Unblogged

I'm back in the land of blogging again. It only took them over 3 days to unblock the thing and now I've got far too much to say in one post but I'll try and keep it as short as someone who's been unable to blog for the past 3 days possibly can.

Thursday night was great fun. I have been in agony for most of the weekend however it was worth it. The following photo of my arm was not caused by domestic violence but by my first rugby training in over a year. My skin will toughen up eventually. At least its better than trying to explain black eyes to the doctor. While still playing in Amsterdam I managed to get 5 black eyes in the space of 3 months. My doctor gave me domestic abuse leaflets with the first 2 and with the next one, even though I was in the emergency room in still wearing my rugby gear and covered from head to toe in mud, they wanted to call the police for me and get my gorgeous hubby (the boyfriend at the time) arrested for beating me up. Now anyone who knows Frank also knows that the concept of him giving me a smack is completely outrageous but I suppose they were only doing their job. I did have a broken cheekbone then so I can imagine that it looked quite bad from where they were standing.

We'll skip Friday's karaoke and head straight to Saturday. Went shopping, went to stricktreff and knitted away quite happily. Met up with Charlene and then went to see the 'Seamen' Frank's band. Here's a wee photo of them. The bloke in the kilt is mine :o) They were playing at a club called JWD which stands for Janz Weit Draussen. German for 'in the middle of nowhere' Well it was in the middle of nowhere but quite packed for place where the only next door neighbours are a family of ducks. They played extrememly well and got loads and loads of applause. A few of the locals even took to the dancefloor. It was a bit like the old 'dorf disco' in Attendorn but the natives were friendly, the beer was cold and the music was good. All in all it was a good night.

Back to the socks now. I'm still playing with the collinette jitterbug and on Sunday I looked at what I'd been knitting on Saturday and decided to take Gisela's advice. She reckoned that my needles were too small for the thickness of the yarn. I have to admit that she was right. I was knitting the main part of the sock up with 2.5mm's and it did look a bit to tight. I ripped back to the cuff. Knitted up with a 3mm, the bundchen is just too loose so with the 2.5's for the bundchen and then the 3mm's for the leg, its going much better and the colours are pooling in a spiral rather than the strange inkspot blob which had appeared using the 2.5's. So thanks Gisela not only for lending me 10 euries when the silly Opern Cafe wouldn't take my EC card but also for the wisedom about the needle size.

Murphy's still in town.

This post was originally supposed to be called 'return to rugby' however on trying to blog this morning I recieved a notification that my blog was locked due to the blog being a 'spam' blog. Now they're probably right about the content being rubbish, but spam? Must be the grammar police or something. So I've sent in my wee secret code or whatever its supposed to be and I'm now waiting not so patiently for them to unlock it so that I can post again. Seemingly I can save this a draft until some 'real' person reviews my blog and judges its content to be unharmful to the world. That may take some time.



I'll post my return to rugby pictures when I actually know that my blog is going to be published.



So thankyou very much Mr Spam-Prevention Robot. NOT

A touch of the Murphy's

I'm having another one of those days/weeks/months I think. You know, those times where nothing seems to go right and everything that can go wrong will go wrong? The separate actions fall directly under Murphy's Law however when it apears to be more of a virus which will eventually clear up then its a Touch of the Murphy's.



List of Bad things

1. Got knocked off my bike on Tuesday


2. Couldn't get toe up sock right at all.


3. Ripped out Collinette jiterbug socks 4 times


4. Ripped out again when I got home after strick treff as I didn't like the pattern and it was too stretchy.


5. argued with my colleague


6. Frank bought huge sideboard for a euro and now we can't get it upstairs or in the cellar.


7. Not getting my knitting time this morning


8. Back light on bike dying last night


9. Harry Potter dying on page 536 (joke)


10. Managed to post this on the wrong blog

Okay so some things have been gonig well too and I'm just whinging and being a grump.

List of good things

1. Found pattern in my favourite socks for the jitterbug
   


2. Went to stricktreff last night and didn't get knocked off my bike or rained on
   


3. Made up with colleague
   


4. Stalin has calmed down and is now only Atilla the Hun(my boss)
   


5. Found new rugby club which will be playing 15-a-side.
   


6. Got Colin's toe up right by the 2nd go


7. Manged to delete entry from wrong blog

Here's a photo of my stricktreff in TeaTheTee or whatever its called. Its not our normal treffing spot but, as our usual haunt was on holiday, we had to find somewhere else to click the sticks. Last night's treff back in the Aurum and was good fun. There wasn't that many of us there but we ended up having a discussion about language history and blunders. Language blunders are one of my favourtie and I abousolutely love it when folks here ask about becoming sausages. I also like making mistakes myself. Maybe I should write more german and see what kind of hillarity comes from it. Acutally I dunno, there's a difference between writing e-mails in bad german and writing blog in bad german. Knowing my luck I'd probably get put in prison by the german grammar police for grammatically gross misbrauch.
Tonight I'm gonig to be cycling miles to the rugby training. Its my first rugby training in over a year so I'll probably be in agnoy tomorrow. I love the german word for muscle ache caused by excercise 'musclekarte' I hope I've spelled that correctly or the spelling police might get me but anyway it literally translates as muscle hangover. Brilliant! Its a much better word that 'Strickjacke'
And because I will have my muscle hangover tomorrow I expect sympathy and chocolate :o)

Toe up tragedy

I've decided that I hate toe up socks. I think in general, the principle is good i.e. you can knit and knit until you run out of yarn.
This is all fine and well if you have 2 balls of 50g or if you have 2 balls of equal length.
The thing which bugs me about toe-ups is the toe. I've tried loads of different ways and I personally like the results of the sherman toe. However I hate picking up the stitches after the toe is completed. I always end up with the wrong number and I'm sure I've dropped more than I've picked up and I find it difficult to unzipp the crocheted chain.

Maybe it was just a bad day but its now the 3rd time I've had to rip out the toe at the unzip stage and I'm getting ever so slightly annoyed with it.

The good news is, I've almost finished my cotton jeans short jacket. I know it will be a bit on the small side but hey, I don't care any more. I hate diets too. They make me more miserable than toe up socks.

Ach never mind. I'll have another go at the toe and if it works out, I'll go back on the diet and fit the jacket.

Finally

So I actually took a picture of something that I've finished. I'm very pleased with myself. Its the first time I've used 2 colours over 2 different fingers. It goes so much quicker than picking up one colour at at time. I can't quite get the 2 colour on 1 finger technique and to be honest I like this one a lot better anyway.

I'm now going to lie down for a while even though its 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. I have a slight ye olde wilde hangover again.

Oh but before I do crawl back into my scratcher. Someone gave us back the summer and there is a huge big bright warm thing in the sky again. Its nice :o)

Addictions in General

Okay so I'm addicted to knitting, wool, books and a few other things. Crafty and f!*@ abouty things. I do also (very) occassionally when the mood takes me, have a sneaky ciggarette however I am trying to stop that completely and only tend to do so when I'm out on the sauce.

Anyway, on the way to work this morning, an incident took place which has left me not only in pain but also with enough incentive never to suck on a cancer stick again.

There's me cycling to work. I decided to go down Friedrichstrasse this morning as Charlottenstrasse can be a bit iffy around 9ish when one is in a hurry. Although F-str can be just as iffy, at least there are plenty of police and traffic lights and its a haupt strasse with lots of yellow diamond signs which means that even me on a bike has right of way. I diverse again. As I was cycling along minding my own business, one of my pet hate's drove by. A BMW s.u.v. I hate those things in town but nonetheless it was there and it was driving. The passenger (sitting on the right chair in this country) was casually flicking the ash from his ciggie as his friend drove along as fast as the morning traffic would allow him. There was however, a bit of a wind and the ash of his ciggie landed straight in my eye. I yowled with pain then cycled as fast as my legs would go in order to catch up with him at the next set of traffic lights. I caught him and was extremely pleased to be able to tell him off in german with tears streaming down from my left eye. He did try to blame the big truck in front but concidering there was no passenger in that vehicle, it didn't really wash and I also knew that it was him. I did see it from my one functioning eye.

The point of this little rant is simple. If you smoke and you want to smoke in your car, please do so but flick the ash into the ashtray. That's what its there for. If you don't smoke in your car then fill it with pot pourri or whatever but then please don't fill it with pot-pourri and flick the ash out of the window onto unsuspecting cyclists or pedestrians who happen to have chosen a much more environmentally freindly way of traveling to work than sitting in a BMW s.u.v. Rant over

My book arrived today. I can't wait to get home now. I had written to Amazon to complain that one of my stricktreffers ordered her book about 1 week after me and had gotten her book last week and my delivery date still said August. 5 mins later I got shipment notification and today it arrived. Yippeee. Harry Potter next weekend and in between should be the Loop delivery. Oh my knickers are in a knot now. He he. I've just thought something up. knickers which are called 'knot now knickers' which look something like a chatstity belt. Either that its what you give to someone to destress them. 'here you go love,have some knot now knickers so that you can get yours out of the knot/twist they've just got into'

Service

I must admit that I love Loop in London. I ordered my needle case on Thursday and it arrived on Monday. I could only pick it up last night but I was soo happy that I did a wee dance at the post office. Well not quite but I almost did. The jitterbug sock yarn is even more gorgeous irl so and I'm kind of itching to wind it, knit it and wear it but I want to wait for my favourite socks book to come in. Mind you I did by the Genial Sock Workshop book and that's got some really nice patterns in it too. We'll see.

Anyway the good thing about www.loopshop.gb.com is that they sent me an advert with the rowan cotton jeans on sale. One of the girls at the stricktreff had been admiring mine so I sent the advert to her. It was such a good deal that I decided I wanted some too and well we ordered loads of the stuff. 40 balls in total. The didn't have enough of the hemp colour (now christened brombeerjoghurt by us as it looks like bramble yoghurt) for Sabine so we both got this. The colour is Jute. Well they' didn't have 40 of that either but 39 so I've ordered 39 and I should be able to make a jumper and matching hat out of my 21. It knits up really well and feels sooo nice. The competition is now on though as Sabine and I now have to make 2 completely different garments so that we don't look like we're doing a 'single white female' . Better go and do some work now or I'll get shouted at by Satlin (my new boss he's called Satlin as he's a cross between Satan and Stalin)

Spending Spree

Look what I bought!! I don't think his nibs will be able to moan at me for this one as it will be helping tidy up the flat. Well it will tidy out the old tin I'm using at the moment and once that's tidy I can shove more stuff in there thus creating space somewhere else in the flat. Well that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

I also finally caved in and bought some Colinette Jitterbug yarn. Its a nice pinky purpley colour. I know that I don't really need any more sock yarn, never mind pinky purpley sock yarn but I heard soooo many good reports about it AND it was too gorgeous to resist.

I know its been a while since I've posted but I've been kind of busy running around like an eejit as usual. I've been to a couple of stricktrefs and had fun. Also the Seamen made their first appearence live. I still think the Seamen all over Berlin would make brilliant t-shirts. Maybe even 'Pirates of the Mugglezee' on the back or something... I'm off on a tangent again. Anyway I have been finishing projects which is highly unusual for me. One project will be going to its recipient on Saturday so I'll post some piccies after then. My other secret project is the Harry Potter SockSwap. Those are just beeing finshed and put in the post. Same goes for HPSS photo's. The Rowan cardi only has half a sleeve and a collar to go an its done then I don't know what to do. I think I'll finish Berni's jumper. Its been on the back burner for so long that I've forgotten what I was supposed to be doing with it. Well not quite but I have worked out what I'm supposed to be doing with the neck which is something. While deciding on that, I suppose I could be getting on with knitting some socks for Frank. I've got 1 sock almost finished and 2 x 100g balls of bamboo yarn to be knitting. I also want to be knitting some corsages and doing a felted bag and knitting up a skirt which I thought up AND a purse AND start on Christmas presents AND AND AND. So really I think I do know what to do and there is no shortage of projects.

Oh and bunny update. The poor wee soul had a tummy bug or something as she had a dose of the trots and wasn't eating or drinking. Well she had been trying to eat the fixtures in the flat and had a good go at the door and door frame but that's not proper bunny food. Maybe thought she could eat her way into the living room or something. We took her to the vet who gave her a couple of wee jags and she's now doing fine, eating snoepjes again and has thankfully stopped eating the house.