Flowers (for Mother's Day)

Last month I've had the 15th anniversary in my company and besides three extra days for this year vacation time, I've got a nice voucher, which I've used to upgrade my camera equipment. I've bought myself a Nikon D5000 DSLR camera.

As I'm on vacation the next three weeks (*bounce, bounce, bounce*) I'm sure to have plenty of chances to play around with my new toy.

As a start I focused (*haha*) on the two orchid flowers I have. I don't know exactly why, but even though I don't tread them any special (like orchids are supposed to be treaded), they are both already on their second flower cycle and have been for several weeks now.


(I particularly like the one on top)

I'm still working on figuring out all those buttons and I'm sure it will be a while until I'm really proficient, but it's a start.

Proudly Presenting: Oblique

Drum roll:



I finish the cardigan on Thursday. Surprisingly, it does fit pretty perfect. The arms are slighly too long, but not so much that I want to go back and change anything. The pattern asked for roughly 1120m of yarn - I ended up using closer to 1400m (I saw at several places that the yardage was off by quite a bit) It was 13 balls of Shetland De Luxe by Cedifra (50% New wool, 25% Baby Alpaka and 25% Mohair) in the color 9202. I might have been able to finish it with just 12 balls, but I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't have to join any yarn while knitting the collar, so I used an extra ball for this.

It wears nicely, but is nothing for a windy day.

There are many, many holes ....

Some details on the buttons:



I did make some progress on the Castle Sampler, but was too lazy to take a picture today.

Instead, some flowers:



On Friday, I visited the botanical garden in Frankfurt, and as there was little to take pictures of on the outside (still too early in the year) I went to the orchids. Lovely flowers.

White Christmas

Everybody is dreaming of a white Christmas (exept maybe those living in a northern country and thus get all the snow they possibly could want and more).
Here in Germany it's usually a less than 50 percent chance of snow on Christmas eve. Normally it's just too warm for snow and I remember many a Christmas where it just was miserable and wet and not at all like the postcards depict it.
This year, though, there's a really strange thing going on and one I don't remember ever happening before (at least not at Christmas time). It's not snowing and there's no snow and there will be no snow, but still, there's a white Christmas. What's going on is that it's been cold the last couple of days and then, suddenly, fog rolled it and the fog started to form white frost (there's a link to Wikedipia here to explain it, in case I didn't make myself clear)

It's quite lovely actually (as you can see from the pics I've made just in front of my door)


Though the coolest one is the frozen spideweb on my balcony.

Isn't that just cool?

Well, it being cold outside and Christmas just around the corner, I've started a second batch of cookies. Didn't have much time for it so far this year (with the trip to Japan and all) so I had to hurry to get any done.


From left to right:
- Coconut macaroons (which I've made actually end of November)
- Angel Eyes (a soft shortbread cookie with some jelly in the center)
- cinamon hearts (tradition dictates that it should be in the form of a star, but I couldn't find my star cooky cutter - they still taste great)
- ginger-honey halfmoons (with candied ginger - after that photo was taken I've decorated them with a bit of chocolate, so those are not the final versions)
- and finally my first attempt on honey cake cookies (also called Basler Läckeris). I have to admit the attempt wasn't a full success as the stuff turned out to be rather on the hard side (and now that I've found there's an entry for those in Wikepedia, I learn that they are suppossed to be hard, so maybe not a failure after all ;)).

Finally, I'm still knitting socks. Though yesterday I've first had to do some repairs on some older socks. I know, I said a couple of weeks ago that I don't really need new socks as the old ones don't wear out. So much for that statement, as I've found out last week.


Luckily I've still got plenty of the original wool left (Wollmeise in the color Thunderstorm Sky), and it was only the lower foot affected, so I had to rip up only a little bit and could fairly easily fix the problem.

A Very Merry Christmas to everbody.

Flowers of Alaska (and Mt Rainer)

Well, that's it. I'm back home from my vacation. Nine days of Alaska and seven days of Seattle / Mt Rainer NP. The weather was so-so - there have been good days (like the last two days in Seattle) and not so good days (like most other days when it rained or was foggy or simply overcast). Not the best way to get a tan ;)

I did read Harry Potter 7 within two days (it was raining, what else was there to do?) but I also did get out for some hiking. And while hiking I did a few photos of flowers (they do have the advantage that they don't run away when one gets close ... most animals are not so accommodating)

As I don't have anything to show stitching vice (I haven't stitch anything (at all) while on vacation) and only knitted one sock (which I'm not even sure I like and might frog again), here some of those flower pictures.

The quick tour of the flowers in South East Alaska and Mt Ranier National Park

Fuchsia at the B&B we were staying in in Craig (Prince of Wales Island):



Fireweed (all over the place)


Salmonberry (taste good too)


pretty flower (might be a Columbine flower)


another pretty flower


Indian Paintbrush

Some sort of bell flower (might be foxglove)


Maybe, next time, some land scapes - and then I should have something to show on the knitting or stitching front ...

Roses are Red ... and White, and Yellow

This is going to be a very flower and picture heavy post.

About 3 miles from where I live is a smallish castle called Schloss Wolfsgarten. Normally you can't visit there, as it's private porperty, but on two weekends in May the gates are open and you can go in and visit the lovely park and look at the castle (though only from the outside). The family that owns the castle is related to the British queen and I've heard that she actually stayed in Wolfsgarten a couple of times while she was visiting Germany (though probably before I moved here).
The gartens are famous for the rhododendron that's growing there, though this year most of the blooming season is already over, and only a few bushes still had fresh blossoms.

Now, for some pictures:

The small lake in the park with the bridge (reminded me of pictures by VanGogh)


Somebody living in the lake



Nymphaea


Rhododendron



And, (for the title of this post for today) some roses





As you can see, I've given my new camera a bit of a workout and I'm really, really happy how the pictures turned out.


Update on the stitching front:

Medieval Tiles - I skipped one of the smaller squares as I've decided to use the recommended GAST Midnight thread after all. I've ordered it, now I have to wait for it to arrive.



As I've got the next week off - *yeah*- I've got back to King Tut. I hope to make quite some progress on him over the next couple of days (though, I've got loads of other stuff planed ...)