FO – A budgie amigurumi

“Hello!”

My best friend in my office building is retiring this week. And he loves budgies. He has six of them in a huge cage at home and they all are handpicked because of their unique colours and patterns and genes.

I made him a crocheted version of a budgie and hope he’ll like it. The pattern is made by Crochetroo (Etsy-link here, Ravelry-link here) and is called Budgerigars (Ravelry-link here).

A shy budgie trying to hide in a plant

I used a 3.5mm hook and the yarn is Alba from BC Garn. Alba is an ecological cotton that you can get in a lot of different colours. I bought mine at Fröken Garn in Malmö, Sweden.

I liked making this little guy (named Drogba as the football player in Chelsea) but I’m having a hard time with patterns that involves a lot of sewing. Attaching limbs make the perfectionist in me cringe. I’m never quite happy with the turnout.

When I have some time over I’ll make Drogba a friend or two. I have yellow and green yarn I can use as well. And some grey.

Random Friday nr2

1)
I have a meeting out of town on Monday afternoon and it’s been decided that I’ll go there using public transportation. I wasn’t sure if bus or train would be the best choice as I’d have to walk the last leg of the journey (or get a cab, which I didn’t even consider until way later…). I called the company I’ll visit and asked the receptionist if she had any suggestions for me.

Within two minutes we had made arrangements for her, or the company’s janitor, to come pick me up at the train station and drive me to my meeting. I was flabbergasted. I’ve never met that kind of customer service from a Swedish company before.

2)
My boyfriend and I will go to the movies and a dinner tonight. I’m cashing  in my Christmas gift from last year. We’re going to see Oceans (the longer non-US and Canadian version) and I’m really looking forward to it.

3)
I’ve applied to my third Creative Writing-class, starting in January next year. I’m not sure I’ll take it though even if I get accepted (as I should be with the university credits I already have). I’m enjoying this second class way more than the first one as I find our assignments to be more challenging and focused, but I’ve felt behind all semester. I’ve handed in one of my assignments knowing I’d have to rework it to change a fail to pass as I didn’t have the time to make it proper to begin with. I’ve added sort of lame posts in our discussion forum as I haven’t read the material enough to discuss it in depth.

That’s one reason to not start the class if I get accepted. The third class will probably mean more reading and even more challenging assignments.

But, there’s also another reason. I’ve also applied to a photography class on visual communication. It’s offered as distant ed from the University of Jönköping. It’d be sooo fun to be challenged to use my camera in different ways as well as get to know more about pictures and images in general.

First round of acceptance letters will be sent out in a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes!

4)
I finished reading a funny book the other day; Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann by Jonas Jonasson. (I don’t think it’s translated into English but the title means The hundred-year-old who climbed out the window and disappeared.) I laughed several times while reading this Swedish version of a Forrest Gump-story.

I can recommend it if you want to have fun!

4 Things Meme

My knitting friend Anna over at garndrömmar.se set me up for a challenge as she wanted me to answer a meme about different things of four. Here goes:

4 TV-shows I watch
Grey’s Anatomy, The Event, the Swedish quiz show Vem vet mest? (Who knows the most?) and the sports news.

4 things I’ve done today (Or yesterday as I’m writing this the evening before I post it)
I cheated to and from work today as I used the car instead of walking or biking. I had chicken wok for  lunch. I worked on the fourth assignment for my writing class but didn’t finish it. I made a swatch for a pair of Snowbird Mittens.

4 things I’m looking forward to or longing for
Warmer temperatures and longer days (and November just began…). Having friends over for lunch this weekend. The knitting marathon that Fröken Garn houses in two weeks time. Finding the courage to battle quilting my big quilt.

4 things on my wish list
A week in a silent retreat. A dinner with Douglas Coupland so I can pick his brain for a bit. Enough vacation days and money to take me (and my boyfriend) abroad so I (we) can see family and friends. Getting tattooed by Stina at Eyescreamtattoo in Ystad.

4 things I hate/loathe/detest
Feeling inadequate. People using my ideas or my work without giving me credit. When I start crying from anger or frustration instead of being able to scream at whatever made me angry or frustrated. And of course; war and violence.

4 people I challenge with this meme
I’ll leave it open for anyone to grab…

Random Friday nr1

1)
I’m supervising/mentoring/instructing(pick one as I don’t know the correct word for it) two university girls in their writing of a project to get a Master’s degree. They are quite fun to meet up with and they are both sooo ambitious. I’m sure their project will turn out to be a great time investment for my company.

Yesterday, the girls sent me their first 2½ pages of the introduction chapter. And I returned it earlier this morning. With 22 comments on it. I felt awful sending it back and included a very apologetic email asking them not to be discouraged by the number of comments. Some comments were overall tips on how to make some passages more defined and more readable as they includedvery technical words, but most comments were grammar corrections or suggestions on how to replace obvious “we’ve-translated-directly-from-English-without-considering-if-it-makes-sense-in-Swedish”-mistakes.

I’m such a pain in the a$$ when it comes to proof reading and giving feedback. I hope I didn’t scare them…

2)
I had a colleague coming into my room this morning to tell me about a guy she has met and will have a date with tonight. I can’t help but laugh when she tells me about these things. It’s “I texted him when I came home” and “he wrote he liked me” and “I wrote I wanted to see him” and “he wrote he was going to London over the weekend” and “I wrote and told him we could see each other tonight” and… After a while I can’t help myself but ask her if she remembers his voice. And it makes her giggle every time.

I feel so out of the dating loop as I’ve never experienced “Text Message Flirting”. Apparently that’s how dating and getting to know each other starts nowadays.  Says the 30-and-some-years-old and have flashbacks to comments from an older generation about the kids of today…

3)
This weekend, my boyfriend and I are planning on a couple of hours in the forrest. Just walking around with our cameras in hand and backpacks filled with sandwiches and hot drinks on our backs. I was so excited about this when emailing my sister a couple of days ago.

And she told me about her plans for the weekend. She’s catching the bus to go to one of the coolest cities in the world to see a super famous building, order coffee and walk in the harbour.

Worlds apart…

4) I’m listening to Barenaked Ladies and enjoying the fact that it’s actually Friday!

China (Part 5) – Expo2010 in Shanghai

Some mornings the line up was ridiculous before the gates opened up for visitors. This is just before 9am and it was raining a bit this morning. But there were just as many umbrellas on sunny days to keep the sun rays away.

The line ups continued in zig zag under the roof. This is about half an hour before the gates opened.

This is part of the African quarters in the Expo2010. If I’m not mistaken, the green and yellow building (looking sort of like a cross between an onion and a tulip) belongs to Angola. This is one of the few times we saw a group of volunteers at ease as they usually moved around marching in straight lines whenever they went from point A to point B…

This ball was in the German pavilion. The audience were led to balconies on three different levels and with our voices we got the sphere to change looks and to move around. It was really neat!

Part of the Russian pavilion was turned into a foreign planet. There were space shuttles and stations in the ceiling, made up flowers and plants in bright colours and small houses with screens that showed kids dressed up like aliens talking about Russian innovations in technical and medical areas.

This full sized lion made out of wire and pearls stands at the entrance of South Africa’s pavilion.

This is part of the shop that Sweden had connected to their national pavilion. Here one can buy Swedish glass from the famous Kosta Boda.

Walking around the Expo2010 can be tiring. These two men were hilarious as they just sat down in this part of an exhibition and fell asleep. I watched them for a bit and the guy hunched over the table actually snored…

In the next part of this series, I’ll show you some random pictures  from Shanghai.