Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Christmas Gifts, lunch with friends

 

Sunday and the new bishop, the King, the lunch.......my time has been filled with preparations and I have not had much possibilities to think ahead. Like counting of time in many ways stops at Christmas Eve, kind of before and after, for me the blessing of our new bishop has been a focus point. My couting of time ended on Sunday. When the service and the lunch was over, we went home and I did nothing! Wrong - I did alot, I went through the day again and again in my mind, in my heart, and was filled with thankfulness. Thank you God for the church, thank you for the bishops, thank you for the people.

I watchen the Norwegian women handball team win the European Championship, and when Terje and the girls started to make gingerbread cookies, I layed down on the coach, slept, dozed and enjoyed the Christmas smell filling the house.

 

Life did not stop on Sunday though. Of course it did not. I woke up Monday morning fresh and ready for new challenges. A few hours of work and then meeting three best friends in town for lunch and exchanging of gifts.

Exchanging of gifts! And no preparations done by me! On my way from the office I passed the cathedral shop, and there is no better place for buying Christmas gifts. While listening to a cd with music by the Nidaros Cathedral Boy's Choir I could sit down and write Christmas cards to my three best friends while the lady behind the counter beautifully wrapped three precious gifts. First in beautiful paper, then the three gifts were put down in three angel totebags.

 

I met my three friends and a couple of hours were spent, chatting, eating......air filled with love and laughter. I had even found time to buy a birthday present to one of them, the birthday girl, a cd with music by the Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt. Some days life is easy.

 

Photos: Handknitted socks. Many among my friends and family will find my handknitted socks under the Christmas Tree this year.

Wrap up to keep the cold away.

 

 

 

 

 

I took my new handknitted shawl out in the garden for photographing. How I wish I was a photographer. The knitted piece of art deserves do much more than my amateur eye. I took it here and there, tried to wrap it around a bench, a fence, over a stone, hanging from a cherry tree branch. Black agains white felt too hard. The softness of the wool disappeared  somewhere between the surface of the snow and the camera. I struggled. I started to get cold. How could I keep warm out in the wintergarden with my new shawl laid out in the snow.....

In the end I gave up. I brought the shawl indoors, snowflakes following me, making a white trail on the livingroom floor. Where it soon melted. I wrapped myself once again in the black lace, sending warm thoughts southwest to Marit, the artist of the woolen shawl.

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Thank you Marit. I love the shawl.

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What I want for Christmas? A photographers artistic eye. I already have the shawl of my dreams.

How does your knitting grow?

 

A week-end at the cabin, alot of mother-daughter time. I found my knitting, and sitting down beside me, Marta looked through the huge knitting basket in search of old treasures. "Look Mum, here is the scarf I started to knit years ago. It must be the first I ever knitted I think. Oh, can you help me to finish it this week-end. I want to bring it with me when my class goes up to Røros on the camp next week."

 

So there we sat, both of us with the needles busy between our fingers, chatting about old days, (old days for a 12 year old is only a few years back). We talked about how we learned to knit, and she still remembered the old story I have used for dozens of children to help them learn knitting. (I used to work in a kindergarted 30 years ago, and I have four kids, all have had lots of friends coming to our home).

   

"How was this old story again?  A princess shut up in a cave, the prince coming to save her, creeping into the cave, embracing the princess, bringing her with him out into the light........." Yes, Marta, you remember the story still. And look, your knitting is perfect. Look at the difference between then and now."

 

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Photos. Marta at cabin terrace, Saturday morning. The scarf is finished, and Marta and her class drove up to Røros this morning for a week at a camp in one if the old mines there.

Unexpected inspiration

     Have you ever reflected upon where inspiration comes from? I read Tara's blog Silver Apples of the Moon regularly, and had to stop to think when I read about the death of brain cells. Oh yes, too many of my creative brain cells have passed away during my 50 years of living, some for good, some for bad. But I believe wholeheartedly that new cells are born. Every day. Every hour. Every minute, as long as the Creator blows life into me.

I don't feel creative all the time. Far from. And may be because of that, creativity feels like a feast, a blessing, when it suddenly and unexpected find my life and creaps into it. This is exactly what happend when I was in Copenhagen some days ago. One night we visited a church center for refugees and imigrants in Denmark. In a corner I spotted a woven basket (it looks like it comes from Eritrea) filled with skeins of yarn in all the colours of the rainbow. The yarn was used to knit small squares, squares which would be pieced together to make quilts, to make warm and comfort where the cold reigns.

Without thinking I picked up a pair of needles and a skein of brown yarn, and before long I had made a square. And in the process of creating my whole body found rest, found piece, and a longing to knit, to create, was born. I used to knit always, and my favorites were when I could create my own patterns and design. But for years now the needles and pins have been exchanged with paper and pins. I will not put away the second, but I will bring forward the first. Insiration found me.......unexpected.

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Photos: the first one is from the imigrant center, the second isa pair of Selbu mittens for Marta which I have been working on for ages.......

A pair of socks

When my eyes enjoy the beauty of the tulips and the view of fjord and mountains, my ears find delight in the singing of thousands of birds, and my mind wanders its own way of longing - my fingers often love to get busy.

While busy fingers dance their own dance, the first sock is growing, and growing.......

.......and growing. And soon it is longing for a partner.

I have started the twin, so it will not be lonely too long :-)

Where inspiration comes from.....

Inspiration comes in many ways.

Dreams, a quote, an envelope inside an envelope accompanied by words from a lifelong friend, a fragrance of colours filling the air, a palette of roses, the magician's smile.........

Some months ago I stumbled upon a new to me blog and the front photo followed me. A crocheted scarf draped over a ready packed suitcase. The moment I saw it I knew I had to make a similar scarf. A scarf to drape over my suitcase. A traveller's scarf.

Yarn came in a Christmas gift from Germany. The traveller's scarf is in progress. Soon ready to travel with me.

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I have searched in vain trying to find the blog again...........

Warm my fingers.

"Mum, can you knit me a pair of Selbuvotter?"

"Mmm" I answered, my nose deep into a book, wondering if Framboise managed to catch the big pike, and would she be able to use the orange peel just one more time?

"Mum, can you really knit me a pair of mittens?"

"Sure"....and what about the German soldier, when would he come back next?

"Thank you mom. You are so kind", Marta's eyes sparkled. Then she looked at me again. "Mum, do you think I am a nuisance?"

Finally I looked up. "A niusance? How can you say that?" "Well, I asked you a question and you answered, but your brows are frowning and I am not sure if you are happy about my question?"

Books take me everywhere and it is not always to come back to reality. Of course I will knit Marta a pair of selbuvotter, and of course I am happy about it. Actually I am thrilled. One of my kids wants me to knit something for them :-). We went to the yarnstore the next day, and during our cabin days I finished the first mitten.

The Selbu Mitten celebrates 150 years this year. The first mitten with the intricate rose pattern was written by a 11 year old girl while she was out in the mountains in the summer taking care of the sheeps.

Today it is almost impossible to get knitters to handknit the mitten for sale, so more and more of the knitting is done by machines.

Walking feet need good socks:-)

On my pilgrimage to Santiage de Compastela I plan to walk during the summer months, so knitted socks will not be needed. But Norwegian winters are long, dark and cold, and even indoors a pair of good handknitted socks can come handy.....or shall I say come footy :-)

Needles and yarn are always filling up a part of my suitcase when I travel, and I am always looking for new yarn for my socks.

Denmark is a dream for yarn lovers, and I really extended my yarn collection during our summer holiday. And sitting on a stone on the beack, girls and husband having alot of fun in the sea, hot bottle with coffee close, my fingers busy with the knitting needles........yes, I was in paradise.

A knitting in progress.

Nowadays most yarn comes in finished spools, not in skeins as they did when I was a girl. I remember I loved streching out my hands to hold the yarn while my mother or my grandmother winded.

For my 8th birthday I got a wonderful gift, The Borrowers by Mary Norton. I sat down even before the guests had left to read it, and my mother had to force me to bed that night. I never forget what I read this first night of my 9th year, the old lady who told the story about the small people, the Borrowers. While telling her story she winded yarn, and she managed to wind it to the perfect shape of an egg. I could't believe how she could do it!

Oh, how I practiced afterwards to manage the egg shape. It took me a long time, but since then all my wool was winded into a perfect egg shape.

Nowadays my daughter loves to wind the yarn for me, and we don't need an extra pair of hands to hold the skein anymore. Years ago I inherited a wool winder from my mother in law. And though I have read The Borrowers for Marta several times, the wool egg story is not hers, she makes perfect round balls out of her yarn.

With Love in every Stich.

I hate cold fingers and I love mittens and gloves. For my daily use I have a pair of thick, rather expensive rabbit fur gloves, but from time to time, especially when it is very cold or when I am out walking or hiking, I wear handknitted pure wool  mittens.

During the years I have gathered quite a wonderful collection, and even have a collection of vintage ones hanging on the wall down in my basement studio.

My newest acquirement is a pair of mittens from Lofoten, given me as a present from the mother of Ingrid's boyfriend. My dearest pair though is the one with the year 1979 knitted in.

Terje and I met during the summer of 1978, and the same autumn we became a pair. The following winter Terje knitted me these love mittens, and since then I have never had a pair which gave more comfort and warmth than these ones. They are almost worn out, and I have mended them several times, and they become more and more dear to me. I will keep on using them and mending them untill the day I don't need them anymore. It must be told that Terje also knitted me a waistcoat the same winter, bottle green in a very intricate pattern with knots and braids. We got engaged the next summer, and since then he has not knitted a stich :-)