yarny bookworm

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Freitag, 28. November 2014

it's finished!

Yesterday, my man and me made the final decorations at his Christmas stall. Now all the crocheted snowflakes and the origami stars are put into place and will hopefully sell like mad to raise money for the Austrian Parkinson society! I think it looks really pretty. It puts me in a festive mood! 

Happy first advent weekend, everyone!






Dienstag, 25. November 2014

Christmas preparation

Ho ho ho, lovely readers.

Just one more month until Christmas! Time flies, actually, doesn't it? It has gotten quite calm around here, as I had a lot of work to do at my work. I had really long hours every day and wasn't really keen on sitting in front of the computer in the evenings when I've already been sitting in front of the screen for the last 10 hours at work.
But now everything is back to normal. The book fair is over. It was really great, to get a look behind the scene of such a fair. It's amazing how much work goes into organizing it. We have just two women at my company who are doing this. But they did an amazing job, it was the most successful Vienna book fair in its entire 7 year history and while I spend my days there, I just thought over and over again: what a great way, to earn a living! 

Now that I don't come home totally exhausted late in the evening, I also managed to get some things done! First of all, I started running again. I was really sloppy with it in the last few weeks. But now I'm back on track. Though I feel a little cold coming up on me, so again I have to take a step back. But I'm feeling better now and will hopefully be able to have my two weekly runs this week.

We started rehearsals for our amateur acting season. The premier will be on the 27th of December and we just received our final text this weekend. So in the next few weeks there will be a lot of rehearsals (we can only do those on weekends) and lots of text-learning. But it really is a very funny and great play and I'm SO looking forward to all those rehearsals as they always mean a lot of fun and laughter! 

And I managed to get some crafty stuff done as well! 
My man will have a christmas stall in December. I wont be there, as I have my normal 40 hour work, but I did some crochet and origami stuff for him. It will be a beautiful decoration for the stall (I will show you a picture, once it's done) and we also plan to sell the things. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get as much done as I wanted to. But I made a lot of crocheted snowflakes. I really like those! I made them just in plain white, but I also played with some colors. Red, purple, blue, green...everything that can be seen as "traditional" christmas colors.


these are my snowflakes - before and after blocking


And I made tons of origami stars for him. A while ago, I bought some beautiful Origami paper, but didn't exactly know what to make out of them. When I was searching for some inspiration on Pinterest I came across these lovely stars. They're fairly easy to make and I think they look really nice. You could make a garland out of it (that's what I plan to do for my home), or put them onto christmas cards, decorate your gifts with it, hang them on your christmas tree...there are endless possibilities! 


I wonder if the principle of the thousand origami cranes also works with stars??


I honestly have no idea, if anyone will actually buy any of this stuff. But I plan to donate everything I make from selling it to the Austrian Parkinson society. A member of my family was diagnosed with it this year and I think that people are more likely to buy something if they know that the profits of it will be donated for a good cause! 

These are all the handmae christmassy things that I made so far. A rather small list. I hope to get some more done in the next few weeks as I actually wanted to give my family handmade gifts this year. REALLY need to focus on that, there isn't that much time left. We'll see if my plan works out or if I'm going to get in a shopping panic shortly before christmas to get all my gifts in time! ;-)

What about you? Do you buy your gifts or do you make them yourselves? And If you give handmade things: what are you making for your beloved ones? I really need some inspiration! 

Have a nice week, everyone! 








Sonntag, 23. November 2014

Liebster Award!

I've been awarded with the "Liebster Award" from the lovely Ann and Michelle from crochet between two worlds. Pop over there, if you have times, as these two lovely ladies have a wonderful blog and wonderful story behind it! Thank you very much, for this award. I feel really honoured! :-)

As you probably all know, the Award is given to blogs with less than 200 readers and the rules say, that you have to answer 11 questions. That's what I did, enjoy! 


1. What is the name of your blog? And what does the name mean?
Originally my name was: crochet. reading. travel. stories. life. love. me. I guess, it's kind of self explaining as these are all the topics I wanted to write about. After a while it dawned on me, that it's actually a horrible name for a blog, so I changed it to the shorter "woolly bookworm". Yarn and books. At the moment my two greatest passions!  

2. How many blogs do you follow?
Right now I follow about 60 blogs. 

3. Do you have a creative soul? 
I think that I've always been a creative being. I used to draw a lot when I was a child, I loved to arrange and decorate my bedroom and I always loved to craft in one way or other. That hasn't changed until today. 

4. At what age did you learn to crochet or knit?
I guessed that I learned knitting and crocheting in school, when I was about 10 years old. I can't remember exactly, though. I really liked knitting, when I was younger. My mum is a great knitter, but somehow I got stuck at crocheting. I really want to catch up on my knitting skills but I always have so many crochet projects on the go that I never find time to do that.

5. What are your future projects?
Right now I'm making some christmas decoration for a christmas stall that my man will have in December. After that I want to finish the top that I promised my mum, then I want to finish the Mario blanket, which I started way too many moons ago. I also need to finish Paul the Toadstool. After that I want to make myself a new cosy ripple blanket, use up some yarn by making some cushion covers. I want to make myself another garment and I promised my sister-in-law to crochet her a cute baby blanket as she is pregnant and will make me an aunt in June. And I think that I will surprise her with some baby-related-crochet stuff as well. I'm thinking little shoes, toys, cardingans, jumpers...
And then I always find some new projects to start in between...

6. Why do you blog?
I started reading blogs when I started to crochet, more than a year ago. Nobody of my friends is into crocheting or crafting and I desperately needed someone to talk about all of the things I made. So I started my own blog. 

7. What will your Christmas look like this year?
I have no idea, to be honest. We will either spend it in Salzburg (about 400 kms away) with my sister-in-law and her family or my man and I will stay at home and have a very calm and simple christmas. We will decide rather spontanious, I guess. 

8. What are your plans for 2015?
Well, I don't have that many plans for next year. My man and I are thinking about buying a house (or rather building one) in the near future, so we decided to try and save as much money as possible for a year. Well, that's kind of a plan.
And we're going to get married in April. And I'm going to be an aunt in June and I plan to visit my little niece or nephew the moment he or she pops out. Great plan, isn't it?
9. If you could travel anywhere, which 3 places would you visit and why? 
Veeery good question. I travelled a lot in the last years and the more I travel the more I want to travel. Ever since my 5 weeks in Peru I'm fascinated by South America! So that's a place I really want to see again! 
I'd really love to travel through Asia (Indosia, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Japan and everything surrounded) and I would love to make a roadtrip either through Portugal or the West Coast of the USA. Probably not the right answer as I listed not three, but actually hundreds of places, but I'm absolutely not able to name just three places.
 
10.What made you smile today?
Making a lot of Origami Stars that my man can (hopefully) sell at his christmas stall. These stars are really addictive (I will show them to you in a separate post) and will make a beautiful decoration for his stall. 

11. What do you do on a rainy Sunday?
Reading, Crocheting, listening to music, watching movies, cuddling with my man...whatever comes to my mind, actually. But usually it involves a blanket and a cup of coffee! 

I'm not going to nominate anyone. But whoever wants to play along is invited to answer the 11 questions for himself, just for fun! :-)

Montag, 17. November 2014

a year in books: November

I really got a lot of reading done in October, despite the fact, that we spent a week away from home where I almost didn't read at all, except for a few pages on the 1,5 hour flight from Salzburg to London.
These are the books that I finished in October: 

Noah Gordon - The Medicus
picture from here



Now I don't really know what to think about this book. When I wrote here that I'm reading it right now I got a lot of comments from people who've read it already and who really liked it. I just found it really...long! Sometimes really tedious to read. Don't get me wrong, I really love big books, books with thousand and more pages. But I don't really like it when I have the feeling that I read and read and read and I'm still stuck somewhere in the middle of the book. And that is the feeling that I got with this one. But I understand how it became a worldwide bestseller. I really liked the story. I really want to see the movie now!

Stephen King: Salems Lot

picture from here

Well, what can I say. I like Stephen King. I think. He really knows how to keep a reader interested, to build up tension and to scare and frighten his readers. But with this book you get to see, that it is one of his earlier works. First, it's really thing, for a Stephen King book. And until half of the book he wrote really detailed and displayed his characters really well. And then I got the feeling that he wanted to bring the story to an end and everything else happened very quickly. Ir was a good read nonetheless, perfect for my daily train rides. 

Sebastian Fitzek: Der Augensammler

picture from here



This was my first ever Fitzek. I have absolutely no idea if he got translated in other languages, but he is a very wide received Thriller writer here. 

"Der Augensammler" or "eye-collector" as it would translate (badly) in English, is a book about a very gruesom murderer who kills mother, kidnaps their children and then gives the father a 40-hour ultimatum before he drowns the child and removes them an eye. 
Sounds like an interesting and horrifying thriller story. My cousin loves to read Fitzek and so I was very curious. It started great, as far as killing children can be described as great. But you know what I mean. I lost interest in the story though as Fitzek introduced a blind girl, who catches glimpes of the past and helped a journalist to catch the killer. I never like it when writers use people wirh supernatural abilities to solve their cases. I always think its just an easy way out, using a person who just KNOWS that this and that has happened and who just FEEL who committed the crimes. So this book was rather a disappointment for me. 

Vea Kaiser: Blasmusikpop

picture from here

I've bought this book on a holiday in 2012 and read it immediately. I re-read it when I was travelling around the world and spend three wonderful weeks at the most wonderful beach in the Philippines. And I re-re-read it last week. 
Vea Kaiser is an Austrian writer who IS MY AGE! I always feel jealous when people who are as old as I am manage to write a book. I wanted to write a book when I was a child but I didn't have a concept for my story. So I just wrote and wrotw without having a clue what I actually wanted to happen in my book and of course it was horrible and I threw everyhing away in the end. 

ANYWAY, Blasmusikpop is Kaisers first book and was a huge success here in Austria. The story is about a little village, high up in the Alps. The people in St.Peter, which is the name of the village, like their undisturbed live away from the big cities and civilization. They love their traditions and rituals, they grow up, learn the trade of their parents and grandparents, get married, build a house, have children and just do all those things "because that's just how they have always been done". One day, one of them decides to leave the village to become a doctor and therefore break the hundreds years old structures and from this point on the story unravels. 

It is one of the funniest books I know. Maybe that's because I grew up in a very small Austrian village myself. I didn't live in the mountains, but a lot of traditions and characters are so familiar to me, that reading about them was even more fun! 

I just found out, that the book will be translated into English too! I will keep you updated if and when that happens. You have to buy that book yourself. It's hilarious, I promise! 

As always, I have no idea which books I will read next! Whatever comes to my mind. So my "the year in books" posts are rather a reflection and a listing of my previous reads. I hope you enjoy them anyway!

Keep on reading! :-)


Montag, 3. November 2014

I remember...

Hey folks, I'm back from London and also back at work. Which means being back to long days and short leisure time. 

A longer blog post will follow soon(ish) but I just wanted to share with you the best souvenir that one could buy as a book lover in London. 

These books have accompanied me through my late childhood and teenage years. I remember reading them for the first time, falling head over heels not only into the story but into a whole new world! 

I remember not being able to stop reading the newest one, when you've waited for months and years for it to come out. 

I remember my brother and me, reading the last 200 pages of the 6th volume together, him sitting behind me and looking over my shoulder, me annoyed with his slow reading speed. And all because neither of us wanted to let the other one finish it first. So we read it together. 

I remember spending the hottest week of the year in the pool, with the newest volume propped up at the edge, while I had a cocktail on my left and a bowl of freshly picked strawberries to my right, not able to get out of the cool water but desperately wanting to finish the book! 

I remember the first movie that I watched with my (then still a child) cousin, who recommended the books to me in the first place and who borrowed them to me, because until Saturday, I didn't own a single one of it. 

I remember reading the last book, totally sucked up by all the things that happened and I remember crying, when fantasy figures died. 

I remember seeing the last movie in the cinema with the same cousin that I saw the first one with. 

I remember holding my breath during half of the film. 

I remember feeling sad when I knew, that all of it was over and that there were never going to be new books or new movies and there will never be another seeing or reading it for the first time ever experience again.

And I remember reading those books again and again and again as I will do so now! 

Because they still have the same magic for me as they had the first time around. I still love the story, I'm still surprised by little things that I forgot since I last read them. 

After all this time? You might ask? 
My answer? 
ALWAYS! 

And in case you didn't get the millions of references, here's a picture of what I'm actually talking about. ;-)