Journal of a Mouse

We Are Family!

2006-08-10T18:18:00.000+02:00

We are so happy about the birth of Linus! This is little three-day-old him.

The little mouse was born this sunday morning, nearly strangled by his umbilical cord and had to be delivered by vacuum extraction. It was all very scary as I didn´t know at first if he had made it. We are so happy he is alive and healthy! The sweetest child ever! He and I came home from the hospital yesterday afternoon and when I was standing before our front door I noticed for the first time how exhausted I feel. So we are still keeping visitors at bay and just try to relax. So no long posting for now...

Raspberry and Cream

2006-07-28T16:24:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I finished the variation of Hanna´s scarf that I had startet months ago... As I didn´t have enough of the raspberry yarn, I decided to add a cream colored border. I like how it emphasizes the ruffles.

I suffer from mood swings these days, which I hate. One moment, I´m the happiest person, then again I feel overwhelmed - not ready yet for the baby. When I went to my midwife today, I burst into tears when she asked me how I was... I didn´t even know why. Oh, boy! But we talked awhile and now I feel better.
I´m still not sure what exactly caused me to cry, if it´s just all of these hormones, or if it´s something more fundamental. It´s probably a mixture of many things... hormones, the heat, fear of all the change that´s ahead of me, feeling guilty about not feeling quite ready for the baby yet... And this is strange, because I really want to have this baby. I´m looking forward to holding him in my arms. But still I want a little more time. Not much. Only a little.
I didn´t expect these feelings. Most of my friends who already have babies told me that they were so tired of being pregnant in the last weeks before their due date... Well, I´m not - yet. Maybe now that my sciatic nerve doesn´t bother me any more, I simply feel too good *lol*.

Week 40 Already!!!

2006-07-26T13:03:00.000+02:00

I can´t believe my pregnancy is almost over! I´m already in waiting position, relaxing a lot. Everything that needed to be done before my little one´s birth is done. And finally I have some time again for creative projects. So now I´m working on finishing all the unfinished projects.
And yes! The blanket is finished! I´m glad all the borders fall flat after blocking the thing. Now, my little one has a soft cosy blanky to welcome him! Although I doubt that I will be using this one at first, as it´s very hot here at the time. Too hot for a 100% Merino blanket...

Baby Blanket

2006-07-06T18:28:00.000+02:00

The Baby Blanket is nearly finished! I already knitted the little duck bills, but before I can sew them on, I´ll need to sew in all the loose ends on the backside... a task I don´t like at all (so I keep putting it off). Well, I hope to finish the blanket before the big day! I also hope that the problem of the border turning over will be gone after blocking the thing.
I still have problems with that stupid sciatic nerve. Sometimes I can hardly walk or get up from wherever I´ve been sitting. I´m just so glad that most of my nest-building activities are already done! My midwife showed me some moves that may help baby to find a different position. So far it hasn´t helped. But I´ll keep on trying to motivate my little one to move down a bit more! Wish me luck!

36 Weeks

2006-07-05T09:21:00.000+02:00

My husband took a few photos of me in the park this sunday to have some memories of my growing belly. It´s still one of the smallest bellies in the "Belly Club" as I like to call my childbirth class. Unfortunately, I had to limp over to the park, because my sciatic nerve is causing me trouble. I hope my midwife, who I see today, has some idea of how to relieve the pain a little. Maybe acupuncture or something will help.

Other than that, the weekend has been a great one. Saturday started off with my childbirth class, where this time all the future daddies came along. The class started with some relaxation exercises, where both the moms and the dads put their hands on the baby bump... My midwife told us to concentrate on the child and find out if our child started to calm down when we placed our hands on the belly or if it started to kick, "as some kids were more communicative..." - just as she said this, our little one started to kick Jans hands, as if to say: " Yes, I´m that type!", hee, hee. I wonder where he got that from *grin*.

When the class was over, we went to the hospital, where I want to give birth, in order to pre-register. Then we had to hurry a little bit, because we had a busy afternoon ahead of us. Grocery shopping, a visit to Ikea, preparing food for a birthday party that we were invited to in the evening... The party was a lot of fun and we came back late in the night.

Sunday, we had friends over for coffee and strawberry cake. Their nine-months old son had just started to crawl and we all had a lot of fun playing with him and making him laugh. He´s still so easy to entertain ;-) Trying to bite into Jans toes seemed to be the greatest pleasure for him, hee, hee. It was so much fun - now we are even more looking forward to having our own baby here in our arms. If it weren´t for giving birth first...

Baby Bed

2006-06-28T08:45:00.000+02:00

We haven´t started changing my old studyroom/studio into a nursery yet. We want to take our time, as baby will be sleeping in our bedroom for the first few month anyway, and I don´t want to risk being in the middle of a remodel when baby is due (only about a month to go!). So, I´m glad, I found this cute co-sleeping bed from Roba on the internet! You can hook it up the parents bed, so baby can sleep safely next to mom or dad. That way we won´t always have to get up in order to feed or console our little one. In the daytime, you can just put up the fourth side of the bed and push the bed over to the living room, or wherever you want to. The bed comes with rockers, so you can also make into a cradle, if you´d like. When baby grows too big and gets too mobile, the bed is no longer safe, but it can still be used as a bench in the nursery.
It´s hard to believe that in no time at all, a real baby- our real baby- will be sleeping in this bed. Right now, our test-baby a.k.a. Urs the teddybear is taking his naps there ;-)

Birdy Swap

2006-06-27T09:17:00.000+02:00

I can finally show you my part of the swap! You can see a larger version of it by clicking on the picture.

And this is what I got from Holli. Isn´t it fun? I love it so much! You can see a better picture of it on her blog.

What I´ve been up to...

2006-06-27T08:55:00.000+02:00

I can´t believe it´s already a month since I last posted!

So, what have I been up to lately? We are still busy preparing our home for the arrival of our baby. Despite my growing belly, I´m still pretty fit and filled with energy. The only thing that doesn´t work so well anymore is bending over, hee, hee. Plus, I have to take it easier than before, because otherwise my belly starts getting contractions.

We were pretty busy these last weeks reorganizing our home, buying furniture, a fridge, and a dryer, and finding new places for our stuff. One of these places is the trash can *lol*.
But we also got a lot of new stuff to fill the corners of our home. Most of these things are for baby, but some are from my grandmother´s apartment that had to be cleared. I was very lucky to "inherit" a lot of beautiful baby clothes from a good friend of mine, when I visited her a little while ago. She also gave me a large banana-shaped cushion for supporting the baby while nursing. It´s also great for sleeping better lying on the side or putting my legs up, when they get heavy from the heat we are having.

So now, I have everything I need for the baby to arrive. There are only a few things left lying around on the floor to be put away into our new living room shelves and then - hopefully - I can finally start to relax and get back to more creative stuff. I crave to do that!

Overwhelmed

2006-05-22T23:25:00.000+02:00

I felt a little overwhelmed these days with all that still needs to be done before our little one arrives. The biggest problem we are facing is lack of storage space. So I started throwing out a lot of useless stuff last week. But there still is a lot to do. I felt quite depressed yesterday and spent most of my day on the couch - something I haven´t done in a while. Just when I was preparing myself to go to bed, it clicked... I was putting too much pressure on myself to have everything perfectly organized before baby arrives. No wonder I was feeling so low. So, I started asking myself what really mattered and realized that many things that need to be done can wait for the time being. I can still do this and that when baby is here. I feel better already. All I´m going to do is making lists of what needs to be done and then prioritizing. I really don´t need too much stress right now.
So today, I tried to relax a little more. I sat down to study some baby catalogues and later went out shopping for the little guy. So much fun! I feel better already. Just need to find a place to store everything now...

A Bird´s Visit

2006-05-18T11:02:00.000+02:00

I don´t know when and how this young birdie managed to sneak into our living room. But when I sat down in front of the computer a while ago, a chirping and fluttering behind my back startled me. And then I found this scared little critter in the bookshelf to the right. I think I was no less shocked at first than he was. And I was even more shocked when he suddenly took off and darted to the top of the shelf on the other side of the room - and fell right behind it! I was so afraid he might have hurt himself. Luckily, nothing much had happened to him. I opened all the windows and hoped he would find his way out eventually. But instead he decided to fly back to the bookshelf where I had first found him. Fortunately, it took only a little time for him to fly over to the window sill, where he took a little rest on my yellow begonia. He finally realized that the way out was through the window, although at first he tried it with the only window that was still shut. So I gently moved my hand over to him and in his attempt to get out of my way he moved over to the open window and flew off. Phew! Poor little birdie!
I´m sure he´ll like the world in front of our windows a lot more than our living room!

Flower Power!

2006-05-17T10:29:00.000+02:00

I spent most of my afternoon yesterday needlefelting the top for a little flower-shaped cardboard box, which still needs some painting. I am a big fan of Marieke´s needlefelted creations and have always admired her flower pincushions, so I decided to give it a try myself. It was actually a lot of fun, but I don´t know if I have the patience for more projects like this one. We´ll see. I need to think about how to decorate the rest of the box now...

This Weekend

2006-05-15T09:13:00.000+02:00

We spent the weekend in the beautiful little town of Weimar for the burial of my grandmother´s ashes. Weimar had been her home until she fled to West Germany with her husband and children and she never really got over that loss. Now, she is back home and has found her final resting place next to my grandfather´s and her family´s. Although the funeral was very sad, it was also very important for me as I couldn´t really grieve for her yet. There was so much going on these weeks. One thing that is still worrying me a lot is the severe illness of a person that I´m really close to. But despite of all of this, the weekend has been a happy one all at the same time. It was so nice to see so many of my mother´s family again. So many warm-hearted people! I am always amazed at how close we feel, how connected, although most of us have only met a few years ago for the first time! As my closest family wasn´t allowed to visit East Germany before the reunification of Germany, I only knew about my relatives from what my grandmother was telling us. Now, even my family is reunited, which makes me very happy and grateful. I feel a little at home in Weimar, too. As I have always moved a lot in my life (due to my father´s career), I now found a place I feel I belong to. There are so many places connected to my family in Weimar. The old farmhouses of both my great- grandfather´s and his father´s estates, the places where my grandparents went to school, got to know each other, got married... There are memories of them to be found everywhere.

Married!!!

2006-05-11T15:12:00.000+02:00

Click on pictures, if you want to see a larger version!
Finally, I can show you some pictures of our wedding! We were sooo lucky! It was the first weekend with warm weather, all the tulips and magnolias in the little park in front of the hotel (were the civil ceremony was held) were fully abloom, and best of all, everybody was in such a cheerful mood! We are still so happy about it all! The ceremony was very nice and very emotional for Jan and me. Afterwards, we walked through the park over to another hotel were the reception was held. We felt like VIPs with so many friends and family around us taking photos! These photos were made by my wonderful friend Kerstin! We got them on CD when we came home from our honeymoon! Thank you so much, Kerstin!
On our walk from one hotel to another...

At the reception
The hotel were we had our wedding reception has a little sunny courtyard garden. As the weather was really warm, we could celebrate outside in the sun! And I had been so worried before that I would freeze in my dress! Ha, ha! Late in the afternoon, we had a date with a professional photographer, who also made great photos of us in a nearby park, which was a lot of fun! When that was over, we went back to the hotel for a festive dinner with our closest family. My dad held a funny speech for us about our soon to be started "family venture", telling everybody about my management qualities as a little girl and how I had always known exactly what I wanted and how to get it, too! Hee, hee!

The next day, all of us had breakfast at the hotel and afterwards met in our apartment to relax a little bit. It was a wonderful weekend! And when everybody had left we were dead tired and could hardly believe that everything was already over! Luckily, we still had lots of presents to open, so it wasn´t all over yet! Beautiful things we got to remind us of the wonderful time we had!

We feel so blessed!

Studio Friday: My Work Hands

2006-04-17T15:23:00.000+02:00

Camera sitting on my right knee...

Easter Field-trip

2006-04-17T14:12:00.000+02:00

Despite the rainy weather, we took the train to Bad Wimpfen yesterday. We needed to get out for a change. It is a little medieval town set high above the river Neckar. Above you can see the little train station, which hosts a small restaurant where we had our lunch.
We walked around town for a while and admired the little cobble-stoned streets, old houses, and beautiful little courtyards, and gardens.

The air smelled of spring!
And cute little snails crept along the castle walls. This one was especially beautiful (you can click on the pictures for a larger image).

Happy Easter Everyone!!!

2006-04-16T10:44:00.000+02:00

I wish all of you a very happy and fun Easter spent with your loved ones!

Happy egg hunting!

Spring Colors!

2006-04-13T14:14:00.000+02:00

I couldn´t resist buying this beautiful fabric and all that colorful felting wool when I was visiting a friend in Heidelberg. I don´t exactly know what I´ll make of it yet, but looking at these colors makes me feel all happy!
I´ve never seen a peach colored hyacinthus before, so I just had to get this when I shopped at the farmer´s market on my way home from an other ultrasound. Now, it´s sweet smell fills the air in our living room. Ah, and the ultrasound! It was just so cute to see our little one giving big yawns! No wonder the baby was tired, after exercising in my belly all night, hee, hee! Mommy was very tired, too!

Ducks in a Row

2006-04-10T10:52:00.000+02:00

I started to knit the little ducks, but they still look a little rugged (I´m not very good with intarsia work). I hope the stitches will look a little smoother when I sewed in the loose ends.
I spend most of last week looking for shoes to match my wedding dress and other wedding preparations. I was lucky and got the last pair of cream colored shoes - nearly the exact shade of my dress! I even found a beautiful necklace, even more beautiful than the one I had wanted to buy in the first place. All that is left to do is making a final decision on the menue and talking to the florists. That will actually be something I will enjoy. So now, I can finally relax and enjoy myself. As the weather is said to be grey and rainy this week, I will probably stay indoors, working away on some ideas for the future nursery and former studio, knitting, and whatever else is coming to my mind that I would enjoy doing...

Baby Blanket Update

2006-04-04T11:36:00.000+02:00

I had a few problems uploading my pictures to the computer, but now that they are solved I can show you the progress I have made in knitting the baby blanky. I frogged it two times, because of the lower brim turning up. Well, it still does, but not as bad as before. I think I tend to knit the garter stitch too loose. I just hope that blocking the blanket will help, too.
I´m pretty busy with wedding preparations at the moment. Only three weeks to go! I still didn´t find any shoes that would match my dress and the necklace that I wanted to buy is no longer available... fortunately I can lend the jewelry at the jewelry shop where we got our wedding rings, in case I don´t find an alternative (oh, they are just sooo beautiful and I can´t wait to show you! We can´t resist trying them on every once in a while just to admire them a little *biggrin*). I´m already pretty nervous and hope it will be a warm and sunny day (so we can celebrate in the little courtyard of the hotel and have our pictures taken outside in the park)!

It Took Me Three Years...

2006-03-25T15:51:00.000+01:00

... to finally start painting my easter eggs. This is N°1. I used acrylics to paint this bunny, which I don´t like using so much as I always ruin my paintbrushes using them. I do clean my brushes, but still they like to dry up and harden or loosen their tip. I´ll have to go buy some new paintbrushes soon to get better results when painting the whiskers. This is where I set up my easter egg painting studio... my favorite spot in the kitchen.

Illustration Friday: Monster

2006-03-24T20:33:00.000+01:00

This girly monster is something I painted with oil pastels at least seven years ago. It was one of the first things I painted after years of not drawing and painting. It still took me a few more years before I drew and painted a little more often, but it represents a new beginning to me and I still like to look at it as a little reminder.

Studio Friday: Secret Stash!

2006-03-24T19:49:00.000+01:00

I kept these empty eggs in my drawer for about three years now... Every Easter, I wanted to paint them and hang them up in some fresh birch twigs! I wonder if I´ll make it this year?

Fear

2006-03-23T10:20:00.000+01:00

Yesterday evening I started to go through my old magazines in hopes of finding some images I can use for an archive of reference materials for future drawing projects. This is part of my "homework" for the home course in graphic design that I had signed up for last year. I must admit that I have hardly done anything for that course and I have been wondering if I should sign out again and if this is really something I want to do. I always had an excuse for not doing anything for this course. First, it was my upcoming law exams, then the exhaustion from the exams and my unwillingness to put new pressures on myself, then the lack of energy I was feeling in the first months of my pregnancy... But now? I think what´s keeping me from really digging into this is plain old fear. The old fear of not being able to live up to my own standards. Perfectionism. The fear of not being able to do this right. Of course this is stupid. When I started this course, my goal was to simply learn how to draw better, try out new techniques (that I might never have tried out on my own), get to know the basics of composition etc.... I just wanted to build new skills! So what am I afraid of? What do I have to prove? So what, if I will not be very good at this? And how will I ever find out if I don´t try?

I´m back...

2006-03-22T17:51:00.000+01:00

I can´t believe it´s already one month since my last post! Just when I was getting out my drawing stuff again, I learned that my dear grandma had died at the age of eightyeight. So I packed and off I went to support my mom, who had a lot on her shoulders already. I only got back home again about ten days ago and have been very busy with wedding preparations. Now, there are only a few things left to do, concerning the wedding, and I finally found some time to start the baby blanket I planned to knit. This does really well for me, as I was feeling a little strained after all that had happened. But apart from that I feel really good and baby seems to feel great too. It´s kicking wildly!
Oh - is there anyone out there, who can maybe give me a hint on how to prevent the border of the blanky from turning over (as you can see on the photo)? Did I knit the border too tight or too loose? Will blocking help, maybe? I would appreciate getting your advice!

Update

2006-02-23T08:55:00.000+01:00

After a few mild and sunny days, the weather got colder again and the sky turned gray. Perfect for sitting inside and crafting away you may think... but I hardly get around to do anything really. There are so many other things to do, like planning our wedding and vacation, visiting friends, buying stuff to make our appartment more family-friendly, doctor´s appointments, finding a midwife... and of course all the daily chores plus a lot of ironing waiting for me... On top of that, I still lack my usual energy and feel sick from time to time. But apart from that, everything is going well. I can finally feel my baby kicking inside of me which is just magical! No more ultrasounds needed to help me believe there is really someone growing inside of me! A very lively someone!

Another Scarf for a Freezing Bea

2006-02-02T15:37:00.000+01:00

So, here I am working away on another scarf. Just in time, because the weather got colder again and everything is covered in snow. My little friends, the green parakeets, are here again, sitting in the sugared chestnut tree outside my window, waiting for my neighbor to feed them. Such cute company!

First Baby Project!

2006-02-01T16:35:00.000+01:00

My scarf is finished and I went out today and got some more wool! This is going to be so much fun! I want to knit the baby blanket which is on the cover of this great book, only I´m going to use the green wool instead of the rose or baby blue one. The pink wool is not intended for the blanket, but for a scarf similar to Hanna´s beautiful one. She has been so kind to tell me how to go about. I hope I´ll get it right!
I´m filled with energy now that I don´t feel so nauseous anymore. Okay, it didn´t disappear yet, but at least it got way better since last friday. Also, my appetite is coming back, which I really missed! My belly is growing, too, but it doesn´t show so much yet beneath my thick winter sweaters. It´s cold here.

Wondering why I didn´t write here so often anymore?

2006-01-19T22:23:00.000+01:00

Well, the big secret is hereby revealed: I´m now three months and a few days pregnant!!!

Our little one´s birthday will probably be around the beginning of august. We are both so very, very, very happy!

But I am also feeling drained of my usual energy and feeling sick a lot of the time. So that´s why I am not my usual creative self. Everybody tells me that I´ll soon feel better again and I so hope I will! I have so many projects I want to do (most of them for baby, of course!), but right now all my energy is being eaten up by the daily tasks like cooking, and cleaning, and so on. Talking of cooking - I can´t even stand the thought of it these days. I´m so sensitive to all kinds of smells!
Still, it´s all bearable because I´m just so very happy! I always wanted to be a mom! And the feeling when we saw our tiny little baby on ultrasound two days ago! The little legs kicking and his or her hand waving at us, like he or she wanted to say a quick "Hello" to us! And - aah - those tiny perfect little feet... I think I´m already in love! So cute!

Happy New Year Everybody...

2006-01-09T17:00:00.000+01:00

and all the best to you! My scarf is slowly growing and I finished about half of it. I wanted to start a few other projects, but then I got this great urge to sort through all of my stuff that has been piling up in my studio. So that´s what I´ve been doing these last days: Throwing out most of my papers from university and all the books that I will never ever read again. Now everything in my room has its own place and it finally looks organized again! Breathing space for my soul! I still want to go through all of my drawers and my closet, but that won´t take as long. So now, I finally have space to create again! Yay! This feels sooo much better!

Back in Creativityville...

2005-12-30T16:04:00.000+01:00

I got so bored these last days...so I HAD to get back to doing something creative. I remembered this fluffy mohair yarn that I had bought last spring. I didn´t get enough yarn (miscalculated somehow) to make the cardigan I had intended to knit, so now I decided to knit a scarf instead. So far, I enjoyed it very much! Hopefully, this will get me back into creativity mood again!

Winter Magic!

2005-12-28T11:03:00.000+01:00

Click on picture for a larger image!

I woke up this morning to a winter wonderland. Everything was magically covered in snow and thick white snowflakes were dancing in front of our bedroom window! Now, the beautiful snow already starts to melt again... oh, well. At least I was blessed with a visit from at least fifteen chirping rose-ringed parakeets (I recently found out their English names!) Right now, only one of the parakeets is still sitting in the tree, along with a few finches and sparrows and a plump turkish dove. Pure magic! I could sit all day here at the window, watching these little critters!

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-25T13:42:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas to all of you! I hope you´ll all be having wonderful christmas days with your families and friends, great food and - of course - the best presents ;-) Ho, ho, ho!!!

Dear Illustration Friday Visitors...

2005-12-22T08:53:00.000+01:00

...I feel very happy about the fact that my topic was chosen for Illustration Friday! Unfortunately this came at a time where I am not able to contribute anything of my own, as I do not feel so very well right now. Nothing to worry about though. I´m sorry and hope you don´t feel let down!

Studio Friday: Where the Wild Things Are

2005-12-05T15:37:00.000+01:00

There is a new creature living in our apartment. This little mouse is visiting me now everyday and is fooling around all the time! No wonder I don´t get around to painting and drawing when this little mischiefmaker is keeping me busy... She loves to hide my tools and collects all kinds of supplies. I need to watch out for her all the time!!! Of course, I love her anyway.

Great News!

2005-11-29T12:33:00.000+01:00

My boyfriend brought me these cutsies back from his business trip to Asia last week (the frog is a pouch for my cell phone). I love them! Well, this is good news, but I also have some GREAT News:
The love of my life also proposed to me! So we are now officially engaged! I got a very beautiful ring! We plan on getting married next spring, maybe april or may. I am sooo happy!!!

Magical Birds!

2005-11-19T14:16:00.000+01:00

Click on image to see a larger version

It´s that wonderful time of the year again, when our neighbor, living in the appartment below ours, is setting up a bird house on his balcony to feed the birds. Twice a day, these green parrots have their little get-together in the old chestnut tree in front of our house. They are not native to Germany, but originally come from Africa, and one thinks it must be too cold for them here. But along the rhine it is a very mild climate and somehow a few of these must have escaped from zoos or private owners and now live in colonies in Mannheim, Heidelberg, Wiesbaden and Neckarhausen. They are my little friends and I love when they sit chirping away in front of my window, curiously taking a peek at me sitting at my desk. That´s when I feel like I live in a truly magical place - a little bit like living in the fabulous world of Amelie.

Reality Strikes...

2005-11-17T16:21:00.000+01:00

I´m sorry for not being very entertaining on my blog these days. I feel a little frustrated. I have a lot of ideas for different kinds of projects, pictures that pop up from nowhere in my head, ... but somehow I can´t get myself to actually realize any of them. I have started. Oh yes. But I gave up after the first little steps. What is wrong with me? Before my exams it was easier for me to make time for my projects. It was like I wanted to create all day long and never do anything else again. Was that just a means of procrastination? I don´t want to believe that.
Maybe my current situation is just so depressing that I think it makes no sense to sit at my desk painting or enjoying myself doing something crafty when that will never bring in any money. Or at least not any time soon. The job situation here is terrible. Not just for former law students, but also for anyone working in a more creative field.
When you are unemployed in Germany you get a certain amount of money (depending on the income you had before) from the state for a year (because I paid for social security from my income before). After that you´re on state welfare. Now, that´s all not too bad. At least you have some kind of financial security. But the amount of money I get is way below that of my friends, who passed their exams a year ago. So low that I can´t even go on paying my share of the rent. They changed some regulations and I am really angry about that. I can get the additional amount of money I need for paying the rent only when my boyfriend can´t pay for me. Because we live together, the state nowadays expects the more wealthy partner to come up for the expenses of the unemployed partner. This is so unfair. I would have to prove that we are not living as a couple. That´s impossible. And they know that. So they make me dependant on my partner wether or not I want that. I think it is okay when people are married. But when you are not married you normally do that because you still want to be independant... Oh, I hate it. Because now I feel guilty for being unemployed and being a financial burden for my boyfriend. I think he doesn´t hold any grudges against me. But I feel guilty anyway. So now I don´t just have the pressure of having to find a job, but of not burdening my boyfriend for too long either.
I need a job. It all drives me nuts. That´s probably the reason why I´m lacking the inner peace to sit here and just enjoy my day and create. Just in case you all have wondered what´s wrong with me. I need a goal again. Some kind of perspective for my life. Please wish me luck.

My Magical Friend Has Arrived!

2005-11-10T19:38:00.000+01:00

See, how happy I am? My wonderful Artiste Soul Birdie Necklace from Tine has arrived in the mail today! Hooray! It is so delicate and sweet! I´m sure my new friend will help me tackle all creative obstacles in no time at all!

Finally!

2005-11-10T10:43:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite botanical painters is Marjolein Bastin. And this is her new and improved site! Check it out!

Rome???

2005-11-10T08:50:00.000+01:00

Roz inspired me ;-)) to take this quiz: Where do I belong?

You Belong in Rome

You're a big city girl with a small town heart
Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome
Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand
And gorgeous Italian men - could life get any better?

What City Do You Belong In?

20 Random Things About Me, Myself, and I

2005-11-07T12:55:00.000+01:00

I have been tagged by Tine (check out her new and wonderful store!). So here is my list:

I sleep for exactly nine and a half hours, if I don´t set my alarm clock.
I never seem to get enough sleep.
My favorite colors are green and pink.
I want to become a stay-at-home mom when I grow up.
I love, love, love looking at Oilily catalogues for inspiration.
I want to create all day long and earn my living that way.
I love to cook.
I love looking over the rooftops of the city.
I am a day-dreamer.
I was born in the beautiful city of Bremen in Northern Germany.
I never lived there.
I moved about every two and a half years until I was twenty.
I lived near Washington, DC for three years.
I´m too afraid to drive.
I promised to do it anyway as soon as we get our own car (so now I hope we don´t ever get one, hee, hee).
I am too sentimental.
When I´m an old lady, I want my own bed ´n breakfast by the North Sea!
I can laugh about myself.
I dream about our own house and garden, and want to grow our own food.
Looking at something beautiful can give me a natural high!

I tag those who read this and want to play along!

Illustration Friday: Night

2005-11-04T15:29:00.000+01:00

You never know what crazy things might happen at night!

May I present to you: The Artistic Bird Company!

Okay, maybe you´ve already seen this before on my blog, but I want to participate in Illustration Friday again and have no time to start something new. So that´s why I post this again. Hope that´s okay.

Studio Friday: Secret(s)

2005-11-04T11:55:00.000+01:00

There is a secret hidden in both of these books. But only one will be revealed now! I´ll reveal the one in the green notebook: I started to write down my memoirs, ha! Maybe you think that I´m still too young to do that, but I´m afraid that there will not be enough time for this once I´m old. Too many things I want to write down! And then I´m doing it only for myself. I moved so many times in my life, I met so many interesting people, been to interesting places - well, I still sometimes feel like I have a totally boring life. So I want to remind myself of this being bullshit. Because sometimes when I read autobiographies and such, I realize that I have at least as much to say, ha, ha! Like when I read "Paula" by Isabel Allende and I thought that my family is no less crazy ;-)) I just have to try writing about it! Just imagine all those crazy moments lost! Not with me, no!

Jewelery Box

2005-11-03T16:10:00.000+01:00

Voilà! My new jewelry box.

Creativity Kitchen

2005-11-03T10:59:00.000+01:00

Something is cooking in my creativity kitchen again! After two weeks of feeling depressed, lacking energy, things are getting better again. I realized, I put too much pressure on myself regarding the job hunt. It really bogged me down that I don´t know what kind of a job I want and all. And then I realized that I do know. It´s just that I don´t know HOW! So I decided to only take one little step at a time and not worry too much about problems that may arise in the future. I noticed a few more things. Like I only need to put on some classical music and I get in a creative mood faster than you can blink your eyes, ha, ha! And then I noticed that I´m really a visual chic! If I look at all the notes in my little notebook (which you can see peeking out from underneath the Oilily Catalogue), it doesn´t inspire me at all. Because I need to SEE them! I need an over"VIEW". Now, I finally got it why artists use sketchbooks for jotting down their ideas. I always thought it was a waste of time, even though I admired the look of other people´s sketchbooks. Why sketch something, when you can describe it? Ha! Now I know! I wonder why it took me so long! I did use a folder for inspiration, like you may remember (if you don´t, just take a look here). That´s where I collected all kinds of magazine cut-outs and such. But I hardly ever sketched down my own ideas. And you know what else gets me going again? The old plastic tablecloth you see on the photo. My mother gave it to me the last time I visited my parents. It´s a tablecloth she used as a protection from paint stains and other crafting side-effects, when my brother and I where little and working away! It still triggers something inside of me. Funny, eh?

FOOD for the Soul!

2005-11-02T10:33:00.000+01:00

Yvonne tagged me!

"Name five foods, dishes or otherwise, that were a part of your childhood, and that you sometimes miss when nostalgia gets to you..."

1.
As a kid, whenever I recovered from some kind of stomach flu and was just starting to eat normally again, my mother used to make a thin broth with vegetables and these star shaped noodles in them (without the sausage). I LOVED star-shaped noodles! We didn´t have those too often, so it was really something special for me!

2.
But my favorite dish was "Hühnerfrikasse mit Reis". It´s chicken with rice made with a very tasty sauce. Unfortunately, I don´t have the right recipe here. I looked it up in the cookbook I mention below, but the way they do it is very different from how I know it. I don´t think I could translate it anyway. Well.

3.
Another favorite dish of mine, made with nearly the same sauce, is "Königsberger Klopse". It´s a dish with meat balls. As a child it always had to be something with meat in it for me! And although today, I don´t eat so much meat anymore, I could never become a vegetarian, I guess. I would be too tempted to eat meat again...

This is a detail of a picture from this great cookbook, where you can find the recipe! This is the German Original Version of the book.

4.
For breakfast it always had to be a cup of hot cocoa for me (made with milk), and toast with butter and Nutella on it! A chocolate-hazelnut spread. Yummy!!!

This is the little cup I drank from as a small child, whenever I was visiting my grandparents in Bremen. Isn´t it cute?

5.
Then there was no summer without the ice-cream man! An Italian selling ice-cream from his little van. You could always hear him driving through the neighborhood, his bell ringing, every afternoon. And when we were lucky my mother gave us the money to get us some ice-cream in a cone! My favorite was lemon sherbet.

I forgot to add this...

As I have to tag five other people, I am going to tag:

1. Tine , because I´m curious...

2. Hanna , because I want to learn about typical Swedish food.

3. Anette, because I´m also interested to see, what people eat in Norway.

4. Anke for some more German recipes.

5. Isay, because she probably nows some exotic (to me) dishes.

I copied this from Yvonne:

If you decide to play along (and I totally understand if you'd rather not), here's some directions to include after your trip down food-memory lane (feel free to skip this part): Remove the blog in the #1 slot from the following list and move the other blogs up one place; add your blog's name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross-pollination effect.

1. French Word-A-Day

2. Cucina Testa Rossa

3. Creature Bug

4. Yvestown

5. Journal of a Mouse

More Tales from the Kitchen

2005-10-30T10:16:00.000+01:00

The view of our little veranda (like I love to call this place ;-) ). This is where we usually have our breakfast and lunch. I must admit that we often eat dinner in the livingroom in front of the tv... bad habit. Well, our little veranda reminds me of the pictures from Carl Larsson (well, except for the ugly, badly proportioned windows - but I´m doing my best to ignore them and imagine high, white-framed french windows, hee, hee, or some looking like the ones on the picture Flowers on the Windowsill). He is one of my favorite painters. And ever since I listened to the books of Astrid Lindgren as a child and seen pictures by Carl Larsson, I dreamed of Sweden. I have never been there for real, but about a few thousand times in my dreams! And now we are planning to go next summer! A dream come true! So now you now, why I love this part of our apartment so much! It´s this and the fact that the sun shines in here all afternoon. I´m dreaming of a kitchen sofa or a bench on the right hand side of the veranda, so I can lie down there and relax in the sun.
The veranda has it´s own little history. We live on the fifth floor of an old building near the city center. Originally this building only had four stories. But after World War II there have not been enough undamaged apartments in the cities, so often there was another story added to the buildings. As families could not afford large apartments, there had to be made more room. In our case, an engineer and his family moved into our appartment. And he built in these "shelves" in the kitchen to separate the room in front of the windows. Once there has even been a door and we think there were windows where now are the shelves (because that´s how it still looks like in the appartment on the other side of our building). Now one of his little girl had her own room there!

Kitchen Curtains

2005-10-28T20:30:00.000+02:00

I finally finished the curtains I started to sew in spring. The one you see on this photo actually hung there since april, when I had hung it up to see where I had to place the hem...I took it down yesterday and finished sewing both curtains. No more blank walls and naked windows in the kitchen!

Socknapping!!!

2005-10-27T13:00:00.000+02:00

I just caught these two little critters who had socknapped my newly finished socks! Can you believe it? I think they were in desperate need of some warm hats though, as it´s getting colder outside. Always up to some mischief...

View from our bedroom window

I finished the Flowers...

2005-10-25T15:36:00.000+02:00

...and I´m finished with painting glass vases. I didn´t even try adding all the reflections. Because of trying to follow the poor instructions of my teacher I had not left any white flecks for the reflections in the glass. And so I simplified the whole thing. Now I´m not really satisfied with it, but at least I learned a lot while trying to get it right. Next time I hope to do better. But for now I don´t have any intentions of painting glass again...at least not any time soon. Too much stress for me, ha, ha, ha!
(By the way: I did not lighten up the photo this time - at least not very much- so now you can see a more realistic coloring)

More Sunflowers

2005-10-23T20:10:00.000+02:00

I worked on my bouquet of flowers again today. I´m not sure about adding details to the petals of the sunflowers. I don´t want to overdo anything. But then again, I think they still look too flat and plain against the violet flowers. And please wish me luck on painting that vase!

Reinventing Myself

2005-10-19T11:51:00.000+02:00

I would love to drift away from some of my problems like this little guy!

Reinventing myself is NOT EASY AT ALL! In fact, it goes along with a lot of problems that rise to the surface of my soul again and with a lot of self-doubting and feeling overwhelmed most of the time. I have bad dreams and feel drained of energy. That´s why I didn´t post so often these days, apart from the fact that I was on the road so much. I woke up early today, feeling guilty about the fact that I still don´t know what to do to earn my money and that I didn´t even start looking for a job yet. I started writing morning pages and writing down all my thoughts that make me feel so guilty. The more I wrote, the more I noticed how I was beating myself up all the time. No wonder I felt so bad! So now I´m working on putting a stop to that behavior.

After doing all that writing I put on the computer and got inspired by Hanna´s Minibook . I used the instructions from Keri Smith´s site and made one of my own. It´s funny how the little pile of cut-outs now so well reflect how I felt this morning...

Make a wish!

Happy family life.

Depression.

Homemade Revolution.

Studio Friday: Lost and Found

2005-10-17T15:38:00.000+02:00

I recently found this birthday calendar in the depths of my drawers. I had made this as a first-grader and my mom hung it up in the guest bathroom for some years. I had long forgotten about this one. As you can see on this example drawing, I have always been one to go into detail, ha, ha!
I love the over-dimensional ladybugs! And what I love even more is this:
Next to my name, my three years younger brother wrote "Blöt Dee". It must have been when he was learning how to read and write, because it is spelled all wrong. It must say "Blöde", meaning "Stupid". He must have been pretty angry at me, ha, ha! So cute!

Bea´s Playground

2005-10-16T18:22:00.000+02:00

Me, still at the foot of the "Ocean of Rocks", aka Bea´s Playground ;-)

These past days I have been "on the road" a lot. On thursday afternoon I took the train to Böblingen (near Stuttgart), where my dearest had written his tax advisor´s exams. He was still very tired and a little beside himself when I arrived.
But on friday he was feeling a better already and ready to drive home again. But before we did that, we went to a small town nearby, where my grandparents on my father´s side had lived until I was about twelve years old. It was strange to see that place again... The house is placed on the edge of town, and when I was little, a shepherd and his flock of sheep often stopped by in the evenings on the meadow next to that house. Now, the meadow is gone and new houses have been built there. Even my favorite climbing tree seems to be gone...Well, we walked around a little bit and I found the indoor pool again, where I used to go a lot and even earned some swimmer´s badges as a kid. I always loved to go swimming! After talking to some of the neighbors, we got in the car again and drove home. We chose to take a beautiful route through the black forest, as we had the most beautiful sunny fall weather you can imagine. I think, it took us at least four times as long as by driving back on the autobahn. But we enjoyed it so much. And this way we did not get stuck in the usual friday afternoon traffic jams and were back on time to go to an Ornette Coleman jazz concert in Ludwigshafen. We had a really great time!
On saturday we were both dead tired, but went to the city center anyway and did some shopping and hung around in the coffebar of one of our favorite bookstores. An ideal people watching place! ;-)
Yesterday, as the weather was still sooo beautiful, we decided to finally go to the place in the Odenwald (the region north of Heidelberg), called the "Ocean of Rocks". I have never seen anything like that. It is a very, very long slope of rocks, right in the middle of the forest. In past times there have been eightteen of those going down the hill! But many of those stones have been used for building churches and whatever in cities like Mainz or Trier. You can still see some stones that have been worked on by the old romans... Well, now it´s a huge playground, especially for young families. They all climb up the long, long slope with their excited children. And while most of the adults are panting and sweating, the little ones jump from rock to rock like mountain goats, some even seemed like little tarzans to us :-) And it was LOUD! Sounded like being at an overfilled outdoor pool in the summer time! It was sooo much fun! And the kid´s are sooo funny sometimes:
Little Girl:"Dad, I´m very fast!"
Dad:"How come you think so?"
Girl:"Because you can hardly keep up with me!"
:0))

This was not even half way up at a narrow part of the rocky slope. Higher on, the rocks got a lot larger than here.

Reichenbach in the Odenwald (Wald means forest)

The sun was sooo bright, I had to squint my eyes

Slowly Progressing...

2005-10-11T22:19:00.000+02:00

I didn´t paint yesterday and it took me until late in the afternoon today, before I could get myself to paint on this again. All because my confidence was a little bruised after all the things my teacher had said. It was not just what I already wrote here. It was also how she repeated a few times how it takes at least five years until one is really good in watercolor painting... That was after her tantrum about my attempts of painting the vase and after she had criticised my first attempt at painting the violet flowers (that was on a different sheet of paper) and I´m sure it was pointed in my direction. So I had a little battle with my inner critic these last two days. Well, I won. And I think the violet flower heads are really okay. I didn´t win the battle in case of the vase yet. But I have plenty of time for that and I may just try painting it on a different sheet of paper first.

Sunflowers

2005-10-10T21:40:00.000+02:00

The last two days I have been painting this bouquet of flowers in a weekend drawing class. We were seven people. Some were from the drawing class I had attended the past two semesters, some from a watercolor class my teacher is teaching. So we could either draw in pastels or use watercolors. Because I love doing the details I didn´t even finish my painting, while everybody else was doing two different pictures... *LOL*
In the beginning I intended to draw some pumpkins and a vase, but my heart craved to draw the bouquet of flowers... So while fear told me I could never ever do this, because I didn´t even know where to start, I told myself to try it anyway. I feared more that I would probably never try this at home, where noone could help me if I needed it. Well, my teacher didn´t help me either. Instead she rather intimidated me. She said I was painting well, BUT that this was not the right medium for me. It would be better for me to try painting in goache... She said that painting in watercolors was all about colors flowing into each other. That she thinks about something different when she thinks of a watercolor painting. Like what she is doing (that´s what she meant, although she didn´t say it). All wet-in-wet technique. But I said, I thought there were no rules. She thinks there are. I told her that many botanical illustrations are done in watercolor, but she said that they are done mostly in goache...
When I started the vase in class, because I thought it would be better to try it there, so she could help me, she just started criticising me for doing something that was still too diffucult for me. But I like doing difficult things. It´s more interesting to me. So what, if I ruin the vase but the rest still looks good? So what if I don´t get everything perfect? I have never done anything this difficult before! I´m amazed it already looks THIS good, for god´s sake! When I asked for help she couldn´t even explain how to do it. She just said that this is not the right way. So I asked, if she could show me on a different sheet of paper. But she said it wouldn´t help, because she would do it so differently. Great! So how do I go about? I don´t mind to being criticised, if it´s helpful. That´s why I went to this stupid class! But I had this feeling that she just could not bear I was already as good as I am. Maybe because she had tried to explain some basics to me, only to realize that I could already do that. I think that it bugged her. Although I listened to her and acknowledged what she did. I didn´t offend her in any way. But I think it offended her that I could already do it. So what was I to do? Pretend that I could not?
I decided to work out how to draw the vase at home. She gave me the bouquet and the vase to go on painting at home, but I was feeling intimidated today, so I didn´t work on it anymore. Stupid, ha? But I have looked up techniques on flower illustration and found out, I´m using the watercolor with too much water on my brush (the picture is a little paler in reality). So I can use watercolor! I do not need to use goache to get the colors more intense! Although I will try it anyway. Because maybe it is something I will like. But still I hate the way she said all that. It was the way she was saying all of that. Afterwards, even the other people in my class did not say anything about my painting anymore, whereas in the morning they had all ooohd and aaahd about it. I think they where afraid of falling from our teachers grace. So be it.
I have looked up how other illustrators do their botanical illustrations. And some do use goache. But many of those use it only to work in the highlights. Ha!
I´m glad I don´t go to her regular classes anymore... I need somebody else.
When I think about it, I think it all has to do with me telling her the weekend before that I want to go into the illustration business one day. I had shown her my Bird Picture before and she thought it was cute. But when I told her about my plans she said that they would not work out. That I needed to go to art school first. That it would be too tough to get published without a degree. When I told her that I know about a few artists who do get published even though they have never seen the insides of an art school, she just said: "Who knows, if that is true." I said that I knew it would not be easy, that I knew I would need more experience before I could do it, that I didn´t depend on it for a living, beause I could always work with my law degree... She still shook her head at me. So now you know it wasn´t just the examination blues I had last week... Although somewhere deep within I still believe I will make it! It´s just a matter of time and more practice. I won´t let anyone take my dream away ever again! NO!

Studio Friday: Golden Yellow - SECRET PROJECT REVEALED!!!

2005-10-07T22:50:00.000+02:00

This is definitely the best topic to reveal the secret project I have been working on since the beginning of august. TA DAH!

As I have already mentioned, it was originally an idea I had for the birdie swap. It started out as an idea of three birds balancing on each others heads - a static picture I wanted to paint in my naive style in acrylics. But then I was tired of this style and it itched me to do it in watercolors and with a more dramatic perspective. I didn´t know if I could do it, because I have never ever tried a wild perspective like this one. But the picture was there in my mind and I HAD to put it on paper. So I told myself to just try it. I wouldn´t have to show it to anyone, if it didn´t work out... So I sketched and sketched.

This was the first sketch I made to see what kind of characters I could come up with. Pretty bad, hah?

My first try at changing the perspective. But something was still wrong. So I tried, and tried...

and tried some more.

And suddenly I saw THIS clearly in my mind and just drew it... Was that really ME??? ;-)

Beating the Blues

2005-10-06T14:13:00.000+02:00

I suffer from post examination blues...That´s why I didn´t post so often. I´m not in the mood to do anything. But I did something anyway. I picked up my knitting again and I finished my secret project last week! I will show you soon! It was actually meant to be for the Birdie Swap, but it turned out to be the best thing I ever painted, or at least it seems so to me. So I decided to keep it. But unless I have an alternative for the swap, I cannot show you...I would so love to though! I have already started to work on that alternative, but it takes me longer to finish it than I thought, because there is always something going wrong - grmmph!!! I will explain later.
So why do I feel blue? At first, I think, it had to do with being exhausted and not getting enough sleep. But then I started to feel the pressure to look for a job and not feel ready for it at all. I still do not really know what to look for. All I know is, that I don´t want to become a lawyer. And I need a job that will not eat me up, because I need to have enough time and energy for all my creative endeavors. What else is making me feel blue? My tummy is causing me trouble again. I´m not sure it´s IBS this time. It feels more like I´ve caught a bug or something. But I´m really not sure and it adds to the feeling of not being stress-resistant enough to cope with all this career stuff I have to deal with now. I think I will take it easy for another week and try some more arts and crafts therapy ;-)

Studio Friday: The Most Unusual Thing

2005-10-02T19:41:00.000+02:00

This pear-shaped flute is probably the most unusual object in my studio. I bought it in a small shop in the little town of Szentendre (near Budapest) on our trip to Hungary, last year. I can play a little tune for you...did you hear it?

Not Enough Sleep...

2005-09-27T09:45:00.000+02:00

All I wanted to do after my exams was SLEEP. But life had other plans...

I was feeling worn-out at the end of my big day, but I couldn´t go to sleep. Too much adrenaline still in my body! So I went to bed way past midnight only to get up early the next day. I needed to go and register for unemployment. But it was okay, really. I didn´t feel too tired - yet. In the afternoon, a good friend of mine visited and we went to the park. We took a boat ride, watched some of the creatures that are living in the little zoo there, and finally got some rest at the chinese tea pavillion.
Next day, I wanted to sleep in. But I was up at eight a.m.! Because I could not fall back asleep, I got up and didn´t know what to do with myself. I didn´t feel so good, either. My IBS was back and I had bad tummy cramps. Also, I was feeling pretty tired, so I schlepped myself to the couch and watched tv until noon. When my boyfriend came back home from his course, we prettied ourselves up a bit and went to a house warming party. Friends of us have recently moved to a cute little village in the midst of the palatian vineyards. We enjoyed the party very much and filled our tummies with delicious food and new vine!
On sunday I was up early AGAIN! By now I was feeling tired to the bones. But it was such beautiful weather outside. As I was sitting in the living room, the windows wide open so I could smell the autumn air and better hear the churchbells of the nearby church chiming, I decided to wake up my sweety and go outside. We went to Weinheim by tram and had some lunch in the beautiful town center. Then went for a long walk through the woods and the vineyards, overlooking the rhine plain. On our way back in the tram, I could hardly keep my eyes open...

Some yummy grapes along our way

But yesterday I had to get up early, as I had an appointment with a man from the employment agency at eight in the morning! The perspectives for getting a job in any law-related field in Germany are pretty bad right now. I know a lot of people who are now looking for a job for over year and still haven´t found one. So it wasn´t a very uplifting talk I had with the agent. When at home again, after some grocery shopping, I decided to roll up my sleeves and scrub down the bathroom. I always get this urge to get everything cleaned up, when there is something new up my way and I´m still blocked and can´t start. Also, it seems to be a good way to beat the blues... So by the evening I was feeling way better! My boyfriend and I had decided that we would go out for dinner to celebrate my exams. And that we did! It was a really nice and relaxed evening with great carribean food and argentinian wine! I was feeling pretty drunk when we where on our way back *LOL*! So I slept very well tonight ;-))
...but...I WOKE UP AT EIGHT A.M. AGAIN!!! This time, because there was some kind of big nasty banging noise! Hey, I just want to sleep in ONCE!!! Oh, well. So I got up and went to the bathroom and decided to go back to bed afterwards and doze off...but then the hammering started...sooo I resigned. Maybe, I´ll just go for a nap today...

Legally Blonde...

2005-09-23T09:34:00.000+02:00

That´s happy, exhausted me yesterday, returning home from a long day, before I ripped off my clothes and finally slipped into something more comfortable, more "me". And guess what I watched on tv yesterday evening? Legally Blonde!!! What a coincidence :-))) Ha, ha, ha...

Yay! I MADE IT!!! I passed!

2005-09-22T22:25:00.000+02:00

I think the gods were on my side today! You cannot imagine how nervous I was today. I have never ever in my life felt this nervous in my life. Yet my head was totally clear! My intestines rebelled, I was feeling sick in my stomach, I was freezing like hell, I couldn´t breath right...and felt like I was near fainting when we arrived after an hours drive at the court where my exams took place. But I didn´t exactly panic. It was just my body. And there was nothing I could do about it. So I just tried to accept it and talk to myself in a reassuring way. I just wanted to get it over with.
I was lucky. I got to do my presentation first, which spared me the horrible waiting time. The presentation was about a subject that I knew very well. The minute I saw what it was about, I knew I could do it. So, I was going to show them! Ha! Suddenly, all my confidence came back. And I was frigheningly calm, hee, hee. I didn´t have my usual problems with timing...it went sooo well! I was finished preparing my presentation five minutes before my time was up! And I knew that it was good. So I went in there and showed them (four examiners - one for each subject). I was sooo relaxed, so concentrated. I don´t understand these stress reactions. Funny, ha? I was still very nervous about the next four subjects. Because we were only two candidates and each of us was questioned for about ten minutes per subject, the whole examinations were over by about 1 pm. Luck was on my side. The other candidate was asked all the questions that I could never have answered. And he very often did not understand what one of the examiners wanted to hear from him (their questions were not very precise). The examiner I was most afraid of asked his questions last. And what a jerk! He asked stuff he isn´t permitted to ask, a lot of questions that had nothing to do with law at all! He didn´t give us time to look things up (which we are allowed to do, as we don´t have case law). Oh, well. It doesn´t matter anymore. Who cares! I got it over with! Plus, I even moved up one grade (mostly due to the good presentation, which counts double)!
Thanks to all of you, who have so dearly supported me! It helped me tremendously in keeping my sanity these last days! I wish I could go and party with you!!! Wouldn´t that be fun? Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! And now I´ll start my new life!!! Yoohooh!

One day to go...

2005-09-21T08:46:00.000+02:00

I´m still very, very nervous. Maybe, I´m still trying to stuff too much studying into my days... Yesterday, for most of the day, I felt way better though. Despite the fact that I didn´t get much sleep. The last two nights I woke up very, very early and lay awake for what seemed like hours, having thoughts racing through my brain of what the examiners might ask me and I wouldn´t know... I tried to calm myself down and it worked better yesterday than it did today.
After reading the records of past examinations by my examiners, I fear one of the examiners most. He is totally unpredictable and sometimes asks only things that are actually not part of what the examination regulations intend him to ask, and are usually questions only in the first state exams. Sometimes he asked only questions on the history of constitutional law, which I did know when I started studying at university, but have long forgotten. Because I did not know the names of my examiners until about a week ago, I had no chance of preparing for a case like this. There is no way I could review this stuff. From what I heard he is an old man who likes to brag with his own vast knowledge... He is from a generation of judges who studied in times where they had to learn about half of what we have to do today and had a lot more time for it. I wonder if he really was as good in his times as he likes to project these days. Today, you can only become a judge in Germany if you have outstanding grades. In his time, everyone who passed the second state exam could become a judge... Of course these thoughts won´t really help me. Except maybe with not letting him intimidate me too much.
Oh, well. I wish it was already over.

Three days to go...

2005-09-19T12:25:00.000+02:00

...and I´m a nervous wreck. I´m really doing my best to revise and not overdo it. But I have never been this afraid of any testing situation before.
I think it has to do with this being my last chance and because I´m scared of not finding a job if I fail at these exams. Or maybe it´s more like being scared of being labeled as a looser. Yes. I´m scared that people will look down on me or worse yet, turn away from me, if I screw up. Even though I know that for me this exam is not really sooo important, in the face of what other people might think of me, my own opinions don´t seem to matter at all. Even all other plans of mine feel like a fraud. I feel like "I have to pass this exam or else I´m worthless sh.t". It´s like my world´s going to crash if I´m not able to make it.
And I know that that cannot be true. I know I would survive. I know that it would not be easy, but that I´ll get over it eventually. So why am I still so scared?
I grew up surrounded by a large family of people (of course there were some exceptions) who only accepted and respected people for the great things they did, the respectable jobs they held, the kind of family they came from, how well people conformed... Everyone who didn´t have anything to brag about was more or less overlooked. I never seemed to fit in or be good enough in their eyes. Which has been especially tough, because family was preached to be the highest value in my life. So I always felt obliged to at least try to fit in and be accepted. But it was hopeless.
All my life I tried to give my all to becoming someone I am not. And although I have gotten over most of this these last years, I always fall back into this kind of thinking when I am under stress or in a situation where other people have to judge me. Even this blog thing triggered these fears at first.
It´s still really tough for me to stand up to myself, telling me that I have the right to not be like people expect me to be . That I have the right even to have these stupid fears.
Still, I wonder why these fears have not been this strong at all, when I waited for the results of my written exams. I think, it might have something to do with other people´s expectations, too. Before, no one expected me to have passed the written exams. But now, everybody is telling me that noone ever failed at the oral exams. That they won´t let people screw up at these... So what , if this is not true for me? What if I do fail at something that everybody tells me is doable? I´m really not all that well prepared.

Studio Friday: Creative Nap

2005-09-15T10:54:00.000+02:00

As I´m pretty much forced to take a break from my creative doings...this is where I take my creative nap these days. It´s my bed sofa in the living room. Now that my boyfriend is gone all day (he is taking preparation classes for his tax consulting exams), I can sit here without disturbing him (he has his desk in the living room). I can´t sit at a desk all the time, because it gives me bad back aches.

It´s getting serious...

2005-09-10T14:09:00.000+02:00

I just got the letter with the date for my oral exams. It´s the 22nd of september! Only 12 days! Now, I´m really, really nervous! Scared, to tell the truth. I know that the chances of passing this hurdle are way higher than those of failing, but still! Although I did study a little bit over the summer, I still got the feeling that I hardly know anything of importance. I keep forgetting so much. And it will be far more embarassing to not know the answers in an oral exam. The written exams were at least anonymous...Oh, please wish me luck!

Ssshh!

2005-09-08T15:01:00.000+02:00

I´m working on a secret project! I can´t tell you more about it now... Other than that, I´m not a very entertaining person these days. I spend most of the time in a grumpy mood, sitting on my bed and trying to stuff my head with boring details of German law... Blah ! So forgive me, if I´m not posting too much these days. It will all be over in october! Then I will reveal my secret project to you all, too (if I can wait that long, hee, hee)! So stay tuned!

Studio Friday: Favorite Tool

2005-09-03T14:38:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the bad picture... these are some of my favorite tools. I´ll start in the lower left corner and work myself clockwise around the picture. So, first of all there are my colored pencils (Polychromos from Faber-Castell) and some Pencils my grandfather used to draw with, although seemingly not too often (as far as I know, he preferred drawing with felt tipped pens). The Polychromos are so great! I love their relative softness, as it´s easier to blend colors than with normal colored pencils. In the top of the wooden box are my favorite Faber-Castell Pencils, a Faber-Castell drop-lead pencil for sketching (my favorite sketching tool!), Staedtler Pigment liners (because I can go over them with water colors), some Pitt Artist Pens that I don´t use often enough, also from Faber-Castell (no! I´m not getting paid by them!), and a Fountain Pen. At the top, there are my favorite inks from Winsor and Newton, some Schmincke masking fluid, a tin box with my putty erasor, my favorite palette and my Winsor and Newton field box. The latter I bought a few years back, when I was visiting my aunt´s family in London. I had never seen something like that box before, so I scratched up all my money to buy it! Below, are my Jaxell pastels. I would never have tried drawing with pastels, had it not been for my drawing teacher at the local evening academy. She is convinced that it is a good idea to start drawing with pastels, as you will get great results much faster than by drawing with pencils. And she always says that you need to experience success while learning to draw, because otherwise you´ll be discouraged and give up too soon. I think she´s quite right about this! Still, I don´t like to use the pastels when drawing at home, because of all the colorful dust it produces! In the middle you can see my paintbrushes. They are all by Da Vinci. I originally used the acrylic ones for painting with water colors, but now I only use them for my acrylic paintings. For water colors I now use mostly sable paint brushes, which I collected over the last few month, as I find they are quite expensive. But it´s worth buying a few, if you are really into painting with watercolors!

Studio Friday: Playtime

2005-08-31T20:36:00.000+02:00

Tine asked us to paint something using our non-dominant hand and using colors we usually don´t use. So this is what I came up with. I´m surprised, it wasn´t as hard to draw and color with my left hand as I thought it would be! I had a lot of fun with these!

Yummy Cake and Marshmallow Bunny!

2005-08-31T17:41:00.000+02:00

Our home is filled with the smells of freshly baked bread and plum cake! We are about to eat the latter in a few minutes, when I´m finished writing this post! So, I guess you´ll understand that I´ll keep it short ;-))

I finished the marshmallow bunny today! Only the little dress needs some sewing in the back, as the shoulder straps are not yet tacked on!

Olivia has already made friends with Bunny!

Bea and the Sock Factory

2005-08-30T18:41:00.000+02:00

Did I say something about being uncreative? Well, knitting socks might not be the most creative thing to do, but at least it´s productive and I can do it in my study breaks without it distracting me too much...I love how these turn out! The zebra socks are finished, by the way!

The Promised Pictures of Our Boat Tour

2005-08-29T19:33:00.000+02:00

I spend my days with my nose in my books, so I have nothing much to tell or show you, I´m afraid. Oral exams will be in the last two weeks of september. I don´t know the date of my exams yet... But as I have promised you some pictures of the boat tour we took a while ago, I thought I´d post them today, just to entertain you while I´m trying to fill my head with the facts and figures of German law...

Above you can see some beautiful old house in Heidelberg. Below, you see the old bridge of Heidelberg with the famous Heidelberg castle in the background.

An old bridge across the Neckar in Ladenburg.
Mannheim

Yippeee Yay!

2005-08-26T00:39:00.000+02:00

I can´t believe it! Did this really happen to me? I ACTUALLY PASSED MY WRITTEN EXAMS! I didn´t really expect the results before tomorrrow or the day after tomorrow... and then my boyfriend came back from emptying the mailbox, and he told me to get the opener, there was a letter for me, and I got this sinking feeling, but I PASSED! - Just need to dance a little - okay I´m back... I can´t believe it. I didn´t even expect to feel THAT good, in a case like this. Now, I noticed how much of a stress it all has been these last weeks! I feel a lot lighter now! So many of my worries were taken off my chest!
I still have to take my oral exams some time in september. But, although it won´t be easy, they normally don´t let anyone fail if they got this far! So, there is still a lot of fear involved here, hee, hee, but I won´t let it get to me right now! No way! And no matter what might happen in september, no one can take this little victory away from me! I am so damn happy! Now, it will really be a free decision to do something else afterwards. No one can say, I had to do something different, because I failed at my exams! What a great feeling!

Illustration Friday: Reflection

2005-08-24T16:56:00.000+02:00

We reflect each other´s warmth and beauty...

Projects that Help Me to Procrastinate ;-))

2005-08-23T20:32:00.000+02:00

I think, you will only be seeing seashells in the next weeks, because LOVE drawing them with my paintbrush! I would love to show you the sketches for Holli´s Birdie Swap, too, but I´m afraid you will have to wait a little until Holli gets my swap!
I woke up this morning having a slight panic attack because the results of my written exams can be delivered every day now... After breakfast, I was so nervous, I could by no means study. So I took to writing my morning pages, which I haven´t done for quite a while now. They really calmed me down. Afterwards I felt quite euphoric, so now I wasn´t in study mood either. Oh my... Well, somehow I managed to read a few pages anyhow. But I doubt that my brain remembers what I read... Late in the afternoon, I found that the only thing that could calm me down again would be to go on painting my seashells, which I did, as you can see here. And it worked. I feel good! I don´t even have any guilty feelings! I hope, that I will be able to study again, when I have the results...
This is the other project that I use to procrastinate: The zebra socks! (Made of Regia Loop)

Studio Friday: Positive Space

2005-08-22T21:02:00.000+02:00

It took me really long to realize which place it is in my room, that I like most. Actually, I like all of it! But these days, when I have to sit at my desk so often, I love to look at all my pens and paintbrushes and inks most of all, enjoying all of their colors! Distracts me from my academic duties though...

Magic!

2005-08-20T18:51:00.000+02:00

This is pure magic, I tell you! I have been sooo afraid of doing this! I wanted to sketch my seashells in my travel journal while still on my vacation this june. But I always chickened out. I thought that I would not be able to do it to my own satisfaction... Then, a few weeks later, I tried it half-heartedly. You can see the result here:

I gave up after this disaster. But today, it grabbed me. I had to try again. Just taking photos of my seashells didn´t satisfy me one bit! And now look at this! I surprised myself! How can this be? My only explanation is, that first of all I didn´t really put a lot of effort into my first watercolor sketches, and second of all, I didn´t really give myself permission to take some time out for this. I still see a lot to be done better the next time I do this (if you click on the pictures you´ll see what I mean), but I´m really happy, the sketches turned out the way you can see here. I am so excited! Now, I´m afraid of finishing the sketches for fear of ruining them...

(Click on pictures to see a larger version)

Homesick

2005-08-19T15:36:00.000+02:00

I took out my travel journal today, because I haven´t finished writing my entries yet... And now I´m sooo homesick for my dear little island in the North Sea! I did that watercolor sketch of a wild Kamtschatka rose two days before we left this little place, sitting in the dunes in the midday sun, sharing the rose´s sweet smell with a bumble bee, the salty winds playing with my hair... It´s the only one I did while staying there. I actually forgot about it, when I posted my sketch of the old house a few days ago! How could I!
I put a postcard with a picture of the old island church in the lower right corner (there is a welcome letter from the lady who owned our vacation home on the back) and wrote the text of a song on this page that my grandfather had taught me to sing when on that first vacation there, when I was only four years old. It´s an old Frisian song saying something like "where the waves of the North Sea wash upon the beach, where the yellow flowers bloom in the green country, where the seagulls are crying in the roaring storm, that is where I am at home, there I am at home..." It´s as if he knew how much this would mean to me one day. I miss him so. No, I´m not going to cry...

Me and my older brother with my grandpa, june, 1978.

Bea the Red-nosed Mouse

2005-08-18T19:21:00.000+02:00

This is what happens when you go on boatride and don´t wear sunscreen... Not so pretty! My boyfriend´s sister and his mother came for a visit on monday evening and we took them on a tour up the River Neckar from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Neckarsteinach and back. This took us all day. Although the sun didn´t shine all the time, when it did it was quite intense. We had a great day and I took a lot of pictures. Some of them I will post tomorrow, as I don´t have a lot of time right now. We are actually on our way to visit some friends for a barbecue. Yum! So bye for now!

My Weekend

2005-08-15T14:01:00.000+02:00

This is what I´ve been working on in my study breaks: Socks for my boyfriend! It might seem like I love to knit socks all the time, but it´s just because it´s so easy and relaxing. No muse needed for this! It doesn´t distract me as much from studying like drawing often does.

Saturday morning, I went to the park to sketch the old house you´ve seen in my last post. Late in the afternoon I went to the park again. This time my boyfriend came along. We went to the upper part of the park, which costs admission, and is a lot more attractive because it has been part of a landscaping exhibition in the seventies.
You can take a boat ride over the little lake and look at all kinds of exotic birds living on an island in the middle of the lake. If your not careful and you let your hands hang into the water it may happen that one of the huge carps tries to bite off your finger, hee, hee! And if you´re lucky, you can sometimes see these turtles swimming past your boat. This saturday, they decided to relax a little and take a sunbath on these stones near the lakeside.
They have a little zoo in this park and a small area, where various farm animals live. But best of all are all those storks who live in the park. They like this area especially well, as you can see here:
Now that I have overcome my outdoor-sketching-fears a little bit, I must come here to draw! I have wanted to do that for the last two years. Imagine!

First Outdoor Sketch in a Long Time!

2005-08-13T15:08:00.000+02:00

(Please click on picture for a larger version!)

I got inspired to go outside to the park and draw this old mansion that sits right on the edge of the park. I have looked at it so often, thinking I should draw it, but being too afraid of people who might look over my shoulder. This post by Paula Becker inspired me to not put it off any longer! Go take a look at her blog, if you didn´t do it already! It´s really great! Now, for my fears... noone looked over my shoulder! I sat down right in the middle of the lawn. Only one man walked past me and all he did was smile at me! I only worked at this one sketch. It took me about two hours. Two hours of pure bliss! So why didn´t I try it before? This stupid fear! I always waited, if I couldn´t find someone to come along sketching with me. But fact is, that none of my friends who live in my area draw or paint. So how long did I intend to wait? Crazy! So thanks Paula for inspiring me to go outside and draw! Now I´m sooo happy!!!

5 Idiosyncrasies of Mine

2005-08-12T20:58:00.000+02:00

Andrea tagged every reader of her post to list 5 of their idiosyncrasies:

1. I bought a magazine for sewing childrens´clothing because of instructions for sewing your own diapers -although I don´t have children yet... Must have inherited this from my mom, who bought a bowl for a dog three years before we got one, who bought batteries before buying the radio...

2. Sometimes I´m so excited about an idea that pops into my mind, I do strange things... like once, I had this idea of needing to go to a nearby park and pick a few leaves of a gingko tree, because I wanted to press them. I darted off and when I stood in front of the tree I burst into laughter... there was not a single leaf on the tree, as it was the middle of january...

3. When I made my soul map collage, I was so happy when I finished it, that I put it up at the foot of my sweetie´s side of the bed (he was on a business trip at the time), so I could look at it immediately when I woke up and for as long as I needed to fall asleep.

4. I sometimes like to startle other people. My last victims were a few 13 year old boys. One of them ran, rammed a gate on purpose and play-acted like he had hurt his belly...and I said in an all serious tone: "That´s what I always do! E-ve-ry-day! Now that´s why my tummy always hurts! I really should stop doing that..." They looked at me in a real strange way and ran off...

5. The tip of my nose moves when I speak (like that of a bunny)! (Does this count as an idiosyncrasy?)

Small Sketch

2005-08-12T18:48:00.000+02:00

I´m really nervous because of the results of my written exams. They will either be sent off next week or the week after. I have such an aversion to studying these days! And I feel guilty because all I want to do is paint! So I do neither one nor the other... Sometimes I wish that I didn´t pass my exams. Studying law feels so wrong! And I feel that I can´t wait even one day longer for living my dreams! Being true to myself is so important to me, that I actually sometimes wish for having failed at my exams... I know it sounds crazy. I wouldn´t have understood a few years back either... I just can´t wait anymore! I want to be able to live my life the way I want to - right now! I´m tired of pushing myself to do things I have no interest in anymore. I´m finished with this.
I started to paste some magazine cut-outs into my new visual goul journal today. I had collected articles and images of people who lead a creative life. An illustrator, some women who have a great store selling felted goodies, a woman who paints and sells old furniture and knickknacks... I only glued in the article about the illustrator. All the other ideas I had collected suddenly seemed wrong to put in my journal. If I´m really honest, I want to be an illustrator. I don´t care if it will take me ten years or twenty or thirty years before my drawings are good enough. Even if they stay the way they are now. I want to draw. I want to paint. Everything else I only want to do as a hobby. I hope I will find a part time job, so that I can make my own money, but will still be able to draw and paint a lot, take classes, ... Call me crazy, but that´s what I want to do. And it actually scares me to death! But I´m going to do it anyway! So now it´s out!

Studio Friday: Negative Space

2005-08-12T16:53:00.000+02:00

This is my studyroom/studio, which you may have already seen on my flickr site. I actually love my room a lot! I painted it pink, because I have always wanted to have a room with pink walls and white furniture. I just wish I were allowed to paint the window frames white, too. Even though I love this room, there are still some corners I don´t like that much, because that´s where I store all the clutter that I don´t have room for. Take a look here:

This is where I store my sewing machine, drawing-blocks, some notebooks (because the shelves are already packed), a bag with wool in it, an old shirt that I wear when painting, and sometimes other pieces of clothing, too, as you can see...

A New Notebook!

2005-08-11T22:07:00.000+02:00

Look what I found in one of my favorite stationary stores today! Something I have always wished for: A notebook where you can put your own cover on (from my alltime favorite Clairefontaine)! Isn´t that great? I´ve just decided that this will be the notebook I´ll be using for my visual goal journal. I´m so excited! I took some time today to cut out more pictures from magazines. Now, all I have to do is deciding on the categories... Then I´ll start using the glue!

Happy Seaside Memories

2005-08-10T19:06:00.000+02:00

I cleaned up my studyroom/studio today and in a plastic box found these. I collected them at the beach of my favorite island in the North Sea. It´s a place where I spent the best vacation of my childhood! So many happy memories! I have always longed to visit that place again, but somehow I never made it. At the beginning of this year I have dreamed twice about this little island. Very intense dreams. And I had the strong feeling that the island was calling me. So I looked it up on the internet and when I saw the pictures, I knew I had to go! Even though I was very small when I had spent my vacation there, I had vivid memories of it. I even remembered my way around! So I convinced my sweetie of going there for a week. And that´s what we did at the end of may/beginning of june (the same time of year!). It has been no disappointment! I immediately felt at home! We spent our days in the dunes and at the beach. It was all very peaceful. No cars allowed on that island, hardly any bicycles - only horses and carriages! You have to pull your luggage in a small cart from the harbour to your vacation home! And everywhere wild roses! Their smell mixes with the salty air of the sea! I miss that place! This is me at a time when I was still called something like "Little Mouse", playing happily in the finest sand!
At the end of a very long day at the beach, my dear grandfather took this picture of me. I always feel loved when I look at this one.
And I was so blessed to spend my fourth birthday at my favorite place! Can you see the candy seashells I got? I remember, I also got a paper doll with lots of clothes and a room you could fold up. And a Holly Hobbie doll!

Look Ma! No Hands!

2005-08-09T00:21:00.000+02:00

The marshmallow bunny is on his way, too! I´m tired now. Night, night!

Monkey Time

2005-08-08T20:22:00.000+02:00

Olivia is enjoying a yummy picknick in our crooked yucca tree... She hasn´t got used to the cool temperatures this summer, so she got a scarf to match her pleated skirt.

Relaxing in the warm afternoon sun, shining into our kitchen.

Who can resist this smile!

I´m so happy I made this sock monkey!

Rainy Day Blues...

2005-08-07T11:50:00.000+02:00

It was nearing noon and Bea the Mouse was sitting alone in her kitchen, reading a book on German family law that was slipping through her brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind... I have adapted this from the first sentence of the new Harry Potter book ("It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind."), as it seems to fit my situation perfectly.
I´m really trying. But I only have images in my mind of pictures I want to draw, things I want to knit and sew... I feel really guilty because of that. Why can´t I just discipline myself! It´s only a few weeks. Then the struggle will all be over and I´m finally free to take up my graphic design course again, and be who I truly am. My creative part is - as I have mentioned before - really jealous. It gives me a really hard time as soon as I honestly work at preparing for my exams. Since I developped a burnout syndrome three years back, I suffer from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). But it got a lot better these past month, as I did more and more of what I really wanted to do and not push myself too much into doing seemingly "reasonable" things, like studying etc. And now its back... So even my body is telling me what to do. It´s so smart! Smarter than I am.

Illustration Friday: Empty

2005-08-06T18:22:00.000+02:00

Not so cute this time. And only a quick sketch of my idea for "empty", as I don´t have so much time these days, having to study...

Studio Friday: Sketchbook(s) / Notebook(s)

2005-08-06T12:31:00.000+02:00

(please click on picture for a larger version)

These are my sketchbooks and notebooks. I use the large folder for keeping images cut from magazines, as inspiration for future paintings and craft projects. Underneath, you can see a spiral notebook which is a kind of travel journal, but I sometimes put cut-outs from magazines in it, too, as you can see here. Then there is my sketchbook, which I don´t use so often, because I find it´s rather intimidating to put something in it. I like it much better to doodle on loose sheets of paper. The blue painting is in my first altered book. A kind of "feelings-only- journal" for me, as I don´t really write anything in it. On the left are some cut-outs I intend on putting into a new visual goal diary. But I have not started on that one, except for collecting images from magazines and such. I got inspired to start this kind of journal by Tera.

Illustration Friday: Aging

2005-08-05T19:04:00.000+02:00

Oh well, I didn´t quite make the deadline... but I´ll post my illo anyway! My thought was, that the process of aging starts at day one, and not suddenly, when we are seventy. I think many of us realize this growing up process first, when we make the transition from child to teenager, and for some of us this has not been an easy one...

Sweets for my sweet...

2005-08-04T21:56:00.000+02:00

Since my sweetie is home for august and september in order to study for his tax advisor exam in october, I have less trouble disciplining myself to study for my own exam in september. But in my study breaks, I just couldn´t resist baking some super tasty strawberry muffins... It makes life sitting at this table (scroll down) a lot more bearable! It´s a little sunroom (a.k.a. as the "balcony", or the "veranda"...) in our kitchen, where we usually have our meals. As it is the only sunny place of our appartment in the afternoons, I love to sit there. I would love to place a little wicker couch where you see the plant in the background. Then I could lie down there, especially in the wintertime, a book in hand, enjoying the sun like a cat, eh, mouse!

Short Update

2005-08-04T00:04:00.000+02:00

Well, nothing special happened today. Aside from trying to study, I also worked at Olivia the sock monkey´s sweater. But something with knitting the v-neck didn´t work out. It turned out too tight. Now I´m knitting a scarf for her (wonder why...). I´ll post a picture soon!

Kitsch happens...

2005-08-03T01:08:00.000+02:00

The colors are not quite right. But what´s really funny is the paper bag that was lying underneath. I didn´t recognize what it was saying before I viewed the photo on my computer...Hah!

Studio Friday: Playtime

2005-08-01T11:17:00.000+02:00

(please click on picture for a larger version)

This is actually something I made a few month ago, when I took out all the magazines and catalogues, I collect in a huge basket next to my desk, and randomly cut out everything that in some way appealed to me. I wanted to find out, if there was some kind of pattern in what I like. When I started to put everything on a large piece of packing paper, I had this idea of cutting out those areas from a map, that showed all the places I had lived in (I had to leave out the place in the US, where I had lived as a teenager, because my old road atlas only contained maps of Europe). I then arranged those pieces from "North" to "South", so they made up a new map. This time, it became more like a soul map... I also included some pictures in my collage, that I had printed out from websites I admired. The result of this playtime amazed me. It is so "me". Looking at it makes me really, really happy. What´s funny: That blue sign in the upper righthand corner says:"Playing allowed!" Now talk about coincidence!

Insomnia

2005-08-01T01:46:00.000+02:00

I can´t sleep. I have been turning from left to right, from right to left, and back again - a zillion times. I´m just so scared. This month I will find out if I screwed up on my written exams. I will get the results by the end of august. I screwed up last year. There was half a point missing on one of the eight tests we had to write... Now, this is my last chance at earning my degree. It´s not like I want to become a lawyer, so I don´t really need this degree. But I put so much time and effort into it all these years, I struggled so hard, despite nowing that it´s not what I want to do. I stuck with it. It´s more like I´m scared of having a hard time finding a job. Or maybe, no: I´m scared of feeling like a failure. I´m scared, I might believe I´m a failure...

I´mad at me, too. For not knowing what it is that I want to do. For not having enough confidence in my abilities. For not being able to be what I´m not: A career-oriented, confident, successful person. For some years I worked my butt off to become just that. I thought, it was all a matter of pure willpower and determination. Where there´s a will, there is a way. The one thing that came my way was a burnout syndrome. Three years later, it´s still a struggle for me. I´m amazed at that person I have been a few years ago. I have been so into this law thing. I can´t relate to that anymore and boy have I tried! A lot of times, I think that maybe it is too a matter of pure willpower, blah, blah. But it´s not. That is what I know, although I question it over and over again. It´s just so strange, that I changed so much.

In the process of recovering from my miserable state, I took up all those things that I had neglected for years on end. All those things that had made me happy when I was a child and that saved me in my lonelyness as a teenager. Drawing, painting, crafts.

And now this creative part of me is ruling my life. And it´s jealous. It´s acting really wild inside of me, whenever I dare to sit down to study... I become depressed, whenever I spend more than two hours over my books. I´m brimming with ideas - most of which I never express, because I think that I can´t allow myself to do something fun, when I actually have to study! So rather I numb my brain with watching some mindless tv instead, feeling even more like a failure afterwards. I have tried different routines. Studying in the morning, creative stuff in the afternoon, and vice versa. Breaking down my study time into tiny chunks and doing creative stuff inbetween. You name it.

And still I´m having a hard time accepting it. I often think that I just exaggerate. That it´s all in my imagination. That I don´t need to create. That it´s all crap. Because I´m not even good at it. How will I be able to make a living of painting or crafting? Me? I need more time. I have lost so much time all these years that I have been trying to be somebody else.

But then again - you can call me naive - I just know, that I will be able to make a living, even as the person that´s me. I know I can be a lot better, if only I keep on doing what I love doing. I know that I will be a lot better at drawing and painting, than I am now. I have seen how much progress there was in my drawings the last two years - and I didn´t even draw all that much! I know that I´m meant for a creative, arty life ( although I´m scared of saying this). There is a part of me, that knows what it is. "That knows it´s neither ice, nor mud, nor winter light - but wood, with a gift for burning." Thanks Andrea, for helping me remember this.

Song

You´re wondering if I´m lonely:

OK then, yes I´m lonely

as a plane rides lonely and level

on its radio beam, aiming

across the Rockies

for the blue-strung aisles

of an airfield on the ocean

You want to ask, am I lonely?

Well, of course, lonely

as a woman driving across country

day after day, leaving behind

mile after mile

little towns she might have stopped

and lived and died in, lonely

If I´m lonely

it must be the loneliness

of waking first, of breathing

dawn´s first cold breath on the city

of being the one awake

in a house wrapped in sleep.

If I´m lonely

it´s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore

in the last red-light of the year

that knows what it is, that knows it´s neither

ice nor mud nor winter light

but wood, with a gift for burning

Adrienne Rich

What I´m working at

2005-07-31T22:11:00.000+02:00

I think I am a bit kitschy at heart.

2005-07-30T13:45:00.000+02:00

I have to add something here... tee hee! Did anyone recognize my cookie-eating racoon suffers from some kind of genetic disorder? Look at his hands!!! I thought about secretly correcting my mistake, but then again...no. This is the first time something like this has happened to me and I actually think it´s funny in a way...

Grrrmph !!!!

2005-07-30T12:39:00.000+02:00

I am having a grumpy day.