Vergissmeinnicht

Spring is in full swing and a certain little girl is freshly in love with … ants. She likes to pick up crawlies off the ground and look at them. I’m working on making her understand that some creatures are off limits. Such as anything that’s yellow-and-black-stripey.

Here are some choice quotes from today’s walk:

“Ants!”, followed by squeals of delight and joy. And I mean delight and joy. Oh, the joy!

“I catch a ant!”

“Don’t lose me, ant.”

“I will find you(r) mami.”

“Ant touch me!” - actually, you’re squeezing the ant to death, but who’s quibbling.

“Oh, no! I lose ant!”, followed by wails of sorrow and despair. I point out other pet ants on the sidewalk and she rejoices again.

Can you stand the excitement around here?

The following is more a note-to-self, and therefore possibly TMI to anybody else, so proceed with caution. This morning Ms Squeeks checked off a further item on the long, long list that guides a toddler toward growing up and independence: in a very serious manner she made it clear that she wished to poop in the potty. Number two! In the potty! I all but averted the press after she succeeded. (we read a potty book while we waited for the event)

Riveting stuff, eh!

So, hi! How you doin’? How’s your spring going? Happy 2008, by the way. Good year so far? On track with those resolutions? Don’t wanna talk about it? OK.

So, yeah. We’re alive and we’ve been all over the place, geographically and otherwise. To combine the “geographically” in the previous sentence with knitting content (there’s been knitting!), here’s some old news - the beginning of a beret that was started in Prague and is seen here a day later at the start of the drive to Copenhagen (from Prague). Pull out your Europe maps.

At the very least, I’ll be posting a picture of the same beret as it looked upon entering Germany soonest. Like, maybe tomorrow. Or there’ll be more insect tales. Or the daily strawberry. You never know around here.

T is for Time spent in Croatia: Two months!

T is for Train Travel: Here’s a pic of our cozy sleeper cabin on the night train from Zürich to Zagreb (what are the chances of traveling from one Z town to another!?).

Train travel with little ones is great. They don’t appreciate the ever changing landscape and countries traversed outside the window, but it is so much easier on the accompanying parents. Even better if you can do night trips. Get on, go to sleep, then arrive in time for breakfast or, as in our case, lunch. Eleven hours of fun travelling!

V would be for Vines, but I didn’t take any pictures, and W is a good one for Wine, particularly following on Vines. But, no illustration.

But V is for View, too and I’ll miss this when back in Switzerland.

It’s all there: vines, fig, pine, olive

W is for Walnuts. Here’s a walnut tree with some nuts still hanging.

X? X isn’t even a letter in the Croatian alphabet. There’s your X.

Y? Why, Y is for yarn! Even Squeeks knows that. Yarn stores visited while in Croatia: One. On the last day in Sibenik, I forced myself to go to the yarnstore, though the prospect of not having gone and blogging about my willpower was rather appealing. So I caved. But. No purchase!

Z is for Zagreb. I cannot capture in pictures why I love Zagreb, Croatia’s capital and the town in which I was born. The same is true for trying to do so in words. Oh, I could go on and on, that’s not the problem, but in the interest of finishing this off, I’ll leave it to next time.

Sock in Progress on a Rock

Is there a difference between “rock” and “stone”? There’s plenty of either in Dalmatia, in their natural, as well as in artfully processed form. I particularly love the old stone houses and the old stone walls dividing fields and vineyards. In Solin I found THE best recycling of a piece of Roman ruin/leftover littering the landscape. Those Romans came and built, but didn’t clean up the rubble. Tsk, tsk.

Pommegranates! People that should know these things, could not tell me why a lot of the fruits were split on the tree. Makes it easier for me, not having to attempt a Martha style shot of whole and open fruit. But then again, with the hype over POM, everybody knows what they look like. And this is what they look like on the tree (more like a big bush).

The Italians eat their polenta with meat or vegetable based toppings. My people likes its corn mush with soured milk. Yumm! If you are a connoisseur of fermented milk, I strongly suggest that you take a trip to Eastern (and Eastern-ish) Europe. However, don’t eat the fruit yogurts. Not that they’re not good, they’re just not … authentic. Plain is where it’s at.

I’m at a loss of words for pine. The smell of it … aahhh. Whenever the wind blows just the right combination of pine, sea, sun and soil my way, I freeze and sniff and sniff and sniff the air. Ahhh.

These grapes are our neighbour’s, beautiful, ne? They’re also funcional: the vines are grown tall along a pole, or other support, and then across a trellis, overhead the porch. Beats awnings. I’m working on my mom and brother to do the same at our house. Everybody’s doing it, why not us!

OK, so I lied. There’s a big gap now, until …

Oleander. Need this in the garden. It’s everywhere. It’s so … Mediterranean.

OLIVES! They grow like weeds.

Because where there’s a sea, there’s freshest fish!

We were visiting an aunt yesterday and Sqeekie helped herself to this bag, which was promptly gifted to her. Not only is it not knitted (but then, I’m into equal opportunity yarn manipulation), the fiber used can hardly be called a, well, ‘fiber’. It’s plastic string, and that in an unabashedly, in-your-face plastic sort of kind. It’s great for a bag for a toddler, but not much else. Oddly, though, my aunt has decorative throw pillows that she crochet with that material. Not only did I not photograph those pillows, but I also didn’t take pictures of the other fantastic granny squared stuff hanging out at her house.

I hadn’t seen her in at least 12 year, but spent the first few years of my life with her and her family, while my parents started our new life in CH without us kids. Looking around her place yesterday, and considering her eccentric outfit, it occurred to me that her tastes are the closest to mine out of all my relatives. Nobody else is quite as colourful and, um, let’s leave it at colourful.

These almonds are about to drop off the tree. My mother tells me that there is a stage when the almonds are still unripe, green and soft, that one can eat the whole thing - shell and all. Maybe Squeeky and I need to spend next spring in Croatia?

This sweater sat a couple of tables away from me yesterday. Digital cameras make great scrap or idea books: I like the striping; specifically, the use of a little bit of a contrast colour on top.