Snow

This is the view from our balcony this morning.

And these are a few of our lights on the balcony rail.

Photos by MyGuy who is on vacation while I still have to work.

Tribute to Dewey the Blogger

I can not think of a better tribute to an addicted reader than a reading challenge, so I wanted to let everyone know about this one:

Dewey's reading Challenge is about reading books reviewed by Dewey.

Lost in Translation

All of these will double for the TBR challenge. Sorry, the translation is TO German as that is my mother tongue.

1. Das Lied der Könige by Batya Gur (Hebrew)
2. Der Besuch des Leibarztes by PerOlov Enquist (Swedish)
3. Underground oder Ein Held unserer Zeit by Wladimir Makaninen (Russian)
4. Der Eroberer by Nedim Guersel (Turkish)
5. Erogene Zonen by Philippe Dijan (French)
6. Der schönste Tango der Welt by Manuel Puig (Spanish)

Series Season 3

While I have not participated in the previous two seasons I will have a go now:

1. Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series (I only read book one, so this alone is a challenge) which could also be counted toward the Jewish Challenge I guess, but I will need to whole year to catch up

2. Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series (can only take a book at a time, but they are in my TBR pile)

Both of those series can count against my RYOB for quite a while as I have a couple of each to read in my shelves.

Jewish Challenge

These are the books for my Jewish Challenge, they are mostly in German by Jewish authors. The first of them will also be in the A to Z challenge:

1. Mein Leben by Marcel Reich-Ranicki
2. Gerettete Zunge by Elias Canetti
3. Denn die Seele ist in Deiner Hand by Batya Gur
4. Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow

Numbers Challenge

I have decided to take the numbers challenge. These books will double as some of my TBR challenge.

1. 1421 by Gavin Menzies
2. Die dritte Tür by Patrick O'Leary
3. 1st to die by James Patterson
4. Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly
5. Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich

The last one means I have to find book 10 that I had last week and can not lay hands on this week and read it.

Reading Challenges

Must be the winter weather, I am considering more and more reading challenges. These are the ones I am contemplating in addition to the RYOB, TBR and A to Z challenges I have already decided no:

- 9 for 09
- Latin American Challenge
- Jewish Literature Challenge
- Well-Seasoned Reader Challenge
- Lost in Translation
- Numbers Challenge
- War and its Impact
- Series Season 3
- Orbis Terrarum
- World Citizen Challenge
- Read your Name
- What is in a name?

Dewey

My Dewey Decimal Section:

919 Geography of & travel in other areas


Class:
900 History & Geography


Contains:
Travel, biographies, ancient history, and histories of continents.



What it says about you:
You're connected to your past and value the things that have happened to you. You've had some conflicted times in your life, but they've brought you to where you are today and you don't ignore it.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Scherenschnitt

This blog is incredible, I am not normally that fond of papercutting or Scherenschnitt, but some of those things are Art! Not the newest post, to me, but the ones like The Wound are wow!

Another one without pictures

As I am not getting around to taking pictures I thought I'd at least let you know what I have been up to.

I knit a scarf for MIL and it needs to be blocked. Inspired by the Yarn Harlot I started a "Noro" Scarf. Mine is made with two color ways of Lang Mille Colori that I got on sale. Unfortunatelly the sale is due to the going out of business of a LYS. I also plan to knit a hat for FIL and a pair of socks for MyGuy. I missed this month's Stricktreff, and feel sorry for myself. On the other hand:

I spent most of the weekend in my hometown. On Saturday my mom and I went for a sewing day with her quilting group. The theme was the storm at sea pattern that I have been eyeing for the longest time. I love the traditional look, but decided on something else for now. I just hope it turns out remotely like what I have envisioned. Due to the lack of preparation on my part I only got to cut and mark foundations, cut a bunch of fabric and sew about 3 units. I have since added a couple more, but with only 15 out of 315 I still have a long way to go. But since I received Bonnie's book at least I feel like sewing again. Actually this morning I really wanted to stay in my sewing room for a while. But that way lies madness, no sewing at 6am on a work day! I also restarted sewing on my Ohio Stars and Rails that was my summer project and am doing the missing stars as leaders-enders.

We went to see James Bond on Sunday and I have to say I was not terribly impressed. It's not bad, but neither does it feel like Bond to me. But I could not tell you what makes a Bond movie, so that is not much of a review.

I am reading quite a lot lately too as you might have noticed looking at my Library gadget. I have found all the books from David Weber that start with Insurrection and am now reading Crusade. Seems to be set before Insurrection, so I might be reading them the wrong way round, but as they are not the same characters it does not trouble me too much. I am thinking about TBR 2009 and what other challenges I might participate in. Novel Challenges is listing them and there are a few that appeal to me. Read your own books of course is much the same as the TBR, but there are Library books and there is the Lost in Translation challenge.

I have adopted some dragon eggs on the net and am waiting to see if I understood enough to get them to hatch.

What to do with HST

Surfing the blogs I came across this post at Kim's Cozy Quilts and wanted to keep the link here so I could return to it. I love scrap quilts and the two layouts that Kim did look fantastic.

More morning pictures

This is another view of the Rhine taken on Monday. The weather was set to change, so we had a couple of great sunups and downs the last couple of days. Unfortunatelly they take place while I am on the train.

Winter come and gone

Just so everyone would put their winter tires on we had snow at the end of October. This picture shows the view from my office across the Rhine last Thursday. By now it is warm again, but it was pretty while it lasted.

Sunny Greetings

This one MyGuy did from two pictures he took. I says Sunny greetings from Karin. He keeps complaining that I have my eyes closed in all pictures. Unfair, I say!

October meeting

This time it was a really small Stricktreff just Betty, Britta and me. Britta was our hostess and we enjoyed spending some of her childfree Saturday with her. (Smile.) Britta, I think I did not too badly with the photo this time?
















Betty once again managed to leave with more stash than she arrived with, but some of the stash she arrived with went home with me, so I am not complaining. Lovely brown yarn, the one with pale ice blue and white and brown is already balled up. Thanks Betty!

Finally something Finished

Finally I have a FO, even though these are simply my train knitting socks I finally finished them and can get on with completing some of the other WIPs.

Quilter's Horoscope

My mum will roll on the floor laughing when she reads this:

Virgo – August 24 to September 22
Virgo is meticulous and fussy when it comes to patchwork and quilting. They never rush any project but pay scrupulous attention to every detail from cutting, to piecing, to quilting. The downside to their fastidiousness is that they always notice mistakes in other quilter’s creations no matter how minor. If you want to know the exact amount of fabric required for any size quilt, ask a Virgo. They have an uncanny knack for making such calculations. Virgos tend to take up quilting at a younger age then other women. They don't have a problem balancing their lives and making time for career, partner, children and quilting.

I am a casual piecer and love working with scraps so I don't have to figure out any yardage requirement, but still I am virgo. Go figure.

Just a bit of my vacation

A view of a damed lake in the Black Forest where we went with MyGuy's parents.












A view from Col du Chat in Savoyen where MyGuy spent a fun time taking pictures of mountains including Mont Blanc.













And a couple of grapes photographed near our favorite weekend retreat, Bad Bellingen.

FO

This is my finished tree, the first of my UFOs for the Cross Stitching Fingers. I turned out great and MyGuy kept insisting on me showing it to people. Actually I am pleased with it, but wonder what sort of frame would look good with it...

Saturday was Knitday

Bettina is showing of the photo from the bridal stole she knit for a dear friend. Stole and bride were beautiful!




This is Bettina's new WIP, a mystery shawl. Her jewels for this meeting were the blue beads in it.


Anouschka is studying Esther's Water socks that looked great.


Inspired by Esther's socks Betty decided to try something new and casts on Italian, Anouschka is assisting by keeping the yarn taut.




And here we have our gracious hostess, Esther. We did enjoy
visiting her in Switzerland! Esther, we will be back!

I got my knitting mojo back, at least a bit and am now ready to turn the heel on the melon colored Doedelsock I had going on Saturday.

Still no craft pictures and no vaction pictures

So I figured I'd show you what we did on the service day from work:



Before

During


After

Back

I am back, had a lovely time (and was sick on my 40th birthday). I finished my tree, didn't do much other crafting or reading, but enjoyed spending time with MyGuy.

Vacation

I will be off for sometime, going to France for 10 to 14 days, so have fun in the meantime.

Socks and more

I finally finished another pair of socks. Like Fillyonk I enjoy plain socks to relax and these were very relaxing. Simple ribbing made for nice socks and the color is a bit more purply in real life.

This is the progress I have made on my tree. As I am stitching only on this it is now a WIP rather than an UFO once more. As I was home sick Thursday and Friday the tree grew more than expected between bouts of feeling horrible. I am enjoying seeing it grow little by little. Unfortunatelly this makes me look at all my cross stitch magazines and that makes me want to start a whole bunch of new things. So far I just started a little free kit of Popcorn. Slow stitching prevents me from making much progress, but I am having fun.

In the latest edition of World of Cross Stitch was an article on Biscornu, something we just recently discussed on Stitching Fingers. I guess I will have to give it a try.

FO and UFO

This is the finished object. My mother has given me an early birthday present and finished quilting my Carolina Cross Roads quilt. As a matter of fact she enjoyed the pattern so much that she made a baby quilt with it and is thinking about offering it as a mystery in Bonnie's sense to her quilt group.

This is the UFO, the first of my cross stitch projects I want to finish for the UFO challenge at Stitching Fingers. I have finished the ground yesterday, so now the tree can grow. Maybe I can get this finished in time for fall. I have the magazine with the companion fall tree, but will need a break in between. Among other things this is just one of my UFOs.

Week-end

This was a good weekend. We put up an additional bookcase on Saturday and I could empty three more of my book boxes, plus the PCs now have a proper home. In the afternoon we had Stricktreff, but I had forgotten my camera. Betty might have pictures up, go visit her via the sidebar link. It was a nice afternoon and we got to meet Esther. We missed Petra, Eva, Britta and Bianca. It looks like the next meeting will be on the 16th of August at Bettina's place. I started my Boyfriend socks (a pattern we are KAL with our new cable knitters)and am in love with the Trekking. Looks like I got my knitting mojo back. Might therefore eventually end up with my green Bob, the poor thing is currently sidelined.

Sunday I had time to sew as MyGuy was sleeping the morning away. So I managed to sew 8 more blue stars for my Ohio Stars and Railfences quilt. Now I need to add 18 more red stars to the 7 I already have. I layed out a tiny bit of the quilt to see if things looked ok and am happy to report they are. In the afternoon we watched Fomula 1 and then went to the sauna.

I also finished reading Making Money by Terry Pratchett and am already looking forward to seeing Moist as tax man. As usual an enjoyable read.

Liberated Quiltmaking

I would love to be part of the Liberated Quiltmakers web ring but I do too much work from patterns, so I do not qualify. Still I enjoy looking at the blogs in the ring.

Orange Crush and QfaH

This is the Quilt for An Hour from Judy's Sunshine Qilts. I changed the sahes and need to add the borders. I am still thinking aout the borders however. Today I finally sewed together the rows of my OC. I do not reallylike the purple in the album blocks. It looks worse in real life. Maybe some applique... And once again, this quilt has no bordes yet. I am thinking about Bonnie's pieced ones, but might do something different. I still have units left over however.

World Knitting Day

Some one dropped a stitch:Someone else had to pick it up...
Petra and Betty are "saving" Petra's sock by catching the runaway stitch.

My sock was beyond saving, but needed to be documented for the blog:

It would only have fit a stork. Bye-bye, pretty sock.

What I am up to

It seems I am back to reading at the moment and am working my way through a couple of books from my Mount ToBeRead. I have read Secret Country, Death of an Irish Consul and finished Wer bin ich und wenn ja wieviele. Currently I am stuck on 1000 Splendid Suns, because I can just tell something horrible will happen next. Ugh! So I started another mystery: Monsterous Regiment of Women. Very enjoyable commuter reading.

However that means nothing new on the sock front. I thought I would knit during the games of the EM, but no such thing. So Bob is still unfinished.

On the other hand I did finish sewing my 40 rail road blocks and tried out 2 of the red stars for my Ohio Stars and Rails quilt from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site. I plan on making 25 red stars with hearts in the center and 16 blue ones with Betty Boops in the center. It will then likely be A Heart for Betty or I Heart Betty. Not sure yet, but the little Betty's have been stash for ages and now at least some of them will make it in a quilt.

Waterfall

Since Finn has a waterfall picture, here is one from Tirol, Austria from last fall.

Amazon?

Check out this article about how Amazon treats publishers:
New York Times

QFAH come together

I have finished the center of my quilt for an hour top yesterday and have to say I am happy with it. I have to take a picture yet, but I am now thinking about the border. There will certainly be an inner border that I know what I want to do, but have to calculated how the pieces need to be cut for it to come out correctly. Then... that is open for discussion as I do not want to buy more fabric and think it would actually need a repeat of the dark purple one.

Stitchery Give Away

I really like Lynette Anderson's patterns, even if I have yet to make one. Check out her Give Away of the newest pattern:

http://lynetteandersondesigns.typepad.com/lynette_anderson_designs/2008/06/new-pattern.html

Gas Station Cozy

No joy still with my socks, but have a look:

Gas Station Cozy

This was to raise awareness to gas consumption. I think doubling the gallon prize did that too.

Knitting is not going well

Recently it seems my socks are ganging up on me. The green one I started in March has disappeared, the hourglass one is in another time out until I figure out if I need to rip the second one back to the heel yet again, the beige one I started is so tight that it will only fit a crane not a human being... Argh!!!

At least my sewing is going well, I finished all 24 QFAH blocks on Sunday evening. Now however I keep deliberating on the sashing. I would like mine to be a bit bigger and a triple sashing with nine patch blocks might do that, but I am not sure if it will spoil the effect. Hmmm...

Step 5 finished

Due to a day of the runs (also known as sick leave) I am now caught up on step 5 of the Orange Crush. Luckily you can sew this in small increments and the way to the facilities is short. Now I can get to hour two of Judy's Quilt for an Hour tomorrow. For today I am off to bed.

A peek at step 5 of the OC

This are my first 5 step 5 blocks with some step 4 ones. I have my doubts about the lilac, but on the photo it looks ok, so maybe it will turn out alright. In real life the colors are more subdued. Compared with the riot in the CC (see header) this one is very sedate and with the yardage there just is not that much variety. I think I prefer a CC type quilt, mainly because I just do not have much yardage.

What I am up to

This is the sample block of step for of the OC. They all look pretty much the same. That made it boring for me and I finally sat myself down and did assemby line sewing on the 10 I was missing. Not I have 30 finished ones.
On to step 5.
These are my hour glass socks that I am currently knitting. Let'a hope third time is the charm, as this is the third go at the heel I have.

Turkish Socks finished

I finally finished my "Turkish Socks". This is what the colors for some reason reminded me off. They are fairly tight as the patterning stitch makes it inflexible. But I love how they turned out. The yarn was Drachenwolle.

Quilt for an Hour - 1st step

First step and I am already behind. I did not cut my pieces ahead of time, so yesterday, instead of sewing my 76 HST I was cutting them. Oh well, I will sew them today and just be behind...

Mai Stricktreff

As you can see we knit, studied kintting magazines and finished first socks ever on our May Knitting meeting. It was fun and we thank Petra for having us!

Orange Crush step 4 HST

I have sewn and pressed all the half square triangles for the Spinning Star block in the OC and have sewn 2 blocks. They are turning out nice, but I kept having a bit of trouble with the third row in the star and got fed up. Back to it today... I think I need more of the light purple I bought the other day for Judy's quilt in an hour as an accent to the OC. Oh well, I am not destashing...

Room with a view

Normally I do not talk much about work here, but I am soooo happy to finally have moved in the new office. And look at the views I have. This one is the one straight out (and yes there is a bike in our office).

The other one shows the view when I roll a bit back with my chair and look to the left. Lovely Rhine on both sides.

Quilt for an hour - fabric

It is a good thing I have never said I would reduce my stash of fabric! Since I usually buy fat quarters up to half meter cuts I did not have any "background" fabric stash, so I bought two shades of purple for the background. I will use some of the fun yellows/oranges I have as stars.

I also bought grey and black fabric for my Happy Stars quilt and a background fabric for my CC. Now I need to do some washing...

Crazy Goldfish orFinding Nemo

Finally I finished another pair of socks. These ones are for me and they are the first pair of plain socks that I have knit in forever. However I was trying the short row heel and am pleased with how it turned out. I still like the dutch heel and so on better, but at least this means I have concured one of my mental hurtles on toe up socks. This pair can serve as a model for where to put the heel. The color is called crazy goldfish or something with goldfish, but I always think fof it as Finding Nemo.

Orange Crush Step 2 and 3

8 of my step 2 blocks in two arrangements. I am sure they will end up in a totally different way, but as others have discoverred, playing with them is fun.
And 4 of my step 3 blocks, luckily this short step allowed me to catch up.

April Stricktreff am Bodensee

These are the members of my knitting group on my balcony.As you can see most of them are very busy. Bianca on the other hand was getting ready to give the available magazines a good airing.

Von den paar Photos, die ich gemacht habe, war dass das beste. Hat schon seinen Grund warum mein Liebster bei uns die Photos macht... Schön, dass Ihr da wart. Ich freu mich schon aufs nächste Mal.

Orange Crush Step 1 finished

Here are half of my four patches for the Orange Crush Mystery by Bonnie. Mine are fairly unscrappy colorwise, but I wanted to use some of the brown fabrics that were in my stash after the basket quilt I have done ages ago. I have cut all the pieces for step 2 and am on my way through the assembly now. Fun! They too will be light and dark browns, I think of them as "background" but of course I do not know how it will turn out with the yardage added. I really enjoy this however.

Blue Ridge by T.R. Pearson

You might have noticed that I have added the initials challenge to my sidebar. This is the first book I read for this challenge where the author is known by his/her initials rather than the first names. The book was languishing in my tbr piles and it is good to finally have gotten it out.

Two stories of cousins are recounted at the same time, switching back and forth between the two. This I usually enjoy and it certainly did not distract. One plot had Paul go to NYC to identify his son whom he barely knew, the other has Ray trying to solve the mystery of bones found in the State Forest. I was expecting the stories to merge at some point or at least interact, this was not the case until the very end and then sort of tucked on. I read more like two novellas than a unified work which I found regrettable. The book therefore was just so so for me. I don't think I would based on this one read more books of the author even if the language was great.

Carolina Crossroads Top

This is finally a picture of my finished Carolina Crossroads Top. I gave it a small pink border and a two block deep railroad fence border in the same dimension as the original railroad blocks but in a different color combination. MyGuy says it looks very green, but I told him spring is green. Now I need to dig out some stuff for a backing.

I have started the Orange Crush four patches for the next mystery. I found it hard to get started on this as I do not have 1,5 yards of most fabrics, I am more a fat quarter, half yard buyer. I am not sure if mine will work (contrast and one of them is fairly patternd), but this is stash, so I will go with it.

A bit of nuttiness....

You Are a Brazil Nut

To most people, you seem exotic, unusual, and even a bit scary. But you're really quite normal. You're just hard to get to know. If people leave you alone and let you do your thing, you really shine. But you tend to get lost in a crowd, especially if it's filled with big personalities.

What Nut Are You?

Fitness for last week

Not too bad, not too good. I went to the gym on Thursday, but only went walking on the treadmill for 45 min (my first time, not sure I did the programm stuff correctly). Didn't do any weights as I was plain worn out.
I went swimming on Sunday (the pool is a disgrace, but the people are nice) and swam 1000 meters.

Back to the gym today.

Mini Stricktreff

We had a mini knitters' meeting on Saturday and it was fun to get together. I was being destructive rather than constructive and started to frog a sweater in Rowan's All Season Cotton that I am not wearing because it looks like a sack. I managed one sleeve there, then needed to cast on another sock to numb the pain of taking out all my carefully hidden yarn ends and unraveling all those seams.

By now I have both sleeves ribbed and the body pieces seperated. So the unknitting can continue.

Reading rather than crafting

This days the pendulum has swung back to reading and I am using my commute to finally read some of my Mt. TBR books. I am currently making my way through Quicksilver and that will keep me busy for a bit longer as it is almost 1000 pages. I have read the first quarter by now. It is interesting and challenging and makes me want to dig out biographies on Newton and Leibnitz to see how historically correct the book is.

Some crafting will get done on Saturday when the Bodenseestricker meet at Eva (lakeside's) place. For more information find us on Strickspiration.

Sockenbilder

Finally I got around to taking some pictures of finished socks. First the choclate socks with the madder ribbing from Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush.








Second the Caffee Lichen socks in caffee latte colorway and lichen patterning from the same book.










The third is the first of my finally started Jacobean Socks for the Sock Knitters Penthalon. Luckily we have until end of April to finish them so there is yet hope for me. I managed to do the magic cast on with DPNs and am knitting my second ever toe up socks.





These are slip stitch socks that remind me of Turkey for some reason.