Things that are keeping me busy

So, lots of things going on for me at the moment - nothing scary, just lots and lots and lots of interesting and/or fun stuff that's keeping me from blogging and sometimes even stitching! Mostly my own fault for getting over-excited with things too, oh well. But just as promised, let me give you a quick overview of how am wasting spending me time at the moment.

A - Master Thesis/Work
Well in theory, this should be not only the first, but also the biggest and most important point on the list, but to be honest, I'm being a little lazy at the moment. I hope that will change once there really is work to do, for now it just trial and error and trying to fixing some bugs, and I don't have a lot of patience for that :/ But I', doing to best to find my work rhythm, and getting on with stuff so I can finish by October/November as planned.

B - Gaming
Probably the REAL biggest time eater here. I'm still trying to get done with Final Fantasy XIV (well, not like you could actually finish it, but I just want the Platinum and then get over with it) so I'm investing quite some time to get ready for my last instances and trophies and stuff. Also some other games want to be played, I finally finished Okami (the HD remake on PS3, I also have the Wii-version but abandoned it halfway through some years ago - shame on me!). If you get the chance to play it, please to, it's such a charming game with it's Japanese brush-style graphics and everything. Then some mini games, like one with the most awesome title 'Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims in HD' AND I finally finished Assassin's Creed 2 today - jup, I [SPOILER]went to kill the Pope on EASTER and I'll probably go to hell for that[/SPOILER]. Lot's of other games still waiting for me, I'm doing my very best to finish them one by one, sigh.

C - Crocheting
Carfting-wise, I spent more time thinking about yearn and hooks and floss, fabric and needles. First, I wanted to get Felix' smartphone cover done, but that wasn't to be just yet: I was adamant about using this beautiful dark blue yarn that had been in my stash forever, and completely ignored the fact that it was more or less falling apart - I just crocheted reallyreally loose, and then the whole thing ended up being a good bit too big for Felix' S3 and also I had no way to safely fasten a belt loop. Oh well, I'll try again with some sturdier yarn eventually, and maybe figure out something else to do with what I have now. Instead I started making an oven mitten using Anchor Magic Line, one of the most beautiful (and most expensive) cottons I've ever used, and a pattern I had already done twice before (it was a free hand out at craft stores a while ago, and I promised Carla to type and translate it for her, so if you're interested as well...). I finished it yesterday, now onwards to new projects!

I also spent quite some time sorting through my remaining yarn-stash that was spread across half of the house, put it all together in one place and categorized everything. So after living in a big old mess for about a week, here's the result (still some mess left around the boxes, but at least everything is tidy inside them...):

 

So what do we have here....a) is yarn I have a decent amount of, enough to make something 'real'. Most of it was bought for specific project that didn't work out in the end (I frogged several balls of yarn from such projects while sorting...sadly, but had to be done) and that is now waiting for a new purpose. I have ideas for some of it, and am still looking for others. 2) is all the other yarn I have and that's either planned for smaller projects, or just so nice and fluffy and waiting to be used on Amigurumi or borders or something like that. Also a lot of really thin cotton a friend gave me once and of which I still don't know what to use it for, and two half-finished projects I decided to keep and pick up eventually. 3) is yarn that is to nice to through away, but of which I'm quite sure it will never be used for anything proper anymore - this is my leftover project, going to be either one big patchwork blanket or a few totes or something like that. 4) is assorted cotton I want to use for several oven mittens and oven cloths. 5) is just downright trash and some projects that weren't worth frogging, probably going to end up as filling for some future projects.



D - Movies/Shows
There was also a lot of movie/show watching going one once again, most of it together with Felix - since he's gone home, I did more gaming and less watching. So...we finally got Frozen on BlueRay two weeks ago (hadn't seen it in theater) and we already watched it three times (two times in German, once in English - German Olaf is much better in my opinion, and I love Elsa's singing voice, it's the same acress as Elphaba in the German Wicked cast, but for the rest of the cass I prefer the English actors, a guess) Also Tangled was on TV twice (which we also hadn't seen yet), and so we watched it - twice. We saw The Great Gatsby (same conclusion as with the book - brilliant acting/writing, but that story is way to depressing for my taste) and we rewatched 'Asterix and Obelix take on Cesar' - I'm not sure, how well known are these guys in the US? Never seen anything about them in English so far. We also started watching Betas, one of amazon's exclusively produced shows about a gang of App-developers in silicon valley...it's quite funny, but clearly aiming to be something like The Big Bang Theory, which it just can't reach. I hope I didn't forget anything here, but I guess that's it.

E - Reading
I usually read about half a dozen books in paralel, and I'm not even going to start on them before I'm done reading, but last week I did get my library card renewed used it to borrow 'Der Schrecksenmeister' by German author Walter Moers. I wish I had started reading his stuff earlier, it's just brilliant - it's like a parody on fantasy literature, but also a (though a little absord) fantastic fantasy novel itself. I'll go bring it back to library on Wednesday, and see if I can get any of his other works. As far as I gathered, Der Schrecksenmeister has been published in English as 'The Alchemaster's Apprentice', but I can't garantee that it's as brilliant as the original, of course.
I'm although going to mention something else here, although it doesn't actually qualify as 'reading': Thanks to Carly, I decided to gice audio books a try. Thankfully, our library has quite a lot of them, both physical copies and digital downloads, and I'm trying both at the moment. The last train ride to Felix was spent listening to Iny Lorentz' 'The wandering Harlot', and it was quite fun - no literal masterpiece, but niece to listen to. Right now I'm listening to Astrid Fritz' 'Die Hexe von Freiburg' (The with of Freiburg, but I don't think there is a translated version of this book), which is quite interesting because Freiburg is actually the town I was born and still live in. I still prefer reading myself, but audio books are absolutely an option for historical novels or crime stories and stuff like that, which I like, but don't love as much as my other genres.

F - Stuff
Well of course there has been also other suff, like meeting friends, going to an awesome 20s party, shopping, trying to get through the mess that is my room, and so on, but I think I said everything that's insteresting, and this post is already to long as it is. IHSW post will be on tomorrow, monday after Easter is another holiday here so I'll just call it a long weekend, I guess. So...see you, and also thanks for everyone's comments, I still haven't figured out why my broser keeps eating my answers. Carla, I'm glad you got your stitching-mojo back, Nancy, your Tully is lovely, Krystal, don't worry, I'm sure we will catch up stash-wise eventually, everyone else: thanks a lot for reading and commenting, I appriciate every single one of you!