Shawls, shawls, shawls

So this is Christmas. Or rather, so christmas is over. It was an especially great one. My grandmother sadly hasn't been all that well during the last weeks, but she started to feel better again with the whole family around. Christmas eve tends to be quite hectic with between 15 and 20 people around, we argue, people race to dinner, race to open their presents and all in all it is usually less harmonic than I hope it to be.
This year was different though. We had raclette, which means less running to the kitchen and people being forced to take some time to eat. And only afterwards we gave each other our presents. Every present was highly appreciated and we had a lot of fun. I gave my mom a whole box of comfort-stuff, like very snugly socks, sweat pants and an extremely soft sweater, plus a book for self-helping you to sleep better. She has been a bad sleeper for such a long time and I know that you can get better at it. I hope she will take care of herself better and I wanted to tell her with giving her all that cuddly stuff. We all had a good laugh when she immediately changed into the new clothes.
The next day we went to my inlaws, also having an extremely relaxed evening. I can say it was one of the loveliest christmas I ever had. Presents include a small Lisek made of felt, a monthly chocolate delivery, bath oil and a spa day. It is going to be great!

I really liked the way the shawl for my friend turned out

It was a light, cottonly yarn, very soft

During the last three weeks I had some time to knit presents. As I loved to knit the cable shawl, I did some more of those. One of them, a pink one, was supposed to be a present, but I made so many mistakes knitting it, that I didn't dare giving it away.

The cables come out nicely with the thick yarn

The next one was a present for my mom. She likes colours I would never wear, bright colours like apple green or orange. So I ordered some of the finest merino wool in orange / yellow. I like the result, it is soft and warm, but you can see I haven't washed it yet, it is less stretchy than the pink one.

soft and warm merino - not my colour, but my mom likes it

Right now I am using some really nice Alpaka Silk to knit a shawl for myself. As it is very thin yawn it takes a lot of time. After wearing my knit cardigan Palma for christmas I feel motivated to knit another one for myself. I ordered some very fine yarn in silvergrey and will knit the following one. It's special to me as my mom gave me the book it is in as a present some years ago and so far I haven't knit anything of the patterns.

My next project

Cardigan Palma and Cable Shawls...

Beautiful colour, don't you think?

... lots of Cable Shawls. I am in a kind of shawl fever. It is so much fun to knit them, they are easy, once you get the pattern, you don't have to sew them together, it is great.

Mr Schön gave me some fabulous redwine wool for my birthday last year and as it's always with those special gifts, I feel like I cannot just knit any pattern with them, but it has to be something fitting and also something I want to wear myself.



You know, there are thousands of pattern on Ravelry and a lot of them are actually free of charge and I still buy books with patterns. I somehow cannot resist. To calm my bad conscience for buying books when we do not even have space for them in the bookshelf, I thought I better knit something from it. Things just added up, so I used the beautiful red wool for a cable shawl and I am quite happy with how it worked out, although the yarn is a bit thicker than in the pattern and the result is therefore a bit stiff.

My newest knitting book

As the knitting was so easygoing and so much fun once I got it, I started with a second one immediately. This time taking a thinner yarn than used in the pattern and it is just fantastic, how soft and flexible that new shawl is going to be.

Cable Shawl with different yarn

If you are a knitter you might know the feeling that all that knitting cannot be good for you, as your shoulders start to hurt, your wrists get stiff after a while, but you simply cannot stop? I have had this for quite some time already and fall and winter coming are making it so much worse. Maybe I will from time to time distract myself from knitting by going through patterns and checking out other people's projects on Ravelry, which is almost as much fun as knitting yourself.


















Cardigan Palma

As addicted I am to knitting, as slow I am as well. I never got those people who can knit a scarf in one sitting. Every bigger project takes ages, which is why I normally need some smaller projects on the side, to feel that I am getting something done. Nevertheless, I had this beautiful book in my shelf, that my brother in law gave me for one christmas. I had never dared starting anything from it, but I was ambitious. I couldn't and wouldn't afford the beautiful and expensive silk yarn suggested in the pattern, so I got something similiar and it worked out fine. Maybe, if I am going to knit the cardigan again, I will get the more expensive yarn, as I have now fully understood the pattern, knowing how it works. The cardigan fits and although I still see the mistakes I have made, it is wearable and actually so warm that I can only wear it when it is really cold outside.

The beautiful Danish book my brother in law gave me. Thank you so much!

The complicated back intrigued me, but also challenged me

Et voilá!

I am quite satisfied how it worked out. It is just soooo warm

I like the front part quite a lot as well. 

As we are awaiting some little ones in our circle of friends, I have taken some time to knit a small cardigan and socks, which was a lot of fun and pretty easy to do. One cardigan is still on my needles and I wanted to knit a hood for the first time, we will see how it works out.

Done, with fitting socks

While still on the needles

Wish me luck that the hood will work out

Edinburgh smokers - I envy you!

First one we saw, not so great yet, but...

Hey everybody,

how have you been? I haven’t been writing for quite a long time for various reasons, most of them were quite nice, holidays and weddings, but there also has been some projects at work that needed my attention. And I have been knitting a lot, working on a cardigan for myself. These projects usually take a lot of time, as I am a relatively slow knitter, but this time I managed to stay focused and I am finishing it in just a few sittings. It motivated me to take up more “big” projects and to make more for myself.

When the cardigan is done, I promise to share some pictures here, but I have some funny pictures to share that I took on my short trip to Edinburgh. To make sure people wouldn’t throw their cigarette buds just on the floor, the city has found a way to motivate them to put them into bins. By turning the cigarette into a vote. Don’t you just love sharing your opinion about stuff with others? Everyone does. Have a look and maybe you will understand why I sometimes wished I had a cigarette bud to throw into. My mum is a smoker, which has often annoyed me on our trips, but this time it was kind of fun to tell her what the ash trays were about.

For those of you who are too young or too ignorant, Ross and Rachel are characters from "Friends" and this is a major question. Yes, they were, as you can see above...

Of course!

Ah and happy dog day, people! 

Beautiful Germany - Summer of 2016

Prepare yourself: This post is going to feature a lot of dog pictures

Typical smalltalk topic: The weather. People in Germany keep on complaining a lot about it. Me too. I didn't have a very high opinion of this year's summer and originally I intended to write about horrible weather when I thought back on our trips we have done so far and actually the weather was pretty good on every single one of them.

Back in April we travelled the Niederrhein, the region I grew up in, which means forests, lakes and a lot of meadows. It was a beautiful trip to the Krickenbecker Seen, with nice scenery and a lot of sun. It wasn't particularly warm, but in April you never know right?

Self Portrait in the Krickenbecker Forest

Dangerous Dog

Fusion Festival this year was great fun. We have never been such a big group there, which worried me in advance, because when you bring together many of your friends, you never know how they get along. It was great! Everyone clicked and we had the most amazing week together. The weather was awesome. Warm enough to have a dip in the lake, cool enough to dance all day and night. We saw some pretty great concerts, including the Mexican band Pantheon Roccoco, which partied so hard, I could hardly keep up. Check them out, they are great fun!

An Onion a day...

Turns out, it did rain from time to time

About a week after Fusion festival some of the Fusionists reunited at the annual Mosel Couchsurfer Meeting. What a blast! And again, the weather was fabulous. We swam in the Mosel and Lisek had never swam as much as there before, as everybody threw his ball into the water again and again. Even the formerly terrified children of our friends started to love the little sausage dog after a while. I love Lisek for being so calm and getting everyone to like him eventually. 

Hiking in the Beautiful Mosel Area

At the end of August, Mr. Schön's brother invited us for brunch at his place in Bremen, so we took a long time to go to Bremen and had some stops along the way. We stayed near a lake which we ran around in the morning and then decided to go to Papenburg, which has the most southern seaport - in Germany I think. Although it is still pretty far from the sea it certainly has a very maritime feeling about it. There is a lot of canals in the streets with pretty bridges (apparently they call it the Venice of Germany) and a very well-known chantier, whose "products" we saw all over town. Papenburg is really pretty, typical of the North of Germany are all the red brick houses, which I find totally charming. 

The first weekend of August we have been to a country- wedding of two Berliners getting married in Brandenburg. The two days party took place in and around an old farmhouse, which was beautiful. The weather - again- was perfect and we had a lot of fun. 

The party venue. Isn't this adorable?

I am looking forward to September when I will be off to Edinburgh with my mum and off to Ibiza with Mr Schön for a few days. At the moment the weather is so summery that I don't even go out during the day as over 35° is definitely too hot for me. 

I promised a lot of dog pictures:

Krickenbecker Lakes in April

Love this picture