It's Pi Day, 3.14, and to my great delight, I've actually realised it before posting here - so you're getting a Pie post today. 

I am quite fond of pies, and sometimes think I should make them way more often, but... well... they do require either some work, or some suitable leftovers. Work as in "making the pie and the filling to go with it", or leftovers that can go into the pie shell with little or no modification, so there's only the dough, and then the baking, to do.

For weekday lunch (which is the thing I'm cooking stuff for), making both the dough and the filling is usually more time than I can fit into the schedule... which leaves leftovers to put into the pie. Sadly, that does not happen too often anymore either. The nicest leftovers (I think) that you can stick into a pie shell is some meat-based dish. Add in, maybe, some leftover potatoes and vegetables, the remainder of the sauce or make some if necessary, and off you go. However, we've reduced the amount of meat-based dishes that we eat over the course of the last years... and there's my problem with having leftovers. 

So, hm, maybe we should have the sweet version more often then, to make up for it - but there's so many nice cakes to bake...

Do you have favourite pie recipes? Sweet or savoury?

In case you're a knitter and enjoy looking at, and thinking about, different stitch structures and what a special move does to the surrounding stitches, you might want to check out Naomi Parkhurst's Stitch Structure series.  She's looking at increases and a cast-on technique as well as some other things like elongated stitches - with lovely drawings that make it very clear what is happening. I do enjoy blog posts such as that, and it's always nice to get this slightly different look at knitting!

I'm back, I've taken a bit of time off yesterday to make up for the weekend, and now it's playing catch-up with all the tasks left to do this week. 

The weekend was lovely, and fun, and a little exhausting (for everyone, probably, not just for me). Friday morning, as I was ready to go to the train station, I got a message from the app that the train I was planning to take would be 98 minutes late... which, knowing how things go, means it would arrive even later by the time it was supposed to arrive, and I would not be able to catch the second ICE, and would travel at least double the amount of time scheduled. 

Now... if it would have been a 2-hour journey, I would have considered doing it. But it would have been almost 6 hours as scheduled, so... no. Which meant I did take the car after all, and drove there, and I did that rather early to avoid getting caught in Friday evening rush hour traffic. (Plan worked.)

I spent a very nice afternoon and evening with the organiser of the workshop and one of the other participants, and then on Saturday I set out with them to make a lot of brain cells work hard. In theory, tablet weaving is very, very easy - you have to be able to tell light from dark and count up to two. In practice, putting all the things together and remembering all the new rules can make heads spin...  

We started with warping (as I usually do in my workshops) and went on to explore threading and turning directions, stripes and monochrome surface weaving before moving on to diagonals and freestyle diagonal patterning. 

As usual, I took way too little photos during the whole thing... I am always too distracted to remember to do so. This time, it was a little better thanks to "take photos" cues in my workshop script - which means that I can at least show you a photo of part of the room:

That was taken during a break, with everyone getting some nice food and filling up on coffee.

And in case you're curious: Installing the edge tablets did go quite well, but next time I will do the installation a little later, in hopes that that will make things a little bit easier. 

After the end of the workshop on Sunday afternoon, I packed up everything, was gifted with a bit of food for the road and set off for home, tired but happy. 

I'm having the day off after my workshop, so you are getting this photo of one of the squirrels living hereabouts: 

It's sitting on the tree one garden over, having a snack. There's at least three squirrels that we see frequently, and two of them - one red and one greyish-red - seem to be romantically involved... so there's a chance for more squirrels over time! 

With absolutely impeccable timing, the German Rail is on strike since yesterday and all of today. Fortunately, this was announced a few days beforehand, so I could look into my options to get to my tablet weaving workshop...

With a normal train connection, it's about the same amount of time for me to drive and to take the train. However, train means that I can do something else while travelling (like reading, or knitting), and driving means... driving. So I usually strongly prefer using the train.

Which got me into a conundrum: Brave the strike, take the train (there's still a decent connection I can take which is, according to the schedule, going to run) or go for the "safe" option and drive instead, on roads that are probably a good bit more full than usual, and on a Friday afternoon to boot? So after weighing the pros and cons, I've decided to be adventurous, booked seat reservations for the trains that are supposed to bring me where I want to go, and now I'm off.

Wish me luck! 

It's springtime(ish) again, which means the bees are out and about - and this is the season where they are in need of water. (In summer, too, but it's important in spring as well - they need water to be able to digest the pollen.)

Unfortunately, bees cannot swim, so the bee bar should be safe for them. I've found drowned bees in the saucers under pots where there was water standing after the rain. That's sad to see. 

Over the years, I've tried different things, and the current iteration looks like this:

It's a piece of coarse fabric wrapped around a mix of wood shavings and wool. That's set into a pot filled with water, and to prevent accidental drownings next to the fabric roll, I've stuffed in some more wool to keep the surface covered. It took the girls from the neighbourhood a few days to get it, but now they seem to appreciate their new bar! 

It looks like it's the time of year for announcements of textile events again! First of all, one for a conference in the UK in June: 

And then, also in the UK, the Early Textiles Study Group offers a practical course. Here's the description, and if you are interested, go to  https://www.earlytextilesstudygroup.org/etsg-courses.html for more!