The Great Knitting Project of 2011, and other exciting adventures

I have to admit, I've been done with my epic sweater project for about two weeks, but am just now getting around to writing about it (oops). I've been busy busy busy, but at least I've also been warm warm warm in my new snuggly creation! As promised, here are some photos of my knitting baby:

You can see from the front, when it sits loose, it's looooooong...

When you wrap it up and around like a scarf, it's much cozier

and here's the profile view...I've been double twisting and it's even more comfy that way

This was a LONG project, and my first experience with sort of designing something as I went. Could it be better? I'm a big believer that things could always be improved upon, but am I proud of how it turned out? Absolutely. And super pleased, too!

Since I finished TGKP2011 there have, of course, been lots of other things to do. Fall is really in full swing here, and as a fun bonding-just-before-leaving activity with my former housemate who moved into a private apartment, we baked an apple pie. I'd attempted pies before and ben met largely with success, but this pie was by far the best I'd ever baked. I used King Arthur Flour's guarnateed recipe, and was floored by how well it worked out

See all the lack of filling oozing out of the sides of the slices? Epic success! I'm making this one again this weekend for my other housemates (hopefully)

Then, of course, came Halloween, which I celebrated not once, but twice! The weekend before the actual holiday, we held a birthday-halloween party for our dear friend, Przem, who have recently discovered is rather a bit older than the rest of us (27. Oh the humanity! Just kidding, but still. We felt like babies). I suggested we name it Przem-o-ween, and I'm please to say it stuck! Anya and I baked a fabulous vanilla cake filled with berries and whipped cream, as well as sugar cookies decorated to resemble pumpkins. A huge number of people showed up with various and sundry other delicious things, but there was, sadly, a lack of costumes. The American-Irish contingent put forth a great effort, and when our other friends started arriving, I wound up painting a number of faces. They were skeptical, but oh, did I win them over with my extraordinary (hah) talent.

L to R: a zombie (previously a butterfly), Frankenstein's monster (the lighting isn't picking up the green paint too well), a hippie with flowers, the Joker (and birthday boy!), a vampire, and a pirate (my personal favorite...you can't see the right side of his face that had a knot for the bandana, but trust me, it was fantastic)

My actual Halloween was spent with my adoptive family for whom I babysit once a week. And when I say babysit, I mean I hang out and speak English with Charge 1 and Charge 2, then their mom comes home, makes dinner, chats with me and generally mothers me, and we all eat together. And for this I get paid. Glorious. We made a Halloween-themed dinner with blood punch, mini sausages in bacon (fingers?), 'moldy' (pesto) and 'bloody' (meat sauce) pasta, and more of my jack-o-lantern cookies for dessert. I took Charge 2 and a couple of her friends trick-or-treating, which was definitely an interesting experience in Germany. Apparently celebrating Halloween has become something of a thing for the younger generation, but it's mostly kids getting dressed up and trying to trick-or-treat with friends. Most of the doors we knocked on revealed people who said 'oh, hello! oh, it must be Halloween!' and then rummaged around for sweet things to give the girls. This resulted in lots of them being overwhelmingly generous (Here, have a package of cookies. Here, have our drawer of Ritter Sport), but sometimes we just had doors shut in our faces (whoops). A couple of families actually had a bowl of candy waiting, which I found rather impressive. It was also my first experience trick-or-treating in an apartment...still fun, but I think I prefer the traditional Carriage Lane experience.

Charge 2 is on the right...she made her own vampire costume by cutting up the previous year's!

Not to be upstaged by Halloween, Christmas continues here with full force. I discovered these playmobil advent calendars in Kaufland...oh how I wanted one!

I'm continuting to subconsciously prepare for the holidays by craving more and more cozy knit things. This may or may not be resulting from the nagging sinus infection I've now had for about two weeks. I went back to the (world's nicest) doctor today, so here's hoping round number two of even stronger (5 Euro) antibiotics does the trick. I took a photo of the table in the center of the waiting room because I thought it looked particularly nice and homey, haha.

Offering water is definitely a German thing. The bank, the doctor's office....anywhere. There's even what seems to be hot water in a termos with disposable cups constantly outside of our corner pharmacy. I don't understand why, but hey, I'm down.

This past weekend, in an effort to unwind from a rather hectic week, I ventured northwest to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse to visit with my friend Friedie and her family. She has extremely wonderful parents who have taken me under their wing in rather the same way my parents have adopted Friedie, which, especially when I'm all the way over here, is wonderful. Friedie's mom invited Gilder (who is coming next month) and I to go for a visit when we are heading to the Christkindlmarkt in Karlsruhe, and I think she'll even join us for the trip, which will be a lot fun. After some seriously good breakfast and the world's greatest jam/butter business (pumpkin pear...jam? I'm going to call it butter because it has the consistency of apple butter), Friedie, her friend from school Juli, and I hopped in the car and drove over to Strasbourg for the day. I responsibly remembered to bring my passport, and then realized that, hello, this is the EU and nobody cares what you do in terms of border crossing. "Oh well," I reasoned, "better safe than sorry". Strasbourg is a beautiful city with lots of shopping, eating, and strolling to be had. I've got a bunch of photos, but I'll leave you with just a couple since I need to be off to make some dead language flashcards. I mean, really, what else do I do?

Here are Juli and Friedie with our delicious macarons!

Look for a series of posts coming (hopefully) shortly. I'm thinking something a long the lines of "Three Euro Wine Thursdays" are in order!