Olive Knitting

I've been wanting to learn German for some time now. You know, for all those dinner parties I go to here in Italy...where the predominant language is German.

So anyway, David got me a German workbook for Christmas (along with Michel Thomas' language cd's - if you want to learn a language and don't know Michel, you're missing out). We had a German friend over for dinner the other night. I told her about my plan to learn German and showed her my book, as if I needed to prove to her that I was serious. Here's the book...




She just laughed and said, "ahhhh, 10 minutes a day. But it doesn't say HOW MANY days!"

She's got a point there. For the rest of my life is probably the answer.

Let's look at a few other things that can be done in just 10 minutes a day...for the rest of your life:

1. Cleaning the terraces.

In anticipation of David's return home from his summer season of work, I had asked Augusto to "clean the terraces" for us. I thought it would be a nice little gift I could give David...the gift being my not nagging him all winter to go clean the terraces. I also thought that with a couple days work Augusto would weed whack a bit and voila! No no no. I should know Augusto better than that by now. I should also have known better what the state of our terraces was.

So Augusto has been working, well, a lot. I've seen him taking machinery up to our land that I didn't even know existed in an effort to tame the wilderness that we've allowed to grow there. He did weed whack...where he could. He also cut down a ton of our trees that were either dead or so overtaken by weeds that they would be dead soon.

Then he said, "so now you guys got a little burning to do." That's like the understatement of the century. And then he said, "and you've got a lot of nice wood for your stove." Yep, we sure do. Except the "wood" is still in tree form that all needs to be chopped before we can even start the burning.



Bottom line is that I've given David (and myself) a really nice gift that keeps giving...just 10 minutes a day for the rest of our lives we'll be cleaning the terraces.



2. Mette's new shawl.

Yep, Mette's back which means the knitters are back together. She got this beauty from her husband as a Christmas gift.



No no no you non-knitters. He didn't give that shawl. He gave the PATTERN and the YARN to make it herself. What a guy!

Look at that thing! Makes me dizzy just thinking about the work that's going to go into that puppy. Mette, just 10 minutes a day....

and last but not least...

3. My new peasant dress.

Another Christmas gift I got was this awesome hand knit creation from my mom.



Can you believe that she made that for me? I'm sure THAT will totally put her at the top of the list for Mother of the Year this year.

And I'm sure she just had to work on that for, well, like 10 minutes a day.