To use a word that is oft in the casual conversation of Team Fabelhaft – I’m CHEESING that Angela from Sew I Thought nominated me for this award! (Cheesing means that you’re chuffed to bits… no wait, is that a British term too? I’m really happy anyway!)

The rules of the award are as follows:

1) Copy the award to my blog
2) Link to the person who has given me this award
3) Tell 7 interesting things about myself
4) Choose 7 other blogs that I want to give this award to
5) Link to their blogs
6) Comment on their blogs that I have given them this award

Sooo, 7 interesting things!

1) I speak Welsh fluently. In fact I’ll write the next part in Welsh (and any other Welsh-speakers out there, please excuse my GODAWFUL grammar)

Fe astudiais i yn ysgol gyfun Gymraeg, sydd yn meddwl oedd pob wers, ar wahan i Saesneg wrth gwrs, yn cael eu gwneud trwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg. Rwy’n falch iawn fy mod i yn gallu siarad iaith fy ngwlad, er rydw i’n teimlo’n fwy gyfforddus yn siarad ac yn ysgrifennu yn Saesneg gan mae fy ramadeg Cymraeg yn hollol pants! Felly, y ddiwrnod rwy medru siarad Almaeneg yn rhugl yw’r ddiwrnod fy mod i’n ‘trilingual’!

Translation:

I studied in a Welsh comprehensive, which means that every lesson, except for English of course, was conducted through the medium of Welsh. I’m really proud that I can speak the language of my country, although I feel more comfortable speaking and writing in English because my Welsh grammar is completely pants! So, the day I’m able to speak German fluently is the day I become trilingual!

I’ve been told that Welsh looks like drunk texting to people that don’t understand it. I feel the same way about Dutch…

2) One of the main passions in my life is Martial Arts. I’ve been doing Karate since I was about 16 and began doing Jiu-Jitsu when I started University. My biggest regret, if any, of this year abroad is not finding a club to train at, but I’ve been doing my own bits and pieces along the way, so hopefully I won’t be completely rubbish when I go back! People think I’m crazy when I talk about some of the things I do in training, but I love it! I have a crazy idea that I’ll make an awesome LBD when I  get my black belt!

3) People don’t recognise me in old photos of myself! Fun fact : my Dad thought I was someone completely different in a Jitsu team photo I have, and that one was recent! It’s funny though, sometimes we take the mickey out of each other’s old Facebook photos, and people haven’t even realised that I’m in the same ones as Beef (same school, known each other since babies) because they plain don’t recognise me.

     To be honest, I think it’s the red hair and the fact that I chopped it all off! (Lucky you guys, you get to see how awful my school uniform was…)

4) I can’t stand Coke. It’s disgusting. There used to be a time where I couldn’t drink any fizzy drinks at all, but since coming to Germany I’ve become a bit of a Fanta fan.

5) I auditioned for S Club Juniors when I was 13. Most of you probably don’t know who they are – basically, there was a British pop band called S Club 7 that were really popular in my pre-teens, and the kids’ BBC channel decided to do a whole ‘Popstars’ dealio for kids, creating a band of pre-teens who would open for S Club… I didn’t get very far!!

Classic! My friend Ki decided she’d tell people that I actually was in the band but quit due to ‘artistic differences’.

6) I think that each and every one of you should watch Spaced. Followed by Shaun of the Dead… and then Hot Fuzz. DO IT NOW.

7) After I’ve mastered ze German, I’d very much like to learn both Italian and Japanese – Italian because I am part Italian and Japanese because of my experiences with Japanese Martial Arts.

Here are my 7 Nominees!

1) Ki Shah is a pal of mine from Swansea University – she may be doing a sooper dooper Sciency PHD but she’s a crafty girl at heart. She paints, she makes jewellery, she has a muffin cat… Oh, and did I mention that she’s a fellow Jitsuka? Shahmeister, is there anything you can’t do?

2) Lily from The House of Mirth has some seriously fab creations that have inspired me the past few weeks. I want to steal her personal style!

3) Tilly from Tilly and the Buttons I found through Sew Retro, and is a fellow Wardrobe Refashion pledger. I love what she’s done so far, in particular her Sencha blouse, which is to die for and utterly convinced me that I needed that pattern in my life!

4) Elaine May from The Selfish Seamstress is one I’ve already sucked up to once, but not without good reason. Her creations are classy and well-made, and she can sew auf Deutsch!

5) Gertie from Blog for Better Sewing – how do I began to describe Gertie? She’s absolutely brilliant – not only is she a talented seamstress, but her personal style is amazing and she comes across as so personable in her blog posts and vlogs. I hope someday I’m just as good!

6) Zoe from So…Zo may have been nominated already, but gosh-darn it I’ll do it again! Like I’ve said before, I really admire her life pledge to the Wardrobe Refashion movement. When you can make your own pants, nothing can stop you!

7) Casey of Elegant Musings is just amazing. Everytime she uploads a creation on BurdaStyle it becomes an automatic favourite.

Phwoar, monster of a post! This is why I’m an English student guys, I waffle too much! There are some people not on the list because I found their blogs recently – so check out my ‘I Read…’ sidebar for some more inspirational blogs!

Anyway last time round we never really got a decent picture of us on the Bierbike, so (courtesy of Beefy’s camera because mine was DEAD before the first loo stop) VOILA :

DAS BIERBIKE. It was actually more of a squish than this picture lets on, as this was a loo stop and all!

You’re probably all thinking that we were bloody nutters to be doing Bierbike in the freezing cold, and you wouldn’t be wrong. There was one point that I thought my toes were going to fall off and/or I was going to die frozen to the Bierbike, forever immortalised as an example of British stupidity when it comes to appropriate winter dressing. Ok, in all fairness my top half was fine due to my lovely coat, but the purple tights didn’t give much warmth, and the peep toe booties didn’t insulate a great deal. I win at dressing for wintery Bierbike rides!

But in this post we’re going back to late November ‘09… If asked to name two of the most popular things in Germany, beer and bikes would probably be among some of them, along with bread, staring and waiting at lights (heeheehee). So what do you get when you combine the two?

YOU GET A BIERBIKE THAT’S WHAT!! A bar on wheels! What an EPIC idea! It only needs 6 people to pedal, but you can have up to 16 on one Bierbike. If you check out Bierbike.de then you can see which cities it’s available in (Dortmund in March!!). We did ours in Muenster, capital city of the world if you were to believe Beef, definitely a good choice! We had the bike for two fun-filled hours, in which we (kind of) saw Muenster, albeit through beer goggles, shouted PEDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL a lo, particularly when the lights turned green so as to not get caught by another red, and pestered whoever was on bar duty at that point!

I got to play barkeep! I wasn’t very good at it though. Someone asked if I’d done barwork before and I pulled a half pint of froth as an answer. Also did the whole ‘barkeep tells a story about the area’ game, in which I told too many people about the cages at St. Lamberts (see the first Muenster post!), which, as you’ll know from that post, creep me out to no end!

Other fun things that happened on Bierbike:

We got serenaded! TWICE.

Once by some angels and devils who assumed we’d want an English song, being English speakers, until I DEMANDED a German one…

  And once by some dude who sang Country Roads and didn’t understand why no one knew every damn word to the song like he did.

We also picked up some hitchhikers on the way :

Lazy bastards! Let this be their wall of shame…

So all in all Bierbike = SPASS

A while back, another sewing blogger linked to Manequim’s collection of free patterns – really chic, really cute… one problem? They’re all in Portuguese! So I downloaded the pattern for this beauty : 

Now, for good old Google translate. I loved how back in Year 9, kids used to try and fool the foreign language teachers into thinking that they’d done awesome German/French/whathaveyou homework by writing it in English and then using google translate – except not only would Google translate use forms that they hadn’t even learn yet, it would use them incorrectly! Fun times to be had when marking that piece of work! I half want to give out homework just to see if anyone does it at my school, but it’s a Gymnasium, and they’re all clever enough and hard working enough to do it themselves! There goes my fun

But anyway, here’s what  google translate makes of the  instructions:

MOUNT
• Close the sides of the external and internal parts separately.
• Add the external and internal parts, right on right, with a seam by
edges of the armholes. Beat the seams of iron, turning the gaps on the inside parts
internal and secure with stitching different. Revire parts, inside on inside.
• Close the collar with a seam, holding the edges under, right on
right. Next, crease the collar along the length, leaving the
edges higher, right on right.
• Sew the edges of the larger collar, without closing the edges of the neckline assembly
front and back. Revire, inside on inside.
• Sew the right edge of the inside of the collar at the neckline of the right front
and back, matching the numbers mount.
• Put up the outside edge of the right of the neckline and secure with
different stitching.
• Put up the bottom edges (0.3 cm, approximately) for the reverse. Tap
iron. Put up the borders again and again secure with stitching.

Go on then! Get to it! BEAT THOSE SEAMS OF IRON DAMN YOU!

Can you make more people do something by making it fun to do? That’s what these guys are trying to do, starting with making more people take the stairs rather than the escalator at a Stockholm Underground station :

ALL U-BAHN STATIONS SHOULD HAVE PIANO STAIRS. FACT.

This pretty much made my day.