In honor of the Olympic Games some members of Ravelry organized the Ravelympics. The idea is to cast on a project during the opening ceremony of the Olympics and be finished with the chosen project(s) before the Games end. I challenged myself to do the Presto Chango, a baby sweater. I’ve never attempted anything of the sort before plus I wanted to use a sport weight yarn instead of the worsted recommended. So I had to swatch and measure and use mathematics to find out how many stitches to cast on and which needles to use. It wasn’t that hard to figure out, but it did took some patience, something I just don’t have when it comes to crafting. Ideally I just print out the pattern and get going. Luckily for me however, this pattern is now flying off the (4mm) needles. I’m about halfway through already and it looks pretty much baby size. So far so good! All I’m worrying about now is if I can find suitable buttons for it on time.

Oh and to everyone takes any interest in crochet or knitting at all and hasn’t done so yet: Go over to Ravelry and sign up for an account! It is really one of the most inspiring places on the web. I spend nearly all my online time there nowadays.

Last month, during our vacation after we got back from France, M. and I visited Sea Life in Scheveningen. Here’s a picture impression. For more pictures, please have a look at my Zoo Flickr Set.
After the visit to Sea Life, we bought herring on a bun. One of the seaguls promtly stole my herring just at the moment I was taking my second bite! And all I was left with was an empty bun, so watch your herring while you’re at the beach in Scheveningen!

I’m in the process of making my own Gabu army. So far I have two. I’m using a 3.5mm hook instead of the 5.0mm recommended. With crocheting I always run into gauge issues. I wonder if this is a common problem. It keeps me from doing project that need to be a certain size, like clothes. I hardly ever have this problem with knitting.
But anyway, back to the Gabu’s! There is a pattern for a Gabu Nest as well and I really want to make my own Gabu Traffic Light some time soon.

My previously solitary cupcake made a friend! CupcakeNumber2 has the reverse colorscheme of CupcakeNumber1; a white cake with brown frosting. He doesn’t have buttons, because they were so dreadful to sew on since I don’t have a needle that fits through the holes in those tiny buttons comfortably. They are here displayed on a piece of fabric that came with a set of sheets for the baby. We’re absolutely clueless what exactly this fabric is supposed to be used for, as it is smaller than the sheets. We’ve even asked our moms and they had no idea either. I suppose I can always use it for something whimsical, like for lining some knitted item!!

My first afghan square! I have a lot, and I mean A LOT of acrylic in my stash that I have no use for. So I’ve decided to make an afghan. It’s a big project but at the same time a small one. I can knit up a square every once in a while, call it an FO and in the end, I will have a nice big afghan to prove that I can finish a big object. I kind of ruined this square with my iron though, so I’m not sure if I will actually use it for the afghan.

And last but not least: My new earflap hat! I knit this up last week, before I knew that I wouldn’t be working my job again this winter. I wanted to be prepared for the snow and cold and keep my ears warm for once, because I’ve ran into that same problem every year since ‘03. Every year I go out and buy another hat or headband that promisses to keep my ears warm, but they never really seem to do the trick.
Oh well.. at least I won’t have to worry about a cold head and ears while walking the baby.. I didn’t use a pattern for this and just improvised. Same goes for the embroidery. It was my first real go at embellishing a knitted garment with embroidery. I think it looks okay, though a bit primitive. But I will definatly try it again as I had lots of fun doing it.

June 26
We had no set plans after Paris and so on our last night there we picked a random spot to visit next. We ended up driving towards the Lac d’Orient, which was about half a days drive, since we still took only the smaller roads. There was a little beach at the lake where we spent the rest of the day. The water of the lake was very clear and there were millions of little fish. Near the beach was a campsite, called L’Epine Aux Moines (pdf), where we put up our tent for the night. It was a quiet site and we were the only “younger” people there. After putting up the tent we went to look for a nice place to eat. Unfortunatly we didn’t find anything to our tastes, maybe because neither of us was much in the mood for dining out again. So instead we did some groceries and munched on those while chilling by our tent.

Now since I’m pregnant, I need to use the ladiesroom a lot, something which wasn’t much of a problem during the day, but was a whole nother story during the night, because of the quiet and dark campsite. M. and I had agreed that I could wake him up if I needed to go. But he was sleeping so adorably (Haha, it’s a good thing he doesn’t read this!) that I felt sorry for him and decided to pop out by myself and find a spot behind the tent, instead of walking all the way to the toilets. So as I’m doing my thing, suddenly I get really scared. So I’m looking around and I see a fat man standing about 20 metres away from me. I started freaking out, pulled up my pants and ran back to the tent entrance. I looked in the direction where I saw him once more as I’m entering the tent and see him now standing on the spot where I just peed. Convinced we’re about to get slaughtered by the fat guy, I dive back in bed, in my sleeping bag. M. is now awake and he asks me what’s wrong. I tell him what I saw and he laughs it off and falls asleep again. I lay awake for another hour, waiting to get murdered.
No such thing happened, of course, and whether there actually was a guy or a ghost or whether it was just my imagination, we’ll never know.

I can’t believe it’s already August and I still haven’t completed the report on my vacation back in June! When I got back I was thrilled to have so many things to blog about, but then my well known laziness set in. Thankfully M. and I kept a little diary during our trip because I’ve forgotten half of it already!

June 25
This was to be our last day in Paris. Perhaps you remember that the day before we were told that the Louvre was closed. Today we returned and found it open for the public again. What really surprized me was compared to the crowds outside of the museum, inside it was quite empty. Sure the main attractions, like the Mona Lisa were very popular, but the lesser known pieces could be studied in peace, and there was almost always a seat available for us, which was great because we both were very tired. The place is huge and I decided that I really needed to return there to spend a couple of days on the museum alone. There are so many things I haven’t seen yet, like the Venus de Milo.

As I mentioned before, M. and I were dead tired, so after a couple of hours we decided to leave the Louvre and Paris behind us and return to the hotel, where we slept untill the evening and only got up again to get a sandwich for dinner.

I took a lot of pictures of the art at the Louvre so be sure to check out my photoset.