Month: February 2018

Mad Hatters' Link Party

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Here are the hats I made/posted about this month:

5 :: Two of a kind – the Slouch

6::Two of a kind – the Bean

7 :: Ribbed Rib Hat (go to the post to download the free pattern for this one)

8 :: It seems my posts are a week off. But since  know in a few weeks I’ll be very busy and possibly struggling to stay on course with knitting one hat a week, I’ll leave it like it is for now. Gives me a bit of breathing room. Sneak preview of #8:

I just finished # 9 yesterday. You’ve seen the start of that one in this post, but it will get its own post too soon. I will cast on for #10 as soon as I finish this post 😉

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52 hats:: 7 – Ribbed Rib Hat (free pattern)

~ Maggie ~ 7 Comments

(this post contains affiliate links)

It’s rather simple, but I like it. It’s the kind of hat my husband likes to wear. I even think I’ll pack it into our carry-on luggage for him if the weather in Holland keeps doing what it’s doing now (so cold! so happy to be away from it!).

Want to make one too? You can downlaod the free pattern here

Please tell me if there is anything unclear or wrong with it. I’d also like to hear from you if you actually make a hat with this pattern 😉

Making, right now:

I actually finished hat #8, but I still have to take pictures of it (It’s not easy to take pictures of hats on your own head. I need to find myself a mannequin head model or something like that (the one I linked doesn’t ship to Curaçao, but maybe I will be able to find one in Holland)

Working on hat #9 now. It’s not going smoothly, this one, but maybe I want it to be too perfect. So right now I’m practicing the art of letting go of perfection… 😉

This Wednesday I’ll be hosting my monthly Mad Hatters’ Link Party. Feel free to visit and post any hats you made last month.

Linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday and Frontier Dreams’ Crafting On

Three Things

~ Maggie ~ 10 Comments

(this post contains affiliate links)

1 :: I took this picture in a local shop. These are American sheet sets, but in the Netherlands (and Curaçao) we usually just state one or two person size and measurements. This is so helpful, so thoughtful and so wrong. 😉

2 :: Iguanas. We sort of like them. Not as a pet, but we don’t mind seeing them in the wild. Fascinating creatures.
I had a chance to eat one last Sunday, but I chickened out and ordered beef stew 😉

3 :: Since we’ve arrived here I’ve been using this hairbrush. I love it. It gets tangles out really easy. Even when I have undone my braid to let my hair dry after a swim in the ocean (so salt and wind have been doing their thing with it), it doesn’t hurt to brush it out. I wish I had had this brush a lot earlier!
I decided to have a pixy cut a few years ago, after staying on Curaçao for a month. My hair was just too dry and damaged by the salt and the wind to keep it long. But I never really liked the short hair on me and let it grow out. I hope this brush will save me from having to cut it off again.

52 hats :: 5 + 6 – Two of a kind

~ Maggie ~ 8 Comments

My fifth and sixth hat were two variations on the same pattern, a slouchy one and a normal fit.

The first one had me knitting on the edge. This was all the yarn I had left to finish it… (and that was after cheating on decreases on the top: I skipped a few rows I should have knit to make it flatter).

Anyway, It actually turned out nice, I think. I added two rows of YO and two rows purls to give it a bit more movement and texture and that worked out great.

I liked that texture so much I decided to use it on the next hat too. Same yarn, different color. Shorter brim and no increasing after the brim, but the rest is the same. I thought I’d like this one better, but it seems slouchy hats are growing on me cause I prefer the slouchy one.

Which one do you like best? And what are you up to these days? Any hats?

(linking up with Frontier Dreams’ Crafting On)

Right now

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Right now I am…

:: looking back at a wonderful weekend

We started it on Friday evening like we do most weekends: by visiting Seaquarium Beach, have a bite to eat and a few drinks, while watching the sun set into the sea. We never get tired of that!

On Saturday we worked all day and it felt good. It’s silly how chosing to work can make such a difference in how it feels… T. dove into getting to know a different programming language then he normally uses and I worked on my Dutch blog and my book. Yes, that’s right. I’m afraid to jinx myself if I write it down, but it seems my writer’s block is finally over!

On Sunday we drove to the west part of the island and visited Shete Boka (Seven Coves), a national park on the North Coast we love very much.

:: knitting

Hats, of course. Working on #8. Note to myself: Bring more yarn next time. I still love knitting hats, but I’d also like to pick up something else every once in a while.

:: reading

I’m really enjoying the columns a famous Dutch writer (mostly known for her children’s books) wrote in the fifties. I love the way she plays with language and I also love that she dares to write what she thinks, even if it was something less acceptable in those days (she was a feminist). It’s kind of inspiring.

I also read a book by Andreas Eschbach, but it seems that there isn’t an English version (I read it in Dutch). To bad. I think he’s one of the best writers of our time. Trying to find English versions I also found out that a lot of his books aren’t translated in Dutch either (he’s German). I can read German if I really want to, but it’s not a fun language to read… Still, his stories are great, so maybe I will, sometime.

At the moment I’m reading and writing both in Dutch and English and I’m trying to learn Papiamento (the local language on Curaçao). I think that’s enough languages in one mind for a while.

Since I keep hearing that the Matchmakers’ series I enjoyed so much is comparable to Janet Evanovitch’s books, I’ve started reading “One for the money” on Saturday. I like it sofar, but I can’t download the rest of the series within my e-book subscription, so I can’t read the whole series.

When I finish it I plan to start reading an historic novel about Curaçao. I feel like I should learn more about the place we want to settle, so this is a good start (I know novels aren’t the best source, but this is written by an historian, so I assume he does have his facts straight).

:: writing

Lots of articles in Dutch. I hope to be back to more active blogging in English soon, but for now I’m stuck with Dutch, it seems. I’m also looking forward to keep going with my book.

:: making lists

And lists of lists to make. Hmn. Relax, Maggie, relax (oh, I was so right to pick that as my word for 2018)! But there’s so much to think about. We return to Holland in about a month, but only to sell our house and to take care of lots of small things. And then (we hope in July, but it may take us longer) we’ll return to Curaçao to permanently live here. O my!

We did decided to give ourselves two years here in rentals and then we’ll evaluate if we want to stay or return (or move on to some other place).

:: thinking

About this blog and where to go with it. But also thinking that maybe for now it’s enough to enjoy what it is now. It’s fun to write about knitting and life. And I love the connections and comments. But then again, there’s so much more I’d to write about and…

Relax, Maggie, relax… 😉

Bon Siman! Wishing you all a great week.

(linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday)

Three Things

~ Maggie ~ 8 Comments

1. Carnaval is a very, very big deal on Curaçao. I have to admit that we don’t really “feel” it. In Holland we live (and were born and raised) “above the rivers” (the north and middle of the country) and that part of the country doesn’t really do Carnaval (mostly protestants). The south (mostly Catholics) does, but we… well, we just don’t get it.
So we didn’t really go and see. We also didn’t end up watching the Gran Marcha (big parade) by accident like we did four years ago. But we did catch a bit of it since we were in the town’s centre to have a drink. And we enjoyed watching the people coming and going from the parade. For hours. But that had mostly to do with not being able to go home since the place we parked our car was blocked by the parade 😉

2. From Carnaval Curaçao went straight into Valentines day. Also a big deal here. We usually don’t do anything (hmn, we sound boring, don’t we?), but somehow the excitement here is catching. Four years ago we went on a bit of adventure, this year we spent an afternoon on the beach relaxing, because we were too tired for adventure. We did have diner at the very same restaurant we had diner four years ago though.

3. Things are starting to feel “normal” here. Including the climate. I still feel blessed to be here instead of in the cold, but yesterday I ordered hot tea at a beach bar. It was raining, temperatures dropped to 25 degrees Celsius (77 F) and I was shivering. Ahem. Don’t remind me that I have to go back to Holland in about a month, when temperatures can still be very low…

Linking up with Carole Knits’ Three on Thursday

Making, right now

~ Maggie ~ 8 Comments

Right now I’m making…

:: hats

Of course.
I sort of lost count and I don’t have much time this morning (this is just a quick update), but I think I’m still on track or even ahead with my 52 hats challenge. I have been knitting almost everyday, despite all the other things I’ve been working on this week

:: home

Last week, we moved. We’re no longer staying at our friends’. It was all quite sudden, but we rented a small (tiny) apartment in a neighborhood we’ve loved ever since we first visited the island. It’s a long term rent, for at least a year. And yes, that does mean that living here permanently is becoming more and more a real thing. I’ll talk some more about that later.

:: rhythm

I find myself going back and forth between vacation mode and stressing out. Last week I was supposed to work on the bookkeeping and taxes, but we spent three days packing, moving, shopping and cleaning (I can’t feel at home somewhere if I haven’t cleaned it myself – I know, it sounds like OCD and maybe it is).
Still, I managed to finish the things I really needed to do, so now I can move on to finding a rhythm that includes writing (both blogs and fiction) in my weekly routines, while still leaving room for impromptu beach visits and other fun stuff.

It’s funny to find that my routines here aren’t all that different from the ones I had back in Holland. I still do most of my cleaning on Mondays (got to get that over with asap) and the weekly bookkeeping on Tuesdays (need to make sure I get to that every week). Wednesdays are for grocery shopping, leaving me two days for the rest.

Oh! Writing this makes me see where my thinking is off. It seems my weeks are very full, but in fact they’re not. Cleaning, book keeping and grocery shopping doesn’t take all day. I have most of the afternoons free for other things to do. I think I need to start viewing my days in AM and PM to get a better idea of my planning. Will be working on that…

For now I’m wishing you all a great week.

Bon Siman! (as they say here on Monday – it means  “good week” and I love how positive that is compared to the “I hate Mondays” attitude so many people seem to adopt nowadays)

linking up with Jeannie Gray Knits’ Makers’ Monday

Three things

~ Maggie ~ 6 Comments

Three decisions came from all that thinking I did this week.

1. I will visit and comment on all the blogs that link up in my Mad Hatters’ Linkup Party but apart from that I’m going to take a little break from blogging, blogreading and commenting next week. I have to take care of my bookkeeping tasks. I’m not too far behind, but I have been distracted by a lot of things and blogging is one of them. Even though my husband is my employer, bookkeeping is my paying job and I need to get back on top of it all.

2. I love, love, love the knitting blog community and would like to do nothing else but participate (and knit) all day, but I really need to step back a little bit. Keeping up with four link-ups each week (and creating my own) is actually quite a bit of work (if you’re a perfectionist like me). Not to mention continuously hatching plans to grow and maybe even monetize my blog(s). I have to accept that now is not the time to do that.

I think I’ll do a “making, right now” post on Mondays (and link up with appropriate parties when I have time to actually visit other blogs and comment on them) and maybe a three things post on Thursdays when I feel like it (and again link up when I have time to visit and comment).

3. 52 hats. Oh yes, I will knit them and I will blog about them, but I think I’ll just round them up by the end of each month, sharing notes, not real patterns (writng those is also a lot of work).

Well, that’s it. Putting it out here to hold myself accountable. Not really liking it (oh, the dreams and plans and ideas I have for my blogs and writing!), but I have to remind myself that I’m still recovering from a major burn-out. I had a good reason to choose “Relax” as my word for this year…

So next time I’m lying on a beach chair I may actually be capable to let it all go and really rest and enjoy instead of mulling over things like I did last Saturday…
I mean, if I can’t relax in a place like this, how can I ever relax anywhere else?

(you can find more people posting Three Things at Carole Knits)