http://www.flickr.com/photos/78017789@N00/1340394491/

Pictures of Sara :-)

Still, no baby.

But: We have the return of the fighting neighbours. Yay. If only it got my uterus to start contracting....

Seriously folks, it's half past 10, we all have kids that need to be fit for school tomorrow, can't they behave like adults? Yeah, so the one guy revved up his motorbike engine, but we have so many dick heads racing through our "walking speed" street right now it really makes no difference... The revving up took like 5 seconds and the fight took more like 15-20 minutes and was a lot louder and involved not only the two men but also the wives and the eldest daughter of one... I don't go outside for the fighting anymore, I just call the cops. Who never get here in time. I guess they'll arrive in about 2-3 hours.
Yeah, I like the police... They're nice and prompt and if I ever get robbed in the middle of the night I'll be sure to call them so they can pick up our bodies in the morning when all the bad guys have definitely scattered....

ca. 1 bag frozen raspberries from Aldi (I'm guessing 500g but I'm not sure)
ca. 3/4 cups sugar
ca. 1.5 containers lactose free yogurt (500g each, so about 750g total)

Defrost berries and cook with sugar. Puree right away and place in fridge over night or refrigerate, then puree. Pass puree through sieve! Those kernels are no fun.
Combine puree with yogurt (no need to stir excessively, I just think it's handier having the lot in one pot) and pour into ice cream maker, run it for about 30 minutes or until you think it's not going to freeze and more in the machine. Scoop into freezer container(s) and freeze. Tada, lactose free raspberry ice cream.

The repair guy was here today. And he took my dryer away! He couldn't find what was causing the pump not to pump, so he decided to check it out in at his work where he's got more spare parts and more testing equipment... I told him I need the dryer back by Aug 8 latest and he promised he'd have it back by then. I hope he'll find the problem and fix it right away and I want my dryer back NOW! I hate having to carry my laundry over to my brothers place to dry it, with the weather being the way it is right now hanging up to dry really is not an option...

Speaking of my brother, he flew to the USA on Sunday. Las Vegas. With a friend, they're going to rent a car and visit Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon and go along the coast. He'll be back around Aug 14 or 15th I think. I'm kind of jealous because he gets to go on holiday, but I checked out Las Vegas on the net and the temperatures are not funny! I know, air conditioning everywhere, but try taking a kid into a casino.... Besides, all the web cams I found showed crowded spaces and me being as big as I am right now... I wouldn't find a place to stand ;-)

Hmpf.
Last Friday we did something really good at Yoga because I was finally able to get up and walk without that weird Quasimodo Stoop. This Friday I apparently managed to stretch something because I'm hobbling. I had trouble getting into my bed last night. The kind where you end up in a strange painful position that you can't change because every move hurts even more. I was about |this| close to calling my brother to help me lay down... But I couldn't reach the phone.
Today we have the most beautiful weather. I want to go to the pool with Sam, only I don't see myself walking around there. And my brother has a headache and doesn't want to go either. Maybe I can convince him to go in a few hours (it's just past noon now and I'd prefer to go at around 3 anyway).

I've had it with this pregnancy. I feel sooooooooo pregnant! And huge and uncomfortable! I want to just squat down and push this baby out right now. I don't care if it's too early or that I'm not in labor. I'm done! She's done! ARGH!
She's been pushing into my stomach and lungs all day today! I'm hungry and can't eat because she's _right there_. I'm tired and cranky and my back hurts and I can't bend over and I'm just soooooooo done being pregnant!

*whine* At least another 3 weeks. And trust me, then I will smoke her out or push her out without contractions or something because there's just no more room!

Kiri is finally done!

Yarn: Knit Picks Bare laceweight
Needles: Knit Picks Options
- Size 5 for the shawl
- Size 9 for the bind off (I misread the tag, it was late, I didn't want to get my needle measuring thing, besides I knit really tight and was scared of the bind off being too tight anyway so I used those needles.)

Started it sometime early this year, probably February or March. I knit on and off on it, had to knit back twice and drop some stitches to fix a mistake once. Therefore I lost count on how many repeats of chart 2 I really did, but I have 15 complete leaves down the spine of the shawl.
After binding off and before blocking I was worried about the size. A Lot! I had thought it would be bigger even unblocked, but it was tiny! It was like a small headscarf. Then I soaked it and rinsed it and stretched it out and it grew and grew and grew and I didn't even stretch it as far as I could because I didn't want the solid sections to get too stretched out while opening the YO's up enough and making the points pointy enough. I haven't measured it yet, but before blocking it barely covered my shoulders and went down just below my shoulder blades and now it reaches my waist and covers my arms to the elbows.

Pictures!

YES!

I finished Kiri today and I've just finished pinning it out on my sons couch. Can't post pictures yet as it's too dark for my camera to focus properly... But OMG it greeeeeeew! It's huge and nice and lacy and it's got pointy points! I'm so happy with the result!

Plus: What's everybody talking about when they say they needed tons of pins?! I was worried I wouldn't have enough and thought I might have to go up into the attic to get my bobbin lace pillow to use the pins from that, but what I had on my pin cushion was plenty!

I have 4-8 weeks left. And I can't believe how mobile this baby still is! She's kicking and moving and I'm pretty sure she's still turning around from head down to head up and all the positions in between.
Especially in the evening she likes to stick her butt up all the way into my stomach and lungs. And I'm back to having some kind of morning sickness, too. Which I think is more because I can't eat much in one go anymore so I get hungry faster and since I don't eat at night (heartburn, yay) I wake up too hungry to eat...

Anyway, I'm feeling huge and my joints hurt and I'd never thought I'd say this, but I'm really hoping she'll be early.

Done:
- fold one load of laundry
- dry one load of laundry
- mop bathroom
- put away one load of laundry
- knit 4 rows of kiris edging

To Do:
- vacuum kitchen
- mop kitchen
- clear of bench in kitchen
- Tidy Sams room
- vacuum Sams room
- mop Sams room
- grocery shopping
- sort towels (cut up the ratty ones for washcloths)
- fold two loads of laundry
- put away two loads of laundry
- find some suitable fabric for sewing cloth diapers (flannel sheets, oh where are you?)

I called the shop where I got the washer and dryer from today and the Beko repair service (the company my dryer's from) called me back this afternoon. They'll send someone over on Friday. Meanwhile I'm still using the dryer because it's so wet and cold here my laundry will never dry if I hang it up to dry :-/
I hope it's just something little and stupid, like a piece of foil that wasn't removed, or a pipe that's not connected properly or something. If they have to replace the whole dryer I'm probably going to cry.

I didn't knit at all today, I just played on the computer and stared into space and made a few phone calls.

And since it's almost 3 a.m. now I'm going to go to bed and hope I'll fall asleep quickly. I've been feeling sick the last few days/nights and I have my bucket next to the bed again. The madam is pushing various extremities into my stomach, preferably in the evening and after meals... *chant* Another 6-10 weeks.

Yeah, I knit Kiri onto my longest cable (60") and it does not fit... It's scrunched up a bit on either end. But it still looks short down the center! *sigh* I'm going to knit at least another repeat (just started it in fact) and then I'll decide how fed up I really am with knitting it and do the edging.

I have 15 leaves going down the center of my kiri right now. I want to have at least 18 I think.

However now I' confused, I thought I was at about repeat 10, maybe 11 or possibly even 12 of chart 2, but now I'm thinking I'm on repeat 14? I don't know... But I'm thinking I should maybe get the thing onto the longest cable I have and spread it out and see how big it really is... I know I'm getting kind of bored with the knitting!

Done:
- 3 loads of laundry
- mop bathroom
- clean toilet
- clean bathroom sink
- clean cups from bathroom
- clean kitchen sink
- load dishwasher
- wash rest of dishes by hand
- started tidying desk
- pick up all laundry from bedrooms
- pair single socks and fold them
- put away 5 baskets of laundry (don't ask, ok)
- unload dishwasher
- reload dishwasher
- clean dishwasher (wuah, the sides of the door were all gunked up and smelled of coffee)
- finish tidying desk
- clean off and put away clothesline thingo
- put away yarn
- put old phone on electro-clutter pile that needs to be moved to attic
- put away spinning fiber
- put away knitting books
- clean out laundry basket of junk
- put foot bath tub in bathroom
- put pillows back on couch
- vacuum bedroom
- put away stuff from entrance
- clean off and put away ironing board
- put away read books
- dust bookcase
- vacuum kitchen
- mop kitchen
- tidy living room
- vacuum living room
- 1 load of laundry

To Do:
- fold laundry
- put away laundry
- tidy sewing desk in bedroom
- put away cookbooks
- put away unused stuff from kitchen counters
- clean kitchen counters

Ok, the washer and dryer are here and installed. The washer had its first run without laundry and now it's running its first load. I'm kind of excited about that... The dryer is running to get rid of the disgusting new plastic/rubber smell before I dry the first load of laundry.

I can't believe how huge my new dryer is! My old one was tiny little compared to this one. Also: My dryer has a light inside. I have no idea why.

I ordered a new washer and dryer. Washer: 399€, Dryer: 299€ Delivery charge: 0€ pickup of broken washer and dryer: 0€ Yay for that. My parents are actually giving me 300€ toward the expense. YAY again.

Delivery: Thursday! Can not wait.

The dryer:

The washer:

Remember how my dryer broke yesterday?
And how I said I hope my washing machine won't be next.
Guess what broke today?

Yeah. We're looking at about €800 to replace both. (350 for a dryer and 400 for a washing machine)
I love my life.

Next up:
Watermelon frozen yogurt.

1/4 ripe watermelon,
yogurt from 3cups milk,
close to 1/4 cup sugar (I hope it won't be too sweet!)

I cut the watermelon into chunks, got out as many of the seeds as I could and pureed the lot. Then I added the sugar and let it cook for a while on the stove to get the sugar dissolved. My watermelon wasn't ripe enough, it tasted a lot like cucumbers... Oh well. If yours is nice and ripe you might not need to add sugar at all, but I'm not sure.
Let the watermelon cool down, if you have the patience place it into the fridge for a few hours.

In the ice cream maker:
Pour in the yogurt (I reserved enough to make more yogurt tonight) let it run for a little bit then add the watermelon puree. Let it run until you have frozen yogurt.
Mine is still running, I'm estimating 30 minutes in mine.

EDIT: The amount of sugar is ok. It doesn't taste quite as great as the strawberry, but maybe that's because it was still a little slushy when I tried it. (I distribute it into containers and eat what's left in the bowl, which usually is not quite frozen)

Homemade Yogurt from 2.5 cups lactose free milk and 2 Tablespoons yogurt.
Maybe 1-2 cups pureed strawberries with 1/8th cup sugar
100g milk chocolate melted
50g dark chocolate melted

In ice cream maker:
pour yogurt in, let it run for a bit, add the strawberries, wait for a while.
Add the chocolate. <- I still don't know the ideal point in time to do this, I end up with huge chunks of chocolate that will kind of block my stirrer and make the container overflow...

Anyway: This stuff is simply wow. Oh My Goodness. I want more. I'm on my second bowl, I gave some to my brother and now I'm wondering why I did that. My container's already half gone.

Hehe, we went grocery shopping today. In Weiterstadt. I bought about 20 liters of lactose free milk and 10 lactose free fruit yoghurts (apricot, cherry and strawberry and one vanilla). Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh heaven!
In the afternoon we went to the outdoor pool and just came back a little while ago. It was really nice, Sam is slowly getting over his gag reflex that kicks in when he gets water in his face, and I'm starting to get used to wearing my gray swimsuit and looking like a stranded wale.
We met some of Samuels classmates and they played rather nicely, splashing each other and swimming and having fun. So I guess outside of school they can play nice.

Other than all that I'm feeling too hot and too big and too everything really. I'm going to go and make myself a nice cold foot bath possibly with ice cubes. Yeah, that hot. I have no idea how to make it till the end of August.

The baby sweater I started this week needs the bottom edge finished and then I can knit on the two sleeves and I'll be done. YAY. First "big" baby item done. I'm knitting it in Knitpicks Ambrosia color Petal and oh it's soft! I hope it'll fit once it gets colder, otherwise I'll probably rip it and knit something else. Yes, the yarn is _that_ nice.

Inspired by this: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000037.html
I went and made my own alternate version.

I used lactose free cream and 1.5% lactose free milk. Both need(ed) to go.

3 packets of lactose free cream (nearly 3 cups) topped off with the milk to make 3 cups

2 regular tablespoons Vanilla
1 cup lactose free milk
1 cup sugar
4 regular tablespoons cornstarch

Simmer the 3 cups on the stove, mix the other ingredients in a bowl, mix into the simmering liquid and stir stir stir until it thickens. Mine turned the consistency of regular homemade pudding (jello).

Let it cool down, refrigerate for a while.
Take about 1 or 1.5 cups of cherries out of the glass and strain the liquid off, put them in the fridge to cool down, too.

Take 200g bar of baking chocolate (unsweetened) and melt in the new microwave. Check every 10 seconds because you have no idea how long it'll actually take (you might want to omit that step)

Assemble icecream maker, pour the milk "liquid" into the bowl and switch it on. Watch it for a bit and get bored, decide to chop up the cherries in the blender while you wait. Give them two whirrs, more will make them a paste.
Watch icecream maker for another little while, get bored, add the cherries.
Check if the chocolate's still kind of goopy and not too runny. Decide it's not runny enough, nuke again for a little bit. Watch icecream maker again, decide to add chocolate.
Watch icecream maker start to overflow because chocolate bits get stuck between the bowl and the stirry thingy. Get a container and scoop some of the not really firm icecream out into the container and freeze that. Turn icecream maker back on and nearly freak out because it won't turn, clearly something's frozen solid near the bottom. Scrape at it with your rubber spatula. Turn it on, and watch it for another while.
Leave kitchen after putting the timer on 30 minutes.


Things I'll do differently next time:

Less sugar. It's really really sweet and I'd have liked it a lot less sweet. I'll use 1/2cup sugar next time, at the most.
Reduce the amount of liquid by one cup. Maybe it won't overflow that way.
I won't take as much cream next time but use regular 3.5% lactose free milk instead. I think it's way too fatty. However the cream needed to be used up, so it's ok.

I don't know if the cherries and chocolate's enough yet, I'll have to check a bowl to make sure ;-)

I like making icecream, but I definitely need to leave the kitchen while the icecream maker does its thing otherwise I'll just watch it and get bored and do stuff to it.

YES! I finally cut off the white pair of pants I bought a while ago. It was driving me nuts that they were too long and scraping on the floor all the time, but I'm scared of cutting off bits of my clothes so I waited... I thought my mom would be here again soon and since she knows what she's doing when she sews and cuts and does stuff like that I thought I better leave it to her.
But today it was enough. I walked into my basement and I kept treading on the pant legs and that stupid string they put in and I thought "screw this, how much worse can it get?" And then I chopped them off just above the original seam, so I knew that was straight, then I sewed around the bottom (about 1cm away from the edge) in a straight line and folded on that line, pinned and even ironed it! Then sewed that bit down, marked 1.5cm up from there, tried the pants on and decided it would be good/short enough, pinned, ironed and seamed and now I have a pair of pants that don't look as stupid as they did before. Now I just have to decide whether or not I want to paint them or dye them.
I have red blue and yellow dye and I bought pink, red, yellow and green fabric markers and fabric paint. The problem with the paint is it kind of runs. Sam and I painted pillowcases a week or two ago, for practice, and I don't think I like the effect :-/ I want to try using a stencil, but I don't think that's really going to help any. The paint's just too runny and the markers don't do fine lines as that color also runs into the fabric quite a bit...
Anyone have experience with fabric paint?

Ugh. Sam has an upset stomach. He went to my brother for breakfast but apparently didn't really eat there and my brother brought him back home because Sams belly was hurting and _he wanted to go to bed_. My son going to bed of his own free will is like the queen saying Camilla is her best friend.
So he's been throwing up all "mid day", he was better in the afternoon/early evening and wanted to go outside and play and since he hadn't thrown up for hours and he didn't have a temperature anymore I let him. Mistake. Big mistake. He came in and immediately threw up again. So I put him back to bed and we watched movies and he's semi sleeping now and I'm sitting here with elephant ears jumping up and running to him at every sound.
He's got a slight fever I'm sure, but I'm not going to measure at this point as I only have the "up the butt" kind of thermometer* and I know how much he hates getting his temperature taken with those.

Let's hope tomorrow is better and he gets through this night without throwing up. If it's not gone by Monday morning we're going to see the ped, if it gets worse tomorrow I'll call the on call doc and hope s/he comes to our house instead of us driving there. I hate having to travel with a sick child, it's so unnecessary. I know that when we were little and sick the ped would of course some to our house and not insist on my parents taking us to the office. What happened to house calls?!



* If anyone knows a really good, accurate and easy to use ear thermometer that's suitable for dummies, let me know. The one I had gave me different temperatures every time I measured. And I mean everything from 36.5°C to 39.8°C all temperatures taken within 5 minutes and in the same ear. Never used it again after that as telling Sams temperature by sticking my hand in the freezer had the same significance.

YAY, repeat 10 of chart 2 done! Kiri is pretty big already, I transferred it to the 60" cord and yeah, I'll knit another few repeats and then start the edging/border chart. I'm so excited!

It's here it's here!

The huge parcel from Knitpicks arrived! OMG. It's a _lot_ of yarn. And books. And needles.

Most of the yarn is for annkari, most of the books are for me, and a little bit of yarn was for Fiz. He also got two books, but those were birthday presents so he didn't exactly buy them.

I also got a ballwinder. YAY. I already used it to make a few yarn-cakes. Wow, I like that! We turned one of Fiz's hanks into a cake and one of mine into a cake and then Fiz had to leave and Sam helped me turn three hanks of my handspun into cakes. He likes turning the handle, so that's fine with me, I'll hold the yarn if I end up with balls I can knit from :-)

Also, Knitpicks Options, the Set and all the parts they don't include *cough*. Yeah. I won't have to buy needles again. At least no standard sized ones. And I got all the cable lengths now. Next thing I'm going to do is transfer Kiri to the longest cable and see how far it stretches out. I'm really curious about that. I do want a big shawl, but I don't want one that's too impractical to use, so I need to figure out how many repeats I still need to do to make it a nice size for me. I know I love the options tips and cords because I already have a set of tips and a set of cords. That's what made me decide on buying the set and all the extra parts.
I heard about the dilemma about how to sort the needles in the case and I can see why it's confusing. they have two pages each of 3 pockets, 2 pockets and one pocket. I put two pairs of tips into each pocket of the three pocket pages (different enough in size that I can tell which is which). But I don't know how to organize the cables yet. I'll figure something out I guess. Right now they're still in the plastic wrap and in the large front pocket. I'm thinking about taking the cords and putting them into the 2 pocket pages and the stoppers and tighteners and stuff will go into one of the single pocket pages. And then I'll have one single pocket for my needle size and gauge measuring tool and stitchmarkers.

The books:
- Favourite Socks
- Folk Shawls
- A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns
- Charted Knitting Designs
- A Fourth Treasury of Knitting Patterns
- Lace Style
- Spin to Knit: The Knitter's Guide to Making Yarn

I'm totally excited about all those books and I can't pick a favourite. Lacestyle has excellent pictures, just like Favourite Socks. The Barbara Walker Books are pretty awesome and I didn't think they were as big as they are. Two are about half an inch thick and the other is almost an inch thick! Spin to knit will come in handy for all the spinning I'm currently doing. Folk shawls has beautiful designs, and to be quite honest, I want to have hair like that model! The pictures are great.

I haven't looked at any of the patterns closely yet so I can't say how well they're written yet, but I'm pretty excited about all of the books!
Of course I also got some yarn. Some of it's laceweight (Alpaca Cloud in midnight) some DK and some Sport weight and some Fingering. Some to make socks with, some to knit a shawl with, some to knit a baby sweater with some to make a top for me with (Hopefully I'll be able to get somewhat close to gauge for a top from Handknit Holidays).

I made Mango Lemon Sorbet today. (Recipe adapted from here) I didn't have Limes and I've never bought/had tequila so I substituted Lemon juice and left the alcohol out. Also, I don't have an ice cream maker (yet*), so I just froze the whole thing and mixed with a fork every 30 minutes. Oh boy it's nice.

*I was looking around amazon.de and didn't like what they had, so I went to ebay. Honestly, I didn't mean to bid on an icecream maker. I really didn't. I wanted to check out the prices and see what's out there. Somehow I clicked on one I liked and it had 5 minutes to go, so I kept looking around, thinking "Shame really, but I'm too late", found the same one again with a better description, but more expensive, went back to the first one, updated the page, 47 seconds till auction is over. Ok, I'll just put in a bid. Never going to get the thing anyway. Oh, have to log in, too. No rush. Put in my bid and won the auction with 13 seconds to go! This is my new icecream maker.

I want to sleep. Just one night out of the week I want to actually go to bed, fall asleep and not wake up until my alarm goes off. I'd settle for waking up just once if it's not for more than an hour.
I get about 3-5hours of sleep every night right now. I wake up at around 2 every night because _somebody_ decided to put their foot in my bladder or I have heartburn, or I have both, and then I can't go back to sleep for at least an hour, and usually I then wake again either at 4 or at 5. tonight I conveniently skipped the falling back asleep bit between 2 and 4 and stayed awake until 5. Let's say getting up at 7:15 didn't quite happen, we made it out of bed and into the kitchen by 7:30 though.
I need a shower and I need to do laundry and I need to put stuff up into the attic. But all I really want to do while Sam's in school is sleeeeeeep.

I feel loved when...

The Five Love Languages

My Primary Love Language is Quality Time

<th colspan="2">My Detailed Results:</th>

Quality Time:	10
Physical Touch:	8
Acts of Service:	7
Words of Affirmation:	4
Receiving Gifts:	1

About this quiz

Unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. It can be helpful to know what language you speak and what language those around you speak.

Tag 3 people so they can find out what their love language is.

Take the Quiz!
Check out the Book

knitting meme
Mark with bold the things you have knit at least once, with italics the ones you plan to do sometime, and leave the rest.

( It's behind a cut now. )

It's been hot and dry here for weeks now. We had a little bit of "rain" yesterday. But rain is really an overstatement. It was a light drizzle that lasted maybe 10 minutes. I never thought I'd say this, but I hope it's going to rain and cool down some soon. I've still got until the end of August and the heat is already putting me through the wringer! Also, my plants aren't looking all that happy...
All the farmers in the area (or rather, all over europe) are unhappy with the weather because it's ruining their crops. And I don't think I want to think about Summer. I hope it's not going to get hotter.

I'm a bad bad girl... since my neighbours are leaving soon I'm ordering from knitpicks one last time. I'm going to financially ruin myself... But there's sooooo many things I love and I won't be able to order ever again *wail* Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh why don't they ship to germany?!

Today we went shopping for plants. Actually, my brother went shopping for paint and I went along and I shopped for plants. I finally, after years of wanting one, got a red gooseberry bush! So, now I have the normal green ones and a red one and my fig tree, which had one fruit but it fell off. And I'll have tomatoes again this year! And flowers. Lots and lots of flowers. I'm really looking forward to summer now.

Plus, hopefully it'll rain soon because today we actually had grey clouds and it's super windy. It would be nice for all the plants to finally get some rain. My brother's watering the garden every evening right now. And I got my own medium sized watering can! *lol* All the big ones are too heavy for me to lift when they're full, so now I have a medium one which is blue so I can tell which one's mine and if I see a kid running around with it I can start yelling at them.

Tomorrow I'll be going to the city to get a replacement part for my mixer. I broke something, luckily I've already called the place that has the replacement and it's going to cost me less than 10€ to replace, so that's a good thing. I'm also thinking about buying a new digital camera. My old one refuses to charge and is super slow to focus. I think I want the one Fiz has, only the new model. His is really nice and additionally takes standard batteries.

Oh, other news: My neighbours are leaving on the 30th.

NOTE: z

No smoking around ___desdemona___. Thankyou for your co-operation.

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From Go-Quiz.com


Sometimes even a blind chicken finds a grain...
I can't even find the words about how annoyed I am by smokers currently. It seems everywhere I sit down because I'm exhausted the person next to me lights up or some idiot stands in front of me with his cigarette right in front of my nose.