I hope that you had a great week! I am super happy to say that mine was surprisingly good – safe Monday, I was able to work on the PhD every day at least for a bit, and when I looked at my Done-list* at the end of each day, I realised that I did get quite a lot of stuff done, not only chores but also things that are important but don’t have to happen daily or weekly (such as buying food for Nanny Ogg and feeding her).
(* I keep a “Done-List” in my planner, because I had the notorious habit of overloading my to-do list and then beating myself up when I couldn’t tick it all off by the end of the day. Since the only “entity” benefitting from this was the depression, I changed my game and now write my to-do list on a separate piece of paper or a post-it note, which then goes on the “Notes” page of the week, where the stuff goes that has to happen some time during the week. The only stuff that I DO write down on my day page is what I have done – be that chores, self-care stuff, hobbies, talking with friends, or whatever. If you have a problem with overloading your to-do list as well, you might want to give this a try!)
Philipp and I went on a lot of walks, I managed to go to bed early and I’m quite proud to announce that I finally managed to get my water intake to 2 litres a day, or at least close to it. PHEW. It helps a lot.
While progress has been kind of slow, I did manage to make some, and since it has given me so much trouble, we will start with the baerchen.
As you remember, this is were we left off last time …
I cannot tell you when, and I cannot tell you why. But there cannot be another explanation for what had been going down since last night.
After Lenka’s shawl was off the needles on Sunday night, I decided to start at least Julia’s bear, since the other option would have been sewing on hexagons and I wasn’t in the mood for that. I decided on a colour (the light purple), and went to look up the pattern for real.
I hope you’re well! Man, it’s been another one and a half weeks, but I have decided that I am going to try and do better for June and be in touch more often, I miss you, and I’m not fond of disappearing for longer and then having this big ass blog post to share. (Just gotta remind me that shorter posts are good, too!)
Lots has been going on.
First of all I am a little overwhelmed by the current amount of WIPs – four is a bit too much for me. Technically, I could or should start a fifth, but I’ll talk about that in a minute. Since I am a little overwhelmed by it all, I decided to put some serious work in Lenka’s shawl first, since it was the easiest one and closest to my comfort zone. The photo above was taken the day before yesterday, and once I was done with my PhD work yesterday afternoon, I sat down and started the lace edging while listening to Random Number Horror Podcast No. 9 (link to the homepage), a really, really great podcast done by Jeffrey Cranor (one of the Creators of Welcome to Night Vale) and Cecil Baldwin (the voice of Night Vale). Whether you absolutely love horror movies or are interested in the genre per se, but are too squeamish to watch them: These two got you covered, because Baldwin (who loves horror movies) takes Jeffrey (and the listeners) on a journey to make the genre more approachable for his friend. Films are picked by rolling dice: Each episode (new ones are put up each Tuesday), they roll a monster die and a style die and pick another horror movie to watch which they then discuss. It has been absolutely fantastic to listen to, and if you love movies and discussing movies, this might be something for you – don’t worry if you’re squeamish, Jeffrey is, too, and he will afterwards rate the movie acorrding to approachability. If you love horror movies, you can totally watch along and join the discussion on twitter or elsewhere.
Where was I? Oh yeah, the shawl. So, as I said, I sat down to knit yesterday afternoon, while listening to the podcast, and this early evening, I finished row 15 out of 26. Not bad, huh?
I know I’ve said it once, and I have said it twice – but the edging is so much fun to knit. The ribbing is meditative, and the increases and decreases keep it from getting boring. Even though this is my third shawl, the magic of “just one more row” has captured me again, and I’m beyond glad about it.
The reason why the shawl is the furthest along of all WIPs is that I have worked on it steadily during online conferences and also during our big seminar which was held last Thursday and Friday. As you might remember, I presented my PhD topic, or rather, the thesis I am pursuing in my dissertation. It was a huge success. My professor took lots and lots of notes, nodded a lot and was very pleased with it!! She did have some questions (mostly whether I was going to incorporate this or that in my dissertation), but I was able to answer them all to her satisfaction (like: Yes, I have already put that all in). And then the other professor (who will, most likely, be the second professor to grade me) said that she was thoroughly convinced by my argument and especially loved the definition of a term I’ve come up with, and I was super happy and relieved (I mean, if one out of two is thoroughly happy with that, that’s gonna be great for me!). I also got some truly good advice, and it was so good to be able to get into academic discourse, discuss ideas, give and receive feedback, etc. I never realised how much I missed this. Once my presentation was over, I pulled out the shawl and worked on it steadily throughout the rest of the seminar (it’s a good thing when you’re scheduled as the second talk on the first day). Once it was over on Friday afternoon, I had not only worked 24 out of 26 pattern repeats, but was so exhausted that I slept for three hours straight. ;)
The blanket has now a shiny new set of new hexagons, but I haven’t managed to sew them on yet – I’m going to do it soon, though, because I am starting to feel a bit stressed about getting behind (I still have to ask Laura when her due date is!).
The cardigan has remained untouched and will be for a while, because I don’t have a deadline, but I did cast on Julia’s scarf!
The pattern is Rachel Stecker’s Dandelion Scarf (ravelry link!), and to be honest, I …. regretted casting it on after the second pattern repeat. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pattern, but I do have to concentrate working on it, because it’s kid silk mohair, and I don’t have the headspace right now (AAARGH!).
Since my SIL will start radiation therapy very soon, I thought about making her a little something that she could take to the hospital with her – we don’t know yet how the whole thing will go, whether she will be home during chemo or not, and I wanted to make her something like an anti-stress ball, but cuter. I went through my queue (which I … should probably sort out again. Ahem) and pulled out Erin Sharp’s A Little Love Monster(the link takes you to her website, where you can get the pattern for free). The monster is not only entirely adorable (it reminds me a bit of a gummy bear), it also sparked another idea, and that is not to crochet one, but three, one for each of the family. If Julia decided to take them to the hospital with her, I wanted the monsters to be washable at 60°C at home, and so I went through my stash and came up with this acrylic yarn:
I haven’t decided on the colours yet, but I thought that I would make my niece’s monster in pink, and then maybe Julia’s in deep purple or light purple/grey – and to top it off, I thought that, maybe, maybe maybe? I could embroider the monsters a little, using the colours of the other two monsters. This, however, is a HUGE undertaking, and I also only have two sets of safety eyes here, and so I am still debating whether I should make one little monster (for my SIL), as we already bought a board game for my niece. I have to think about this.
How are you all? Are you well? I hope you are well, and I hope that you will have a fantastic Friday, and a really great weekend. I’m going to check out your blogs now, and finally catch up. To my LGBTQ+ readers, happy Pride month! I hope that you get to celebrate somewhat, if you want.
Okay, so until next time! I gotta remember – short posts are better than no posts …
I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to disappear unannounced for almost two weeks. I hope everyone is well! Since it has been so long, I think I’ll give you some updates on what happened here. Erm … okay … where do we start .. ah, yeah!
To be honest, it had already started to come to life when I showed you the yarn in the gift-knitting post, but I wanted to complete one polygon of each colour (the grey will be used for the border only) before I showed any pictures. Well … here we go!
I know it took a long time and I have been talking about writing this post for even longer, but today is the day. I’m finally showing pictures of my grandfather’s cardigan. I know that you will have seen quite a bit of them, but since I started the sweater last July (yes, really), and it was a Christmas present, I hope you will forgive me. ;)
If you have been reading this blog for some time, then you know
I hope you had a great weekend! Originally, I wanted to put “The Baby-Knitting Commences” in the title, but then, I mean, I’m not … actually … knitting … babi-
I hope everyone is fine and that you had a great week!
As promised, I will finally wrap up the last two gift posts from last year by blogging about Lenka’s shawl and my granddad’s sweater, and then we will be fully updated! Today, we will start with Lenka’s shawl! Ta-daa!!!
Lenka got the shawl last Tuesday (her birthday), mainly for practicality reasons. I wrapped the shawl in Christmas-themed wrapping paper, her friendship anniversary present(s) in butterfly-themed wrapping paper, and the paper for her birthday presents had bees on it. Since she had picked the yarn, but had asked me to keep the pattern a secret, I didn’t post any updates, and so you will get it all now. (The pattern, by the way, is Hunter Hammersen’s Deceit (ravelry link)).
Yes! THIS is the big project I’m going to talk about today!
Now, before anyone is completely freaking out: This blanket is NOT for us! I’m not pregnant.
Laura is. Yes, one of our oldest friends are expecting their first baby (remember when I said that a few posts ago?), and yes, they’re gonna have a boy, and I offered to make a blanket!
When Laura told us at the beginning of the year, she was brimming with joy. You could see it clearly on camera. Steffen is just as excited. They both spend a LOT of time with Laura’s nieces, nephews, and godchildren, and they get super creative when it comes to Christmas presents for the kids, too (such as making a whole self-made audiobook for Laura’s American nieces and nephews with them reading German fairy tales, complete with sound effects, music, etc.). They’re going to be great parents.
I hope you had a great week so far! Things are kind of okay here – I’m struggling with concentrating on the PhD work, because I can’t do a lot to spice up my daily routine, and mental health-wise, it’s been a little difficult as well, because my anxiety has been spiking up, but the weather has been warmer and sunnier, my father-in-law got his first vaccine this week, as well as another relative, and I just hope it’s going to be better soon. :)
I have been spending some quality time with my two WIPs over the past few days, and thought I could show you pictures! Are you up for that? Here we go …
