Time is running

Oh boy, where did October go? Only 6 days left in this month. I can't believe how fast the time is running. A little too fast for my taste...

Work is crazy, as usual and therefore I didn't get as much things done this week as I hoped, but here's a quick, rather random update for you. 

First a little explanation: the company where I work is organizing the Vienna book fair. It starts in three week and that's the reason for the long hours. But it's really fun and I'm excited to be part of this huuuge and interesting project. 

I'm thinking about getting a book tattoo in my inner left upper arm (this will hurt so badly!!). It's still just a thought. I already have three tattoos and I always wanted to have a tattoo of my biggest passion! I will keep you posted on that. 

Last weekend we had the most gorgeous weather! It was sunny and warm and felt much like summer. When my man came home from work, he wanted to put his motorcycle helmet on the shelf in the hallway. The shelf came crashing down and we spent the weekend redesigning the hallway. We bought new furniture, built it, put it in the hallway, put all our things back in. It was a lot of work but we really like it now. It's cleaner and more organized and all those new drawers that we have now are really handy. I tried to make a picture for you but the hallway has no window so it's really dark. And it barely fits two people so it's really small and it was impossible. Sorry. 

We did manage to put our rollerskates on and make a trip to the lake, though. Would have been a shame not to enjoy the nice weather. 

With rearranging the hall we had a shoecase left over. And I immediately thought that this would be a nice yarn and craft supply storage. See, we have a really small appartment and until last week my yarn was put into tote bags and they were all over the place, which drove my man crazy! So, I now have my own little craft corner and I absolutely love it! 

I also baked Toffiffee muffins. Just little muffins with a Toffiffee (I hope you know these - little chocolate/caramel/hazelnut-treats. Those are so yummy!) centre. The chocolate and caramel melts when you put it in the oven ans it just tastes soooo good! Would you like the recipe for these? Really easy and quick to make and people always love them. 

And I managed to get a little crochet done. I made a few more christmas ornaments and experienced with different colors. But these will be put in another post. 

And I worked on Paul the toadstool! You can't see it in this picture, but he got hands! He's nearly finished and I feel that my first, proper ta-dah post will be coming soon! 

Isn't he lovely? My man already claimed him for himself and as soon as my mum saw him she ordered herself one lovely lalylala doll. 

Well, I have to go now. I'm invited to my aunts 50th birthday party today which means a family gathering (I love those, especially since my cousins are having babies which means I can cuddle those little boys all das long!) and lots and lots and LOTS of food! 

We'll be heading to London on Wednesday. As ir was a cheap flight we don't start in Vienna but in Salzburg. Which isn't that bad since my man's sister lives there with her husband and two sons (more children. Yay!) and we're going to visit her too. So there will be a lot to talk about and LOTS of pictures!

Have a nice weekend, lovelies! What are your plans? I'd love to hear!!

Taking stock in October.

Making : more stuff for my christmas stall
Cooking : pasta with vegetables. today there will be no meat.
Drinking : a huge cup of coffee as I just got out of bed
Reading: still "The Medicus". But I hope I will finish it this weekend.
Wanting:  for the nice weather to stay. I'm so not ready for winter!
Looking: out of the window. There are way too many clouds in the sky right now! :(
Playing: with my part-time dog Hugo. He belongs to my mother-in-law but we take him on the weekends
Deciding: on what to wear when going out for a walk with the dog. I'm afraid it's not as warm as it looks.
Wishing: that I will get a great role in the play this year. I'm in an amateur acting group and right now we're in the middle of deciding what to play this year.
Enjoying: that I was able to sleep in today. Gotta love those weekends!
Waiting: for my man to come home from work so we can have a nice and calm weekend together.
Liking: the fact that I have time to do lots of crochet in the next two days.
Wondering: how the weather in London will be like...just 11 more days. Yay!
Loving: the fact that the acting group season starts again. It's always so much fun hanging out with these people!
Pondering: which crochet project to tackle today. There are just too many WIP's, I really need to finish some of them!
Considering: playing with my mans Nikon to make nicer fotos for my blog
Watching: Orange is the new black. I know I'm late, but Netflix just started here in Austria.
Hoping: that it wont rain until I'm ready to go for a run later.
Marvelling: on the lalylala dolls. I'm really curios if my Paul will look just as cute!
Needing: more time! The hours at work are crazy right now and I get NOTHING done in the evenings.
Smelling: the great autumnal smells that are waving through the open windows.
Wearing: Jeans and T-shirt. Perfect weekend clothes.
Following: my new workout routine. We'll see how long that lasts...
Noticing: the progress my mum is making.
Knowing: that this day won't have nearly enough hours to get everything done that I planned for today...
Thinking: about wanting a house. need to save more money for this, though.  A LOT more money...
Feeling: great after a little walk with the dog. Such a beautiful day today!
Admiring: the changing landscape. All those colorfoul trees everywhere...it gets me everytime.
Sorting: out the laundry. Today will be a massive laundry day as it accumulated over the week where I get NOTHING done in the evenings...
Buying: new clothes! Vienna has a new HUGE train station with a mall attached. And since I missed my train this week and had to wait...well, a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do... ;-)
Getting: ready for going for a run. Just need a little time to digest my breakfast.
Bookmarking: tutorials for christmas crochet. Stars, snowflakes, ornaments...
Disliking: the fact that there isn't enough time for me to crochet all those things
Opening: a package with running clothes for winter. I plan to run throughout the winter to be really, REALLY fit in spring!
Giggling: about my dog because he's really clumsy.
Feeling: great. weekend just begun, two days off work, the sun is shining. Life is good.
Snacking: nothing right now, but I'm going to make myself a nice fruit salad after my run.
Coveting: summer back. I'm just not made for temperatures under 20 degrees...
Wishing: that I'm able to track my running target for today!
Helping: at work. Wherever I can. And believe me, right now there's lots to do! More on that later.
Hearing: Lisa Hannigan - Save travels don't die. Love this woman and her voice. Click here if you want to hear the song and see the cutest video! :)

Have a lovely weekend, everyone! What are you guys up to?

getting ready for Christmas

Wow. It's October, the weather is finally getting a little nicer and warmer again (we had 25 degrees yesterday. twenty-five!) and what did I do in this fine weather? Right, I came home from work, turned my laptop on and started to browse for patterns for crocheted snowflakes. Of course.

See, I will have the opportunity to sell some of my stuff at a christmas stall - without having to stand there everyday! I just have to make it and another person will sell it for my. Quite nice, isn't it? But the stall will open up in December and I just heard about it yesterday. So I racked my brain and hundreds of blogs for ideas and started to try out some stuff.

The crocheted owl keyring is my favorite, unfortunately it takes ages to make. The pattern isn't as easy as it looks. And I suck at sewing on the eyes. So I glued them. Pretty sad, actually. But no one will know. Hopefully.

The second is my first crocheted snowflake and I LOVE IT! It will look great hanging from the branch of a christmas tree and I bought tons of glitter (yay, glitter, one of the things that I love most about christmas time - that there is so much glitter!!) to sprinkle over them. AND they're pretty quick and easy to make. It took me about 15 minutes and I will get faster once I've memorised the pattern, which shouldn't take long as it's not that complicated.

And the last one should be a bauble. It turned out a little small and not as round as I had expected it but I will probably make more of them as they're also quick and easy and I think that they look very nice. And there are tons of possibilities with colors and different yarns.

BUT for now I stop making those christmas things. I bought a pattern. The very first pattern that I bought but I've been toying around with the idea of buying it for a while now! For some time I drool over the images of lalylala and the gorgeous amigurumi figures she makes. So when there was a sale at dawanda (which is something like the german etsy) I decided to buy three of her patterns. I chose Paul the toadstool, Lupo the lamb and Dirk the dragon. I will start with Paul.

And so I'm off to my local yarn store to buy all the supplies that I need for Paul. I probably won't sell him because I find him so cute that I will keep him. Or rather give it to my man as he demanded that he wants to have that lovely little mushroom. Do you understand now why I marry this guy? 


P.S.: The owl design is from here, the snowflake is from here and the bauble I found here.

Travelling Austria: Gmunden

I've been away last weekend. It was kind of a spontanious trip. See, my mother isn't feeling that well at the moment and so she is on rehabilitation in Upper Austria. She's in a center where she has been before and she really liked it and it really improved her health. That was three years ago. Back then, I visited her twice. Once on a day-trip with my brother and the second time I went there with my father and we stayed for the weekend.

And that's exactly what we did this weekend. And what a lovely time we had! It was really great.

The name of the little town we visited is Gmunden. If you want to know a little more about the history of Gmunden, have a look here, it's really interesting! 

Gmunden is famous for it's ceramic pottery! When people get married in Austria it is common to give them a tableware set of "Gmundner Keramik"! As you know I have a faible for mugs. And of course we had to visit the outlet store and I bought some lovely bowls and a even lovelier mug. (Pics will follow!)

The rest of the day we spend walking around town. Its such a beautiful old town. When Austria was still a really big empire, the emperor Franz Joseph loved to spend his summer holiday in and around Gmunden. 

Gmunden is located near the lake "Traunsee", the deepest (206 m) lake in Austria. We strolled around the lake just when the clouds began to disappear and the sun came through. 

We walked to the castle "Schloss Orth", a little castle that was built in the 11th century. It belonged to a very nasty and evil landlord who was famous for his cruelty. In the 1990s it was the set of an Austrian telenovela. 

The next day we made a little boat tour on the lake. The weather wasn't as nice as the day before but it didn't rain, so it was okay. The boat tour took about 50 minutes and was really beautiful. I love this landscape, it's so nice and everywhere you look you see so mich history and tradition! 

We went to lunch to a hotel near the lakeside and had the most amazing dinner! My mum and I ate the best lamb that we've ever eaten!  

And because both my mum and I have a sweet tooth, we ordered a delicious dessert plate! It had mousse au chocolat on it, a chocalate cake, Tiramisu and parfait. 

Needless to say, we ate EVERYTHING! It was worth every.single.calorie. 

I'm still going for a run tonight, though! ;-)

Oh and the best part - I found new shoes! Every holiday is perfect, if you come home with new shoes. Don't you think? 

a year in books: October

As I mentioned before, I decided to take part in the year in books.

Reading is something that I do everyday. I can't imagine a life without books. It's so great to emerge in a story, slip into another world and get soaked up in the life and stories of other people - fiction or not. I can get totally lost in a book, though this only happened with a few books. The feeling of totally being IN that story. The feeling, that these characters must be real, that these stories really happened somewhere! And the total sadness and disappointment when the book is finished and you have to face reality again!

Since August books are not just my passion in my freetime but also the thing that I earn my money with. I work for an Austrian association that represents the rights and the interests of all Austrian booksellers and publishers. I love my work, I love being able to earn my living with books. And my new work means commuting by train, I also have again more time to read each day.

Right now I'm reading "The Medicus" by Noah Gordon. I just started it, so there's not much that I can tell about it - so far! A little review will follow next month! ;-)

Instead I can talk about books that I've read in September. Now I thought about including these books, as these are written by Austrian writers and as far as I know are not available in other languages. But as I really like these books and authors I'm going to talk about them anyway!

The first book is "Polivka hat einen Traum", by Stefan Slupetzky. (The title translates as: Polivka has a dream) and is a work of crime fiction.

photo source

I only started to like Crime fiction in the last few years. I've read a few books of Slupetzky before. He has written a four-volume-series about a a detective called "Lemming". All of his books are situated in Vienna. I've you've ever been to Vienna you probably know, that the Viennese people have their own charme and way of live. They surely like to moan and complain. They're very negative but in a very lovely way. It's really hard to explain! But let me assure you, that Slupetzky really knows how to capture that "Wiener Charme". And he knows how to write a intricating plot.

The second book is "Brennerova" by Wolf Haas.

photo source

If you're able to speak German - go and buy yourself all of the "Brenner" crime fiction novels. Brenner is the name of the main character. And he's a real character! Kind of a loser type, used to work for the police but got sacked (which isn't really easy in Austria!) and now he's working as a private detective. He's something that you would call an anti-hero. He makes mistakes, he gets himself and those around him in danger. But he's also incredibly smart and somehow always manages to capture the bad guys. Well, most of the time. Some of these books have also been made into movies and have become quite popular and successful in Austria.


I don't know what else I'm going to read in October. Normally I don't plan my readings. If I have new books, I read them first. If I don't, I sit in front of my bookshelfes and just take out whatever seems inviting at that moment. If I like a book, I need to read it more then once. I'm a really fast reader, but I tend to forget what happened in the book very easily. So to REALLY read a book, I have to read it. Again and again. There are books that I've red ten and more times. Because I like them so much. Because I have memories attached to them. Because the stories never seem to bore me. I'm sure some of those will appear here over the months!

Happy reading, everyone.

three things

FIRST:
I decided to join the year in books from Laura at circle of pine trees. The idea behind it is a monthly recollection of the books one has read and a little outlook on the ones that one wants to read. As I am an avid reader and wanted to have some kind of "reading diary" on my blog anyway, I thought that this might be a good way to keep track over all those books that I am reading. I'm trying to write my first book-post on the weekend.

SECOND:
Look what finally made its way into our kitchen:

YES, a Jura coffee machine. We're so happy with it and I haven't been tired for days! ;-) It has cost more money than our TV, but for us it was really worth it. It's the new heart of our kitchen! 

THIRD:
We're going to London! Not now, but at the end of October. As I know that many of you readers come from the UK I ask you to share your London-tips with me! We have a hotel in Westminster, so we're really central! 
We have three days time. It's my first time in London so we will visit the obvious tourist attractions. But do you have any special tips for me? Any restaurants that have great and cheap food? Any bars that we really HAVE to go to? A really lovely book store? Anything special? I would really appreciate your help! 

Have a nice weekend you all! :)