21
Dec
Catmas
Last weekend I took a trip to a city – or no, actually, I went to see a concert and it just happened to be in another city: Berlin. Before you ask, it was a Týr concert and really everyone should know by now that I travel all over to see these boys play. Their music gives me energy.
From Den Haag to Berlin takes around 6 hours by train. The entire trip was an excuse to knit for 12 hours on end. At home there are always things getting in the way of me spending hours on knitting! Some days I feel like I am wearing a sign on my forehead that says “I’d rather be knitting”, all the while I am vacuuming or cooking or even working. I cast on a new project on the train, with a lovely skein of Madelintosh in “corsage” to make Isolda Teague’s design Veyla:
The pattern is for fingerless mitts, but I couldn’t make up my mind if I perhaps needed new gloves instead. It’s very nifty: you knit the lace for the wrist and then pick up stitches lengthwise to knit around for the hand.
Around Wolfsburg I put the first mitt on a scrap piece of yarn and started the second one. There’s no excuse for second-sock (mitten)-syndrome while you are traveling with only one knitting project!
And a few hours later, there I was!
What are the main sites of Berlin that you can think of, offhand? Hm….the (former) Berlin wall, the Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag. The Tor is obviously what the Underground logo is to London, it’s everywhere! From the entrance of the Christmas Market on the Alexanderplatz:
To the windows of the U-Bahn:
This poor man was preparing and selling sausages from a contraption hanging from his shoulders. I don’t want to think about what he smells like at the end of the day!
And I’ve never before seen a two-story caroussel!
Nor so many Lebkuchen in one place…
I only saw the Reichstag from afar, since I was really only in town for 10 hours to see the lads.
The Wall is obviously not there anymore, except for a small stretch, but a shop inside the Central Station sells pieces of it like there’s no end to the supply:
The concert at Magnet Club was great! Crimfall opened, then Moonsorrow (great show!!) and then Tyr closed. There was the usual practical joking of the last show of a tour: Moonsorrow came on stage during Crimfall and messed with the bandmembers’ hair. Then Crimfall showed up during Moonsorrow and acted a little roleplay of the priest trying to convert the Finns and getting an axe embedded in his head. Then our boys come on, covered in the fake blood Moonsorrow also used! Heri (singer) and Kari (drummer) complained about it all night – especially since Moonsorrow couldn’t get their usual pig’s blood in time and had used a sugar-solution which stuck to everything and wouldn’t wash off.
The best is Heri’s quick jokes that less than half of the audience even see. There was a plush horse (donkey?) around 50 cm high (19 inches) that the Moonsorrow boys kept dragging around – apparently it had been living in the tourbus. During the TYR show, one of the boys tried to push it onto Gunnar’s bass and basically a**rape the horse with the bassguitar. And while all this bedlam is going on on stage, Heri mutters into the microphone: “I thought I felt a little hoarse”, and rubs his throat.
I’m pretty sure most of the audience was either too drunk or not fluent enough in English to get that one. 
(And if you’re interested, come join us at the forum, where there is always more discussion and stories about the live shows.)
I need to spend more time in Berlin, and soon, I really enjoyed the vibe of the city, especially Kreuzberg where the concert was. Too soon it was time to leave again.
And Berlin is too close to finish a pair of gloves, but a darned good excuse to try again with a different project!
When one does not have a car, one must improvise:
It’s a very classical Christmas tree, with mostly homemade ornaments of felt and paper and red bows tied to the branches. I love it.
Miss Leika however is not impressed.
31
Oct
October 31
It’s that time of year again – break out the ghouls and ghosts!
Paint your windows with pumpkins and graveyards…
And of course the kitchen should never be left out!
where I made two pies: cheesecake-with-poisoned-poppyseed and applepie-with-bats:
Who’s got a good name for the spider hanging from the ceiling?
15
Oct
Sun and 13 degrees C
Never mind if it’s cold outside, the sun shines on the floor.
09
Oct
Horatio, baby version
Last winter I bought the British Magazine The Knitter (issue 14) and saw this:
I don’t know any man who would wear that. I don’t mean that as a slur to the designer (Belinda Boaden), because I think it’s a wonderful pattern – I just literally know no-one who would wear it, or that I care enough for to invest in such a labour of love.
And then a friend of mine told me they were expecting a baby boy. Bingo! Meet the baby version of Horatio.
(Pen included for scale.)
And lest the child gets cold, I included some babyleggings, after Elizabeth Zimmermann’s pattern:
03
Oct
Fear of fear
Let’s say you’re out somewhere in a public place. Behind you someone is angry. They’re trying to get to somebody else who is standing just over there and you are in the way. What happens? You get pushed. You may even get pushed hard enough to fall over. Maybe you’re lucky and you can grab onto something and keep your feet. Or maybe you’ll fall to the floor, flat on your face.
Last Thursday we learned how to avoid that last bit. There we were, twelve grown ups, falling over again and again – and catching ourselves in a push-up position, elbows bent, head to the side. Why the head to the side? So you don’t break your nose or cut your face open on the glass on the floor (we’re pretending we’re in a rough type of bar, after all).
I couldn’t do it. That is to say, when sitting on my knees and falling very slowly forwards, I could catch myself just fine. Even roll over onto my back, kick the crap out of a boxing cushion and get up into a fighting stance, fists high to protect myself. But the falling…the falling especially from standing up – Aaargh, NO. It’s a bloody long way to the ground…and I’m only 5″7 (174 cm)!
I guess if I’d have learned to fall at a younger age I wouldn’t be so scared now. If I had done judo as a child I might have learned how to fall, roll and get up. But I only did ballet, so I learned to tuck in my gut, stick up my arms and reach for the sky. Ballet, or at least the classical kind I did, is all about being up there, on your toes, floating like a fairy. Pretend the floor is lava! Raise up your arms like a growing apple tree!
So, yes, falling. I can’t even remember really falling in my adult life. Not literally anyway. I also happen to suck bigtime at falling, figuratively speaking. I really hate losing, or letting myself down, or not living up to someone’s (my own) expectations. I always reach for the sky and am focused on moving up. And then, inevitably, I do fall and it takes me a lot longer than the average jane to pick myself up again.
Our Krav Maga instructor just shook his head. He was watching me – I was whining and wincing before I even hit the ground. What if I break my arms? What if I smash my nose? What if…?
“Fear of fear”, he said, “that’s all it is. Because you can do it.”
I tried and I sucked at it. But I don’t want to give up. I like getting fitter, I like feeling stronger every week. So tonight I practiced again, in the woods on a nice grassy and very soft meadow. I can nearly do it now. When I pretend to fall, I fall to my knees first and then down to the ground. Instead of cringing when the ground comes closer, I just stick out my arms and catch myself.
In my head, I know I can catch myself – I haven’t been doing all these damn push-ups for nothing. It looks like my body is starting to believe it too.
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