stitch cable next time. Judging from the photos, it might be a two-stitch cable in the original, too.

But still. Pretty hat! And I’m very much grateful for somebody else charting it. (Also, I wanted to make a pretty version with KnitVisualizer, and when I was finished… I discovered the demo version doesn’t let you save stuff. WTF.)

Also, after thsi baby, I’m kind of in love with bobbles. Bobbles! Simple pleasures for simple minds, I know, but they’re kind of awesome and… bobbly!

And I’ve rocked them all

Kay. I might not have managed to clean up my room. BUT!

I finally photographed the TARDIS potholder. And I did it in a way that makes it seem like it’s not as wavy as it actually is.

I cleaned up and reorganized the spice cupboard. We have a lot of spices. It’s kind of insane, considering we’re students.

I learned some vocab and managed to reduce the words I didn’t know from around 200 to around 100. And then I labeled all my clothes and accessories because I can finally name them. Article AND material.

I cleaned the kitchen. Wait, cleaned? I basically spit-shined it. I also made some pasta with a pretty good pumpkin-tomato sauce.

And I finished a washcloth. I started that one yesterday, my great plan, yadda yadda yadda, and I kept ripping it back. It was weird, cause it wasn’t supposed to be that HARD – I mean, come on, a washcloth shouldn’t make me want to tear out my hair. But I did it.

I’m now proud owner of a washcloth proclaiming, in big block letters, BITCH.

The matching JERK cloth is for tomorrow.

And that’s the only thing I don’t have a picture of. Yet.

 

And the most exciting thing about today: DOCTOR WHO: WATERS OF MARS IS OUT.

People think I’m insane

I pretty much spent the last two days doing… nothing. Well, nothing the rest of the world would deem particularly productive.

I did cook – and pretty splendidly so. I’d bought a rather large savoy cabbage (or at least that’s what I think it is in English – I’m referring to Wirsing) that I made half of into my favorite dish, with mince and béchamel sauce. The other half is still hanging around in the fridge, I’m not sure what I’ll do with that, but, eh. Then, today, I made beef broth from scratch, and added tons of veggies and tried my hand at marrow dumplings since I’d bought two marrow bones for the soup. So, yeah, I’ve been feeling a bit like an epicurean, and I’m loving it. I’ll make that soup again, just with fewer veggies.

Seriously, I bought marrow bones. I’m feeling like a 1950s housewife. Just a bit.

To offset that, when I wasn’t eating or cooking, I spent my time knitting – the endless Muir, which is up to I think 13 or 14 repeats. (Had I known how much time I’d spend on the bus in London, I’d’ve taken it with me. Lost opportunity there.) But it’s good TV knitting, which is just as well, since I’m developing new fandoms.

As if I need any more geekery in my life.

But I’ve started with Merlin (which is fantabulous) and I’m halfway through the first season of Supernatural, which is even better. Because there’s random pop culture and geekery, and awesome old music like Black Sabbath (who I stole this post’s title from), and demons galore. Big ol’ oil tanker full of nightmare fuel, but entertainingly so. Plus, even in the first season, they have this insane tendency to fanservice, which in later seasons (as far as I’ve seen) reaches almost ridiculous proportions. Awesome, I say.

And… it’s funny, but in a way, there’s a lot of parallels between Doctor Who and Supernatural. I mean, we have two people zooming from one place to another to solve mysteries and keep the apocalypse from happening. And making, let’s face it, somewhat morally dubious choices all over the place. Nevermind the whole money thing (credit card fraud vs. sonicing ATMs), or the brilliant taste in music. And very intimate relationships that don’t feature sex. Not that I’m opposed to that (and I do admit to having checked out naughty SPN fic on more than one occasion, to say nothing of DW), but it’s nice to have a dynamic that is subtly different from about any other dynamic on TV.

So, yeah.

Merlin, on the other hand, is just plain fun. I mean, come on. You’ve got a cute, gangly  and snarky Merlin, a bratty but sometimes surprisingly insightful Prince Arthur, you have Giles as King Uther, AND there’s some dragons and other mythical shit thrown in for good measure. Not to mention Gwenhyfar twisted into a rather likable servant girl to Morgana, and some pretty awesome guest stars. Like Eve Myles in the first episode, and that chick from the last DW Christmas Special as super-hot evil witch.

And obviously, because I’m back home and have access to a host of fabulous yarns… I’m dragging out sock yarn leftovers and knitting the Quant headband from what I didn’t use for these two pairs of socks, held together.

And let me tell ya – I’m having a blast with the entrelac. It’s kind of a scary concept, which is why I’d queued it more than a year and a half ago (Feb 13, 2008 to be precise) but never actually worked up the courage to start it. Well… it’s great. It’s a way to hone my mad knitting-backwards-English-style skillz, and it’s so entertaining! Cause you have tons of stitches on the needle (well, 18) but you only work a maximum of six at a time, and all these small squares are done in what feels like no time at all. And a couple of Supernatural episodes later, you’ve got yourself three quarters of a headband and a new knitting skill. Honestly, I can only recommend it. It’s not nearly as hard as it looks, though you do have to keep an eye on it, and it’s super-impressive. And the wrong side doesn’t really look as wonky as everyone keeps saying, either; I find it more intriguing. I’ll take pictures tomorrow, when there’s actual daylight.