Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Just 8 months late:)

Well, it was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but it did not get started until January, then my arm started acting up and so on and so on. But now it is done!:) A Setesdal sweater for my sister-in-law. With the embroidery and all.
They say this is the antique version. The white at the bottom was the part where they used to stuff it down the trousers and would not bee seen, so they saved the black, more expensive yarn.

The embroidery is on felt. And the hook is pewter.

This is my Setesdal - about ten years or so old. It is of thicker yarn, and shorter, but with more elaborate embroideries. Done it all myself, this one, too:)

Monday, August 15, 2011

A slight taste of fall

I dog sat in the deep forest of Sweden again this weekend. After a week of cold rainy weather in Oslo, it was sooo nice to be able to spend a few days in warm sunshine, just walking (and walking) the dogs in the huge forest.
Fall is slightly arriving:) The red color of the cranberries just pop on the white moss. Made it easy to find them.

This were the first real fall colors I have seen this year - a little bit too early. But wonderfully bright with the moss.

Odin and Frøya resting after I wore them out (and we were just half way:)) Beautiful view, right?

Here they are, the little Norse godlings - Odin in front and Frøya in the back. Beautiful chessies, and mostly well behaved, even with me.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Perils of the sea

I am back on the island again:) Still pictures left to show. One of the 'sights' on the northern coast where the wreck of a ship from the 1926. The ship crashed on some hidden rocks during a horrible storm the winter.
Fortunately, the whole crew were saved. But the ship were a loss, and during another storm it were pushed onshore. There it has been since then, left to the elements. I actually liked that:) For some reason I like weatherbeaten wood.

The form and colours were just fabolous. The other tourists must have thought me crazy, crawling around taking close-up of the wood:) On the other hand, I did get some great shots of these:
Beautiful spiderweb all over.

Good thing I did not see the inhabitans of the web...

Monday, August 8, 2011

Beautiful nuisance

Beautiful, aren't they? We call them Porcelain flowers.
I inherited this plant from my mom. It is at least 30 years old, if not more. It hardly gets any water, and it has sunshine from morning to night. Mom cuddled it and looked after it and did everything she could think of to make it flower, but it never happened. I basically ignore it, and it repays me by giving me at least four or five flowers every third month or so.

Nice, right? Problem is - I am allergic to the smell! The smell of sweetness is overwhelming, it even wakes me up in the middle of the night! I have to just nip the flowers off before they spring out. Sometimes it flowers without me knowing, and I only realise it because of the smell.

So this is the only way I can appreciate my flowers. In a picture.

Not fair...

Saturday, August 6, 2011

It has to do with knitting

I have to be better at showing progress instead of just waiting for it to be done:) I just have to remind myself. So these last two days I have been working on this.
It is wool embroidery on felted wool. And not easy at all!
The stiff white embroidery fabric is there to help me get the first parts on correctly, then afterwards more details are going on, with thinner embroidery thread. However, getting the thick wool through the holes are difficult, to say the least.

And yes, it has to do with knitting:) It is a neck adornment to a knitted sweater. This one, actually.
It is an old Norwegian pattern, and it keeps coming back in fashion. This one is for my sister-in-law. I made mine years and years ago.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Lighting the way

Since nothing much, except work, is happening, I continue sharing pictures of the island. This session: lighthouses! There is one on the southern most point.
Beautifully white and crips against the blue, blue sky.

I just love the shape of it.

It almost looks like it is soft and fluffy, doesn't it?

The one on the northern point, Long Eric, is of an older design and quite different.

Do love it, though. Stranger still, it is the first time I have seen these long towery lighthouses, though. And my country have a very, very long coast line!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Creatures of the island

More images from Öland, this time the animals I found.

Yup. Camels. Not indigenous to the island, for sure. (Not even found floating on driftwood, if anyone has read 'The Last Continent' by Terry Pratchett.) But somebody had a camelfarm on the island, for some reason. I must admit I temporarily felt I was transferred to a complete different part of the world for a few seconds.

These two, though, are more normal for the latitude. I just love the color. The brown with the blue sky and the green grass. It was dazzling.

This guy did not even deign to look at me! It is, apparently, the same kind of pigs they had there during the iron age? It was a part of the exhibit at a rebuilt castle/fort from the iron age. The pattern and the colour - amazing. The pigs I am used to are either pink or black.
These cows seemed to live at the beach, and who could blame them? They ate seaweed among others. They were quite shiny black, so I guess they were living good:) Such clear colours.


Not sure what fascinated me more - the animals themselves, or their colouring?