The Giving Flower

In the spirit of the Berlin marathon I went out today and ran 17 kilometers!!
This is my personal best-I’ve never run so far and it felt great. I ran it alone in a little under 2 hours. Can you imagine it, running for 2 hours? I’m just so proud of myself for keeping it up. Even after being sick the last couple of weeks and having an absolutely full schedule, I’ve still been able to get my running in. Thanks, Gina from Sleepy Eyes Knitting , Brenda from Cast on (I hope you’re feeling better) and Knit Therapy! Your podcasts kept me happily entertained those two long hours.

I’ve also been knitting.
It’s keeping me sane (more about that later).
I even have an FO. Here she is:

Well, that was her a week ago. She’s been well fed and has grown quite a bit since then. Unfortunately, I’m waiting for her to dry from the blocking she’s had to go through and then the tassel ceremony will commence. Once this is over and the weather clears up so I can get a good photo session, you’ll see her in all her warm beauty. All I can say is she turned out better than I had hoped and I love her already.

Until then I give you my peacock feathers shawl progress.
Here is a good picture of the pattern but not the color.

Here is a better pic of the color.

Oh I’m in love. I’ll be working on this one sporadically between other projects just to keep the good knitting feeling alive. Also because the darn rows are getting so long that it’s nice to take a bit of a break. I still love her though.

In case you’re dabbling with the idea of starting a peacock feathers shawl then join us over at ravelry.

Everyone’s doing it, you know!

One more thing.
If you not afraid to break out a knitting project in public and show a little needle come and join my public knitter group in ravelry.

The stories are great. Be proud, be a public knitter!!

Alida’s party was a lot of fun, according to Alida, the smiling faces and the kids that didn’t want to go home.

Here are the pictures. First we had some buggy food :

There were butterfly sandwiches,

some butterfly veggies,

and, of course, a butterfly cake. Are you starting to get the theme?

This cake is called the parrot cake (Papageikuchen) which is a German recipe I begged Alida’s teacher for last year. It was yummy. Here’s a link to a recipe similar to what I used, unfortunately it’s only in German.

The kids also wanted to make a carrot cake, so we colored it pink and made it into a castle that the kids then decorated. Did you know that it’s much harder to get past sour gummy worms than it is a real moat? This is for you, Barb!

Oh we can’t forget the butterfly name tags.

We also started two weeks ahead and made our own lady bug piñata full of goodies.

After eating the food and playing a few games inside, we headed down to the playground behind our building and had some more fun.

The kids were all absolutely adorable and played so well together. As you can see, Alexander walked around making movies with our video camera.

Now my little girl is 4, oh where did the time go??

I would love to put more pictures of all the kids but I didn’t ask the parents so I don’t feel right about it.

It’s Saturday and I’m off to work again, being in the sports department, as well as the English and Spanish departments, makes me responsible for some out-of-school activities. Tomorrow is the Berlin marathon which has the whole city in runner fever. Today we have a mini-marathon, 4.2 K, for the older students and a bambini run, 800 m, with our younger students. I’m in charge of the bambini runners with 2 other teachers. Alida is going to yet another birthday party this morning and then she and Alexander are going to the run with my bambini runners, so it’ll also be a family event and not all work. More tomorrow.

We’ve been very busy these past two weeks getting ready for Alida’s 4th birthday.

The invitations were drawn, glued together and sent out and the  paper mache piñata made and decorated. The cakes have been baked and we’re now ready to have some fun. More later after the guests have left and we can finally play with all our Alida’s new toys.

Happy birthday, my little cutie!

You can call it what you like, I’ve been casting on with yarn that I’ve bought and tucked away until it was meant to be knit. You see, we knitters have all sorts of excuses for the two, mine being that I need to listen to my yarn. My yarn tells me when to knit it and when to leave it alone. This decision has nothing to do with me. At least that’s what I like to think.

Lately, the yarn has been calling me. All of it. I’ll be on a tight budget for a while, so this yarn calling is a very good thing. I know why knitters stash-so they can go ‘shopping’ when they have no money to go shopping. This is fun. I’ve found some treasures that I had absolutely forgotten about.

Here are a few things that have found their way on my needles and are very happy to be there.

First we have some merino swatched and ready to go for the Secret of the Stole project. Beads are next.

This red girl is the beginnings of a hat from Hat’s on! by Charlene Schurch in my beloved Lana Grossa Meilenweit sock yarn. Which hat you ask? You’ll see later when I’m a bit further along.

This little fuzzy beauty is some alpaca from Schewe that I had bought with all the intentions of knitting a cabled poncho. Yes, I like ponchos but don’t have one yet, so I thought it would be a good project for this yarn when I bought it over a year ago.

When I uncovered this stuff while stash diving, I realized I had enough, hopefully, to make the Eris cardigan from the girl from auntie- This patterns been marinating for two years now waiting for the right yarn to come along. I hope we have a good pair here. Time will tell.

kids tidbit: Every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I teach Spanish in the middle school and because I speak English and German to everyone during the day, I like to listen to Spanish on tape on the way to school. Of course, Alida is with me and likes to listen too. There are some Spanish songs in between the dialogs which are fun and we usually try to sing along. This, among other things has sparked her interest in the language, so I’ve been teaching her a few things. She knows hello, happy birthday, and how to count to 10. On Sunday after our long run she came home, put on her PJ’s and started reading a book to her doll in Spanish.

She was even making the sounds and saying the words she knows. Hmm where could she have this from?

By the way, I’ve been really sick this past week, Mr. G too-he even stayed home on Wednesday with a fever, and yesterday I had to drag my coughing butt to work for a ‘Welcome Tea’ so time for blog posting, blog reading and email answering has been sparse at best. I’m just today feeling a bit better but I’m still not myself, so I hope to get back to my emails and reading soon.

Excuse me while I get some tea and try to knit some rows, I now have enough projects to choose from. Now it’s your turn to stash dive and find some treasures!!