Hello! My name is Tabea Katharina. I started this blog as a place to post about knitting and sewing. It gradually expanded to include the books I read, the food I cook and bake, and my little roof garden.
I haven’t been in the right headspace to celebrate or even acknowledge fall this year, but this week I decided to something nice for myself and bake a pumpkin pie. To be honest, it’s only in the past few years that I discovered how delicious pumpkin was in both sweet and savoury meals! We never…
Read moreYou were the best kitty girl, Marchesa. You were the ray of sunshine on the darkest days. You were a fighter, neither Oscar’s grumpiness nor your sickness could stop you from taking on the day. Every insect and bird that made the mistake to cross the borders of your kingdom regretted it for the nanosecond…
Read moreStarterities is my downfall. Now that my enthusiasm about a new project (and stripes!) has died down, knitting progress has slowed down as well. Not even the stripes get me that excited anymore … I’m still plotting along, but I’ve finished the bigger front and back pieces in less time than I’ve needed for the…
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I’m still successfully knitting stripes! In my previous post about this sweater I showed you the finished back and half of the front. I took a break from knitting for a couple of days because the edge stitch kept slipping of the needle. I had to go back about four stripes, and I felt slightly…
Read moreThe upside of working with several colourways in one project is that it’s incredibly fun to knit.1 That’s why I’ve worked pretty much every day on this WIP since I posted about it first. Consequently, I’ve made quite a bit of progress! I finished the back piece, and I’m about halfway done with the front…
Read moreI tried something new! After I was really happy with my embroidery kits, I went ahead and purchased a yarn kit. I’ve never done that before! Usually I just choose a pattern and then try to find a matching yarn. The reason for this is that I live in Germany but usually use English knitting…
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Rentals in Germany can be a specific kind of hell. Why? Because they sometimes come without a kitchen. Yes, you read that right. You rent an apartment, and then you have to buy a kitchen for it. Before I go on, I want to say that I love our little cozy nest. We were lucky…
Repairing, and thereby prolonging the lifespan of your garments, is an integral part of a sustainable wardrobe. It should be on every single one of the gazillion How to Build a Sustainable Wardrobe posts, and it’s honestly shocking that it isn’t. I guess it’s probably less glamourous than buying another piece from a trendy, yet…
I think we can all agree that 2022 was a shit year, but in comparison to 2021 it came with a mild upswing in my crafting output! Not that this matters much in a global perspective, but. You know. You gotta celebrate the little things. At the beginning of the year, I finished two WIPs…
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I’ve started working on the Oh Sew Bootiful Winter Flowers embroidery kit. The name alone gives away that this isn’t seasonally appropriate, as do the flowers on the pre-printed fabric, but I figure I’ll at least finish it in time for winter! To be honest, I’ve owned this kit for a while. In fact, I’ve…
Read moreI finished my embroidered strawberry wreath! Since this was basically my first embroidery project, it definitely had its ups and downs. All in all, it was so much fun! However, I struggled in some parts, and I’m somewhat unhappy with the way some of my stitches look. I’m sure I’ll get better in the future,…
Read moreI’m obsessed with embroidery right now. In fact, it takes all my willpower to not buy all the cute embroidery kits I can get my hands on. I love most of the kits by Rico Design, to say nothing of the cornucopia of adorable Stardew Valley cross stitch patterns like this one on Etsy. I…
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Cheesecake isn’t my favourite. There, I said it. Yet I’m surrounded by people who actually love cheesecake. That means that I bake cheesecake more than my own favourite (marble cake for example). Luckily I found a simple and delicious recipe that I can whip up in no time but still gets lots of compliments.
Read moreThere are two edible spring plants I adore: leeks and rhubarbs. However, they aren’t really that popular for some reason. It’s is one of the facts of life I find utterly incomprehensible. Nevertheless, I use them as much as possible as soon as they’re in season! The rhubarb strawberry tarte is one of the recipes…
Read morePalm pretzels have always been my favourite thing about Lent. They’re sweet pretzels with raisins that are traditionally eaten on Palm Sunday, a week before Easter. So you can imagine my surprise and disappointment when I moved away from the deeply Catholic region I grew up in and realized that palm pretzels were not, in…
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I could eat pasta everyday. It’s so versatile! I love classics like bolognese or carbonara, or the ever-so-slightly objectionable puttanesca. Mmmh, puttanesca. I was recently absolutely obsessed with simple spaghetti alio oglio pomodore e prezzemolo (spaghetti with garlic, oil, tomatoes, and parsley). However, I also love off-beat recipes that aren’t classically Italian. One of my…
Read moreGardening is something I love and loathe at the same time. I loathe it because I don’t even really have a garden. I just have a terrace garden, an urban garden, call it what you will. That means there obviously isn’t much room for gardening. Little space and plants growing in pots sadly means that…
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We’ve arrived in midsummer, the time were it’s simply gorgeous to spent time in our roof garden. Now that I’ve repotted all my seedlings, I mostly have to maintain. That means watering and fertilizing the plants, cutting dead leaves and sweeping the floor every once in a while. Thankfully we didn’t have any major plant…
Read moreThese are sad times. I’ve been working overtime to use my coping skills so I can keep it together. It isn’t helpful for anyone if I’m stressed and overwhelmed. I try to keep away from obsessive and negative thought patterns – we’re doing everything we can to help Marchesa, but many things are obviously out…
Read moreMay has been so rainy and cold so far that I’ve been procrastinating working on our roof garden. Additionally I felt demotivated because most of my herb seedlings didn’t make it this year. 🙁 Curiously, the veggie and fruit plants have been thriving. On the top right of my raised bed you can see the…
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I’m back from my unplanned break from this blog! I don’t believe in toxic positivity so I’ll just say that I’m in the middle of a bad depressive phase. I’m not okay, but I will be again some day. That said, I read a couple of very interesting books in the meantime, so without further…
Read moreWhile I mostly liked the books I read this months, I’ve been feeling somewhat discontent with my reading journey this year. I’ve been read mostly books that were given to me by other people or that I randomly found in public bookshelves. A couple of days ago, I stood in front of the fantasy books…
Read moreI got a lot of reading done because I was sick all of August. Out of these books, I enjoyed two. For one I can’t really say if I liked it or not because I overestimated my comprehension of the French language! The others were, sadly, a let-down even though I was interested in the…
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There was one thing our vacation needed to be this year, I told Philip: relaxing. I started a new job, I’m on the finishing line of my PhD, plus our cat’s sickness has made for one very stressful year so far. In a nutshell, I need rest. We had been thinking of doing a city…
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Phil and I created a summertime themed playlist together, and here’s why: As a couple, doing projects together strengthens the relationship. We’ve been under a lot of pressure lately taking care of our sick cat. She’s somewhat stable now, and we’re thankful for every day we can spent with her. Obviously, it’s been an emotional…
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While I’m also watching some good old-fashioned Netflix when I’m knitting or sewing something, I’ve really become to appreciate podcasts over the past years. In general – but also when I’m crafting! It’s a definite plus that I only have to listen to them. That means my visual focus is completely on my knitting or…
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We’re back from our vacation in France. It was truly magical! I fell in love with the wine region Beaujolais and its tiny villages scattered among vineyards. The region isn’t very touristic except for people who visit specifically for the wine, so it’s really quiet and peaceful there. Perfect for us! Living in a chateau…
Read moreMy mom recently came back from three months in the Philippines! She’d attended an huge family reunion she’d organized with a few cousins and renovated her late mother’s house. Even though she was busy as a bee, she still took time to find some beautiful gifts to bring home to us. We’re so excited about…
Read moreWelcome to the second part of my Vienna travel diary! You can find the first part here and the post with my initial plans for this trip here. This post is about cake, second hand shopping and two huge splurges! LET ME HAVE CAKE If you visit Vienna, you obviously have to go to the…
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Endings and beginnings are hard for me. I’m a sentimental and very anxious person. But I handed in my notice at my minimum wage job at the afterschool daycare, and I started a new parttime job in Stuttgart. Between financial worries . are we going to be able to afford our upcoming utility bill? -…
Read moreI’ve heard the time after Christmas be described as a limbo were nothing happens. For some unfathomable reason I decided that this was the perfect moment to work through long-neglected items on my to-do list, with the predicable result that I spent every single morning hyper-ventilating at the massive mountain of tasks that lay before…
Read moreI’ll be heading to Vienna soon to do another round of archival work for my thesis! As always, I’m trying to make plans for activities when I leave the archive in the late afternoon/evening. From experience, it gets rather depressing just going from my hotel room to the archive and back again every day. This…
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