I am

making:
Granny squares for a hot water bottle cover. I know, it's mid-summer and it's way too early to think about hot water bottles, but Kate over at foxs lane (great blog, by the way. If you don't know it, go over there immediately and read EVERYTHING Kate has ever written!) has startet a crochet along and so I joined in! 

gathering some left-over yarn

my first squares!

thinking:
about all the preparations that need to be done for the weekend. On Saturday our little town has its annual town party (no idea how to translate Stadtfest) and my man and I will have our own bar, serving Schnitzelsemmel (a Schnitzel, ketchup, and a leaf of lettuce in a roll. Best. Snack. Ever.) and cold beer and Spritzer. We already did it last year and it was really successful. Lots of money for one night of work. So we decided to do it again this year. I already started a list. I love lists.

feeling:
happy and sad at the same time. Today's my last day at work. I'm really sad to have to leave all those nice and wonderfull colleagues behind. But I won't miss the work per se. It was pretty dry technical stuff. Come Monday I will work in the book industry. Something I wanted to do all my life. An office job as well but not in the industrial district that I am working now, but in the very centre of Vienna, right behind the Stephansdom. Prepare yourself for some photo-heavy posts when I walk through the tourists part of Vienna. EVERY DAY! I'm really excited!

worrying:
about the heavy rainfalls that hit our town last night. The main street was completely under water! The fire department was working all through the night because a lot of basements were flooded due to the massive amounts of water! Poor people! 

that's how the main street in our little town looked like yesterday. horrible!

eating:
the last piece of the delicious plum cake that I bake for my colleagues yesterday. I come from a part in Austria were cakes, cookies and pies are a very important part in our everyday life and in our culture. My mom is a wonderful baker, she makes the most delicious cakes and pastries and I got the recipe from her. It's a very easy one, suitable for all kind of fruit cakes.

the plums for my cake. they could have been sweeter...

...but the cake turned out fine. That's the only picture. Its life was rather short.

smelling:
the ripe and juicy peaches that are right beside me and waiting to be eaten. My godfather is a fruit farmer (and he makes schnapps out of those fruits too) and he brought us some wonderful peaches. The smell is divine - it fills up the whole room. Can't wait to bite into them! 

yummy peaches.

dreaming:
about the little escape that my man and me (or my man and I??) talked about last night. See, August 15th is a friday and a holiday in Austria. Which means, there is a long weekend. Now, if the man will be able to have the 16th off at work, we will jump on his new bike and drive down to Croatia. Now this will mean that we will drive on day, then have one day to spend at the beach and then drive back for one day. Sounds a little crazy, but that is how we roll. Or ride.

my man's motorcycle. and himself in the background.

wishing:
for a warm and sunny weekend so our bar on Saturday will be a (financial) success which will enable us to turn a dream (weekend in Croatia) into reality!

hoping:
that all of you have  a lovely week yourself and a even more lovely weekend ahead of you. I'm curious: what are you planning, making, smelling, eating, hoping, wishin, dreaming? Tell me, I'd love to know! :)

Summer's here...

...finally, and just in time for the long weekend (there's a holidy on monday in Austria). I'm not much of a winter person. In fact, I hate the sight of snow. It immediately ruins my day. I don't want to see it. I don't wan't to feel it. I don't want to have it anywhere near me. Same goes for temperatures under 20 degrees. There's a reason why I have a big sun-mandala tatooed on my back!

There won't be much crocheting going on because the weather is way too warm to have wool wrapped around my fingers and my man's familiy comes for a visit which will take up most of our weekend time. The only things that I plan for the next three days are lying in the sun, enjoy some reading and eat massive amounts of food. As the temperatures are predicted to top off the 30 degrees border, there will hopefully also be some jumping in water involved. Great things to look forward to!

But as I've learned from reading what feels like thousands of blog post entries, I know that posts are more appreciated if they are accompanied with some pictures. As none of you knows, my man and I just moved into a new appartment three months ago. It was my third move in two years and as you can imagine I was more than ready to have a steady home, some place, where I won't move out of in the foreseeable future. I think we found that place. It's a lovely, rather small appartment, but more than big enough for the two of us. And for the first time in many years I finally have the opportunity to DECORATE! What a coincidence, that I was reading a lot of great blogs at that time which gave me plenty of inspiration.

One of these inspirational ideas was found here. I was able to save the curtains I bought for our last appartment and take them with me to our new home. As I didn't really want to cut them off again (I had to do this before and let me tell you - I can count the times that I operated a sewing machine on my two hands -  I want to work on that though, I got a sewing machine for Christmas which is still untouched in it's original packaging! But more on that another time) I looked for another opportunity to make them look good. I loved Gillians idea to crochet curtain tie-backs. I chose the colors green and yellow as they dominate the kitchen where the curtains hang and also because they are featured in the curtain as well. I used Schachenmayr Catania, a 100% cotton yarn which I absolutely love. It's wonderful to work with and I love the way the cotton feels and looks. I found the pattern for the squares somewhere on the interent. I tried to trace it back so I can link it here but I'm somehow unable to find it anymore.

It was a very quick and easy and therefore also a very satisfying project. As I tend to do projects (i.e. blankets) that take a loooong time to finish, it was really nice to have something whipped up in a few days. And I love them! So glad that my man doesn't care that there is so much crochet around ("look at those nice colors", he said when he saw my lovely tie-backs). He actually loves the blanket I made for him in winter and refuses to let me use it. "Nope. My blanket. Go make your own." Best man in the world.

The hand. And a pillow.

My man and I love drama series. We binge-watched Breaking Bad (I recall a sunday where one whole season was watched), we worked our way through Six Feet Under (a bit tedious sometimes, but the finale was worth it!!) and now we are currently in the middle of Dexter. As it was raining most of the weekend we managed to finish season four. Lots of pain, blood, tears, horror and cut-off or split-open body parts. To me, it's fiction. Something on TV. But things are different for my man. He lives the series he's currently watching. He talks about it. He dreams about it. He really works himself up about it. After seeing way too much of the inner workings of psychotic mass murderers for two days, we managed to get outside. We had a little drive through the beautiful, calm Austrian countryside, when I drove over a yellow rubber glove, which was lying in the middle of the road. 

"Why did you do that?", asked my man. 

"Do what? What do you mean?", I replied. 

"Drive over that hand", he said calmly. "It is not nice to drive over a cut-off hand. Somebody might still need it", and proceeded to look out the window. 

Ladies and Gentleman, this man thought it perfectly natural not only to find a human hand on the side of the road but for me to be a little rude just to drive over it. Guess who will be having a break from watching Dexter for a little while! 

But on to less disturbing things. If you look closely, you can see the word 'crochet' on the top left corner. The initial idea behind setting up this blog was to show off my humble crochet creations to people who might be interested in seeing them instead of shoving them in my man's face in a desperate attempt to gain some apprais. ("Nice colors", my man says. "The yarn is really soft!")

So here is what it's all about: I proudly present my first ever granny square cushion cover. After the disaster with my first attempt at creating something out of squares (I just threw away about 100 horrible grannies), I gave the good old granny (my, that sounds awefully wrong) another go. I worked without a tutorial, just crocheted nine squares, crocheted them together, made one big square for the back and squeezed a pillow inside. 

Now, the idea behind this was to use up some leftover yarn I had from a bag I made before. The two left-over balls were used and I had to buy about ten new balls to be able to finish the cushion. I overestimated my yarn-usage though. There are now two balls of yarn left. But look how pretty it is. Nice colors. And the yarn is very soft. Totally worth it!