breispace

Seven weeks of glorious summer vacation. The gods know I needed it. This year I went to England and Wales with Kees for ten days. We had reservations for a car at John Lennon airport (great slogan) and got upgraded to a brand new VW Jetta Turbo Diesel because ours wasn’t ready.

The first days we went to Chester, Snowdonia (which was absolutely beautiful) and Portmeirion (which was a bit unreal because nobody actually really lives there). At the end of the third day Kees’ friend Geoff and his lovely wife Sarah put us up for a night and took us to dinner at a v nice pub.

We skipped Devon and Cornwall because the weather was going to be bad there. Instead we headed for London, visiting the White Horse of Uffington on the way. Within a mile after leaving the horse’s parking lot our gearbox blew up, and we were eventually towed back to Bristol Airport. This took the best part of the day, the upside of which was that I got a lot of knitting done.

London was excellent, and so was the weather. I indulged in some retail therapy at the British Museum, and bought a miniature Lewis chessmen set and a cookbook. We had excellent sushi (much cheaper than in A’dam) and other healthy foods. We enjoyed the splendid hospitality of Bryan,  Helma and Freki for three days, after which it was time to move on because “Guests and fish stay fresh for three days only”.

We stayed in Cambridge for one night (lovely free archeological/anthropological museum), and in York for two (scored some hand-painted Araucania sock yarn ((not to be confused with Araucana)) at “Sheepish”, yay!) and wallowed in  culture, history and Beef-and Stilton pasties.

After that we were quite close to Manchester, our final stop, where my friend Steve had arranged a room for us. We took the long route via the (again, beautiful) Yorkshire Dales and stopped for some Wensleydale in Hawes. I had a Yorkshire rarebit for lunch, also made with the local cheese of course. After settling in at the hotel we had a Balti dinner and a few pints with Steve and did some catching up. Good craic.

Our last day was a Sunday and our flight wasn’t until the evening, so we went to the Peak district for some more stunning landscapes. In Bakewell we had their famous pudding and visited a craft fair in aid of the local Scouts, and I spent my last pounds on various embroidery paraphernalia at a big car boot sale. Kees looked around for old cameras and militaria but didn’t find anything he liked. The flight home was uneventful and I was back home around midnight, welcomed by purring pookies.

I am fairly up to scratch with my studies, and so the main part of this autumn half-term was spent on leisure and other forms of my own personal  benefit.

To begin with, I had ordered three Lundia bookcases to hide some of the chaos that is my study-cum-living room. I wanted to bring some order to my favourite sixteen square metres, and I wanted the possibility to continue the same look on the other side of the room in the future. I had ordered the planks, panels and worktops mid-August, and October 14th was the first possible delivery date. I had it moved to this week because it’s my Autumn half-term holiday. Good things come to those who pay through the nose wait, I suppose.

The before situation can be seen on Kees’ blog, and below is what I apparently looked like after Kees, Nantko and I had moved it all and I got supper on the way. Notice the emptiness behind me…

This is what things looked like a few days later, with the Billy and my comics collection moved to the left and after I had assembled everything and put most of my stuff back in. All the top shelves will be behind mauve-pinkish doors once the hinges get stolen from Ikea come in the post.

  

After two days  of marking tests and writing planning schemes for work I decided it was time to get some R&R before all school breaks loose again. Therefore this morning Marion and I took off to the textile craft fair in Rotterdam. It was held in a beautiful architectural landmark, the former Van Nelle factory.

I had just finished this cute amigurumi penguin the night before, and he seemed to enjoy his first view of the outside world while Marion and I KIPped on the train. He had made himself quite comfortable on my -also recently finished-  purple beanie with pink skulls. I decided to call him Pengurumi until his next owner decides on another name.

Saint Salarius had just visited me the night before, and after paying next month’s rent and various other bills it was now time to blow the rest on yarnabilia. I bought 9 skeins  pure brick-red silk tweed yarn (on sale) for a sweater to be knit next spring, various bits and bobs for making more amigurumi, a book on modular knitting and 700 grams of gorgeously soft BiFL roving (to be spun this winter and knit into yet another sweater next autumn).

Pengurumi was quite exhausted by now, and had a little rest in the Ravelry / Dutch knitters‘ corner.

Marion had managed to restrict herself to only one hank of hand-dyed sock yarn, although that wasn’t her only purchase; perhaps she’ll own up to blog about that herself. Or perhaps not.

One more day before school, and the end of daylight savings’ time tonight. Take a deep breath..

Summer vacation is finally here for me. Seven weeks of blissful nothingness. Nooooht! There’s the To Do list, for instance:

• finish the dreaded POP (I’m trying to get that done this week);
• do my taxes (over the last two years; that should bring in a few Euri);
• muck out the house (stuff is stacking up all over the place, making me look and feel like a compulsive hoarder sometimes);
• find and visit a new dentist (haven’t been in a year or two; there goes the tax money);
• write a couple of book reviews for Keramiek magazine.

Speaking of stuff: another potential new hobby has been added to the stack. Two weeks ago it was my dad’s 75th birthday, and apart from a present for him one of my aunts also brought something for me: a four-shaft weaving loom. I’ll try to put a pic up next time, when it’s no longer crowding the bedroom. I was planning to store it in the shed for now but couldn’t get it through my tiny narrow kitchen, so it’ll have to wait until I’ve mucked out the bedroom or workroom. I had borrowed a van for the occasion, and took the opportunity to go by the garden centre to get some willow screens to cover up the fugly fence my neighbour put up years ago from leftover planks (take a breath here). You can still see a bit of it on the right. I’ll have to do some demolition before I can negotiate the second screen behind the invisible tree to the right from there. The little cage doesn’t contain bird food but camel hair, for birds with late nesting aspirations.

Other things in the garden: the rocket is starting to bloom so I’ll have to do some weeding there; also blooming is M’s flax. I hope she lets me know when it’s time to harvest the stuff and what to do with it next.

Knitting-wise I’m in a finishing mood, although I’ve also started a few small new projects (and finished one within two days, so that doesn’t really count, does it?). The 2nd project will have to remain a secret in case the colleague I’m knitting it for reads my blog. It involves light pink Merino, ’s all I’m saying. The in-between project was an orange cabled case for my reading specs, made with a reflective biking arm-band for inner reinforcement and some of my mum’s vintage cotton for the lining.

Also finished: the v-neck pullover (although I’m thinking of adding a few more cms to the sleeves…).

I copied Andy B’s trick (from EZ if I remember correctly?) for disguising the colour changes in the ribbing: worked a treat! It goes like this: if you change the colour in ribbing and you don’t want the little specks of the previous colour to show in the purl stitches, all you have to do is knit the entire 1st row of the new colour and then continue in ribbing. Totally invisible!

A few weeks ago Kees sent me a link to despair.com, a site that sells self-depreciating wares with pessimistic and down-putting slogans. Very funny. He asked if I saw anything I liked and I replied in the affirmative, and the next thing I know he’d ordered it for me. It came in a cheerful little box, with a text on the back warning me in advance that the company had lawyers and was not afraid to use them.

Inside was a new mug for my tea:

On the other side it says “pessimist’s mug”. In fact I seldom fill it above the mark, because it’s heavy and half of my tea would go cold if I did. It’s a good mug, I like using it. Kees gave it to me because the order was sort of an accident. Sweet, eh?

At school, the end of term didn’t go by without a glitch: we couldn’t get into the building on Thursday because the renovators had done something wrong with the asbestos removal and the whole building had to be closed off, air samples had to be taken, the final meetings had to take place in another building about one km away, etc. After all that could be done was done I had about four hours to kill, and I decided to visit the Ethnology Museum to see the departments I had missed the last time I was there. After that I did some window shopping (and bought shoes), until it was time to have a lovely dinner with my English dept. colleagues at Delphi, a very good local Greek restaurant. Good times and food were had by all. When I got home there was an email from the Head, informing me that no asbestos particles had been found in the air and we could all get back in to finish everything we needed to finish before the promotion (or not) ceremonials on Friday.

Yesterday M, Kees and me went to a small Irish music festival in Deventer, organised by the incredible, scuse me legendary Mark Gilligan. Kees has blogged about it extensively, so I won’t bother. All I might add is that I added about a handwidth to a sock during the gigs and worked on my colleague’s present on the train. Good weather, lovely town; I’ll get back there some day I’m sure.

From day one (last Tuesday) I have been fully back in the rut, of course. Like me, both students and colleagues are displaying signs of end-of-year fatigue, not helped by the glorious weather we’ve had up ’till Friday last. This weekend I’m spending mostly on planning, prepping and writing, although I saw a chance to sow some very late broad beans (tuinbonen) this morning. They’re one of my favourite kinds of beans; the Ex used to refer to them as “old biddy’s toes”. Not surprising I didn’t get to eat a lot of them at the time. I love beans.
Last Sunday the BF, Marion and me went to the biannual ceramics market in Swalmen, Limburg. I bought a salt-glazed casserole made by Netty Janssens shaped somewhat like a knor, and a couple of rustic goblets and bowls made by Erik du Chatenier that were on sale. Marion got some nice stuff too. She also wrote lots more about the Whitsun Viking market in Eindhoven we visited, after stopping for a few kilos of asparagus and some strawberries on the way.

I got some cheap, undyed, coarse wool (3€ /100 grams) from Bjorn there; perfect for nalebinding bags, felting and such.

I’m going through my new sweater project like hot needles thru butter; already halfway there! I got some pink-&-purple Manos del Uruguay wool at Egg Mercantile for the contrast band, as soon as I got back from Ribe.

Right. back to work. Seeyis when I’ve done me next paper, I hope. Also check out Gerrit’s PussyCam next week: I’ll be taking care of the little darlings for the next two weeks.