And the Snow Came...

...and I had to hurry out with the camera to get som pictures of my christmas-sock-calender-socks in the snow. The first snow usually don´t keep very long.

Sometimes knitters talk about the "second-sock syndrome", where the first sock in the pair is knitted swiftly and quickly but the second one takes forever. The first sock is all challange, with a new pattern, a new yarn, interesting colour. When it´s finished there is no novelty left, but you still have to do the thing allover again, because socks are usually worn in pairs (a bit conventional, perhaps! After all, there are no laws that force us to wear two identical socks. At least not in Sweden). I myself, suffer from umpteen-sock syndrome! I have now knitted twelve ones, and have to knit twelve more. I´m bored, and on the bus home yesterday I actually read a pm on money-laundering, instead of knitting!

But I can´t allow myself to start another knitting-project before this one is finished, because then this dratted sock-idea never will get finished. Yesterday Mr Darling said: You will never get that done in time! and of course I must rise to challenges like that. My knitters pride is at stake here!

Ich bin ein Berliner

Four very nice days were spent in Berlin. Neither me nor Mr Darling hade been there before, and now it was time! It was cold and rained a lot - but who care about such trifling details?! We acted like real tourists and went to all the "musts", tried currywurst (we liked very much!), bought chocolate-christmas-calenders at KaDeWe and aired our very dusty German. The Germans were very polite and didn´t mind our grammatical errors.



We went round by U-Bahn and S-Bahn a lot. Berlin is as full of shops as any other city, all sorts of shops, but strangely enough we never came upon any yarn-shops. Was this very clever planning on Mr Darling´s part...?

And at Waisenstrasse there it was: Die Mauer = The Wall!! A real treat and well worthy of a photo. Wait a minute, you are thinking, that is not Die Mauer!! It wasn´t situated there and it was made of concrete!

But this really is IT, the old city wall, built around Berlin and Cölln during the second half of the 13th century. It was enlarged during the 14th century, but got torned down in the 17th century, after it has lost its military usefullness. A few pieces of it still stands. Amazingly enough, after everything Berlin has been through! (Yes, we visited the remains of the other wall as well).

This was really my kind of holiday: I love visiting big citys! To walk around and look at houses, visit museums and historical buildings, and to ponder about the city´s history. My favourite city? Well, Stockholm, of course! And one of the great joys of travelling is coming home again.

Knit-wise it wasn´t a very productive holiday! My knitting was regarded very suspiciously at the airport-security, both at Arlanda and Tegel, but in the end was allowed to pass - after I had taken of my boots to have them specially searched. I knitted on the plane and then dutifully carried the sock-in-process around Berlin. So it´s a sock that has seen some of the world.

It´s bittery cold and the papers have huge head-lines of coming snow-storms. But this year we are prepared!! Winter-clothes has been carried down from the attic and the car is fitted with winter-tyres. Welcome, King Bore, we are ready!

Life According to the Ketchup-Principle

Life very often works according to the Ketchup-Principle: first comes nothing, then comes nothing and then everything comes at once! At work things started to heat up and I went from being comfortably busy to beeing too busy. At the same time my very quiet social life started to buzz - which is very nice, but tireing. And a lot of things suddenly needed to be attended to; things that couldn´t be postponed to a less busy day, week or month. And while the autum-days have been really wonderful with clear blue sky, sunshine, crisp air and sparkling colours, I haven´t had much time to enjoy them.


This is a morning-picture of the neighbours house. Yes, there actually IS a house behind all that golden sunshine: a big, modern house in brown-painted wood!


One of the things that suffers heavily when life is busy is, sadly, the knitting! A hard struggle between the things I want to do and the things I must do of course ends with me doing the things I must do, and when the "musts" were finished, I was to tired to take up the needles.

Imagine that: to tired to knit!!

The choise between my "real" work and the knitting, of course never was a choise and I dutifully stuffed my sock back in my bag. On my way home from work I was to tired to knit or to read anything and just sat there on the bus, doing nothing. A rare thing for me: doing nothing! But I spent a few minutes thinking that I actually am a lucky person, who has an interesting job AND interesting hobbies!

One thing that lately needed immediate attention and stole a lot of knitting time, actually was quite nice! Well, picking over and frying a lot ( and, yes, it was A LOT!) of funnel chanterell (trattkantarell) is extremely boring, but they were free ( and I didn´t have to pick them myself) and now the freezer is well stocked with this Gold of the Forest. And during the winter they will add a lot of glory to my cooking.

And with winter rapidly advancing, it will be a whole year until I need to bother with mushrooms again.

Knitting, luckily, is always in season, and since I´m behind with the christmas-sock-calender I can´t waste any more time blogging, but have to get those needles moving!

The Greatest Knitting Tool

I can´t read and knit at the same time (which is a great pity!) but knitting and tv goes very well together. The tv is actually my greatest knitting tool and some of my best times are spent in the sofa, with a cup of tea on the table beside me, something tempting to knit - and someting nice on the tv! Of course, I can´t trust the tv-compaines to make the choice for me, and I don´t have SO much to choose from: we don´t have cable. But most things I can wish for is available on dvd! I seldom follow tv-series, they usually run to late in the evening for me, and I actually can´t have my lifte adjusted to what is shown on tv. So I patiently wait until the thing I want to watch is released in dvd-boxes. Yes, one day even I will have watched "Mad Men"!


A few weeks ago a new box arrived, and a whole new world opened up to me. It was Granadas "Sherlock Holmes" with the excellent Jeremy Brett as the famous detective. What a joy to watch! And what a voice Jeremy Brett had. Absolutely seductive!

The series is said to be very "true" to the books. I read a few Sherlock Holmes-stories as a teenager, but judging from the size of the box, I had missed quite a lot. So when I found the complete Sherlock Holmes-stories and novels in two paperbacks, I bought it and am now enjoying Holmes and Watson in both filmed and written versions. I can´t really say which is the best: the books or the dvd - they are both very good!

The first volume is a little over 1000 pages long. It´s good to know that I will not run out of either yarn or things to read for a very long time.

And the Frost Came!

Yesterday the ground was white with frost. I hurried to the bus very early in the morning, after having had a hard time deciding what sweater to wear. I decided not to take the one in black merino-wool - it´s VERY warm and would be to hot to wear in the underground. This morning Nature decided to show the cocky humans their place, and the cold morning was combined with a power-default in the underground-system. The journey that usually takes 50 minutes, now took 2½ hour! During this time I several times had longing thoughts about the black merino-sweater. I also seriosly considered turning home: the whole incident could be interpreted as a great sign that going to work was a bad idea! But on I went, somehow...



Well, I can live with stops in the underground-system, they don´t occur very often nowadays and usually one can find an alternative route to take. And it IS possible to walk a bit! What is irritating is the lousy information!! In this digitalized era it shold be possible to get the information out very fast, but no! One of the reasons that it took me such a long time to reach work was that I was told that one of the other underground-lines was running. A short bus-trip took me (and a lot of other hopeful passengers) to a station of the blue line - only to find that it was equally devoid of trains! And suddenly there wasn´t a bus in sight. Or taxi.


But the weather is nice! Cold, but nice!


During the morning adventure I had plenty of time to knit - always something! and the second sock for the christmas-calender took shape and was finished yesterday evening. Only 22 left to make! Sometimes I stop and wonder: is this crazy?

But when I look at the result I find it quite charming.