Week in retrospect

|Listened to| Buena vista social club
|Read| Drood by Dan Simmons
|Did| unpacked more boxes
|Learned| about copyright violations
|Ate| apple cake
|Drank| tea
|Thought| it’s going to get colder again
|Was happy| for first sale on our little Esty shop
|Wished| for a holiday…
|Planned| a one-day-Paris trip to meet up with sister
|Bought| cable binders
|Clicked| Ravelry

It would have helped…

…if we had called the bike repair shop to book in for the check up, but we didn’t and so we had to push our bikes home all the way from the storage place. Great! Maybe it’s  a sign that we should wait with the check up (although totally needed) for our little bikes until it’s a bit warmer? Hmm, I’ll think about it. In the meantime I  found a comfortable space on the bed and I have an appointment with Placido Domingo live from the Met – well on the radio this time only.  I can already hear the orchestra tune (most feared and favourite moment when you perform) and there is maestro Levine on his way to the pit…. and we’re off.

©Metropolitan Opera Simone Boccanegra

Gateau aux pommes – hmmmm!

Yum! To celebrate our first 3 items sold on Etsy, we had ourselves a little cake feast.

I can’t believe, we had to wait over 4 months to try our first recipe from Portugal, la cuisine de ma mère. In November and December 09, we blogged about our little 4-day trip to Paris. Since we were both ill for pretty much the rest of the year and beginning of this year, we weren’t allowed to eat anything exciting (i.e. gall bladder baby food diet…. grrrmphldfwelrk! Don’t ask!), but with the move into the new home and some enforced rest (partly due to the flu), we FINALLY got to try the recipe for the gâteau aux pommes (bolo de maçã). So worth it!

We slightly altered the recipe by replacing the sugar with grape juice-sweetened raspberry jam, as neither of us can have regular sugar – thus the red berry finish on top. Have a look at the cake (last time to see it in all its glory, as now parts of it have already found their way into my stomach ). Oh yes, and some Cacao Rooibos tea, as we just received our first tea delivery from Jenier Teas today. Try it – it’s really nice!

A little new (ad)venture

dots&yarn proudly presents: the little dots&yarn shop on Etsy.

So much thought and knitting and sewing and choosing fabrics and trying patterns and chatting with friends and family and getting registered as a business and setting up bank accounts……. We would really love to share our little hand-made somethings with all of you, so we decided to part with some of them and make them available to be bought on Etsy.

On a personal note (and most notes on this blog should be personal!), this is also a small step to find out whether it might not be possible to find a vehicle to share some of M’s creativity in design, colour and material choices, photography, knitting, etc. while allowing for the daily fight with CFIDS, especially on the more difficult days. Since we know there are a lot of people out there, living with similar chronic illnesses, $0.50 of every sale will go to the Fatigatio Hilfe (CFS Germany). This is only a small amount, but perhaps we can help raise awareness and our contributions can grow over time.

We will post regular updates, and there are a lot of little items that are still being worked on and not quite ready yet to face the big wide world… In the meantime, we would love for you to visit us over on Etsy.

Also, we’d love to hear from you – leave us a comment or drop us an email at dotsandyarn[at]gmx[dot]de to let us know what you think

Rafi Hoodie

Hey, finally here it is – a new pattern for a baby hoodie. About a year ago, we designed it for our friend D’s first baby son. Originally, I knitted it in green in Berocco Ultra Alpaca Light (colourway: Peat Mix 4277), which we bought (together with the very cute dog buttons) at Churchmouse Yarns & Teas on Bainbride Island.

Rafi in Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light

The very cute dog buttons

However, since we are based in London, we wanted to make sure to use a yarn for the pattern that was easily available over here. Thus, the new version in Ranco Solid by Arauncanía (colourway 488). I knitted the cardigan with less than 1 skein – so a great little project and easy to take on the bus or tube

Rafi in Ranco Solid by Arauncanía

The free pattern is now on our “Patterns” page – hope you enjoy it!

Last week in retrospect

|Listened to| Keith Jarrett Melody at Night
|Read| Measuring the World
|Did| Not much
|Learned| more about organising the Ravelympics2010
|Ate| Blueberry cheesecake
|Drank| A lot of tea
|Thought| it would be nice if heating switched itself on on time
|Was happy| for having a good friend
|Wished| for cold/flu to go away
|Planned|….(can’t tell yet)
|Bought| More tea
|Clicked| die Zeit

Slowly getting better

We’re slowly getting better… (veeeery slowly – ok, too slow for me).  We spend a lot of time in the company of a box with sheep (see above), lots of tea (mostly the caffeine free stuff), films, audio books. You can see that we have put up some book shelves – it just takes about 5 times longer than we’d expected—

We’re already through part 5 of First Law – sigh – and now into a funny German book called ‘Die Vermessung der Welt’, a fictional story about Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Gauß (ha, just discovered that it has actually been translated into English and called Measuring the World).

There is a bit of knitting going on as well (finishing new house mate A’s gift), a bit of thinking what we’re going to knit for the Ravelympics: the most sensible would be to start in the  WIP Dance (that would be work in progress for the non knitters – but do we always do the most sensible things….?). There are lots of very amusing categories like Lace Luge (anything lace) or Cable Cross Country (anything cable) ah decisions… I think for now I decide to go down and have some chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner.

Time to rest

It seems as though the stress of the past months has paid off (sort of ). The first day of low stress after the move  (= ‘normal’ Saturday = not running around, driving van full of stuff, carrying boxes through the snow etc.) the flu came to us.

Monday saw 100% of the house down; this is now reduced to 2/3, after having slept through nearly three entire days (one of them with sunshine – grmph).  Today was the first day through which we haven’t slept for 80% of it – obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t sit here and write).

The house still looks like after a major Christmas explosion: full of boxes, despite us carrying so many of them to the dump.

The piano now lives nicely in-between two rooms. The location seems to come as a bit of a surprise. I believe the first house guest had an ‘oh-dear-God!’ moment when he saw the piano in its new home…. anyway, three more weeks and it can be tuned again – the neighbours and we will be grateful

Thankfully, I had the sense of saying no (despite it being hard) after Christmas to go to Dresden this weekend  to meet up with my sister and her boyfriend for a concert. There wouldn’t have been much chance of me making the trip – not even the trip to the airport. So they’re driving alone and it’s R’s birthday today  as well (Happy Birthday again!), would have been time for a party – (sigh)

My brain is still full of Philadelphia (nicer to say this than fog or slime although, I’m sorry to say, it is most probably the latter as it gets better with steaming) and thinking for longer seems difficult. This is challenging when one has to remember where one put what. A couple of items turned up in a totally different box than I thought I’d put them… (see: Creuset pot). On the gallbladder thing: definitely on the way back up and past the vegan time – had meat several times as well as half of the glass of lemon preserve with an insane amount (compared to before) of olive oil.

On the knitting front I’m preparing for the Ravelympics as co-captain of the Team PurpleHaze: the team for knitters affected with CDIFS and fibro (hence the purple in the name as CFIDS has a blue ribbon, in case you get confused with the ribbon colours). This event basically consists in knitting one (or several) items during the Olympic period. After some thought-exchanging, co-captain (and initiator of the team) Sajrsteph has worked her butt off to come up with a list of simple patterns that we will be able to complete in time. This was very good as I only had limited access to the internet in a nearby cafe…

I’m very much leaning towards knitting the the Easter bunnies, but I haven’t decided yet…

Waiting

And there we are again – waiting. It seems to be the motto of my life – and I don’t like to wait… This time we’re waiting for the piano to come home and for the cold to go away. How could we think to get away without one while moving in the winter.

Ha, wait it’s finished (the waiting, not the cold)- piano removal truck is coming down the street!

45 minutes and a rather difficult move later – piano fits!

Snow – again!

My way to work feels like the perfect scenario to re-memorise act I of Puccini’s La Boheme… Lots of snow, but on the contrary to Marcello, Rodolfo, Colline and Schaunard we seem to have mastered the heating which was a bit temperamental at first.
We’re still without any internet at home- but at least the phone line is working – so again, I’m blogging through the mobile device.

I found out how to access internet via opera mini on my Blackberry (including Ravelry where I was named co-captain of the PurpleHaze team- never been co-captain: all very exciting! More about this later- but I can’t send any messages and my trial post in the forum seemed to be lost in space…)

Friday will see the return of the piano and they’d better not cancel on us as we spent a fortune to suspend parking in front of the house! At this point we should probably tell the neighbours that they now live close to musicians….