| Friday, November 25, 2005 |
| Hey, where'd she go? |
ok, so the ticker says it is 10 days since me thesis was due. so one would think that it was all over now. but no, i had to be all sneaky with my blogging self and make my countdown end before the actual, horrific, dreaded, panic-inducing day in an effort to curb my terrible procrastinating ways. ha! sometimes i'm so amused at my own optimism. but now it really is almost over. today will be for making some changes my tyrant *ahem* supervisor suggested, and tomorrow morning we take it to be printed and bound. i need a copy for each of my readers, and normally people print one for themselves too. i'm not sure if i'm gonna, cuz god knows i never want to touch that thing again, but it might be fun to burn. mmmmm.....burn. did i mention that Matthias hides the lighters he uses for his horrid cancerous habit because sometimes when i get twitchy i like to play with them? he's not so much used to crazies, even after all this time with me, so things like that make him nervous. really, i prefer candles, cuz i can look at the flame longer, and play with the wax, but i can't really do that unless i want to risk kitten with flaming tail running like crazy and setting the whole house on fire. so i have to settle for the lighter until i can convince Matthias to get a fireplace, so i can zone out with the fire in a completely harmless and un-pyrolike way. or of course, burning my thesis in a little bonfire in the garden.
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posted by tatjana @ 12:00 p.m.   |
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| Friday, November 11, 2005 |
| Done! Improv Cardi :) |
YAY! I finally decided what to add! I liked how it turned out with the ruffle, it gives it a girly feel that suits the colour. And the flower on the side keeps it from looking lopsided. I sewed loops on the inside of the ruffle for the buttons, so you don't see them when the sweater's done up, and i wove some of the boucle garn through the ruffle around the neck and tightened it a bit so it wouldn't hang like a collar but sit more snugly around the neck. The yarn is a really bulky cotton/acrylic blend that's really soft and makes a really cuddly sweater without being stifling. I already got complimented when I wore it out today, and I think it will be getting a lot of use. To think this is the first real sweater I've managed to both finish knitting and actually want to wear!
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| posted by tatjana @ 4:51 p.m. |
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| Thursday, November 10, 2005 |
| Kitty Chaos |
Usually it's Lily who goes looking for my wool, and she already knows she's not supposed to, because she takes off as soon as she sees me coming. But this morning Lily managed to tear off some and carry it off with her to show Abby. I should've known she was out to get her hooked.
Lilly: Rrrrr. Rrrr. I love playing with this lovely sheep stinky wool!!
Abby: Huh? Hey! Whazzat? It smells funny. Can I sniff?
Lily: No! My wool. But, you know, I could tell you where you can find some more.....
sigh.
And so this afternoon, while I was in the kitchen making myself a sandwich, the two of them were on a wool mission. I come back to my desk to find Abby nestled among the bundles, purring and getting ready for a nap. Lily was outta there so fast, for a second I wasn't even sure she had even been there, but she left here mark behind, as you can see in the big white mess on the left.
I'm just glad they don't know where I hid my little stash of camel hair.
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| posted by tatjana @ 8:17 p.m. |
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| Sunday, November 06, 2005 |
| Flea market fun and Pumpkin fissure pie |
i swear one of these days someone is going to knock on my door and give me an award for being the biggest procrastinator ever (or you know, an enormous kick in the ass). what i've managed to write so far this weekend is just pitiful. and now i'm even blogging! what the heck am i thinking! but you know, just in case anyone is actually reading this i felt compelled to share my wonderful bargains!! i took a peak in the fabric section of the local dept store yesterday, and found a pile of trims that had been reduced to 10 cents a metre. woohoo! i love hording trims. and the blue flower trim is so cute. i'm already fantasizing about a spring scarf in cotton with a flower pattern and this trim used as a fringe. and then i went to a flea market and picked up a whole pack (10 pretty skeins!!) of mercerised cotton. i love cotton. can never have enough cotton. i need to move to greece, or mexico or anyplace warm and sunny wear you have no choice but to wear cotton all the time. and besides that, it's pink! loud, blaring, in-your-face pink. nothing apologetic about this colour. and i'm gonna have to think of something fun to make with it, probably involving some equally bright contrasting colour. why? because sometimes i just enjoy being tacky. in fact, sometimes i enjoy it so much that i think when i get older i'll pray for white hair, so i can dye with some horribly cheap hair colour that instead of being brown or blonde or whatever, turns that eerie shade of purple. and then i can wear a matching boa and slippers with rhinestones, and call everyone dahling.
ahem. anyway. and i made pie. pumpkin pie. with a can of pumpkin puree that i brought back from canada and hid in the cupboard and totally forgot about til we went a whole 8 days without grocery shopping and i had to ransack the kitchen. i really love pumpkin pie, and the squash family, in all it's variations, is one of the things i miss from back home, but this is the first time i made a pumpkin pie myself. i found a recipe on the net that sounded pretty good, adjusted it a bit cuz i forgot to buy evaporated milk (if they even sell it here) and it turned out pretty darn tasty, even it does look like an earthquake happened to it.
 
i think i'll have to look for another recipe though or figure out how to adjust this one, cuz it's not nearly as dense as your typical pie, and although i kinda liked the lighter texture, the thing just falls apart. i'm figureing maybe some flour (of which it has none) to make it a bit drier, or maybe an egg. of course, this is all purely theoretical, as i think the few token pumpkins they sell here are already gone, and i don't think there's any place to order canned pumpkin online |
| posted by tatjana @ 6:04 p.m. |
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| Friday, November 04, 2005 |
| Ruffle Cardigan |
i'm so happy with how fast this cardigan went, and how it turned out, in spite of all my indecision and totally knitting by the seat of my pants! so i have to post more pictures, of course.
it's not technically completely done, because i still haven't finished putting buttons on it, but i will post a pic of me wearing it tomorrow, in all its purple ruffled glory! i'm fastening the buttons with little loops that i'm sewing on the inside edge of the ruffle, so when they're done up, you won't see them at all. the sweater fits snugly, and feels very cuddly and warm, i really like it! the only thing that might be missing is some kind of embellishment somewhere on the front. that whole ruffle-less side looks kinda lonely. i was thinking of maybe embroidering something with the yarn from the ruffle, but i'm not sure what. i played with the yarn a bit to see how it would look with a flower, but i'm not sure it looks right. i guess i'll just have to bug the folks at KR for the billionth time and see what they think. |
| posted by tatjana @ 11:51 p.m. |
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| Tuesday, November 01, 2005 |
| up in the air |
things have been kinda all over the place the last couple of days because i found out that the doctorate position that i was really hoping to get, will not be mine. this complicates things a little bit, as there aren't many positions available lately, even in other parts, but even if i found one, i probably couldn't afford to live on my own in some other city or country. the great thing about this position is that it was right here, so i could just keep living with Matthias, and he could keep his job, and we could both keep on having cheap rent. perfect. i have to admit, i was a little upset by all this at first, but then i was kinda relieved, because deep down, i wasn't really sure i wanted to spend the next 3 years working on breeding models to evaluate the extent of heterosis in corn breeding programmes. as much fun as i'm sure that sounds like.
so i've been in quite the tizzy trying to figure out what the dagnabbit ima gonna do, because soon the clock will be ticking on my student loan. it's a very loud, irritating clock, and it's tick sounds like the constant dropping of coins in the amount of interest that i am accumulating and will seemingly forever owe the tyrants that are the government of Canada. if i had only thought to do BSc here in Germany as well, i wouldn't have had to pay any tuition at all, and if i still needed to borrow money to support myself, they would never have charged me any interest at all. ever. do you see why i like it here?
anyway, to keep my mind off impending financial doom, Matthias took me on a little day trip to Karlsruhe, where we had yummy bacon cheeseburgers (a startlingly foreign concept here) in an American style diner, which sold things like pancake mix and mountain dew. then we went for a walk in this lovely park by the castle:
sorry. i forget what the castle is called. there are a lot of them here, and after a while you don't remember anymore what they're callled, unless they're really mindblowingly original names, like the 2 castles here in Stuttgart, the Old Castle, and the New Castle. wow, the creativity just drives. me. wild.
and of course i've been knitting like mad, because i should actually be making changes to the T word, and there's nothing like some nice chunky knitting to make you feel all accomplished when your regular activity is a paper that just never seems to end. so three cheers for Gedifra big point! i love you even if you are lavendar and will probably make me look pale!
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| posted by tatjana @ 7:49 p.m. |
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