Miscellaneous

Just a few random things today...

I do have a new set of photos to post, but haven't sorted through them yet.  I was at a conference in London last week, and stayed a couple extra days to see the palace and the Tower and (especially) the British Museum.  As a result, I have like 600 pictures from the museum, and no one wants to look at all those except me, just like no one wants to spend six solid hours looking at every item in the British Museum except me.

What else?  This article about a Dutch cyclist almost being ticketed in New York caught my eye this week.  And no, the skirt she's wearing isn't unreasonably short for Dutch cyclists.  I see women biking in shorter skirts all the time.  I even bike in skirts, although as my skirts are all about knee-length, it's less of a problem unless it's super windy outside.  It's much less difficult than it seems like it should be.  Figuring out how to bike in a long winter coat was a bit more of a challenge, actually.

Lately, what I've been up to is crafty stuff.  All that stuff that I never had time for at home.  But as I have a bit more free time here, I've picked it all up again.  Specifically, I'm cross-stitching and sewing again.

I'd brought cross-stitching supplies with me in September, but didn't touch any of it until April.  (I'd brought things with me because the necessary thread is ridiculously expensive here: it's about 50 cents in Canada and about 1.50 euros here, which is about four times the price.)  I suspect I'll end up with a giant pile of projects with no actual use for them, but that always seems to happen.

I hadn't been sewing much in the last couple years, partly because it requires solid chunks of time in a way that I just didn't have, and partly because my apartment was just too small, without any solid surfaces on which I could lay out fabric and cut.  But there's an extra, empty table in our office that's now got my sewing machine on it.  I had bought a cheap machine in the after-Christmas sales, but it wasn't so happy sewing through anything, including simple cotton, for more than a few minutes.  And, let's be honest, neither of us can ever find jeans that aren't far longer than our legs, so having something that can handle denim is a necessity.  So, for my birthday, I bought myself a better machine.  Nothing fancy, only about 20 stitches, but it's a Singer and it'll certainly do whatever I need it to do.  And last for years, too.

So what am I sewing?  Clothes, mostly.  I have so much trouble finding clothes that fit properly that sometimes it's just easier to make them myself.  And some things, like PJ bottoms, take almost no time or money to make.  There are fabric stores here, but every Tuesday, the main square downtown turns into a giant fabric market.  Most of the fabric is cheaper than it would be in Canada, sometimes significantly so, although the broadcloth and the printed cotton (think what you would use to make a quilt) are more expensive.  That means I have a slight backlog right now, because I end up grabbing things as you see them, as I never know whether they'll be there next week.  I always end up with a backlog when I'm sewing, though.  There are cut-out-but-never-sewn patterns sitting in my parents' basement that I cut and prepped years ago.

So, that's about it for me.  If you'd like to see a few of the things I've actually finished, the pictures are here.

Visitors

This is just one of those funny coincidences.  Stefan's old roommate Josh was looking at conferences last year, and realized that the big conference in his field this summer just happened to be in Maastricht, about 45 minutes away from Eindhoven.  So Josh and his girlfriend Jocelyn came to visit us last week on their way through Europe :)

We met up with them in Utrecht, as they'd been in Amsterdam and Utrecht's got a bit more to see than Eindhoven (and has the advantage of being right in the middle).  So we hung out in Utrecht for the day: climbed the cathedral tower, had lunch in a little pub, went canoeing in the canals.

Side note: Apparently, despite the fact that the Dutch word kano is quite clearly "canoe," when you go to rent a kano, you end up with a kayak.  They did have something on the price list called a Canadian canoe, which I presume was a real canoe.  It's just one of those odd cultural differences that you don't realize, because who besides a Canadian distinguishes between canoe and kayak?

Another side note: I can't steer a kayak.  At all.  Nor can I paddle in a straight line.  Neither of these things is good when the canal is only about as wide as your kayak is long and the walls are covered in bushes and reeds.  But I only almost fell in the canal once, and I managed to scramble upright, saving myself (and Stefan, and the kayak) from a lovely swim.

We hung out in Eindhoven after that... Josh and Jocelyn had already been through London and Amsterdam and were getting tired, so I think they were about ready for a few quiet days at home, with no restaurant food and no drunk people in the hostel hallways.  Before they left, we went to the DAF truck museum.  Stefan's been wanting to go for months, as it's about two blocks away from our house, and we just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  He was very, very excited about the big trucks.  I guess it's true: boys don't get older, they just get bigger ;)

And finally, as usual, the photos are here.