Sade’s Blog

Marr from Smelly Chick’s Online, a soapmakers’ resources website, tagged me for this six things about you me-me.

Da rulez:

1. Link to the person who tagged you (see above).
2. Post the rules on your blog (this is what you are now reading).
3. Write 6 random things about yourself (see below).
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them (This is only a game)
5. Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up

Six Things About Me (that you couldn’t care less about)

1. I’m a Scorpio, and it does show, sometimes, when I’m pissed.
2. I love Linux. I loathe Windows.
3. I’m dabbing in too many hobbies at the moment, but loving it.
4. Paracetamol gives me trippy dreams.
5. I lurve chocolate.
6. I only started liking plush toys (teddies, stuffed animals and so) in my laaaate teens.

There, that’s it, Six random things about me, that you most likely don’t care about. Know me better? I doubt it :p

Da taggin’

Uhm, yes, I’m supposed to tag six people who haven’t done this lately. Lets see…Smartash, CJ, Zanne, Asa, KnittingKitty and Purlpower.

And for those who are wondering, I’m not dead or falleth off the internet, I’m just very busy. Last weekend (8th-10th August) we were on a city break to London. This week (11th-14th August), we’ll be renovating the bathroom. First stage done (everything removed and ready to tile and paint), more to come. And next weekend (15th-17th August) we’re on another city trip, this time to Düsseldorf. We have booked a weekend special at Relexa Rattingen City (10 minutes away from Düsseldorf), with a candle-light dinner, use of spa, breakfast buffet, and more things for a nice price. So yeah, I’m not much online at the moment. More about the London and Düsseldorf trips when I have time to write all the stuff down!

On knitting news, I “joined” the Ravelympics (Ravelry inside link, if you want to read you have to be a member. I joined cause they made me join). I’m knitting the Anastasia Socks, in Opal Neon 1934.

I only had this little yarn left from what I bought last summer to make a cardigan for Lumi (a friend’s baby).

Read more »

We went to Germany a couple weeks back. Read all the story on our shared blog. See all the pics on our gallery.

Bounty!

PS: Oh, yeah, I changed the theme of the blog, same style, same colours, but now in wide screen.

And now I am back, but I won’t be very prolific with posts either this next month and a half, since it’s the last leg of the semester: lots of studying and exams galore.

So what have I been up to? Uni vacations were spent mostly with Jan, in Belgium. You can read a recolection of the events in our shared blog and you can see pictures in our gallery.

I finally took a pic of my first skein of yarn spun on the wheel. Or the first skein of yarn spun by me evah, as you prefer:

That you see under the yarn is a stuffed hippo from Ikea:

I did some sewing as well, “pimped” my wheel, so to say, but of course I forgot to take pics of it. The pimping consists of a cotton cover (for all those days when it’s unused) and adding a cute carpet under it, so my feet won’t freeze while I’m spinning.

Stay tunned, I might pop in between studying sessions and exams!

As I said a few posts back, life is so busy, I barely have time for anything else than University, Labs and studying. I’m also working at uni, free hours, so it’s not that stressing, but still takes time. Whoever said university time was fun, should come spend a couple semesters at mine ;)

Now, November is over, and I have to say I blatantly failed on NaNoWriMo. I wrote around 17,000 words, and then I came across two problems: the big lack of time, thanks to see above, and then my muse disappeared to take the vacation I can’t take, and left me with a huge block. I might try again next year, it all depends on how busy I am.

On the knitting front, I can report that the ripped kilt hose is back in track. Already did the heel and I’m on the gusset decreases. I don’t have pics yet, bad light, no time, you know the works. I’ll try to take one some time.

I’m also traveling this week, going to Belgium to spend a few days with Jan. We’ll be resting mostly, since we do need it. I probably won’t be online much, so if you want to catch me, you’re better off e-mailing than trying to catching me on IMs or IRC.

I’m just dead busy!

Here is the deal: this semester I have six courses and three labs, and that means at least all morning at university (plus mondays evenings) and the rest of the time trying to study all the notes and making exercises and doing lab reports and sleeping. Ok, and eating, I would skip that part, but seems my body isn’t happy with it ;)

Also, starting the 1st of November, I’ll be trying to write around 1,700 words per day, because I’m doing NaNoWriMo. It’s set! I have a plot, I have to develop the characters now, and write a decent outline so I can reach the 50k goal. And I’m also working on that at the moment.

On other news, Jan was over here this past week. He put up with my stress and my classes and my studying, and took me out for dinner at Vegaviana, a very nice vegetarian restaurant. When I wasn’t in class, I just tried to do nothing and enjoy him. So it was a bit quieter.

And on the knitting front, after finishing the Turkish Stitch String Bag, I put knitting off for a couple of weeks. And then I ripped off the too narrow kilt hose, and started it again. This time I learned proper crochet cast on.

More updates as time allows. And probably a few teasers from my NaNovel too.

After those lovely forty five days with Jan, I’m back home to take exams, do paperwork, and go back to uni for yet another year ™. What have we done this summer, you ask? Well, 45 days seems long, but it definitively wasn’t long enough for us.

We had joined a group trip to Scotland, but for several reasons, it didn’t work out. That was my first week there, and instead we just had a quiet time at home, since Jan had the days off anyway.

We fancied a boat trip, and so we went to Overmere Donk, rented a slow boat, and had fun around. We also walked in the park by the lake, so pretty. Pitty the triathlon was so noisy and taking most of the routes!

We went to a friend’s wedding, that consisted of a civil ceremony and a medieval party, which we had to skip (will link to pics whenever, if ever, they are up).

We went to Germany: Dusserldorf (and pics en route), where we met up with Susann and her husband, then from there to Greifswald (with more pics of the drive), where we met up with Laura, and then we drove to Münster. And finally drove back home.

And we also went to Brugge, to buy chocolate at my favourite shop, The Chocolate Line, which you will know already if you read this blog often. I can’t praise this shop enough. All the chocolate is hand made in situ, and you can see the Meester Chocolatier at work through the window at the back of the shop. And visited the Sand Sculptures Exhibition. Lots of work involved in them, and all will be destroyed in a couple of weeks.

Other things accomplished during the summer: knitting (not much), spinning (two whole bobbins, still to be plied, next time I go to Belgium) - no pics of either, stash enhancement (four skeins, enough for a pair of socks and a skinny scarf, pics coming, sometime), cooking a few recipes from our database, visiting family, going out, going five(!) times to the movies (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Over the Hedge, Miami Vice, She’s the Man & Monster House), general happy living together, adopting our two little critters, going out with a bunch of friends for bowling and dinner, and much more! Oh yes, studying too.

Leaving was hard, again, very hard. And I so want to go back very soon. Plans right now are me spending my “winter break” in early December and New Years in Belgium. Meanwhile, Jan will be coming over some time in October and November!

For those of you who care about my flight back, it was okay, if it weren’t for the more than three hours of a detour. The story is, we left Brussels airport on time without problems, the flight was good and we got to Madrid at the scheduled time, but there was a huge storm with lighting that kept more than fifteen planes waiting to land. That meant we had to wait over fourty minutes to land, but we didn’t have enough fuel and detoured to Valencia to fuel there. Once the storm was over, all the detoured planes wanted to leave for Madrid at once, and we got a slot for 10pm (that’s 2.5 hours after we were supposed to land in Madrid). We finally made it to our destination at nearly 11pm, then wait for my suitcase, which luckily was one of the firsts to get out, and get a cab to go home. I got home at midnight, a whooping three hours and a half after I thought I’d be! Luckily for me, I bought the last sandwich on board, and that was all my dinner.

So that’s all, we’ll be back to the regular irregular updates of the blog after my exams and the end of summer cleaning week chez moi!

I’m not dead :p (sorry for those of you who were looking forward to it!). I’ve been rather busy, but I’ve been knitting and sewing a bit. A quick look at how the kilt hose is looking right now, after 10cm of cabling:

See y’all soon. Jan’s coming here next thursday! :) *happy* *jumpy*

This Easter I was in Belgium (see full post on our blog, and all the pics on our gallery). Since we have a big garden and room to work, it was the perfect time and place to dye the fabrics I had bought for making our medieval costumes.

We bought our dye and chemicals from Zijdelings, a workshop on textile design and mailorder service from the Netherlands (part of the site is English, but if you want to order, get ready to browse in Dutch). We got pre-reduced indigo, soda ash and thioureum dioxide. Fast service, and average prices - indigo is expensive, no matter what.

We did a pre-bath mixing 4 tablespoons of indigo, 4 tablespoons of soda ash, and 8 teaspoons of thioureum dioxide in 700 ml of tap water. Mix well and carefully(!), you don’t want to stain anything blue, like your fingers (I did *ahem* skin washed off in two days tho). Remember you are using chemicals, so be careful, work in a ventilated area, don’t touch the chemicals with your barehands etc etc etc . We let it rest a whole day in an airtight closed jar until it turned greenish.

The next day we filled our big bucket from Ikea with about 30 l. of (cold) tap water, and poured the pre-bath in. Mix carefully and let rest a bit. If you are careful and do not introduce much air in the bath, you’ll be able to dye right away. Else you have to wait until it turns greenish away. Now, put your fabric in and let it under the water (the fabric will have air bubbles and you have to push it down constantly) to catch the dye for some 5 to 10 minutes (I really didn’t time this process - the colours are totally non repeatable). Fish the fabric out, wring out well without splashing much using gloves, your hands will thank you ;p and extend your fabric so it gets aired and it turns blue. Keep dipping the fabric in the same fashion until the colour is slightly darker than desired (it will wash off a bit). With this bath and white linen fabric we got a pretty dark blue shade after three dips, that will be Jan’s tunic.

We did let the dyebath rest overnight, and used the nearly exhausted bath to dye the tan linen fabric as well. Two dips later we got a blue-greenish shade that I love and that will become my dress. Want pics? See here a couple:

For the whole set, please visit the photo album in our gallery.

Sade

When I first took up knitting, it was in my pre-internet era, so there were only magazines and help from my mother, who actually taught me to knit. I only made very easy things, since I didn’t have the resources to knit elaborated patterns.

Then the internet came into my life - that is, I got my own laptop, and I found that I could find more help and patterns and resources online. Happiness and bliss, there was a knitting life out there!

I started stalking personal blogs and specialized sites about knitting, and followed links around and about. I discovered new patterns, new techniques, and very helpful sites this way. I also found fiber related sites about fulling, diy tools, dyeing and spinning, and whatnot.

And so, I got the itches! I wanted to dye and I wanted to spin and I wanted to full… I wanted to try anything and everything fiber related. And thus we get to the present time: hereby I introduce you to my futute spinning wheel:

This beauty is a Louët S15, made back in September 1982. It will come home (or more accurate, it will get to Jan’s place) in about ten days, together with Louët hand carders, an upright skein winder, and a spinning hook. We won this wheel off ebay this morning, around 4:45 am. But no, I didn’t stay up that late to bid on it, there is this little nice trick that … well you know ;) The fun thing is I had a dream where my non-existant wristwatch’s alarm went off and I was so excited about this exactly auction being finished then that I had to check. And then it’s when I woke up and went check that we actually won the auction.

I will have to wait until Easter break (for me, the week between the 8th and the 15th of April) when I will be going to visit over to Belgium and then I’ll be able to check this wheel out and get the groove spinning my first yarn! That will be fun :)

*Very Happy Sade*