breispace

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.