reposting: “KIP it real”

I’ve only ever had good experiences with knitting in public. Perhaps it’s also in the attitude, when people stare, I tend to interpret it as “Look, they’re fascinated by what I’m doing!” instead of as “Ouch, they think I’m a weirdo”. And perhaps I’m just lucky – I’ve never had something like this happen to me. But if that story discourages you, do go and read this one. If anyone ever asks me again why I knit, I will send them that link to read. And they’re not even things that have happened to me. :)

Stay proud, knitters. :) :*

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why I love Belgium’s national day

It is Belgium’s national day today.

A holiday in my second week already – not bad! It did rain, though, but at some point I just decided to stop moaning about it and ignore it. I ventured out to see what festivities were taking place and I was quite pleasantly surprised! There were throngs of people out despite the rain, and there were lots of things going on – mostly public organisations presenting their activities and getting friendly with the populus :) My favourite was the demonstration of the abilities of police dogs – I think I hung around for about half an hour watching well-padded mock-criminals get restrained within seconds by these super-trained dogs. It was really impressive. And at some point, even the rain stopped.

(And then it started back again.)

But the main reason I love this holiday is because it gave me an opportunity to just sit and knit for a few hours. I started off yesterday with my official first attendance at the Brussels Stitch’n’Bitch. It was lovely. They were so welcoming and relaxed, I couldn’t have wished for better. I can’t wait to go again! I got some good work done on my sock there, and even powered through some finger pain and did more than I usually do in one sitting. It got me so energised that I even knit some more when I got home!

And then some more today.

And when it actually started looking like a sock, rather than just a funky tube, I fell in love with it completely, all over again.

Now I can’t stop. It’ll be done in no time! :) Yaaaay for national holidays and all their benefits! :)

verbs

Hugging…

my tea. (Brussels is cold. And rainy. In July. And every other month of the year.)

Being…

very proud of myself for cooking next day’s lunch. (One-hour lunch breaks are awesome! In Croatia we only get half an hour.)

Teaching…

my mom to use this. (She’s always ready to try new things. I love her for that.)

Knitting…

a few rounds every few days. (And planning to go to my first Brussels S’n’B this week!)

Reading…

very very little. (And this book is about 800 pages long. At this rate, I won’t need another one until Christmas 2012.)

Oh, and absolutely LOVING my job. :)

almost wordless wednesday

Tiny treasures. A leftover from my baby bootie craze back in April.

Photos courtesy of my lovely friends.

For technical details on pattern, yarn, modifications, please go here.

And that’s all the words my drained little brain can muster this week. But I’m having fun, don’t worry. ;)

reappearing

Hullo! :) Long time no see! Well, I’ve been seeing you, at least those of you with blogs of your own, and even making a little comment here and there, but you haven’t been seeing a lot of me. If you suspected that I had gotten buried under my giant yarn stash, you were wrong (but thank you to those who actually emailed to check ;). If your suspicion was more in the direction of me and my new ball-winder going off to see the world, you were much closer to the truth. :) In the few weeks I’ve been gone, I’ve changed my permanent geographical longitude again: since Thursday I’ve officially been a resident of Brussels, Belgium, and from Monday I’ll be a worker (t)here too. :)

The preceding weeks have been a whirlwind of interviews, documents, permit applications, work clothes shopping, quick-vacationing, packing and goodbye-saying. This was something I had hoped for and awaited for quite a long time so it was more joy- than stress-inducing, but it sure didn’t leave a lot of time for knitting or blogging.

I expect the upcoming weeks to be a similar whirlwind of apartment-hunting, account-opening, rope-learning, people-meeting, city-exploring, weekend-travelling, etcetera. Exciting! :) I do hope, though, that knitting and blogging will manage to fit in the “etcetera” bit, and that there’ll still be someone here to witness it when I get into my rhythm again… ;)

In the meantime, how’s your summer going? :)

Images are by my friends, from our little vacation on the Croatian island where my grandfather is from.