13th May 2015 - Save Return

This is just a small post to let everyone know that I'm back in Ireland. I had a lovely though a little sad time. And of course it was over too quickly. Work awaits, house hunting awaits. I hope to have good news soon.

One good though before switching off: I managed the get my lamp home safely and it's absolutely beautiful. A friend's father made it for me just based on ideas and I understand that my friend found it difficult to part with it. Just to let you know: it arrived in Ireland and it's working perfectly.

My personal designed butterfly-flower Tiffany lamp with a energy-saving bulb inside. Once the English and German websites are up I will copy it into my blog.

Lastly, two pictures I took while I was on holidays. I think I'm getting the hang of using my phone properly to take pictures even though the resolution is not the best.

Tulips I bought for my mother.

Picture taken from inside the bus last Tuesday, 5th May. It suddenly started to pour out of the heavens like in a movie. The sky turned dark, rain came down in sheets. Within a couple of minutes trees were broken in half by the storm. Not far from my home town, a tornado destroyed a village - tornadoes in Germany, first thing I've ever seen on TV.

Alarm clock is set, light is going out soon. See you all soon and thank you for the great time.

3rd May 2015 - Sunday in Hamburg

My friends had invited me today to visit them in Hamburg. I got an early train and was treated to lovely home-cooked food: vegetable soup and vegetable lasagne. It was heaven! We had a very long catch-up, loads of coffee - LOVE coffee and then we went for a walk/cycle to the Stadtpark. Haven't used bikes in a while. Hamburg introduced a rental service, similar to the service available in Dublin, for people to rent bikes, free of charge for up to 30 mins of use.

I took the opportunity to take pictures. I'm seriously considering buying a proper camera to get more into proper photography. But I can't spend the money on one at the moment. So I use what's available, my Huawei phone. I think some of them are really good.

My friends explained to me that this is one of the restaurants where you can rent boats to explore the river.

Cherry blossoms fully in bloom.

The park hosts a lot of different types of flowers. This one is tricky - I got a close-up picture of a flower bud making it look like it was the size of your palm. It's about the size of your thumb.

The local geese had a little offspring. Still all fluffy looking. So cute.

According to my friends this fountain is rather new. Really love the penguins.

There's a round pond with remote-controlled ships. The pirate ship was even playing music.

After our walk we went for a beer in the beer garden. When we left I noticed this heart-shaped sculpture. You might not see it but fairy lights have been wrapped around the construction. I'd say it looks very pretty at night.

I left Hamburg with rain and a heavy heart, hoping to catch up with my friends again soon. Please read the blog and thanks again for the lamp!

1st May 2015 - New knitting project and my mum's cooking

I've decided to bring a knitting project with me which is Ginny's Cardigan. It has owls on the back in lace and I fell in love with the pattern when I saw it for the first time. I still have a lot of yarn stashed away so I hope this one will reduce it again as planned for 2015. I'm only back in Germany since yesterday but I've already started on the 3rd ball - only brought five with me. But my mum has crochet stuff to do so I will keep myself busy as it is.

Again, I decided to modify the pattern. I love the lace on the back but the front of the cardigan is rather plain and I'm not a big fan of knitted pockets. I always tend to stuff them with ... well ... stuff. Ruined a couple of jackets in the past. I've also decided to lengthen the cardigan as I have more yarn than required hence I started the cardigan off with two repeats of the owl pattern before starting the shaping for the waist. Here's a picture of the current project.

I didn't bring stitch markers with me so I robbed my dad of paper clips. Works well enough to mark the pattern section, e.g. decreases and the lace part. The lace is easy enough once you get used to those triple decreases: sssk and k3tog. Looking forward to the finished project.

Great thing about holidays is that I'm able to enjoy my mum's cooking again. And let's be honest - nobody cooks as well as your mum. She made gyros today with her own herb mix and baked feta cheese with peppers, red onion, tomatoes, dried basil and olive oil. The whole ensemble was served with olives stuffed with almonds, home-made sauce and warm bread. Picture of everything before going into the oven and the frying pan.

I didn't last very long once it was cooked.

Tomorrow, I'm going shoe shopping - desperately need new shoes and pay a visit to one of my favourite crafts shops, Sticklise, hunting for buttons.

Going to bed now. Night.