December

It is storming outside. Raining cats and dogs. The trees are bending to the wind, all in the same rythm. I am home today with Astrid who is suffering from an ear infection and her fifth day of fever.

The wool has come out of its hiding place. It is time to let those needles find their own tune again and make warm gifts for the people that form part of our life.

garden glimpses

After Sally’s comment last post I have been searching for photos from our garden. I never meant to tease you. I am sure I took some this summer, but the photos are nowhere to be found.

It will have to do with some glimpses from about a month ago. Autumns colours dominates and the sun is getting low, but you still get the feel of how our little but cozy garden is.

PS. We even have an apple tree *joy*!
And the neighbours let us go picking plums from their tree *double joy*

The entrance and back side of our house

We like it here!

Starting to get there

i love my new kitchen

At least for now most of the main work on the house is done. We have several details left, but can't do them all at once. One detail is for instance to put up paintings and photos on the wall. Somehow i am in no hurry. After all the work and money we have spent on the walls i am terrified to make holes in the wall. In case we make one and regret it.

The stair colour we chose

My anxiety of making holes in the wall actually reminds of my anxiety for cutting into new fabrics. But we can’t live a lifetime with bare walls, so sooner or later we will have to bring out the hammer and nails.

visit from new wee  neighbours (look at our bare walls)

The plan is to frame all our chosen photos and posters put them on the floor (no nails required), and then see if a hanging on the wall pattern reveals itself to us. What do you think? Does it sound like a plan?

our summer progress

Thank you everyone for the encouraging words and for checking in on me from time to time. I hope you have had a nice summer filled with your favourite summer funs. With so many things to do I have not had the time or creativity to write and post. Energy is coming back and here is an abbreviated update of these last months. Just to catch up a bit.

April 10th: All the floors in the second floor have been sanded and varnished.

May 1st: Walls are being torn down, door openings closed and others opened. I have no clue as to how this will be finished by June first.

May 10th: Holes and cracks in the bedroom walls and ceiling are now filled with fine and coarser filler. Tomorrow we begin to sand it all down. I look forward to all the dust.

May 27th: Finally finished painting the 3rd coat in two of three bedrooms.

June 1st: We have moved to our new house! There is no kitchen here yet.

June 14th: There is still a lot to do and we are trying to keep sane while waiting for the house to come together. After two weeks without a kitchen sink and water in the kitchen we are delighted to do a re-entry to the dish washing routine. The cabin feeling and fun with “back to basic” of washing the dishes in the shower wears off surprisingly fast. It will be years (…at least months) before I complain about being the one to empty the dish washer. It is beginning to look more like a kitchen than a construction site.

June 20th: Trying to decide on colour for the stairs. Haven’t found the right one yet, but we are getting closer.

June 25th: The electrician was here to day to do some more work. Now we have light in our bedroom and bathroom. Hurray!

June 28th: We are going on a much needed vacation to Costa Brava (Spain)

July 18th: We are back from holiday with renewed energy to take on more work in the house.

July 20th: Our basement is floated with water because of the heavy rain the last days.

July 22th: Something terrible happened today. Unexpectedly and far from anyone’s imagination.

July 23rd: It is worse than we thought yesterday. It is a national tragedy. No one of our friends have been affected. We feel numbed.

August 3rd: We finished painting the walls in the stair cases.

August 8th: We finished painting the kitchen. One day before my cousin and her friend come to visit.

September 2nd: The door knobs are finally on all the doors in the second floor.

September 10th: The walls and the ceiling in the basement living room are painted white.

September 12th: We are still waiting for the refrigerator that supposedly arrives the 15th.

And we have one patient little girl, that we feel very, very guilty for not playing and having as much fun with as we should. There will be some catching up in the time to come.

 I'll be around from now on. Looking forward to catching up these autumn!

as it was

There are 300 unread posts in my feeder, and I feel like I am missimg out on everything that is going on. I don’t want to be out of touch with you.

This is the reason why Im not writing, reading or spending time with you. This is the town house” we bought (or “rekkehus” for my Norwegian readers, which literary means “house in a row”). This is how our new and modest 98 square metres (or 1054 ft² and 124.3 in²) house looked like when we bought it in January

And this is pretty much how it looks like know.

We are tearing down walls, taking down all the electric installations, and shaking up old dust.

And opening up between the hallway, kitchen and livingroom

I am terrified. What have we gotten ourselves into?

a quick hello

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Easter!

I am enjoying mine with an Easter egg filled to its brims with chocolate and marzipan, Norwegian radio drama, yellow daffodils, and British television crime shows at nights.

signs of spring

They might seem like small signs but never the less they are very important signs for a spring hungry Norwegian gal.

By the way, I am still alive. I have had an expected and unavoidable setback with my back/shoulder and am under good treatment. We are also busy preparing for renovating our new house. This weekend we get our keys and can begin the work. Photos shall be shared in the future.

Now I'm on to a very longed for cup of tea and visit to your places to see how you'all are doing and how much spring you have around at your place.

two requests and a pair of baby mittens

Thank you so much everyone for your well wishes, good advice and shared thoughts. It feels special to have so many people care about our well being and share this new adventure with us. Thank you.

Baby mitten made in baby wool for my friend R's daughter

Sarah-Jane and Homebody at Heart have made each their request some blog posts ago. Sarah-Jane would like a neck warmer pattern for grown ups. So I have begun working on one based on her request and perfect for anyone who would likes to be warm around their neck but wants something else than a scarf. I share the pattern once I get happy with the result.

Homebody at Heart has asked me if I could share an apple cake recipe and I can. I just need time to bake it so that I can take photos to accompany the recipe. Cake day will be put on the calendar.



For everyone living in Japan or knowing someone living in Japan, I hope yours ones are doing well. All my Japanese friends and friends living in Japan are good. I love what some artists have come up with this last week to show their thoughts with everyone hit by this tragedy. Check out Gera’s free cross stitch chart “We are with you Japan” and Natascha Rosenberg’s illustration “Hug Japan”.

Wishing everyone a good week!

Ravelry link

many life changes

They are all good changes but right now life is so busy that I don’t know how to relax when I have some time to do so. I keep finding my shoulders tight up under my ears and no matter how many times I roll them around and try to relax they keep up ending under the ears. I need a massage, yoga class and some relaxing acupuncture, all at the same time. Do you know what I mean?

Jacket made in baby wool for my friend R's daughter

The funny thing is that all the busyness is related to changes that we have wanted for some time and that we are very happy to welcome.

As you might now, I have been day dreaming of a house where I can put a food tray for small birds right outside our kitchen window. Well, in January we bought a house! It is a small “town house”, but still a house. With garden. AND garage!

A garage might not mean much to you (depending on where you live) but for most people living in Oslo it means a million in saved time from driving around the streets looking for somewhere to park the car. During winter it means saved back pain from hours of shovelling snow before parking or before driving away to get the car out from where parked.

The last two weeks have been extremely busy  putting our flat for sale, choosing a real estate company, preparing the flat for the property appraiser, the photographer, and then for the flat viewing. Lots of hard work in short time. It all paid off. Two days after the viewing our flat was sold for more than the asking price. Happy, happy, happy!

In the midst of all this I left a job on Friday and began a new one on Tuesday. Today was my second day and I am so very content with the change I have done. Life is great. It was already good, now it is even better.

We get the keys for our new house in the beginning of April. There are several things we need to do with it before moving in (in June) but that I’ll save for another day. Now I’ll go on with my shoulder rolling and yoga.

Happy Thursday!

Ravelry link to jacket

neck warmer for kids

Before Christmas I was busy making gifts and was for the lookout of practical gifts I could knit with one skein and knit fast. I remembered the typical neck warmers that we used to have when I was a kid. They would simply be a neck with a front and back panel to keep your chest and the back of your neck warm. When our coats and winter jackets were closed it looked like we were wearing a sweater with a long neck.

I knitted them for a two and four year old, but the pattern can easily be adjusted for kids of other ages or grown ups by adding 4, 8 or 12 stitches more and adjusting the length of the front and back panel.

The top to bottom knitting was inspired by JCasas Neighborly that I have made on several occasions.



Neck warmer

Sizes
Approximately 2 years and (4 years)

Needles
3.5 mm circulars (US 4) and 4 mm circulars (US 6), (both my circulars were 40 cm long (15.7 in)
Yarn: Drops Merino extra fine

Notions
Stitch marker
Stitch holder or scrap thread

Abbreviations
k – knit
p-purl

Pattern
Cast on 92 (96) stitches on 3.5 mm (US 4) needles. Join the stitches making sure not to twist and place marker to designate the row.
k 2 and p 2 to the end of row
Continue to [k2, p2] until the piece measures 6 cm (2.4 in)
k four rounds.
Switch to 4mm (US 6) needles and k four more rounds.

Bind off 7 (8) stitches after marker, k 39 (40) and place these stitches on a stitch holder or a scrap yarn. These 39 (40) stitches are for the back panel of the neck warmer.

Bind off 7 (8) stitches and k 39 (40). These are the stitches for the front panel of the neck warmer and the ones you will continue to work on now. Turn work so you are looking at the wrong side (purled row). Knit the following rows like this:

From wrong side: k3, p 33 (34), k3
From right side: k 39 (40)

Continue with this until your work measures 12 cm (4.7 in) or your desired length from the point when you divided the work in back and front. k 6 rows and bind off.

Now take the stitches that you put on the stitch holder or scrap yarn (for the back of the neck warmer) and do the same as with the front.

Happy knit!

Brooklyn tweed love

Back in October Denise asked us on her blog if we would like a simple scarf to keep us warm this winter. I signed up for the giveaway right away and loved the idea of having a scarf made by her on the other side of the Atlantic. She would pick one reader and the lucky reader could choose the colour from Brooklyn Tweed’s palette and let her know which one was our favourite.

My two favourite colours from the palette was “homemade jam” and “soot”, and since I love surprises I asked her to choose which of the two if I happened to be the lucky winner.

Well, I was! I was the lucky winner! And two weeks ago a soft envelope arrived at the post office. Inside was this beautiful soot - grey - Brooklyn Tweed - made by Denise - scarf. I have worn it since as it has the perfect length, is warn and accents my brown feather filled winter jacket.

It truly feels special that someone I only know through blogland has made this scarf for me. I love my gift. Thank you very much Denise!

Together with the scarf she had put an extra surprise for me, a cotton bag from the Kinokuniya bookstore in San Francisco! Either she was on a lucky struck (or me depending on how you see it) or she knows me better than I thought. I love the Kinokuniya bookstores. Back in 2008 when we visited San Francisco that was one of the few places that we (I) had planned to visit before we travelled. I spent three hours in the bookstore, and only left because my poor husbands patience could not be stretched an inch more and neither could my swollen pregnant feet.

I love my gifts.

ski weekend at Norefjell

Do you want to come along for a weekend at a ski resort with us? Perhaps it can make amends for my unannounced absence these last two weeks.

Mr. Yonder’s company sponsored a couple’s weekend for their employees and we enjoyed every single minute of it. It was our first grown ups only weekend since Astrid was born. We will not wait another two years before we do this again.

We enjoyed our time here so much that we have decided to go back some time soon. If you come long with us you can choose between cross country skiing, slalom or snow boarding.

If you are not into skiing you can take a dip in the pool, visit the Finnish sauna, take a day at the SPA or try climbing the wall that goes all the way from the bottom floor through the lobby and continues upward.

What about diving into these comfortable couches after a long day with activities?

And then order a steaming warm coffee or hot chocolate and perhaps a piece of this tempting apple cake with crème Brule and whipped cream? Anyone?

By the way, when was the last time you went on a ski trip or had a couple’s weekend with your hubby? I think we have to improve at that here in Yonder.