I'm back from my breather, and it was a wonderful time - there was holiday knitting, and there was bouldering, and some quality shopping for things I cannot get here, and there were walks in sunny weather and a bit of mudlarking and there was cake.

Lots of cake.

[caption id="attachment_4080" align="alignnone" width="446"] That, by the way, is the Afternoon Tea for two people in the Salvation Army Café near St Paul's. Which was delicious.


Somehow, British cake is considerably different from German cake, and somehow I have not yet managed to copy it. I probably have not tried hard enough (read: properly, using a recipe from Britain and actually sticking to what it says) - but when we are across the Channel, I end up eating lots of cake and really enjoying it, and scones with clotted cream as well.

So there was cake, and scones, and more cake. Too much for my own good, probaby... but I regret nothing.

There was also a streak of luck in timing, and we got to see the first female Doctor Who right when it was aired in Britain, which was totally awesome (and of course accompanied by a nice cup of tea). It's probably a good thing we only discovered quite late that we could watch older episodes of Dr Who in our apartment, or there might have been some binge-watching to the detriment of sleeptime (which was very, very much needed).

What there was not, though, were those lovely German Heinzelmännchen who take care of all the work back home while one is away, so on the list of "urgent things to do", getting emails and shop orders on their way was right up there on top with "go grocery shopping or starve".

Now there's some Textile Forum stuff to be taken care of, and Google has let me know that there seem to be some issues with the mobile version of my webpage. So if you've been trying to read stuff on the blog with your mobile implement and have gotten a load of 404 errors - I'm sorry about that, I am now aware of it, and I am trying to fix it. (If you should run into any errors, or have any other issues with these pages, please don't hesitate to tell me. It's amazing how many things can remain undetected even if you try from time to time to make sure everything is working alright - so I always appreciate getting a hint if something is not!)

As is usual when you travel, you discover things that are very different from home, and things that are similar, and things that are almost the same.

In some ways, Finland seemed very similar to here - the people are friendly, but a little bit reserved as well, and they do like their privacy. You pay with Euros, and a lot of things in the touristy places are written in English as well as in Finnish and Swedish, so it's not hard to find one's way around.

Some things really prodded at our weird-receptors, though. Bakeries and hairdressers were one big thing. When you walk through a town or city here in Franconia, you come across a bakery about every second step, or so it feels - well, at least there's a lot of them. Whereas when you need a hairdresser, yes, you will find a few - but they are spread rather far apart, and you might have to search for one for a bit.

In Helsinki, this was reversed. We found about one single bakery that was similar to what we would have here, and that was it - there were cafés selling baked goods, but nothing like what we are used to from home. On the other hand, every third shop seemed to be a hairdresser's, sometimes a wellness or beauty shop something, and quite often there was a shop for evening and bridal wear right beside it.

Speaking of bakeries and thus, implicitly, cake, prices for baked goods were a real shock to me. You can get a small piece of cake for about twice or three times the money that will buy you a large piece here. Yes, in a café. Which means I still grin when going to the bakery after coming back home, as it is so nice to get really affordable bread or cake!

Lunch buffets, though, are a thing in Finland, and they are quite good value for money; buffets actually all tended to be good value, especially compared to the prices for single dishes or single snacks bought in the same places. And just like our guidebook had warned us, it was not so easy to get traditional Finnish food in a restaurant. We also were curious about the non-touristy restaurant-y traditional food - so we did what people living there would do: shop in the supermarket and buy TV dinners.


That was a fish dish with potatoes and a dish from cabbage, rice and minced meat. I liked both of them a lot, and they were definitely Finnish (at least the package promised it).

We also went bouldering in Helsinki, and that was another thing with a good dose of weird, as the walls there were... smooth. Slick. Laquered wood. Which meant that instead of getting some resistance when placing your foot on the wall, you'd get... nothing, except a squeaking sound. That, plus the many kinds of holds we were not used to at all, plus them being rather small and bad, and lots of reachy moves made it very, very hard for me to get up the routes. I did manage a few, but wow, it does make me appreciate our home bouldering gym a lot more now!

[caption id="attachment_3321" align="alignnone" width="490"] Shiny walls at the bouldering gym in Helsinki. Note the light reflection on the right side of the wall!


 

After the WorldCon, we had a bit more than a week left in Helsinki - plenty of time to get to know the city a little better. So we went to see the sights.

There were, of course, churches, among them the famous one below ground, set into the rock, and the cathedral.

[caption id="attachment_3318" align="alignnone" width="922"] The Cathedral. Big, white, shiny - but mostly from the outside.


We took walks around, enjoying the many green stretches (always with rocks in!) and the lots and lots of bike paths (even though we didn't rent bikes).


We also enjoyed the beautiful houses in the Finnish Art Nouveau quarters - that definitely is a distinctive variation of Art Nouveau, just like the guidebooks promised.


To us, it seemed like sort of regular Art Nouveau mixed up with a slightly romantic "Castle Architecture" - think fairytale or Disney castles.


And we also visited Suomenlinna, which is a chain of small islands right before the coast of Helsinki, once used as fortification. Part of it is still in use by the military, and the rest is mostly museums and cafes or restaurants. The museums include a submarine, which we also visited (as the Most Patient Husband of Them All has never been inside one before).


We also got to see barnacle geese!

Here we are, rolling inexorably towards the end of the year and the longest night of the year, so here are a few odds and ends if you're still looking for stuff to add into your personal mix of seasonal things.

First of all, there's this slightly different song (that has totally become an earworm for me this year), from the other hemisphere where it's cherry season now, and everything is nice and warm (or even hot) and summery:


If buying stuff and giving it to friends and family is part of your mix, you might still be looking for something? The Yarn Harlot, it seems, is way too swamped this year to give holiday gift suggestions (and good for her that they've cut down on everything they don't really love to do in this season)... but John Scalzi has kept up with his tradition and posted a five-part guide for holiday shopping that lives in the comments, where creators and fans tell you about their things:

Part 1 - Traditionally Published Books
Part 2 - Non-Traditionally Published Books
Part 3 - Creative Gifts (arts, crafts, music, ...)
Part 4 - Fan FavouritesPart 5 - Charities
Or maybe you'd just enjoy a gratuitous picture of the silly "stuff on my cat" variety? Here you go:

[caption id="attachment_2083" align="alignnone" width="689"] One cat was slightly irritated for the taking of this picture.

Another year is over - it really flew by... and today, my calendar reminded me, gently, that it is blogiversary day. I started this blog in December 2008, when I was starting to work freelance full-time, so it is turning seven today... which means that I have actually been blogging for about a fifth of my life.

It was a wild and crazy year, 2015, with 205 blog posts up till today; with not only one, but two books published (the Beast, which I did together with Gillian, and Working Medieval Gold Embroidery, which I did on my own). I went to a few yarn fairs or other fairs, there was a Textile Forum again, and there also was the Great Relaunch of the blog and website.

I had no huge museum project to do this year, but there were a number of presentations, demonstrations and workshop, and plenty of work went into development of a few new things for the shop - spindle sticks in different types of wood and the large gold embroidery kit that I had been thinking about for years already, to just name two of the things.

There were also, you might have noticed, a few more pictures than before, as one of my friends told me off for not posting piccies often enough... which may have led to a few more gratuitous cat pictures thrown in with the others.

Now the year is winding down, and though I have a few more things that need to be done (as in I can hear that whooshing sound of a deadline rushing by), I can also start winding down a bit already. The seasonal baking is well on its way to being finished (yesterday saw the gingerbread baking being completed, apart from a little chocolate coating that still needs to be applied), we've made most of the plans for the holidays, and the weather is also starting to get more wintery.

[caption id="attachment_2071" align="alignnone" width="677"] Nuremburg-style gingerbread, all baked, chocolate-coated up and waiting to go into its storage tin. The choc cooled off a little quickly, leading to the matteness and white layer on top. It will still taste fine, though - and my baking has a clear sequence of priorities that goes a) really yummy, b) lots of it and c) looking okay.


It was a good year, 2015. There's still a little bit of it left, and I plan to enjoy every little bit of it - I hope you will enjoy it right along with me!

If you've been wondering about the unannounced blog silence yesterday... that was because of a relapse into my childhood days.

The little town where I grew up has a festivity each year, something like a country fair, perhaps - there's a parade of the school children through town, and some dances and sports things for and by the children, and then there's the fair area which is full of fun rides and booths where you can buy food, and a big tent (the Bierzelt) for sitting in (if you don't mind very loud music, that is). And a place where you can buy helium-filled balloons.

The fair runs for two days - Sunday and Monday - and everything is closed on Monday, because it's like an extra Sunday. It also feels like an extra Sunday, which is why I completely forgot to blog yesterday. After a few years of not being able to make it to the Wiesenfest, I managed to go home again this year for the two days. Most of my time was spent at the place where you can buy balloons, helping to knot them after filling with the gas.

My parents have been part of this since it started, so I have fond memories of the place, and the people, and I've always liked helping there. Let me tell you: I have knotted many balloons over the years, and I can knot a balloon very, very quickly.

I came back and it was just like always this year - a lot of fun, and on Monday a lot of knotting of balloons. A huge, huge lot of knotting, because one of the fair's traditions (and tradition is an important thing for this one) is children taking one or two balloons into town on Monday evening, when it's the official end of the fair, and letting them fly.



It is a spectacular thing to watch when almost two thousand balloons in all colours rise up into the sky. It's also slightly weird to know that you have held a substantial percentage of these balloons in your hands... and that everyone letting go of a balloon has done a good deed as well, since the money from selling them goes to charitable organisations that help children in need.

So this is why you got no blog post yesterday - because in my personal universe, it was totally a day off and everyone of course knows that nothing work-wise ever happens on Wiesenfest-Montag, because for all practical purposes it's just like an extra Sunday. (And now you know that, too.)

There we are, Monday morning. Time to start telling you about all the things that happened during the blogging break... and the first thing is: our holidays.

This year for our holidays, we went to England again. Now, me and the most patient husband of them all like to have vacations with an, um, active element to them, such as going for a several-day canoe paddle... or travelling with the tandem.

If you've been a long-time reader, you might know that we own a semi-recumbent tandem, a perfect machine for travelling. We've done two England cycling trips before, and this time, we wanted to have a go in the south - Kent, Sussex, maybe even the Isle of Wight. We prepared the trip by getting Sustrans maps, loading all kinds of data onto the satnav, checking out what English Heritage and National Trust things would lie in the region, and finally went off for a two-week holiday.

What we had underestimated were, of course, the hills. Now we knew that England is only flat in tiny areas (quickly travelled through) and goes up and down otherwise. We're both not afraid of climbing a hill or a large hill... but the short and steep inclines in the inland of Kent and East Sussex do drain one's legs quickly if you have a bike with some weight to it. And with all our stuff, plus the rather heavy build of the tandem itself, it's a significant amount of weight! We were planning to camp, so our gear included the tent, mats, sleeping bags, and a full camping kitchen including a stash of emergency food supplies. Alltogether, with our personal gear and food and water loaded onto the bike, it weighs about 70 kg - that's a lot of weight to pedal up a 10% or more slope.

So we didn't get as far as the Isle of Wight. We did, however, manage to see Brighton (including some sea-bathing, though not directly in Brighton). We also saw lots and lots of beautiful vistas across cliffs, lands, fields; rode through dozens and dozens of streets that were flanked by trees so dense and high it turned them into green tunnels; went into gardens and old churches and houses. We saw Dover Castle (twice!), happened across a band of change-ringers (to our great delight), and most of the time we were very, very hot as we managed to get the full heatwave that England had in July.

It was, altogether, lovely. We met lots of nice people, had lots of nice food, slept incredible amounts of time ("oh, it's dusk already... hm... we could go and sleep?") and took in wonderful, wonderful landscape and scenery. We also made the most of our Overseas Visitor Pass from English Heritage... and not so much from our National Trust one. And you can totally save yourself the money for buying an overseas membership for the Camping and Caravanning club if you are going to use a tent - not worth it at all.

More detail? Here you go.
We have had so many good times with the English Heritage pass that it was a no-brainer to get one for this holiday. Really, it's amazing value - if you visit Dover Castle twice, you are already saving money if you bought the pass. And it's easy to spend two days (or two half-days) at that place, there's so much to see. When you buy the OVP, you get all the info stuff you would receive with a regular one-year membership, so you can look up all the details for all the places in a book.
If you are still in doubt - don't be. We usually broke even on our second or third day of holidays with the pass, even if travelling on the bike. And it gives you plenty of side destinations, all with clean and nice toilets, friendly people, gift shops to browse and fairly-priced, good food in their tearooms.

The National Trust has lovely parks as well as stunning houses and gardens, and they also offer a temporary pass. Unfortunately, though, you do not get a book with info, and all you have to plan with is a (rough) map that tells you whether it's a landscape, a house, or a garden. There are no opening times, no descriptions, no prices for regular entry (which would help in planning, as the price is usually a good hint on the size of the property, and thus the time you should plan to visit it). The only way to get this information is to pick up one of the info leaflets for the individual properties and places - and these are not always available in the spots you happen into. We thus had a hard time planning, and ended up not visiting as many of the places as we had hoped to (also because we were not cycling as far as we had originally planned to go, so it's not completely the fault of NT). The staff, though, was all incredibly nice, and we were even given a proper info book at one place, when we complained about our difficulties. We were also allowed to have a walk through the garden at one place even though we came there on a day where it was closed, having cycled a good distance just to visit this place.
So... if you are planning to do a sightseeing trip with bicycles or similar slow transportation, you will probably want to look up everything in the Internet before and take notes - including notes on opening times, which can vary immensely from property to property. The parks and landscapes are usually free to visit, so you might not even need to buy a pass.

And in regards to the Camping club... not only do you get no info, you also get an unfriendly answer when you ask for more info, or for the reason why they are so stingy with their stuff. As most of the places they have are very hard to find without the big book of sites, it was a waste of money and we will definitely not do that again. Also, they have plenty of places that do not take tents, and it's a hassle to find out which ones do from via the websites, if it's at all possible.

But that really was the only fly in the ointment of a holiday trip full of sun, fun, and beautiful things. Was it exhausting to cycle in England? Hell yes. Would we do it again? Hell yes, too.