Half Marathon - Hannover

Before we start here, let me just apologise for the lame cell phone pictures and British spellings.  The former is due to me being alone on my trip.  I wasn't positive if I could get a late checkout, and I didn't want my DSLR in a plastic baggy in a giant room full of everyone else's plastic baggies.  The latter is due to my computer's current identity crisis and its strange need to write things like colour and favourite.

Hannover was pretty fun!  I didn't see many of the cities cultural offerings, but I would say I explored a pretty decent chunk.  I didn't take any maps with me on my wanderings, so I let myself get lost a few times.  On my first attempt at finding the race expo, I actually found my hotel again.

On Saturday, I woke up, went for a 2 mile loosen-up jog, came back, and took a shower.  The hotel had some interesting soap dispensers, and I couldn't resist a picture.  You will notice that each language places "hair," "hand," and "body" in a different order.  I'm not sure what this says about the different cultures, but it probably says something.  (The German, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic versions are in very small letters at the bottom, hence the giant picture.)

Hair: important to anglophones, unimportant to hispanophones, francophones are ambivalent.

Then I put on my new, magical Cornhusker shoelaces.  They barely fit through the holes, but I think this was actually a good thing.  Once I tightened them down just right, they weren't going anywhere!

With those, I went on my short walk turned long walk to pick up my race packet.  It was a nice trip.  I saw lots of side streets, ate a crepe, and got some ice cream.

When I got back to my room, I dropped everything off and then headed down the street to buy a Hannover Starbucks mug.  I just started collecting them this year (which is unfortunate, because I don't have them now from a lot of places I've been), and I really want to have them from places I've run in.  I don't have a picture of the actual mug, but I do have a picture of the statue of King Ernst August.  His statue is right outside the Hauptbahnhof at Ernst-August-Platz, which is not a great location to get a good picture of anything.  I took it just to prove that I actually went to the place to get the mug instead of trading for it.

The actual race was pretty nice.  The forecast had predicted heavy rains, but they didn't come until much later in the evening.  I'm not sure yet about my feelings on the weather.  I wore a baseball style running cap to keep the rain off of my eyes so that I could see while I was running.  I ended up wearing it despite the dry weather to keep the sun out of my eyes instead.  I could tell by the end of the race though, that it was starting to get hot under my hat.  In general, I would have preferred if it were 10 degrees cooler with less wind and humidity, but I was there to have fun, not break world records.

After I ran the race, I had a couple hours to kill before my train was ready to take me home.  My intention was to go visit a museum, but I noticed that I really just wanted to do a lot of sitting.  I did some sitting on a bench with some ice cream.  I did some other sitting on concrete blocks without any ice cream.  Then I took a very roundabout way back to the train station and saw this building.  I can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something very German to me about a Bäckeramtshaus.

When I was finally on the train back home, I learned a very important lesson.  Deutsche Bahn coffee is both overpriced and terrible.  The quality is comparable to American gas station coffee.  (The average German gas station coffee is actually very good.)  It costs 2,80.  So about $4.

The offending cup

You'll also see there part of a chart from my double knit Space Invaders scarf.  I got four aliens finished on my various train rides, which doubled the work I had accomplished over the two previous months.

Overall: Success!  Four German half marathons down, twelve to go!

WIP Wednesday

It's confession time.

I really like Harry Potter.  No, you don't get it.  I really like Harry Potter.  As in, I like it so much that I joined a group on Ravelry over a month ago where people get sorted into Hogwarts Houses, turn in knitting projects as homework, and compete for a House Cup.  They even have OWLs and Quidditch.  April is a break month, but everything starts back up again in May, so I've been waiting for then to cast on my knitting projects so that they will count for things.

But there's no point in not working on things I had already started.  And it seems a shame to deny myself knitting just because there's a game going on that I can also knit for.

Here's my Vasa, which is still a WIP because it has 50000 ends not woven in.  I was an absolute idiot and for some reason didn't carry the contrast color up the side of my first piece.  But it is blocked, even though that little piece of ribbing doesn't like to stay where he belongs.

I'm still deciding how I feel about the Vasa.  I think it's decently flattering, for a shirt with no shaping whatsoever.  If I do make another one, I am definitely doing it in the round.  I am all about easy finishing.

And what's this over here?  Could it be?  It's Visser's big cousin, Visser 4!  (It's only the second one I've made, but it's the fourth size.)  It's coming along reasonably quickly.  I've already separated the torso into front and back.  I'm working the back right now, because it's just mindless stockinette.

FO Friday - Visser

My favorite online LYS, Eat.Sleep.Knit, wrapped up their first quarter KAL challenge on Monday.  We were supposed to knit things that required us to learn a new skill, and we would get credit for 1000 yards in their yarnathon.

My initial plan was to submit Zantha, which you've seen here before, since I had never done lace before.  But since then, I've knit two more, and I am just Zantha'd out right now.  I didn't even want to look at it long enough to sew the buttons on and finish it up.

Instead, I grabbed a skein of Madelinetosh Pashmina and got to work.  My two skeins of Pashmina, in Cobalt and Citrus, reminded me of the bright, complementary colors I saw a lot of in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  I decided to see if there were any typical Dutch sweater designs that I could translate into a baby sweater, and there were!

These would be quite at home in a Van Gogh work.

Dutch fisherman sweaters were exactly the thing I was looking for.  They are knit in solid colors, so the visual interest comes from various knit and purl stitch patterns that decorate most of the front of the sweater.  They also generally have a drop shoulder construction, which is much easier to measure and calculate for than the raglans I am used to making.  They are often knit very tightly, but I loosened up the gauge a bit, since a baby doesn't need to be waterproofed on a boat.  (They probably also weren't knit in a yarn with any silk content, but hey.)

I've named this sweater Visser, after the Dutch word for fisherman.

And what were the new skills I learned for this?  Many, to include casting on in pattern and the right twist mock cable.  But the one I am most proud of is seaming.  I'm no longer terrified of it, which is good, since my plan is to knit myself a seamed garment someday.  This also lets me use sweater construction methods other than raglan and circular yoke.