der k-Raum

Hallo Internetz,

heute möchte ich Dir schreiben, welche Lötprojekte aktuell bei uns aktuell sind:



Schaltplanskizzen und Programme folgen demnächst mal.

So again we applied the increment operator (++) to the year variable, in an illuminating way. It then took a while to find an acceptable photo.

Why? The answer is known since Bob Dylan.



And this is our party's neighbour, taking a huge argument with his rockets …

A few days ago we received a very nice postcard from a friend, who is visiting LA and doing a bit of research there. Thank you very much for that!

Last two weekends I found time to (nearly) finish my tax computation for "oh-eleven". Missing are four copies and four so-called Eigenbelege (maybe missing receipt declarations?). Elster is down, so I couldn't submit the cover pages electronically.

Hi there. Now that the dust of the holidays and their preparation has settled, I'm trying to live up to my own resolution of "more blogging". osti keeps nagging me :) I'll try to touch on the main subjects since my last blog post.

In early December I became aunt of a beautiful baby boy. That event was foreshadowed by an true mountain of knitted items, which I have to tell you about an other time. And there were various birthdays and of course a bit of Christmas knitting. All of that I'm going to skip for now and tell you about our fabulous knitting club.

This past weekend saw our second official meeting. My sis and an friend came to our flat and stayed for the night. Sadly the fourth member didn't have time. But we had boatloads of fun and soup, burgers, hot chocolate with little marshmallows and lots and lots of knitting. Additionally we got ourselves started on our private rerun of Doctor Who. Both me and my sis have watched it already, but our number three didn't and got hooked, so we threw our plans of going out to the movies out the window.

It was a fun weekend hopefully soon to be repeated :)

Obviously, I got lazy with the blog in the last few weeks. I'm trying to catch you up on what happened. And I will split it into different posts, only because osti always complains, he has to read so much when I post :). So now I'll try to write up what has happened in my life since the last post, the next one will deal with the knitting progress and general yarn stuff and in a third post I'll tell you what is going on right now. :)

In my last post I just started on different nursing shawls for my big sister, when I got swallowed up by the preparations for the freshman orientation week. First of all I invested two days into reediting our little magazine for freshman. I don't recall if it already came up, but I used to be quite involved in the student site of faculty politics. Nowadays I'm mostly retired and try to be the voice of experience and if it is necessary I chip in. So this year I was stuck with updating, proofreading and finally re-layouting the "Hamsterexpress". I worked for two days straight and long hours to make the deadline for printing only to get the news, that the printer was broken and printing had to be delayed for a day. Damn. But through luck and persistence it got printed in time.

As a special treat for our freshmen this year prepared a screening of "Piled Higher and Deeper - The PhD-Movie". To cover the expenses we advertised on the whole science campus and arranged for a advance ticket sale; that meant me sitting all day long in the office with the tickets. Advance sales started on Monday with the screening on Friday. Sales were picking up slowly, but by Wednesday afternoon all our expenses were covered; than, apparently, we hopped onto a train to crazy town, because by Thursday morning we had to print additional tickets and by afternoon we had sold twice as many tickets as Wednesday afternoon; us booking more than one lecture hall, didn't seem like over-carefulness any longer, but more like a necessity. By midday on Friday we had to close advance sales in order to have any tickets left for sales before the screening. There we were sold out flat in 15 minutes, leaving approximately a hundred people without tickets. We had 565 guests that evening and are still simply flabbergasted by the sheer amount of people. But it was a ton of fun and the atmosphere was overwhelming.

The next Monday (surprisingly) the semester started up again and I had to pick my courses. Simultaneously I did some proofreading for ostis dissertation. Not much to tell there, but time consuming.

That was my recap of the past weeks, my next post will be all about my knitting projects.

After a really crappy summer with mostly no sun or only in combination with miserly high humidity, we are positively basking in a golden Indian summer. Yesterday for example we had ourself a nice barbecue with a bunch of friends and ette, who is visiting. The whole summer we never got to barbecuing except for once in spring, but yesterday it was really beautiful. It got dark rather fast, but we lighted tea candles and a torch and later it got cold rather fast but we came prepared with sweaters and blankets.

In other — that is knitting — news I asked my big sis (that is a rather bad qualifier, since all my sisters are older than me. I'm talking about my oldest sis) what I can knit for her or my soon-to-be born nephew. I have knitted everything I could not stop myself from knitting and now it is time to knit something that will be really useful. She hasn't gone through the boxes of newborn clothes, so she didn't come up with actual newborn stuff, but she asked me for a wrap. She will be nursing all through winter and needs something to ward off the cold, when she goes partially naked. So I started two wraps.

I had two beautiful skeins of Crystal Palaces Mini Mochi in the gorgeous colourway Lake Trail in my stash. The colour shifts from brown through green to a brilliant turquoise and back. Sadly two skeins with a total meterage of 356 is a bit too little for a full blown wrap, so I chose Summit and hope that its special construction with rather big holes makes for a big enough shawl. I wanted to try that pattern since I first saw it. Due to the long colour change of the yarn it has a peculiar look that differs a lot from the pattern. As soon as osti is done playing with optics, a cd, a glass of water and his new lens, I'm going to badger him into taking pictures of all my knitting stuff.

For the second shawl I found a pattern I had to try: Ginko Shoulderette Shawl. It has the added virtue of being mindless knitting for the most part, which was perfect for yesterday night. So I dyed white sock yarn to a rich yellow with turmeric and cast on. I had to overcome a few obstacles, since the pattern has you cast on provisionally with a crochet cast on and I had not read the pattern that closely before and then had to perform a crochet cast on without a crochet hook, just a little piece of scrap yarn (naturally I also didn't bring extra yarn and had to make due with the pieces that had held together the skein) and in the half-dark. Surprisingly it wasn't a bad morning after and the cast on doesn't look botched up :) .

I'm back to blogging after my final physics exam yesterday (I'm entirely pleased with the result, just for the record) but I'm a little off my game today, really, really tired and I think the cold that was looming over me for the last few days may become full-fledged. So today I'm doing everything I had no time for before the exam. That includes blogging and making new and exciting knitting plans.

So yesterday I was waiting for my exam and sat on the hall in the theoretics department, a complete nervous wreck. And in the next room there was a heated discussion going on. Raised voices in thickly accented clumsy English. The few bits and pieces I actually caught indicated some kind of professionally disagreement. I fully expected that before someone would start sharpening vectors ;) I'm asking you, what could possibly get so emotionally heated in theoretical physics that it could warrant a full-blown shouting match?

Back to knitting: I finished the double heelix socks and I am rather sorry but I don't think I can present you this a picture, because they have to go rather quickly to the post office, so that they get where they are going in time. But I will try to badger the recipient into taking one and sending it to me. They ended up being identical because it would seem rather strange to have dramatically different sock legs peaking out of your shoes...

Also yarnharlot bombarded me with the cutest baby patterns during her baby watch 2011 and I couldn't resist and made a tiny zig-zag-cap and turned the left-over-yarn from Blue beast into a tiny Puerperium Cardigan. It's still waiting for buttons but a I'm conferring with a friend over them today. I can also report that I have done nine and a half of the fifteen seams of Rainbow. It's coming together and it is about time :)

The super secret project has been started. I have to think of a code name. One that doesn't give away anything. Code Name is actually not so bad :D It's not bad at all. For that project I started doing colourwork two-handed. I really have to concentrate to do that and my right hand keeps cramping up. That's not so unexpected since I only recently learned English knitting and the movements are not quite as familiar as picking is.

And now I going to browse the web for new knitting ideas and try to find the one yarn I have to get to finish the Blue Laminaria. It will hopefully be perfect for my big sis who requested a wrap to ward off the cold.

Since today is the first time in a week I really enjoyed my morning coffee I have all reason to declare myself healthy again :) Seriously, my throat bothered me to the point of refusing coffee, that sadly aggravated my poor sore throat, especially in the mornings, when it was already dried up. Except for an occasional cough I'm back to my normal self.

After my last blog entry ette came for a visit, but this time she took the direct route to me (or should I say she tried?) instead of going via our parents. So she endet up in the big road works going on under my living room window. To be more precise she was redirected around the construction zone and taking the first sign, that read "University Northern Campus" she ended up in an area completely unknown to her. Unfortunately the redirection took her the long way around the campus area and nearly very road sign will direct you to the Campus (frankly because there isn't anything else there) and instead of taking the first one of those, she would have been perfectly OK, had she taken any other exit :) So now she was parked in the lot of the new Botanical Garden, with no idea how to get to the lot of the Physics Building. So she phoned me and asked be basically "I have no idea where I am. How do I get to you." Even Botanical Garden parking lot is not especially helpful as there are two botanical Gardens there in close proximity each with at least two parking lots. But then there was the helpful bit: "I think I can see your house". Hallelujah. We confirmed that suspicion with frantic waving and holding up a large piece of white paper on my side and a quick description of her clothes on ettes side. Than I picked up my mp3-player and went to her and directed her to the right parking lot, all the while shaking with laughter :)

We sat down on my couch and knit away and discussed our plans. We had a fair bit of knitting and talking about knitting to do, especially on ettes super secret knitting project and wanted to go to the movies to watch Captain America on Monday night.

Now I have to report my knitting progress or the next thing that came over us won't make any sense to you :) I finally finished Blue Beast (hence the title)! It looks really great (even if I say so, but ette confirmed it also) and I sticked with the sewn cast off because it relaxed nicely since my last entry and doesn't flare anymore. "Cuddly and Sweet" is also done and awaits the fun that is to come. "Rainbow" has four and a half seam done. And I really started on "Wraparound" that is as of now more than half way done. Also I cast on a new pair of socks, that kept nagging me to try them since the last knitty-issue came out: double heelix. I chose sock wool in a foggy gray-green and a simple cream to offset the green wool and make it pop in contrast. I'm thinking of adding a spiral toe and cuff, but the jury is still out on that one.

Back to recapping ettes visit we went grocery shopping on Monday morning and since I was sadly projectless (more or less) and also kept thinking about the Aeolian Shawl and my ball of regia lace and how I didn't have exactly the right beads for that I dragged ette to my local yarn source. And than ette discovered that there was sock yarn on sale. That was the beginning of the disaster as it was half or even a third of the original price. After about half an hour of getting high on wool fumes we left both with way to much wool and in my case to new pattern books. I got a happy orange and a pale yellow to set it of. another ball of gorgeous deep green wool (as if I didn't have enough of those). Also I got a nice booklet with patterns to knit acorns, mushrooms, berries, bumblebees and other things you meet in meadows and forests. And a knitting book for women with curves pointed out to me by the really nice clerk. But the zinger was the hand painted sock yarn in a deep coffee and chocolate brown, that apparently no one loved as there were several left. They looked so lonely that I adopted three skeins. I have no idea what they are going to become, but it will be fabulous and I think it will have lots and lots of stockinette so the color way can have the stage.

At that point ette was already a bit miffed because she broke her sock wool rule but I hadn't found the right beads for the regia lace. So I had to go to the arts and crafts store next door where ette pointed out the perfect beads, I quickly picked up those earring wire thingies and ette had a little accident in the aisle with the knitting books and bought two pattern books that I have to steal at the next possible occasion. Than we really went grocery shopping and collapsed on my couch. When I had found my breath again we ate and then ette had me make the decisions on her super secret knitting project because she couldn't muster up the required courage. The details I can't share as they still secret and of course they are ettes to share. But it involved some weird kind of impromtu-steeking which should be enough to make you understand her reluctance.

Finally we decided to skip Captain America because it would be no fun for me sitting in the movie theater, sneezing and coughing in turns, and pissing of every other person there. We will simply watch it next week. We ordered rather bad pizza, watched "The Mentalist", knitted and talked.

We ran knitting project ideas by each other and I have at least three new projects in line. Number one is another version of "Quack", Number two will be a sweater for my niece with an elephant on the front and Number three is super secret and a perfect present for a dear friend. All of them require new yarn, so that ette should get things together on her end. We will order together to save on shipping and because I already have an account.

And now I have to finish this in order to chat with osti who is currently in Argonne, near Chicago :)

That's where I just was and it was good that you weren't allowed to take animals home today or I'd have two very cute cats and at least one dog now :)

We ate lots of cake and bbq stuff because all the money they made was for the animals, we looked at cats and dogs and warded off lots and lots of wasps. There's an invasion of them this summer. Not fun. And then we participated in the tombola and I even won two things! A gift certificate for a breakfast in an restaurant and a pedometer. Quite cool, if I hadn't bought one just two weeks ago...

Now I'm starting to pack and prepare for the visit (again) at lizzies...

Edit: Oh, I forgot to tell you all about the incredible bad singer there, who sang Eric Claptons "Leila" and Johnny Cashs "Folsom Prisom Blues" and it sounded exactly the same! And he continued to brutalize a lot of other songs and I really really wished I could just shut my ears but sadly that isn't possible. A significant flaw in human design. I mean, really! How can someone just alter the tune if it gets too low to sing for him??! And in what universe is it possible that those two songs sound the same??

Today is all about the upcoming weekend. I put my shopping list next to my Petronius, so that I can jot anything down, that comes to mind. On sunday ette is coming for a visit and we are going to do some super-secret knitting-stuff. To be precise we are going to do two different super-secret knitting-stuff things. And one of them is going to involve "Rainbow".

Maybe we are going to do some dyeing, since ette may want to try that and osti will be gone to France :( by then and therefore won't complain :)

Mostly I hope until then I have the main part of "Big Blue" done. That is because it has steeks and my very first ones. I may need ette to hold my hand and mop my brow while cutting those. *scribbling down "white wine" on my shopping list.* We may need that. (Or would you prefer eggnog, ette?) You'll get a full report by next week.

Hopefully I'll get some of the odds and ends on those nearly done projects from my last post finished. Seeing them written down motivated me to finish them and getting them off my queue. Also I discovered some additional half-forgotten projects and that list is about to become even longer:

• Another thrummed project: mittens in black for a friend of ette. For those I have a decent excuse: the color of the thrums has not been decided definitely by the recipient (ette: that is an not so subtle reminder to get that data)
• A pair of fingerless gloves in orange with red beads. Number one is about two thirds done, but I seem to have lost interest the moment it stopped being so fricking cold in spring.
• The first square of a double-knit blanket with colorwork. I'm starting to think it may take that one years and years to get finished.

Now I think I need an agenda for those odds and ends. Hmm. Thats very ette of me :)

1. knitting on "Blue Beast" till I'm getting to the point of cutting the steeks
2. new feet for "Cuddly and Sweet"
3. finishing "Quack" and weaving in the ends
4. starting the sewing part of "Rainbow"
5. finally elongating the striped cotton sweater

Hmm, that looks like an weekend heavy on knitting :) And I'm thinking along the lines of two kinds of cookies and visiting my parents, before osti is off to France. I can picture how that ends: Next week we are going to see eachother again and I'm going to have the exact same agenda :/

And now I'm going back to my books before someone (*glaring in a very specific direction*) is going to scold me. I better add chocolate to my shopping list...