I got yer knitting

I have been knitting, and reports to the contrary are false accusations. I just don’t think the knitting is something you want to be updated on daily, as I knit painstakingly slowly, only allotting half an hour a day sometimes to the task.

Anyway, you remember the witchy firestarter socks, I’m sure. It’s still going, past the heel turn now. I still have a ton of the skein of yarn left. I bet I could make two pairs of socks out of a skein of this. A little daunting, come to think of it.

One thing I haven’t told you about yet is my second attempt to knit a two-color hat. An attempt I am hoping is going better.

A pirates’ skull cap! Oh yeah. This is the We Call Them Pirates hat, with a few modifications. Hopefully this will work out with this yarn. My fingers are crossed. I really just want to knit a colourwork hat! I’m not sure if I’d wear it though. I do have a lot of hats. Time to start knitting hats for charity or gifts.

I also have some dark red and orange yarn that I think I might turn into these squirrel and oak mittens. So cute! And yet mittens are getting more and more unnecessary! Ah well, my current mittens are wearing out a hole in the thumb (what?! I’ve only had them a year!), so new mittens for next year will be more than worth it.

What else have I been doing? Baking. Sadly, it turns out that my time in Berlin is soon coming to a close. (And I still haven’t gotten that travel blog set up yet! I am a terrible procrastinator, and where have the e-mail reminders been from people that want to see my pictures???) I mistakenly bought two 1000gr bags of flour to bake a cake way back in January, thinking they looked small so maybe I needed more.

Ha. I really need to figure out how measurements work.

So I’ve had two and a half bags of flour and 3/4 of a 1000gr bag of sugar. Therefore, sugar cookies. (And bread on Monday. I don’t want to bring flour and sugar with me to Vienna, sorry.) I called up a friend and she came by and we baked.

Don’t they look delish? I love baking cookies, and I ate waaaay too many last night. Won’t need more cookies for another day, at which point I’m thinking of bringing them to class to share with my classmates. Of course the S is mine, but others can have the rest. After all, too much refined sugar is bad for the body.

Today I made myself oatmeal for the first time in years. It was also the first time I made oatmeal from rolled oats, i.e. not instant. I’ve had non-instant oatmeal before, but never cooked it myself. I ate oatmeal every day for breakfast for a few years and then got sick of it for a while, but here I’ve started experimenting with my breakfast foods—because I get to make it myself. (Take that, college cafeteria!)

It was really good! I was surprised by how much I liked it, even without adding honey or fruit. I did eat some fruit with it (an orange) and added honey, but it could have easily stood on its own. Score for a new, vegan breakfast food.

Did I say vegan? Yes. Chile and The McDougall Program are getting to me to eat less dairy. And meat, since I started eating some of that while I was here. I realized I can’t eat meat more than once a week though. It just doesn’t sit right with me. Now, though, I’m also trying to keep cheese out of my fridge and see how well I do without, and I am still experimenting with eating whole-grain foods.

But back to the topic of breakfast: I’ve discovered recently that I really, really enjoy weekend morning breakfasts, enough so that I don’t want to go out to brunch like the rest of Berlin. (Shock!) On the weekends the sun is usually shining on me, saying “Good morning!”, and waking up slowly and having a long breakfast that I’ve made myself with a cup of tea that doesn’t have to be gulped down in ten minutes—it’s something I’ve really come to enjoy. I still need to check out a Berlin brunch before I leave, but I’m enjoying my slow mornings, and I think that’s good for me. Slowing down is never easy, so I’m grateful I’m learning how to slow down at least a little.