Told You So!

See? This is what happens....


Your lovely girlfriend asks you nicely to try on the toe-up sock she's knitting for you. Then a day later, she knits a bit more (because she likes to knit and often) and asks you again nicely to try the sock on - so that she doesn't knit for another week to find out the stupid thing doesn't fit (like what we corrected last Friday). Another day and she begs you to try the friggin sock on, but you insist that at whatever point she asks is so terribly inconvenient that you couldn't possibly take 3 seconds to match the carefully increased toe to your foot.

Then, the girlfriend takes the damn sock off the needles - do you hear that one, boyo? OFF the needles and starts a pair of socks for herself (it's that veredelt mit Rostkastanian - processed with horse chesnuts wool that she's been dying to try since she gifted the first ball to her mother and had to wait a month to get back to the cool store in Erlangen). So, darling, hope your toes have some other way to stay warm during the last few cool days of May, because mine will be toastie-warm :)

And they're pretty darn cute, too!

Warming up the House!

We had a wee party last weekend:



And a bit of music:


There might have been some alcohol...


And this little piggy was waaaaay tastey!

proof

heehee

OMG It Hurts!!

Do you have any idea what it's like to buy a house and have like no money and then find out that Opal has started doing silk sock yarn? Do you? Do you??
Even worse is that my last bit of renovation money has me doing that am-I-going-to-be-a-bad-girl glance between internet ordering and IKEA. Hmmm, if I just use my old busted wardrobe for one month more, then I can afford to get some silk sock yarn, because we all know that the 8kilograms up in the attic, ahem....Wool Studio is not going to keep me busy for longer than 2 hours, right? But, if I don't investigate Opal's new silk sock yarn now, how will I be able to make informed buying decisions in the future - seriously, yarn shopping isn't as easy as it looks. It's more of a science...

Speaking of studios, here's my sneak preview. Can't show off too much because Aaron's staying there right now and a lot is hidden by sleeper sofa, traveling cases and 26 year-old nephew necesseties, but soon, My Precious will be fully organized and operable. Then, I'll be saying, "IKEA who?"



Also, just updated the Goldy Family website with loads of pictures from this weekend.

Grill Boy

Our local superstore, Globus, has signs up advertising grills and charcoal briquets, the slogan is "Hard men, tender meat - the grilling season has begun!" LOL



Please note the Irishman won the argument for the charcoal grill - yeah, okay, it does taste pretty good ;)

I Scream, You Scream!

The ice cream truck pulls through the streets of Forchheim with a really annoying, old-fashioned bell. Kids beg loose change off their parents and chase down the fifteen-year old Volkswagen van. Once the van stops, a line of children contemplate their choice of frozen goodness. Then the kids, one by one, walk up to the window and order one or two scoops of gourmet Italian Ice. Yes, that's right, gourmet Italian ice - no third rate, year-old, chemical-filled popsicles here, it's flavors of cappucino, stacciatella, banana and strawberry hand-scooped into a light-crispy cone.

Lick, lick, lick...

Bubba

Chilly!

After those gorgeous couple of days last weekend, crappy weather came back with a bang. It just got steadily colder and rainier as the week wore on, until the weekend showed up with hail storms and steady downpours. Finally got some sun today, but its warmth is still hibernating somewhere....

Being the opportunist that I am, I took the cue to get some more Horse-chestnut processed sock yarn from my favoritest yarn shop in Erlangen. Aaaaand, the (hopefully!) last chilly weekend of the season deserves a big pot of Georgia's finest. One humungo pot of chili, a modest-sized 7 Layer Dip and an iron pan of cornbread from scratch made for a great gathering of neighbors and friends. Dusan and Denisa with Luka and Kai came over from across the street and Iveira and Neal with Patrick drove up form Nuremberg.



Guys stood around, drank beer and exchanged theories on the positioning of the doors and handles (shame there were no tires to kick...). Girls set the table, made a salad and unpacked mounds of crap into my new cabinets. This kitchen is about twice the size of my old one - and I've already got every niche filled. Isn't there a theory about buying a bigger house and having just as little free space as you did in the eensy two-bedroom apartment. I don't think I could ever manage to be a minimalist - that would mean less yarn, wouldn't it? Perish the thought!!!



I know this pic is a bit bright, but love the looks on everyone's faces :) Almost felt like Christmas having so much of our ex-pat family together for nibbles.



Almost forgot to mention that the reason we were invited over for fish to the neighbors the other night was to be the first to here the latest news: Mrs. Neighbor is pregnant :) Me and Mr. Neighbor (who plans to take parental leave for a couple of years) decided that these things are better done in pairs and wouldn't it just be fun if we had a baby at the same time and then could go pushing baby carriages around together in the park afterwards. Irishman isn't so sure...

Maybe we should talk about things like this once the kitchen is finished - doesn't everything seem so much more manageable when you have a complete kitchen? If that Irish boy reads this blog, I'm not going to have the cabinet doors finished for the next 5 years - LMAO.

The Tender Story of a Girl and her Philips Vacuum

If there is one piece of advice I could give you it would be to wear sunscreen, ha! just kidding. No, but seriously, if there is one piece of advice I can give to anyone anywhere who is thinking of building their kitchen together themselves: Make sure whoever is doing the wood-cutting is doing it at least 10 miles away from the kitchen!! I'm lucky I've only got half the drawers and shelves in - I just spent the better part of an hour on my stomach on the loveliest kitchen tiles in the world vacuuming sawdust from the distant recesses under the cabinets. Gotta say it's been one big fat learning experience.




At the very least, we made progress and I will be able to start filling cabinets and drawers before you can say "moving boxes". The Irishman is teasing me that he's going to hook up the water to the sink tonight. But I know better than to get my hopes up for any part of this kitchen to move quickly. Yes, I know, poor me - getting a new kitchen and it just can't be fast enough. Ha! You try waiting 2 months while scratching 50 year-old wallpaper off of ceilings and it just so happens that I could live in a bombed-out hovel and feel perfectly at home if I only had a countertop and working stove and sink. This not having a kitchen thing is like having live wires hanging out of the walls. I'm just going to feel all on-edge until I can stop cooking with the telephone and washing my dishes in the bathroom sink. Is there anything weirder than washing dishes in the bathroom sink?



If I could hook this crap up myself, I'd have stayed up all night last night finishing the one room in the house that I could live in forever (bit of an emotional connection to food there, I'm afraid - I blame Harry's Farmers Market). I feel like the dog in the Beggin Strips commercial; running around because he can smell something good and then he finds the bag and screams "I can't read!!!" because I can't hook up electric water heaters and sinks. Does anyone else remember that commercial? It always cracked me up. And then, of course, anytime the black'n white pulled up next to me at a stoplight, I'd mimick the dog "I smell bacon - bacon! bacon! bacon! bacon!"

Sally to Harry: Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?!

Right then, enough random memories and showing off how much TV I watch...maybe I'll just go unpack all the pipes and line them up on the counter top so that Irishplumberboy can hook things up that much quicker tonight. Helpful, ain't I?

God bless the neighbors who just called and invited us to dinner!! That gives the tall blond another day's grace...

Get Your Groove On

This gave me a good giggle - had to share!! Can just imagine my nephew sitting in front of his computer doing something similar LMAO

Kaputt

First picture of the day - the water wheel at Ebermannstadt.




We drove out this morning for an antique fleamarket. Weather was absolutely perfect and a couple hour's stroll through the city was a nice relief from moving and unpacking and even yielded some incredible results:




I found an antique lazy kate - how cool is that?

Also took some pictures of the scenery - the town is located smack dab in the middle of the Franconian Switzerland and only 15 minutes away from the house.







We were home in time for lunch (if I had a kitchen, I would have made something lovely - har har). Speaking of which, we finished hanging the wall cabinets last night and have all the other cabinets put together. Plumber and carpenter are coming tomorrow - I pray to God there is a kitchen in my house when I come home from work.

If not, then we're taking another walk up the street to the Kellerwald for dinner. About 20 minutes up the hill from the house is where all the beer kegs are stored in cellars dug into the mountain. Sitting under the trees, drinking beer and eating wurst and sauerkraut and the world just slips away.... until you stand up to walk home and realize that "up the hill" really means "scaling the mountainside" and your legs are kaputt :)




Talking about kaputt, that totally describes me after this weekend - about time to have a thrown down with my comforter. Nighty, night!