Cute Dog Pictures

Greg sent me the cutest pictures of the dogs taken out in our back yard in Spokane on a beautiful fall morning. Sammie looks like she is really enjoying the sunshine:



And Beau (in front) and Jack are probably resting after just having run around like crazy:

A Stocking, a Mobius and Kloster Andechs

The second in the series of five stockings for Sigrid's family has been completed. I am not a fast knitter, so this project will probably go on for some time. It will also go on for a while due to the fact that I seem to have "Crafter's Attention Deficit Disorder" (CADD), which just means that I love to start projects but not to finish them!

If the project is quick, I can usually manage to finish it before my CADD sets in. Below is a mobius scarf that I finished in about a week here in Munich. I love it and wear it almost every day. The yarn is a bulky weight, variegated, 100% wool called "Schoppel Wolle Pur" and I came up with the pattern myself.





Conrad and I went to Kloster Andechs (Andechs Monastery) outside of Munich today. We took public transportation to a small town about an hour away and then walked some three miles to the Kloster. It's well worth the hike--we enjoyed spectacular views, the beautiful monastery and church, and some scrumptious Apfelstrudel with vanilla sauce afterwards.

The Alps are in the distance on the picture below. Unfortunately, we couldn't capture them well with our little camera.

Conrad's Here!

Conrad arrived this past Saturday for a ten-day visit, and typically, he's already seen and done a lot here in Munich. He and Greg went on a walking tour on a gorgeous sunny day Sunday, and later in the day Conrad went to the English Garden and back to the city center on his own. That evening we were all invited to Norbert and Sigrid's for dinner.

Today while I was teaching, Greg and Conrad spent six hours in the Deutsches Museum and seemed to have enjoyed every minute of it.



And here's a picture they took on the walking tour--I'm posting it to show that we do sometimes have sunshine in Munich!

A Visit to Salzburg

Greg and I had a wonderful trip to Salzburg, Austria last Thursday. It's only a 2-hour train ride from Munich. Above is a view of the Medieval shopping district. I really like the old-style signs--can you spot the McDonald's sign?

Here's another nice street view:



Mozart was born in Salzburg in this house:



Church towers and steeples abound:



If you want to see all our pictures from that day, click here.

A Couple of Finished Projects

The Christmas stocking is for Greg's sister Sigrid and her family; it's the first in the set I'm making for her in colors that she chose--burgandy, forest green and off-white. The pattern is from a knitting magazine from the 1990s, and the yarn is Lamb's Pride worsted weight wool.

This is yet another Stefanie Japel sweater from her book Fitted Knits. I made it before in the bulky weight yarn the pattern called for, but I thought it looked terrible on me (I gave it away to a friend who says she loves it!). I liked the style of this cardigan so much that I wanted to try it again, so this time I did it with worsted weight wool, and I lengthened the ribbing and started it just under the bust line. I also changed the short sleeves of the pattern to 3/4 length. Like all Stefanie Japel patterns, this sweater was knitted from the top-down in one piece. The yarn is Moda Dea washable wool.

Now I'm concentrating on finishing a nice warm scarf for me here in Munich--it's already very cold!

Back in Munich!

So the Germans are also a bit puzzled as to why Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. Greg and I got a kick out of this front page picture in the paper. The headline reads: "Obama Is Not the Only One Surprised by the Nobel Peace Prize."

We took a beautiful walk through the city today, partially to help us both overcome our jet lag. It's still very green here and there are lots of flowers.



The trees are just beginning to change colors.



We discovered some interesting statues as well.



Soon I'll post a picture of the sweater I finished before returning to Munich--it's actually the one I have wrapped around my waist above.

An Odd Assortment of Books

Book news:

Shakespeare dringend gesucht, by Heinar Kipphardt, 1953. A satirical play about a theater director who is looking for the next Shakespeare. The play was a huge success in socialist East Germany in the 1950s in spite of its, or because of its, palatable social criticism. It's actually quite funny.

Black Elk Speaks, as told to John G. Neihardt, 1932. Even though I already knew that the European-Americans completely wiped out the American Indians, reading this book felt like learning about that fact for the first time. It's devastating to read, but very worthwhile.

Ehen in Philippsburg, by Martin Walser, 1957. Walser's first novel is about a young man who establishes himself in the prosperous German society of the 1950s. All the relationships, including his own, are unhealthy, to put it mildly. Walser's skill in writing ironic prose is fantastic.

An Introduction to English Sentence Structure by Andrew Radford, 2009. This sounds like it's easy to read--after all, it's an introduction. Well, it was very difficult as it is actually about Chomsky's Mimimalism. I learned a lot!