A list of various loves and hates

I love cardigans.
I hate sewing buttons.
(There is a way around this called open front cardigans that I am currently exploring.)

I love my dog.
I hate it when she is aggressive toward smaller dogs, because it puts me in an awkward situation with that other dog's owner.  Although to be fair, it was an albino dachshund, and she could probably tell that an animal like that does not belong in nature.

I love ice cream.
I hate, wait, no, never mind.  I hate nothing about ice cream.  Except when the ice cream store is closed in January.

I hate sitting in traffic.
I love seeing how far I can maintain appropriate speeds in said traffic using nothing but my clutch and gear shifter.  No gas, no brakes.

I love ordering yarn.
I hate the two weeks that it takes to get to me.

Sunday Six

In no particular order, here are six pretty cool things that happened this weekend:

1) Spring finally came to Germany.

When I went for a run this afternoon, it was around 60 F!  It was nearly 20 degrees warmer than last week's run, so my pace may have suffered a little.  I didn't bring a watch, because I didn't want to compare myself to last week since the weather was so different.

And flowers are starting to bloom.  I even saw a potted plant we had put outside last year.  It used to be a houseplant, but it looked dead, so we just put him outside.  Not sure why.  Anyway, turns out, he was not dead!  He was just done for the year!  (His friend behind him seems to be actually dead, though)

The Lazarus plant.

2) I bought a cool pattern and the yarn to go with it.

Someone in one of my Ravelry groups posted about Vasa, and I decided I needed one, too!  I bought the pattern (my first purchase on Rav!) and then wandered over to my favorite online yarn shop, Eat.Sleep.Knit, and ordered three skeins of Tosh Merino Light.  I plan on making the Vasa over and over again, so there's a ton of TML in my wishlist now, but I'm starting with Alabaster, which is a pale yellow.  [I just counted.  There are 12 skeins of TML in the wishlist for various projects.]

I hate seaming and purling, so I may modify it to be knit in the round, but that will depend on what size needle I need to get gauge.  If I need anything smaller than a 4, I will have to knit back and forth, because that is as small as my reasonably-sized circulars go.

3) I ran the highest mileage week I've ever run.

33 miles!  There were only 30 on the schedule for this week, but we had a 3 mile company run on Friday.  It was pretty slow, so even though Fridays are rest days, a slow three felt restful enough that I didn't think I needed to move around the rest of the miles and just kept with the schedule as planned.


4) Three bananas reached their banana bread prime.

I put them to use in some banana bread from the Smitten Kitchen.  I've already eaten half the loaf.

 

So tasty.

5) I found the missing piece of my coffee maker.

Senseo: One of the top things I will miss about Germany

You see that black shelf looking part?  The place where you would obviously put your cup?  I moved offices a few months ago, and the new office didn't allow coffee makers at desks (literally the only thing I miss about that other office and job), so it had to come home with me.  That one piece ended up misplaced, and before I found it again (in a suitcase?!?), I had a tuna packet balanced there that I could very gently put a little mug on.


6) My shawl started developing an actual shape.

That shawl from the last post is starting to take on the shape I was intending for it to have.  I'm using yarn leftovers right now just to test it out, but when I get yarn specifically for it, I'll alternate colors more often.  The stripes right now are a little wide for my taste.

And here's a bonus picture of the dog in the yard:

When there's nothing to compare her to, she looks bigger than 20 pounds.

Sneak Peek

Here's a little peek at the first thing I'm designing for an actual adult human!

This was taken in my dining room with no flash and a speed of 15 fps.  The motion control on this camera is incredible!

Eventually, my hope is that it will turn out to be a shawl.  I did some swatching, but I think I just won't really be able to tell if it's working the way I see it in my mind unless I get it bigger.  I wanted to order yarn especially for this, but as I'm on a bit of a restricted yarn diet, I decided it would be better to work with yarn I already had in the stash.  This right here is Tosh Merino Light, a fingering weight yarn, and you may recognize the Antique Lace colorway from the baby cardigan photo I posted earlier.  If it works out, I may order some laceweight and make it again before publishing the pattern.

Running, Yarn, and Beer in Amsterdam

I haven't been able to blog for a while, because I've been away in Amsterdam!  It was fantastic.  Everyone spoke English well enough, and since I can read English and German, I could read Dutch well enough that we got around just fine.

We had a general idea of what we wanted to do, but we were so tired that we only accomplished half of it.  I guess we'll just have to go back!

This picture is in front of the Rijksmuseum.  We didn't go into this particular museum, but we had to see the I Amsterdam sign.  It's also just a couple hundred meters from the Van Gogh Museum, which we did go into.  He only painted for a few years, but he managed to produce enough to fill an entire museum.  I have never been so impressed by a painting of a pile of potatoes.

Can't even make fun of everyone in front of the I Amsterdam sign, because we were there, too.

And of course I had to stop in an adorable yarn shop, Penelope Craft.  They had plenty of Madelinetosh, Malabrigo, and Cascade, but I can get those anywhere.  What I was really after were Loret Karman's yarns, which she dyes in Amsterdam!

 

We also took a tour of the Heineken Brewery.  The first half was very neat.  We got to look at all the copper vats that the beer brews in, split some barley, play with the dry ingredients, and taste the warm water and barley stage.  The second half was just a gigantic advertisement.

I also went running, of course!  I ran twice, once for six miles and once for eight, and I felt really good.  I'm very glad, because I had started to worry that my shin pain was compartment syndrome instead of just plain old shin splints.  I have no desire to have surgery on my legs now or any time in the future, so I'm relieved that there was no pain at all on either of those runs.  My times were also pretty good, since the city is so flat.  I ran mainly through the Rembrandtpark (which was near where we stayed) and the Vondelpark (which is on every "Running in Amsterdam" list).  I also learned that Dutch dogs are not as disciplined as German dogs.  Both parks were full of Dutch people looking and calling for their dogs, and I saw one tiny dog bite a man's leg.

Ouch!

Turns out, you shouldn't jump right into a heavy-mileage training plan after you don't run for three months.  Who'd have thought?

[Pause for laughter as "real" runners take a glance down below at the weekly mileage I was doing.]

I've developed some pretty awesome shin splints, only on my right leg interestingly enough, which I didn't know was possible.  I was supposed to have a three mile run today, but I was in pretty awesome pain after just a half mile walk with the dog, so I nixed it.  Something tells me an 11-miler tomorrow would be a bad idea.

It's hard to do, but I think I am going to have to start over with a lower mileage plan, like one for real beginners even though I've run five half marathons already.  Munich in October is my target race, and I don't want to injure myself training for a race I'm running just for the heck of it.

Not one to end on a negative note, I am also including a photo of my first pair of knitted mittens!  Just missing one thumb!

If you are a right thumb amputee, these are finished!

I'm a Real Person

I spend about an hour each day in my car, commuting to and from work.  Public transportation is, unfortunately, not efficient or cost-effective in my case, so I drive.  This means I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts, and one of my favorites is NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.  One of my goals in life is to do something interesting enough that Terry Gross interviews me.* 

Terry Gross was interviewing Greta Gerwig a few months ago for her movie Frances Ha (which is pretty good, by the way), and Greta said that she felt like a real person once she was a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

All of the to say, today, having joined the Knitting Guild Association, I am also a real person.  I'm pretty sure you have to actually act on a screen to be part of the Screen Actors Guild, and you don't have to provide proof of knitting to join this guild, so maybe I shouldn't compare the two, but it still feels good.

You even get a membership card!

*I used to want to be on Conan O'Brien, but I've realized I wouldn't be able to make jokes fast enough, and it would be one of those really uncomfortable, scripted interviews.  Although, if you still want me, Conan, I promise I will make you look really smart.

Real Stashbusting - Donating Yarn

My goal behind designing patterns it to have others knit them, too, which means they should at least have access to the yarns I'm using even if they choose to substitute something else.

This is a problem when I have a yarn stash that I've been building since 2010 (I realize it's a tiny baby of a yarn stash compared to some of you) half full of discontinued yarn.  I don't have the energy right now to develop something that no one could reproduce.  And since all of my knitting efforts are currently focused on designing, I didn't want to do any of the typical tiny or heavily striped projects.

But the yarn has to go somewhere.  And I picked Project Warm-Up in Washington State.  They seemed the most legit, and their leader, Holli, was really quick to e-mail me back with an address to send the yarn.  (You can also find it on their Facebook page.)  They use yarn to knit items like hats and toys, and they also work with a Girls and Boys club that teaches fiber arts to at-risk kids.  Maybe something in these two boxes headed out tomorrow will keep someone from joining a gang.

Not all of it is discontinued, though.  Some of it is downright fantastic, but I know that I'll never be able to turn it into anything.  For example, my seven skeins of Colinette Point Five, no more than one per color, that I bought for no good reason.  Maybe someone can make seven really adorable cowls or baby hats.

An awful picture of beautiful yarn: seven skeins of Colinette Point Five, all headed to charity.

Now my yarn cupboard is quite sad and bare.  It's very tempting to go out and fill it all up again, but I think I'll be able to resist.