Lineanongrata

a great sigh of relief (advent day 21)

Finally, finally, I'm getting there.

While listening to the last hour or so of Stieg Larssons 'the girl who kicked the hornet's nest' as an audio book, I'm finally finishing up the advent calendar you have all been participating in.

I am really incredibly sorry that this year's advent calendar game has been such a chaos, with days left out and nobody having any idea what the gifts actually looked like, not even me.

I finally figured out many of the things I have been puzzling about lately, advent calendar included, and I think most things are for the best. I know for a fact that all my beloved dogs are well and loved and happy, I have a wonderful apartment, my family is waiting for me to celebrate christmas, and your gifts are ready to be sent.

Thank you for hanging in there with me and thank you for all your comments. They really, always make my day.

...I almost forgot: Yesterday's present goes to Ginny.

when sewing machine meets table (advent day 20)...

...a twelve hour sewing fest ensues. I was incredibly happy to have the space and all my things to start making things again. It's only four days until Christmas, so not everybody can count on a handmade gift this year, but maybe a small something for a select few should be possible.

The bag still needs some corrections, but I really like the light blue (Ikea) and the green gingham together. I bought the green fabric in Paris what seems like ages ago (uh, listen to that: '...bought it in Paris...' does that sound bohemian, or what ?).

The baby blanket will be for the winery's celler master Christian, who had his baby son just a few weeks ago. It's spring that does us in, I tell you. Spring and it's feelings of lightheartedness and happiness. Nine months later, when everybody has to work hard in order to make Christmas gifts for the friends and family we already have known for years, new people are born, and add to our workload. Babies peep up left and right around me at the moment. It's unbelievable. 

Carrie, you won yesterday's Advent gift. Will you let me know your address via email, please ?

A blessed fourth of Advent to all of you.

a post about everything but cooking (advent day 19)

To counter a slight hangover (Germany and its beer have won me over, once again), I carried this machine through the apartment all day today. Not that there were so many holes to drill, it just felt good. Like John Wayne. Only that there were no bad guys around. I regretted a bit that no one came to the door. I would have loved to open with this thing in hand.

First attempts at order were made today. One table that needed drilling holes (glee!), the other one is just a long plank of wood put on Muji boxes. - Nifty scheme to save space.

 

The non-existent daylight (from 8 am to 3:30 pm - if it's a joke, I don't think it's funny) in Berlin forced me to take action on the photo front, and the construct you see in the photo above is a light box I made with the help of this tutorial. Oh, the joys of daylight light bulbs are inestimable!

 

I used transparent paper instead of interfacing, and I glued it to the inside of the box, because it looks less messy. But it works wonderfully.

No shadows, light and good colors. Stop grinning. I do realize this photo is not a masterpiece, it's a try. But it's full of hope, don't you see ? Hope for a good future in product photography (I get emotional when I have a hangover. So let's meet again tomorrow. Carey, you won yesterday's gift, will you let me know your address, please ? On monday I'll have Internet in my own apartment and then I'll start answering your comments and emails for good. So just hang in there with me for another day.).

how everybody knows I'm not trying to seduce anyone (advent day 18)

It's not even that I got myself a pair of comfortable slippers.

It's the almost blinding combination of these socks with those slippers. It hurts my eyes, but it's damn comfortable.

Phew, we can all take a deep breath, Vincent is safely in my heart. What's that you say ? You get to see an awful lot of pictures of my new floor ? True, I tell you, but I'm still wondering how there seem to be new things scattered over it every five minutes. I pick something up, and next I know, it looks just as littered as before. It's becoming quite an obsession.

LeeAnn and Sara of Dream Big won yesterday's two gifts. Will you write me your addresses, please ?

where fox and hare meet (advent days 16 and 17)

Where fox and hare meet is a very romantic and good spot in German literature for children. It's a sort of garden of Eden where all dangers and differences, the chaos of everyday life are forgotten.

 

We can thus exclude my new apartment from the list of possible 'where fox and hare meet' spots.

Very pragmatically, I have to say that my new home is the spot where sock and cable meet, or shoe and panties, or even orange and telephone bill.

 

Nobody has met a table yet, which unfortunately means that everyone lives on the floor, books, shoes, dirty laundry, sewing machine, and me, too.

The chairs are so ugly that I don't even dare sit on them, but they came from my grandparents and will surely, with a new coat of paint and new cushions, be a joy to have around. So stay tuned, big changes are about to occur.

Today's post is good for two giveaway gifts (again, as you will well and justly remark, but Internet is still missing, along with a table, but who wants to put the computer on the floor anyway...) and the last present will go to ikkinlala.

too tired to communicate (advent day 15)

Something sweet for you tonight. The last three gifts go to Sarah Jackson, the Frogdancer and itto. Sorry folks, tonight I'm really too tired. What a weird advent this is.

advent day 12, 13 and 14

...Packing, shipping, shipping, packing,... that's what I have done almost all day today. Plus some printing. Some time ago I realized (with about 30 years of age, at last) how it makes shipping more fun to wrap things up nicely. Not in a complicated manner that takes too much time, but just nice. It's soothing that way. And does please the customers. Basically a win-win situation.

There, I've always wanted to use that silly expression. It took me a while to create an appropriate situation.

 

This year's advent calendar really is unregular, isn't it ? Sorry about that. Internet isn't always to be had, and time is missing, but I'll pick three winners from today's post, one for saturday, one for sunday and one for today. Pomona won the last Advent gift, so if you'd let me know your address, I'll ship it (nicely wrapped, of course).

I missed them so while I lived in the South (advent day 11)

(The last two advent gifts will go respectively to Natalie Edwards and Mary Lee, if you two would send me your address via Email.)

The village I grew up in are surrounded by woods, the forest of Teutoburg (the wikipedia page shows places and pictures I have never seen before and I kind of marvel at the beauty of this place right now), and even though at this time of year they are grey and dark and often threatening, I have always loved them.

There is something to a good scare, enhanced by all the Mary Higgins Clark novels I have ever read, something in the way you sink ankle deep into mud that just makes me happy.

Ah, well, seriously. They seem to come right out of a fairy tale, something the brothers Grimm have found and written down. Equally scary and lovely, and very much home for me. I can remember playing in the woods, building huts, playing at Indians and Cowboys (don't ask me how the cowboys came to be in the woods. The cattle got lost or something like that, I guess.), and then coming into the house at dusk, frozen blue, to listen to the winter bedtime stories I can't quite remember. All I can recall is the feel they had to them. The yellow light shining from windows into the dark woods, from the house the good witch lived in with all her animals.

the quiet moments (advent days 9 and 10)

Nothing is the way it was supposed to be so far this advent time. No quiet moment, the rings beneath my eyes basically reach beneath my knees and I'm as sleep deprived as my best friend with her two year old son. The dogs story is a never-ending one, and I had to relocate because of, let's say, family incompatibilities. So now I'm at a friend's house and there isn't no internet, which is my best excuse for not posting yesterday.

There will be two winners drawn from today's post, though.

The rare quiet time I get, marked by a cup of tea, a dinner with friends, a walk in the night-dark woods, or very early in the morning, the mist just rising from the fields, are cherished, though. I feel these moments are blessed, a reminder of what advent should be and what we so rarely get this time of year. 

Even though I'm not particularly religious, I have always liked the christmas story, the poor folks coming to see a newborn, the three kings, mary and joseph, in a pinch much greater than mine (at least I'm not supposed to have babies in the cold and dark and put them away in mangers). In those few quiet moments happening around here right now, I think about that story and am glad that I can still feel it's going to be christmas, even though all the rest seems to be going haywire (now that's character, isn't it ? I could be pulling out my hair instead, but no, I think about baby Jesus in his manger.).

Advent gift number 8 will go to Margith, I'm happy to say. Will you let me know your address ?

two left hands when it comes to wrapping things (advent day 8)

One of our Christmas traditions is that, when my little sister gets a glimpse of the packages I have proudly wrapped (at the last possible moment, I will admit), I get a derisive snort at the least, more often though, there'll be a hiccup of a laugh.

 

And I grant that she does wrap things beautifully, with christmas pendants, name tags and all those fancy extras (like a tuned car).

But I lament the fact that my right hand turns into a second left hand as soon as it touches wrapping paper, tape and ribbon. On the other hand, it might be a kind of a skill. I mean, who else is able to wrap a book and make it look like a firecracker ?

And just in case you're wondering what a map of Marseille has to do with gift wrapping, you might have to wait until you receive your advent gift this year (Janet, yesterday's gift is yours, however skilfully wrapped), but don't expect there to be any cookies left by then. I share my inaptitudes only.

laughing (advent day 7)

I found this via Merrylmarylee and even though I have watched it six times, it still makes me howl with laughter. It also kind of makes me want to be british. It's always lovely to meet new people via the blog, like Merrylmarylee, and I have to say it's equally pleasing to see you old friends around, whom I have never met personally, more often than not. And still I tell my mother stories about you (the same mother who was standing in her pjs in the bathroom, laughing tears because of the clip above), and thus it is with great pleasure that I announce Erin, who has been around for a while, to be yesterday's Advent winner. Will you let me know your address ?

presenting walter (advent day 6)

His name is Walter, and he's one of the new presences in my mind. I think Walter will live many adventures, they just need time to crystallize in my head.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I will also need some time to draw those adventures, but at the moment, settling in is the priority.

Would you mind telling me your best ways to quiet down and to cope with seemingly insurmountable difficulties ? We went from one minor catastrophe to the next today. Aki the big dog doesn't settle into his new family very easily and is still with me. We're going back to meet them again tomorrow, but he's having problems with the other two male dogs.

The way it looks at the moment, Orion is facing too big a change in Berlin. It is very likely that I will need to find a new family for him, too. Someone with a garden and someplace very quiet. He's shaking every time he puts his nose outside (all those new things all around him), and we're in the village I grew up in, not even in a town.

Add to this juggling three dogs on a leash on walks, steady rain and fatigue and that's about where I am tonight.

Tomorrow will be brighter, won't it ?

Yesterday's winners are Ann (need your address, please) and Maui (got yours, my dear). 

skipped a beat (advent days 4 and 5)

Please excuse me for leaving you all alone yesterday. Advent should be a daily thing on this blog, but I was so exhausted yesterday that I just couldn't bring myself to post.

Today's blog post will be for two advent gifts then, two people will win something today.

Lisa, you won the last Advent gift, will you let me know your address, please ?

Since yesterday we have arrived safely, all four of us. For those of you who are new to this blog, the picture shows Aki and Wind, two of the creatures who just drove across Europe with me. Orion is a simple german shepherd, so you can about imagine what the trunk of my car looked like with those three in it.

We took off from France yesterday, and the first twenty kilometers or so were from hell. First, they wouldn't get into the trunk. When one was in, another jumped, and the first one came out again. We're not even talking about the third one here, namely Aki, who refused flat out to jump in in the first place. As for yours truly, I was half in the trunk, one leg outside for stability, moving like a goaly to fend off two from jumping out again and trying to lift the third one (as heavy as myself) into the car. - Shut the door, the whining started instantly, cold sweat dripping from my brow.

Thoughts ranging from 'what am I doing to those poor creatures' to 'they might just die in the trunk' (what from ? Well, dehydration, for example ? What's that you say ? It's winter and dogs don't die from dehydration right now ? I wasn't thinking about that while Wind (the black and white one) did her dying swan act in the trunk.) started to turn around my brain immediately. The whining stopped after about thirty kilometers, as I said, and an eerie silence set in.

At first, I looked in at them every couple of kilometers. But then I thought we'd better drive quick and shorten the suffering that way. So I drove and drove and drove, hearing nothing but supposing absolute misery.

When I finally had to stop to get gas, I got out of the driver's seat with the wildest apprehensions, walked around to peek in the trunk... had Wind shoot me a tired glance and then drop right back to sleep. The other two didn't even budge.

I guess it's a lesson in taking things as they come and not worrying before they have even arrived.

on the road

(photo completely unrelated to post, I'm aggrieved to say)

Today was yet another day of travel, as I drove from Marseille to the winery. Right upon arriving I had all my dogs jump on my so I look artfully disheveled right now.

This is just a short post today to announce that Hanna won yesterday's present, and to beg your pardon  for having not yet answered any of your comments, and probably won't be able to do so before saturday, but I appreciate every one of them.

Stay tuned for a refreshing post tomorrow evening, because tomorrow's trip will be 800 km across countries (back to Germany) with three big and probably unhappy dogs in the car.

a different kind of advent calendar (second day of Advent)

This year we are making an Advent calendar for our adopted grandmother, too. The one that's 97 years old and can still look at us and state something along the lines of 'gee, are you hung over today, or what?'.

It's a letter calendar and comes by the post. Every day one of the siblings (that means probably mostly Hanna and me, Daniel said he'd be 'guest writer' on greater days, such as St. Nikolaus.) writes a letter with a photo of him or her in it.
That might seem a bit narcissistic, but on the other hand, grandparents can never get enough pictures of their grandchildren, be they adopted or not.

And getting a letter in the mail every day (or clusters of them, who knows. This might actually be revealing of the efficiency of the european posts, Hanna being in Madrid at the moment and I in Marseille) is a wonderful thing, if you ask me.

It was wonderful to hear from you all yesterday. Thank you very much. Yesterday's mystery present goes to Faye, as soon as I figure out what it is, get it wrapped up and take a picture of it.