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