Stitch and Kvetch

Also ...

No Internet at home for a couple of weeks :-(

*Having* a home is brilliant, though!!

Things are happening!

Socks have been knit, a Clapotis has been knit (and then promptly forgotten at Mam's in Germany ...), we stopped house-hunting and instead found a lovely rental!

We're officially moving today! Our very own place for the first time in 3.5 years!!! No more one-room living, no more sharing, lots of space and privacy! Yaaaaaay! Our new home is a ginormous 2-bed apartment smack in the centre of Hoofddorp - my work commute is reduced by almost 1 hour each way, and DH will be a mere 20-minute drive from his office rather than "45 mins in theory but 2-3 hours in practice". He is self-employed and usually works at home but he drives to the office/research centre several times a week, often at short notice. An afternoon appointment often meant spending a whole day on the road - crazy. But that's all history now.

I will have my very own craft corner/desk, so I can finally pick up my hobbies again, it's going to be lovely! As I also have a new job within the company since 1 Jan which comes with a bit more responsibility/management, I'll see how much time I have the next couple of weeks ... But there's always my long week-ends, I still work 4-day weeks :-)

Life is pretty good these days!

Oh and

That house didn't work out - potential structural damage :-( We now have a bid on another house but it's competitive bidding, so we'll have to see. This is taking so long :-(

New Life, New Blog Design

Hi, I'm back!

I moved to the Netherlands on 14 September, so I've been here just over three weeks now. I live in Almere, a polder island close to Amsterdam, I am surrounded by water, beaches and lots of nature reserves :-) I love it!
Thursday I started working at a telecommunications company in Amsterdam. Eventually I'll be providing German-language customer service but instead of waiting for the new round of training for that, I decided to start work immediately, so I am doing assorted mail-filing and customer service tasks for this month. I have a one-hour commute which is *perfect* for catching up with lovely podcasts like Cast On ;-)

Things are slowly starting to settle down, I'm getting into a routine, there will be some cash flow soon, and then I hope I'll have time, energy and money for knitting again ...

Open Adoption Support

Open Adoption Support

 

This has nothing to do with knitting or crafting - or even chutney-making ;-)
As a member of a first family of a foster-adopt placement that was closed unilaterally by social services and as a future adoptive mother it is an issue that is very important to me, and I'll do my little bit to help the site climb up on Google page ranks if nothing else ...

Dawn of This Woman's Work set up a website to support people who are in an open adoption, be that first family members, including grandparents, siblings or extended family, as well as adoptive families.

 

Our goal for this site is to help people find each other for the purpose of getting support around living in open adoptions. If your family (extended family included) is part of an open adoption, chances are that you have been unable to find pro-openness support around the common and uncommon challenges of your family's unique configuration. We hope that by networking with other adoptees, adoptive parents and first parents in our communities we can help each other in building healthy, respectful families.

If you want to find me on the forums, I'm Tatjana :-)

Chutney

This is the recipe I used. I've been making it every year for a couple of years but never with mirabelle plums :-) It turned out very yummy.

And if I could only get around to weaving in ends there'd be a FO picture of a pair of Opal Tiger socks ...

Not a knitting update ...

I spotted Beta Sweet carrots for the first time in our local supermarket! I've eaten one raw so far, and it was distinctly sweeter than regular carrots. Cooked, I didn't notice a difference taste-wise, but they looked lovely among the rest of the veggies :-)

And today a neighbour gave us about 2-3 kgs of mirabelle plums ...

I've pitted and halved them, will cover them with vinegar, some agave syrup and cinnamon sticks and turn the bunch into plum chutney tomorrow!

Still around

But not very inspired ... Though I *am* knitting something these days, namely spiral socks! I think I'll be done tomorrow, that'll be my first knitted FO for a loooong time.

Life is still hectic and unpredictable, and I don't have peace of mind to *create*, you know? All my creative juices are waiting for an outlet. Maybe I should just declare a summer break for this blog? I don't know, I keep hoping to be back with lots on the needles, and brimming with ideas.

Back online!

Sorry for being gone so long without posting ... We were in the Netherlands again, and now it looks like there's really good big news :-) I'll be posting more later!

I'm back :-)

It was a lovely, lovely week in the Netherlands, I think I'm in love :-)

DH had successful promising meetings, and we had a great time-out from the daily struggles of the last two years. It was fantastic to have couple time! We hadn't been alone together for more than a couple of hours at a time since last June ...

We're back in NL in three weeks' time for another week, and hopefully it won't be too much longer until we're moving!

I didn't do any knitting, I'm afraid ;-)