Second Hand Books

 I love buying things second hand. It's a lot cheaper than buying things brand new, it helps reducing waste and most importantly, the thought of holding something in your hands that someone used to cherish is very comforting. 

That last point holds especially true for second hand books. Seeing the little notes that former owners left in it always feels like sharing a small moment of intimacy with a stranger. Someone before me held this exact book in their hands, their eyes glancing over the same letters, the same words as mine. 

Daniel Goleman, Emotionale Intelligenz

Especially when certain passages are underlined, I start wondering why they chose to highlight exactly that part of the text? What made it so important to them, what was going through their head in that moment? 

 

Even if these things might seem rather trivial, and maybe they really are, it is things like this that make me feel a little connected to the previous reader. It shows that someone was here, a proof of their existence.

Aldous Huxley,  Brave New World

Daniel Goleman, Emotionale Intelligenz

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

Siri Hustvedt , Was ich liebte (With chinese annotations)

The third picture shows a page of the drama "A Raisin in the Sun". Every few years our school goes through the books that are lying around in the storage room, and throws away those that aren't needed anymore. Most of them are text books, but there are a few novels amongst them here and there (I have no idea how they even got there). That year our class assisted with this whole process of sorting out, and we had to throw away a ton of books, which was a little heartbreaking. While I had no use for the textbooks, I did take a few novels and such with me. "A Raisin in the Sun" was one of them. The book must have belonged to one of the students before, which is why the book was full of little annotations, translating words and analyzing scenes. 

It was an interesting insight into the way someone else worked with the book. I could see all the words that they didn't know before, and the thoughts they had on the different characters, how they interpreted their relationships. This also reminded me of the books I got from my mother, with which she tried to learn German. They are filled with little translations, and you can follow the path of her slowly learning the language, word for word. There is something incredibly human about it. 

 

Oliver Sacks, der Mann der seine Frau mit einem Hut verwechselte

Lastly, I also found a few books with little messages written at the front. I couldn't quite make out of all them, but it still adds a personal touch to the book. 

This one translates to: "For Doris, best wishes for continued success and happiness in your apprenticeship from Martina (...), Neurology internship, (...), 03.08.2007". 

It must have been a gift from a neurologist, to someone who did her internship at her clinic. I wonder, what became of Doris, if she ever finished her apprenticeship? Are both of them still in contact? Clearly, they must have had a good relation, if Martina gifted her a book? And I wonder, what did Doris think of the book? Did she like it?

It does feel a little weird, almost intrusive even, to hold something that was meant as a gift for someone else. These little messages were never meant for me, they weren't written with me as a reader in mind.

And yet, I am now the one holding the book in my hand, and getting to read it, giving the book a second life, apprectiating the little traces previous owners left behind.

Paul Celan, Die Niemandsrose/Sprachgitter

Maren Gottschalk, der geschärfte Blick

Fair isle sweater

 Hello again!

Yesterday I wrote a little about the sweater that I'm currently working on. Here it is!

It's halfway done by now, all it's missing is the main body.

As I mentioned, this project came with a lot of hurdles, and the hardest part isn't even over yet. 

I first got the idea for this when I was browsing Pinterest for some clothing inspiration and I stumbled upon lots of very cute sweaters. Buying them brand new however is rather expensive, so I'd thought that I'd just make my own one, where I could even tweak it a bit to fit my tastes perfectly. 

I was inspired by the picture of the sweater shown above, so I quickly did some research on how one would proceed to make something like this. I tried to reverse engineer the color chart of the sweater, and ended up with the chart on the right. Of course, I wouldn't be able to make it look identical to the original sweater, since that was probably made by knitting, and mine would be done with crochet, where the stitches are a little bit tilted. 

Fair isle crochet seen from the other side

While doing my research online, I found out that there are numerous ways to do color work in crochet, from fair isle to intarsia. In the end, fair isle seemed to be the best fit for this project, and it is also most commonly used when making sweaters. And so I started to plan the layout of my sweater, orienting myself on an Youtube tutorial for knitting fair isle sweaters, and a sweater of this sort that I already owned. I also noticed that there were surprisingly little resources for sweaters of this kind using crochet. I found one tutorial on Youtube, but I didn't quite like it, since the colorwork only extended to the parts of the arms, and the rest was in one color. I should later learn the hard way, why this was the case.

 And so I planned the whole sweater using the instructions from the knitting video, measured the lengths of the different parts I'd need and calculated how much yearn I'd need. I decided to use a size 3,5 Polyacryl yarn from Schachenmayr, and ordered it from German online shop for wool supplies. 

It all arrived within a week and I was so excited that I immediately got started. However, I soon realized something. When knitting fair isle sweaters, one knits the whole body first, and then cuts two slits on the sides to sew the sleeves onto. The technique one uses to cut holes into knitted fabric is called steeking. It turns out that steeking isn't really a thing with crochet, something I should probably have realized earlier. While there are some ways to cut into crochet fabric, I only found little resources about it online, and it seemed to only work for horizontal cuts. For arm holes however, one would need vertical cuts. 

This is where the hard part began. I pondered a lot on how I should proceed and ended up with the following:

I made a chain loop on each side of the upper part of the sweater and sewed the sleeves to those. This way, both parts were connected a little by their corners. The next step will be doing the crochet in rows instead of rounds, always doing a little slip stitch at the end of each row, to connect it to the sleeve. 

This however means, that I will have to crochet from left to right half of the time, which is an absolute nightmare. We will see whether I manage to gather up the motivation to pull through with this. I'll keep you updated on this fun little project!

 -Tournesol 🌻

Last collar

I still haven't quite figured out how to customize the design of this blog yet, but I already wasted two hours just to tweak some colors so I won't waste any more time on that. (I accidentally made the titles invisible, help!!)

Yesterday I crochet another little collar, which I liked quite a lot. 

I followed this lovely pattern, just like for the other three collars I did. Initially, I was a little scared that it might end up being too small, however it's just the perfect size to fit around my neck! This makes it ideal for sweaters with collars that are a little higher than usual, but not quite turtlenecks (I'm not sure how these are called).

These are the other three little collars I made, the patterns are all from the same channel. (You can click on the images to get redirected to the pattern!) I'm honestly not quite satisfied with the second one, but I guess that's okay, considering it was one of my first attempts at this.

This is all the fine wool I have left, so I probably won't be able to do any little collars anymore (for now at least)! But this also means that I'll get to continue my sweater. I might make an entry about that project tomorrow. While it is a ton of fun to work on it, it definitely also case with a lot of difficulties. 

Anyways, that's it for today!

- Tournesol 🌻

Exciting beginnings

I guess this is going to be my first entry in this blog. 

I'm not very good with words, so please don't expect too much. In fact, please don't expect anything of value. 

Maybe there won't be anyone who'll read this. Maybe there will be people reading this first entry and never returning afterwards. Anyways, even if this isn't interesting enough to read for anyone, it will at least serve as a nice little archive of some sorts, for myself. Like a diary, documenting a part of my life. 

I've had two blogs before, both when I was around 8 years old. I just posted random stuff, most of it not even remotely interesting (as you would expect from an 8 year old). Unfortunately both of these were lost to time, and I don't have any of those texts anymore.

Maybe things haven't changed that much, I'm still just a little girl, typing silly texts into a PC and sharing them with the world wide web. I don't have a plan on what exactly I'll post in this blog yet; probably the things I crochet, some photography, my drawings, books I'm currently reading and just anything that interests me.

Anyways, I'll leave it at this for now. I can't wait to write my first real entry!! 

- Tournesol 🌻