Sinterklaas kapoentje...

We're already halfway through November! Where has the time gone?! Today is already the 17th of November and while for many people, today is just a regular Saturday, for a lot of Dutch people (and maybe a fair few Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, South Africans...) today is a special day: Sinterklaas has once again set foot on Dutch soil!

Sinterklaas is my favourite holiday. It may have something to do with my father playing Sinterklaas a lot for schools and offices when I was younger, so we had a lot of Sinterklaas-related activity going on in the house during the second half of November. But it's also because it's such a laid-back holiday: on the 5th of December, Sinterklaas-evening, we have a nice, simple meal (usually soup and sandwiches), then gather up on the couch and unwrap gifts and drink hot coco and eat a bucketload of candy. There's no pressure to cook massive dinners, or dress up in your nicest clothes, or having to invite the whole family over, nope, the more junk and wrapping paper and packing peanuts gathered around the living room at the end of the night, the better!

When we were younger, my dad made a whole thing out of Sinterklaas-evening. I remember once, that we got one gift, with a little note inside that sent us on a scavenger hunt all over the house, tracking down the big bag of presents that we eventually found hanging from my parents' bedroom window. Nowadays, we draw names and buy presents for that person, accompany it with a little rhyme and some treats, and spend the evening eating until we explode while people unwrap their presents. I can't wait! I have just put my name in the hat (which is digital, nowadays, because we haven't been able to get all 8 people together to do the draw...). 

Sinterklaas is not really a holiday to decorate for, even though I quite enjoy the shop displays around this time of year. But, because I was bored, and in the mood for silly crochet, I made a small Sinterklaas-decoration.

He's my personal little Sinterklaas! Complete with his big white beard, and his red mitre with a big yellow cross on the front...

his big red book with the big yellow cross on the front that contains all the names of all the children and whether they have been naughty or nice (because you only get presents when you've been nice. When you have been naughty, you get a lump of coal. And if you have been really, really naughty, you will be stuffed in Black Peter's bag and taken back to Spain. Which, to me, never sounded like that much of a punishment.)...

and he's got his golden staff in his hand! Which, in this case, is my stainless steel crochet hook, because I was out of copper wire.But hey, at least this way, I'll always know where it is!

I think he's going to be the perfect little desk companion to keep me company until Sinterklaas-evening. And with only two weeks to go to draw names, buy presents, think of a rhyme, and maybe think of how I'm going to wrap it all up, I'd best get cracking!

FO: Turkey hat

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted a picture of a hat on Facebook. It was a crochet hat with two turkey legs sticking out the sides. As I was expecting, he decided he needed this to be a Real Thing, and came to me asking if I could make him one. Challenge accepted! (Please imagine me saying that in a Barney-voice, it makes it ten times better)

Now, the picture linked to an Etsy page for a pattern but since I'm a: lazy, b: cheap, and c: like to pretend I'm up for a challenge, I decided to see if I could do it on my own without a pattern. The hat that he posted was a simple beanie with a tightly rolled-up brim, and had two turkey legs sticking out the sides, crocheted in a thick, camel-brown wool. Simple enough, right?! Right. Except the rolled-up brim was giving me a headache because whatever I did, it wouldn't roll up as tightly as I wanted it to. In the end, I realised that my crocheting in the round was making the fabric curl inwards, so I turned the hat inside-out and voilá: rolled-up brim! (I may be doing something wrong in my stitching, though. Maybe too tight, that whenever I make a rounded figure it rolls up towards the inside? This requires further investigation!)

The legs were a bit of trial and error, too: the first one I made was far too small, the second one was waaaay too big, and the third one was perfect the first time, but I forgot to make notes so I had to measure again and again to make sure that it would turn out the same size.

In the end, though, it all turned out fine. And the hat is hilarious. I might have to make one for myself just for fun!


(Oh, and I decided I was long overdue for a hair cut (last time was in July of last year...) so, to celebrate that it's finally Autumn and getting cold and dark, I got a hair cut and dye! It's lighthouse-red, according to the hairdressers at the salon. What's lighthouse-red, you ask? Good question. I asked the hairdresser, but she couldn't explain either. I assume it's like fire engine red, only with a big light on top... Yeah. They weren't the brightest crayons in the box, bless 'em, but they were a hoot!)

Merged, relaxed, and ready for October

Just a quick note to say that:

1) I'm aliiiive! I've survived the Vintage barbecue, have sort of survived September, and am now enjoying the last few days of my two weeks off in which I have done absolutely nothing. Nothing. Haven't even gone to the gym. Only went out to get groceries or because I had to. Other than that? Sat on my bum, played the new WoW expansion, played with the birds, slept in, took naps during the day... I haven't even crocheted a single stitch so far! Only two days to go though, so I'm slowly preparing myself mentally for the whole going-back-to-work thing, combined with the whole going-back-to-the-gym thing, and let's not forget the going-outside-of-the-house thing, either.

That's not my house, by the way. Before you ask. That, my friends, was the house we rented for the weekend in the south of Holland (Limburg), where we spent 3 glorious days in the garden, soaking up some late-summer/early-autumn sunshine and made fun of our neighbours the cows, chickens and Tony the Pony (who was probably not called Tony), drank too much alcohol, and grilled lots and lots of tasty food. We lounged, watched some dvds, went for a walk or two into town or drove to the nearest town for a saunter and some shopping... I had a great time. Thanks guildies, for being so unbelievably awesome! (also, if you're Dutch and looking for a great and cheap place to accommodate a group: It's part of De Vinkenhof. I can really recommend it!)

2) I have merged Tecrin gets Fit with Tecrin Tries. I no longer saw the point of using two separate blogs since they got mixed up quite a bit already. I'm still fiddling with stuff though, and am on the fence about some earlier decisions I made about my blogs, so don't be surprised if posts go missing or appear twice. You're not nuts, and you're not seeing double, it may be that I posted it on both blogs and haven't removed it yet.

3) I may change my whole blogging thing entirely, but more on that later, since I haven't made up my mind yet as to what I want to do with it. It might become something more.. *gasp* organised than it is now *gasp*. But before that can happen, I need to do some serious thinking. And jotting down of ideas. Which means I have a reason to buy more notepads! Yay!

4) It appears my camera is well and truly buggered. Did someone drop it while I wasn't looking, or something? Because really now, the sudden switch in quality is just absurd! The picture of the house was the only one looking decent out of the whole set I took while we were away for the weekend. In the end I just started taking pictures on my phone because the quality was so shoddy! It also randomly resets all my settings when I put in new batteries, which means I keep having to remember how I turn off the sound effects... Maybe I can bribe my sister into letting me borrow hers for a while.

Why I love sunsets

They're faded and dull, yet colourful at the same time. And they only grow more colourful the longer you stare out into the darkness, as all lights just fades away into the background and all you're left with, all that you see, is the growing intensity of those hues of blue and pink and orange and red.


(P.s. I have been messing about with my blog again, and have added three nifty little buttons underneath my blogposts: a Pinterest-pin-button, a Facebook-share-button and a Twitter-tweet-button! You know, just in case you ever feel the need to pin, share or tweet about something from my blog. So pin, share and tweet away, my friends!)

This & That: Why I won't be online this week

This edition of This & That is all about new hobbies!

On the one hand, I picked up a new physical hobby: running! Yep. After loooong deliberation, and more procrastination because I didn't have the money for my shoes, I bought a proper pair of running shoes last week and have started running. I am so out of shape, it would be hilarious if it weren't so painful (I am so sore. I mean it. I am hurting in places I was not expecting to be hurting in. My feet, oddly enough, are fine though. Must be the awesome running shoes.). I found the Couch to 5k-training programme last year and have been interested in trying this because I thought it would be doable. Let me be honest with you: it wasn't. The first step, alternate running for 60 seconds and walking for 90 seconds, for a total of 20 minutes, was already too much for my bad shape! I know, it's pathetic! So I'm taking it slow, and am slowly, slowly, slowly training to become better. Maybe next year, I will be running that 5k with ease.(I'm not getting my hopes up, though.)
 
On the other, a less physical hobby, and the real reason why I won't be online too much this week... Diablo 3 is coming out this evening at midnight! I AM SO EXCITED YOU GUYS. Diablo 2 was the first game the boyfriend and I played together, and played for hours and hours on end. We only stopped playing Diablo 2 because they announced Diablo 3 more than 4 years ago, and switched to World of Warcraft as an in-between game for a year or so. It turned out to be slightly longer than that. I have played the Beta, and we've tested all classes, so I can say with fair certainty that I am going to be playing a female Monk first. The storyline was always the main reason I played Diablo 2, and what I've seen and heard so far is looking very promising indeed. So this week, I'll be immersed in Sanctuary, saving the world from Prime Evils. And maybe angels. I don't know yet. That's why I'm excited!

KCBW2012: Something a bit different!

 (3KCBWDAY5)

 Today is already day 5 of Blog Week! Amazing, isn't it, how time flies! I have been enjoying all your blogposts a lot so far, and we've still got two days of blogging to go! Today's topic is always my favourite, because it gives so much space to create something fun and unexpected. Let's see today's description:

"This is an experimental blogging day to try and push your creativity in blogging to the same level that you perhaps push your creativity in the items you create.There are no rules of a topic to blog about but this post should look at a different way to present content on your blog."

I've decided to push my creativity to a new high, Photoshop-wise. I taught myself how to make an animated gif, just for you guys! Oh, the ordeals I go through just for this blog.  It was fun to do, and surprisingly simple! Here it is. Enjoy!

(tiny edit: oh my gosh, thanks for all the wonderful comments! My mailbox hasn't been this busy in ages! If you really like my post, you can always nominate me for.. eh, I don't think there's a title involved. Just goodies. So this is a really selfish edit, really. But thanks anyway!)

FO: A Tauren for Rob

It's safe to unveil the supersecretspecialpresent now, because the recipient will not be able to read this before his birthday!

It all started with this.

Or, well, I should be honest, it started with the BF and me joining this little guild in World of Warcraft called Vintage. Fast-forward to almost 4 years later (whoa), and we've made some great friends, one of whom is turning 40. What would you give a gamer geek who doesn't want to celebrate his birthday?

If your answer was 'Something he doesn't need but that's related to WoW', you think like me. (I'm not sure if that's a good thing.) So I started sketching. And drawing. And crocheting. And frogging and unraveling and throwing away, because the process was very much trial-and-error... And in the end, I came up with this.


Isn't he cute? Don't you want to fluff his cute little mane?

He's got a nice big sword, an unfairly small shield and a massive belt, all the way Blizzard intended gear to be. I opted out of making the characteristically humongous shoulderpads that WoW-players all know and love/hate, because it got too bulky. My endless playing around with paper models for a helmet all just ended up in frustration, so I left it out as well.


The whole thing was a massive learning experience, and I'm happy about most parts and not too happy about some, but I'm determined to try this again. It's so much fun! The crochet part was mostly a no-brainer, though the body did take a few takes to look just right because I had always made the head and torso in separate instances. With this one, though, I decided to see if this was more sturdy than having to sew the head on afterwards. And it is!

The sword was the hardest piece. It's a ton of tiny pieces, all sewn and glued together around a sturdy cardboard base so it would stay straight and not flop around like a fish on dry land. It turned out okay, if I say so myself!

The belt and the shield both were built slightly different than the original model, due to colour variations and construction. The belt was a matter of material: I couldn't get the felt cut so thin that it could resemble the light piping on the original, without it falling apart in my hands. The shield was a matter of 'this sorta looks like it should be something like this, right?' And.. yeah.. let's call it 'an artist's interpretation', shall we?

"Hey there, baby!"

All in all, I'm pretty happy with mini-Grimbull! I hope he is, too!

We're a real family now!

It has been a dream of mine to own a pet of my own. I grew up with two cats in the house, have always had rabbits until I moved out of the house, the BF grew up with parrots... So to live in our own house, with just the two of us, without any pets.. It took some getting used to. And there was also the eczema issue, which means that any pet that leaves hairs behind is a no-go for me. In other words: pets were out of the question.

This Monday, I lamented the lack of animal companions in our household out loud and declared: "I want a pet! Any pet! Even a fish. You know what? I want a fish. I'll take a goldfish!" The BF, ever the enabling one, said he'd give me a goldfish if that was what I wanted. So off to the pet shop we went! Since it's a small pet shop, we heard the chirps of birds as soon as we came in and, since we couldn't find the fish tanks immediately, wandered down the aisles towards the bird cages. And promptly fell in love. With two little lovebirds.

Actually, no, I should rephrase. We fell in love with all 4 of the lovebirds they had at the shop. We just couldn't take all of them home! So after some deliberation, and some planning, and some measuring and researching possible tables we could put a bird cage on, and some q&a with the nice lady from the pet shop, and some more q&a, and some back and forthing, and a trip to Ikea on Tuesday evening after work, and a trip to the pet shop on Wednesday during lunch time...

We are now the proud owners of two gorgeous little lovebirds!

Meet Anzu and Al'ar! Geeky names for geeky pet-owners. These little pretties are 3 months old, just the right age so we can still train them and let them get used to being handled by people. They're currently slowly but surely getting used to the cage and their new surroundings after a scary trip home in a tiny, tiny cardboard box and have been chirping and chattering away quite loudly already (sorry, neighbours) but they're quiet and more relaxed at the moment. Expect more updates with gorgeous bird pictures! But not now. Now it's time to admire these two gorgeous birds some more!

Back from holiday!

Ooooh, it's been a while! I can explain, honest. See, I was on holiday for most of August! First, we went to Scotland for a guild barbecue and meet-up, then we got back and were home for one day before we left for Lowlands, a music festival! Busy month, indeed.

But first things first, because I have some good news! My thesis, the one you may or may not have heard me complain in great detail about, that monster that gave me headaches, temper tantrums and stress-related meltdowns, is done and graded, I got a 7 out of 10, I am officially done! Woooo!

And by 'officially' I mean 'done by all standards, but not yet recognised as such because the Uni is being a horrible pain in the general behind area'. I've got until the 31st of August to get them to confirm my graduation, or I have to re-register as a student just to be able to graduate... Gotta love burocracy.

Anyway, on to more interesting things: holiday pictures!

Our trip took us from Amsterdam to London, where we met up with friends living there. On Saturday, we began our trip to Scotland by driving up to the Lake District and checking in to our hotel just in time for the England-Wales rugby match. I saw my first real rugby match on tv! It was awesome! I did my best not to bother our friend, who used to play rugby himself, too much about rules and the how and why of the game, but it was difficult. Such a strange game to watch! And such a strange audience to watch it with, as well! We were staying in a hotel with a sports bar so the pub was packed with people, both supporters of Wales and of England, but there was no awkward hostility between the rivalling fans like you'd get with a football match. (unlike the next day, when we watched Manchester United against Manchester City and people almost got into a fight over it)

The town we were staying in was a lovely little place that had turned into a tourist nest, called Ambleside. There were streets where literally every house was turned into a B&B. Hotels everywhere. Outdoor shops everywhere.

Unfortunately for us, the weather had turned from sunny and warm to rainy and blegh, so the trip we took on Sunday to see a bit more of the Lake District was mostly done from the car.

Our trip took us to the stunning Wastwater lake, a large, stretched-out lake in the middle of nowhere (literally, I think the road we took was a paved-over goat trail) that was voted as 'Britain's Favourite View' on a tv show in 2007. Unfortunately, my camera's batteries died right after I took the first two pictures, but in hindsight, this may have been a good thing. I don't think I would have wanted to leave if my camera had worked.

Our trip took us down to a town similar to the one we stayed in, called Keswick, where we had lunch in a very crowded little café.

On Monday, we continued on our way to our destination: Wanlockhead, the highest village in Scotland. Inhabited by about 400 people (if not less) and about 10.000 sheep.

Literally.

They were everywhere.

I won't bore you with endless pictures of the week, because thanks to the rain we did not do a lot, except..
Drink and make merry...

And roast bits of meat and veggies. The rest of it... well.. Let's just say that what happens at a Vintage barbecue, stays at a Vintage barbecue. Or as we put it:

Oneshotting bosses and wiping on trash. Or rather, oneshotting Sambuca and wiping on stairs.


Our trip home took us through the Peak District, where we were once again wowed by stunning views down into valleys and up along mountains. This was taken across the road from the Cat and Fiddle inn at the Cat and Fiddle road, which is infamous for the high number of accidents among motorcyclists.

Since I don't bring my camera to a festival, this is where the holiday pictures end. I enjoyed our annual get-together, loved seeing old and new faces, finally meeting some of my guildies who I have only heard on Mumble or Vent or seen on pictures, though I would have loved to have seen more of our surroundings as well. Scotland, the Lake District, the Peak district.. I would love to come back some day and do a proper holiday with lots of exploring and enjoying your stunning countryside. For now, I'll leave you all with one of the very few touristy pictures ever taken of me.

I do a fabulous dork wave, don't I?

Guild pride

(disclaimer: today's post deviates from the norm a bit, but I wanted to post this anyway. It's about my World of Warcraft guild and crossposted from our guild's blog so those not interested in WoW at all may skip this post.)

Although some people would debate that there is no such beast, to me, World of Warcraft exists for a large part because of the community. Sure, one could perfectly enjoy the game without ever setting foot in a guild or having any friends on his or her friendslist, by simply pugging their nights away or questing or even by spending hour after hour on the auction house. But to really enjoy the game, I need my guild.

Back in the day, when we just hit level 80, the boyfriend and I started to look for a guild. We had our own little guild, The Silvermoon Bookclub, founded just so we could stand in Orgrimmar without getting guild invite after guild invite from random people, but this was never meant to be a 'real' guild: it only contained our mains and Tim's first ever character, a warlock named Festago that never made it past level 10. But we wanted more. We wanted to raid. We joined a few pugs, the most memorable one being our first venture into the new Naxxramas, where the very first trashmob dropped a purple fist weapon that I immediately rolled on and equipped. In my offhand. In my defense, I was a baby-rogue, I learned much since those days.

But pugs didn't cut it. At that point, the decision was made to either look for a guild, or quit the game: we both reached the point where just single person content didn't interest us anymore. We spent a good two weeks reading up on how this 'guild' stuff works, looking up guild websites of Turalyon guilds, spent hours idling in Dalaran or Orgrimmar to keep an eye on recruitment messages in trade chat... Until a message by this one hunter, named Jdog, came along, which made us chuckle, look up the website, chuckle some more, whisper a member and ending up in a long whispered conversation with the guild master. We filled out an application form (and took it very seriously too, I think it took us an hour of filling out, proofreading, editing and finally sending it in), joined Vintage, and ended up in a guildie's backyard in a different country a mere 2 months after for a barbecue.

When I tell this story to people that do not play the game and have little knowledge of how a MMORPG works, they have trouble believing it. I mean, we joined a group of people and it steered us away from wanting to stop playing the game altogether? Really? Does getting the right group together really make that much of a difference?! But it really does. And the longer we play the game, the more we realise that it can really make or break the game, too: one rotten egg in your carton can ruin the whole cake.

Some guilds out there make it a point to show off their guild pride in every way possible. Recently, one of the top guilds on Turalyon reached level 25 and celebrated by parading through the Valley of Strength on their freshly acquired scorpions. Some guilds flaunt their guild pride more aggressively: I've seen guilds gather up in bunches on the steps of Dalaran's North bank just to show off a title and laugh at people who didn't have it. Some had the habit of shouting their latest achievements throughout town for everyone to read. And even in real life, people show off their guild pride in the strangest ways: they paint guild-related scenes on their cars or even get tattoos of their guild name and/or logo.

While Vintage has never been about flaunting our guild name in public, in-game or real-life, (except for one Swedish loonie who wanted to tattoo 'Vintage' in the back of his neck), we're more than just a group of people that get together in-game and run instances. Who doesn't log on every now and then just for guild-chat banter? Or logs on Vent while not even in game just to chat with guildies? Even if Vintage gives me headaches every once in a while, I still smile when I talk about my guild. And that's how I flaunt my guild pride.

Things that are on my mind

That's three things, actually. PHP, MySQL, and Attic24's ripple pattern. God I'm a geek.

I didn't take your eggs, I swear!

Oh my, what's that?!

Wha? There's another one!

Three?! And they all look so angry!

Stop glaring at me! I didn't take your eggs, I swear!

Run, Monkey! Save yourself from those Angry Birds!*



*Pattern is the red one only, I improvised the other two.

Just a quick one

I stumbled upon Wordle (probably as the last person on Earth, but hey) and made one using my blog. Thought I'd share it with you! So now when I start rambling, you can tick off the words in this image. Or something.

Geekery

This post has nothing to do with yarn, cooking, baking, crafting, or anything like that.
Nope. This post is about geekery.

I think you may know this by now, but I play WoW in a wonderful, amazing guild called Vintage. Last night, Vintage took down the Lich King, earning us our Kingslayer title after 4 whole months of wiping. Needless to say, I'm very proud of us all and feel the need to shout it off the internet-rooftops. WE DID IT! HE'S DOWN! Check out our homepage if you want to see how we did it (and aren't afraid of a few cursewords and 15-minute videos)

ahem.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programme. And by that I mean hardmodes. GO VINTAGE!

Incoming: rant

My apologies in advance for this non-crafty, rant-a-licious post, but there's something that's been weighing me down for weeks now and I've finally taken a step forward so I feel like I should let some of the stress out.

It's about my thesis.

As you may or may not know, I'm a student and am currently trying to finish my Master's Degree in Translation by writing a thesis. My subject: Young Adult Literature. I love YA lit. Not just as a reader, although I must say many of the YA-titles that came out in the past few years have entertained me very much. I love it as a bookshop-employee, because it gives me the opportunity to help kids find something interesting to read when they no longer feel at home in the children's section but don't feel like switching to adult literature yet. I'm probably projecting; it's how I felt when I grew up and had read every single book in the children's section of our local library by the time I was 12 and moved on to fantasy because there was nothing to read.

Anyway.

I love this category to bits, so I figured that writing a thesis on translating YA should be a piece of cake for me.

Wrong. Very, very, very wrong. It's a difficult subject at best. YA as a literary category is relatively new, but it's known under so many different names that finding secondary literature on it becomes a slow and frustrating process: you never know if a text is discussing YA under another name, or simply discussing something different alltogether. And that simple fact has made me push it away from me since I started last year in June. Summer interfered heavily with my work too, since I was gone most of August. Then September hit, and it hit me hard: I felt so stressed I was unable to sleep for nights in a row, it was affecting my health very much, it was making me tense and probably not very pleasant to be around. I had row after row with the boyfriend about really stupid things. I think we once had a fight over toilet paper. I was ready to break down. So I finally made the decision to stop what I was doing.

Well, no, actually, that's not entirely true. I've made that decision three weeks ago, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and wrote something down in a notepad on my phone about it. I didn't do anything with this, though. I just didn't want to admit defeat and move on to something that would be more productive, like an actual translation. I'm stubborn like that. Very unattractive trait.

But I've done it; I've admitted defeat. I've bitten the bullet. After not sleeping again all night because I was tossing and turning and frustrating myself with thoughts about my thesis, I got up early and sent my supervisor an email explaining the situation, along with a proposal for 2 texts I would like to use as a translation thesis instead. Now all that's left is waiting for a reply and hoping he'll accept one of my proposals, so I can get started.


I've been taking deep breaths all morning, ever since I pressed 'send'. I hope he'll get back to me soon. In the meantime, I think I'll just go and sort out my stash. I've made a small start on that last night, but I'll devote an entire post to it one of these days. It'll be both yarn-porn-ish and yarn-horrorish. I promise.

Sweden

We went to Sweden with a bunch of guildies to have our Second Annual Vintage Guild Barbeque and had a great time! I kind of forgot I had my camera with me and didn't take that many pictures (only 42, wth..) but this is basically what our weekend consisted of:


Friends
Booze


Good food (lots of, even)


And.. cats.


And remember these?


I made a small army of them, added a label saying 'Vintage Oneshots Sweden, August 2010', and gave them to my guildies. I'm glad to say that they were adored by all and are now proudly dangling on keychains and purses.

Thanks guys, for a great, great, great weekend!