Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Top of the world

 

cabin life

charging batteries

time

cards and boardgames

rejoice in creation

Note on the door

 

Note on the door

I am sorry, we are away at the cabin for the week-end. Ingrid is at home though. Please come in, and she will be more than happy to make you a caffe latte

 

Please come in and make yourself feel at home. All rooms are open, but if you want to stay over night we would prefere that you use The Blue Room where we have made up an extra bed for you. Feel free to read the books, but not my diaries, and if you use the computer, can I kindly ask you to send a greeting to my blogfriends (you can ask Ingrid for my username and password)

 

The Blue Garden always loves visitors. I am sorry about the wet and cold weather, but a garden tour should be a nice pasttime anyway. And while you are out there, will you be kind enough to feed the birds? I am not sure if Ingrid remembers. The seeds are behind the red door on the kitchen veranda.

I have left the guest book on the side table in the livingroom. Don't forget to leave a note.

Enjoy the House in the Woods.

 

Photos: the treasures I found the other day at a local Salvation Army shop. French caffee latte cups from the Norwegian Egersund Fajanse, the old Norwegian china which I collect.

Blog of the Week this week must be a real French antique collector, Tongue in Cheek, the favorite blogger of so many of us.

..where you have your books about India all lined up please

            I must have talked a hole in your head by now.....that's what we say in Norway, to talk a hole in one's head (what is the British/American expression, please.....) Yes, I must have talked hole in your heads about my trip to India. In one week I am on the plane. Trondheim-Oslo, Oslo-London, London-Bangalore, and there Carolyn and her driver will be waiting for me, in the middle of the night, to drive me to Mysore.

Ha, if you have got a hole in your head it is good for you, then you can let all my talk, all my chatting, all my nonsense just float through, and while I keep on with my words and my photos, you can keep on with whatever you are doing.......

             Ardi, you asked me about my line of India books. Well, here it is, right over my laptop. The laptop stands on an old desk which used to be Terje's when he was a little boy and faithfully did his homework. I love to think of that when my albues rest on the plate. To the right I have another, newer desk, where I do all my handwriting, letters, diaries and so on, and looking out the window, I see The Blue Garden, the red maple, birds and squirrels and even a moose or three sometimes.

To the left of my India books I have my handwritten travel diaries. Started with spiral bound notebooks many years ago, the last years I've used moleskins. To the right I have a few treasure book, my poesi book, Terje's poesibook from his childhood, my mother's poesi book, my grandmother's autograph book, a few letters, a few photos. Lifting my eyes from the laptop I look out into The Blue Garden, or I look up into my treasures or travels.

My studio, which is also called The Blue Room, because I call it all something with blue and there is almost nothing blue in the studio except the name........trying again, my studio is the room in our house which I love the most. It is also the guestroom, so if you come to visit you will get a bed here.

               Ardi, do you see any books you know? This is not my whole collection, but most of it. I still have a cookbook in the kitchen, a photobook down in the livingroom, a children's book somewhere, a Dervla Murphy in another shelf, Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair on my nightstand, a Travelers' Tales Guide in my backpack, East of the Sun, West of the Moon at our cabin, and so on.......

One more thing: I know I promised you the result of my antique hunt today. But you will have to wait till tomorrow. We are leaving for our cabin this afternoon, and I want to show you something beautiful while we are away!

Hunting for autumn colours

A perfect morning.  I sat in my studio looking out at the bright red maple in The Blue Garden. The colours dragged me out and soon I was on my way out to the botanical garden with my camera. Autumn is for hunters. I am hunting for colours, and here is some of what I got:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I could go on for a long time, but I will save some for another day. May be for next Friday when I am on the flight to India.

Ardi, tomorrow I will show you my India bookshelf and my studio where I dream my dreams.

And I will also show you a very special treasure which I found on a second hunt, later in the day. A hunt for antiques.

 

Photos: From Ringve Botanical Gardens

A Night at Home

          What do you do when you have a quiet night at home?

I know exactly what I do, or at least what I did yesterday.

After an early dinner, we always eat when we come home from work, and yesterday we were lucky as it is autumn break here in Norway, the girls have all the time in the world available, and Ingrid had dinner ready for us, it was still sunny out in The Blue Garden. The ground is filled with dead leaves and needles now, and I spent a good hour raking, filling several wheel barrows. Then it was time for the afternoon coffee and the afternoon news. Sat down with Terje for a while, but soon decided that I'd had enough economic crisis for one day, so I fled into my studio, The Blue Room, where almost nothing is actually blue, we have so much blue everywhere else. And here is what I did

- listening to Mozart and CosÌ Fan Tutte on the iPAL radio

- writing an email to India, an email to Brazil, one to Istanbul, well, actually several emails to friends around the world

- welcoming Marta into the studio, helping her to find some old childrens picture books in a bookcabinet where I keep special book treasures

- writing in my rose diary about my Mozart rose

- writing in my garden diary about my day in the garden

- writing in my diary

- writing a letter to Dottore Feli in Venezia

- writing a letter to a lifelong friend in The Netherland

- looking out the window, dreaming

- asking Marta is she would come and empty a drawer in my desk where I keep brick à bracks, telling her that she could keep a few things, then put the rest back, tidy

- listening to Mozart

- looking at the blue hydrangea on my desk

- spotting my flight ticket for India, dreaming

- reading through old emails from my friend in India

- writing a blog post about A Night at Home to post the next day

- looking forward to the next day when Terje and I will go to IKEA to buy more bookshelves

- recieving an email from a friend in Roma

- looking at the hardangersøm-angel in my window, praying

- reading from A Traveller's History of India

- ending the night in front of the fire with Marta and Terje, reading aloud from 1001 Night, hot chocolate and warm homemade pastries.

              I want more nights like this.

A small town, somewhere.......

                My job takes me around. I can air my wings almost more than I care for. Sometimes it feels like I am home only to unpack and pack again my suitcase. Me, the lover of my home which is my nest. Me, the world traveller. The one, two or three day's travel for work can be exhausting. My way to survive and to love it is to make it all like travels for pleasure. I work, and I love my work, so I am lucky, but I also always make time to see the places I visit, to try to come under the skin of the places. To do some fun things which are not work.

                 Like last week. I was going up north in the diocese to a small costal town to give a course in the evening. Planes go there only twice a day, and I flew up in the morning to do some planning with a local lady. She met me at the airport and we drove home to her place where she had prepared lunch for me. Already a favorite travelling part - visiting the locals :-). We worked for a couple of hours and then she drove me to the hotel where I was to stay and where the course would be held.

                      I left my suitcase at the hotel and went out for a walk. A long walk in a low autumn sun. Small houses, bigger houses, the harbour, a mall where I visited the bookshop. Alot of houses totally without charm, but in between I found treasures. Old houses where the oldtime charm was still intact. I found the local library where I sat down for a while at the computer. Wrote a few emails, visited blogs around the world. But there was more I wanted to see, and my walk kept on.

          On top of a hill was the local church. It was closed. I could have asked for the key, after all it was the church workers who would be coming to my course, but I didn't. My praise and my prayers were said outdoors.

          After a while I walked down to the sea and the local museum. Inside was an exhibition about life near and in the sea through centuries. I walked through it, and then sat down with a cup of coffee and my diary. The only guest.

          The next morning I flew back home, memories filling my traveller's chest.

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Photos from Rørvik in Nord-Trøndelag, Norway.

The first snowflakes

During our morning coffee yesterday we looked out the window and saw the very first snow flakes of the season. Only a few, very wet ones, and they melted almost before they reached the ground, but still a clearly sign - winter is on its way.
There were still flowerpots left out in the garden, I always wait as long as possible to empty them because I hate saying goodbye to the colours of summer. Often I wait too long and the frost takes plants which could have survived in the basement, or it breaks the pots.

We finished our coffee and then dressed in boots and thick jackets.
Four hands work so much better then two, and in almost no time most of the pots were emptied and stored away. Some plants have found their winter room, some are still in the livingroom or the kitchen to give us more of their beauty before I also have to carry them down into the basement. A few are still outside, I never give up the hope that frost will be delayed and we can enjoy one more last rose, more sparkling colours from the fucsias, a few geraniums in white, pink and red.

The squirrels didn't like to be disturbed by two busy gardeners, the neighbours little dog loved it though, and helped us spreading as many cones as possible. Marta watched from the window and came out to play along.

A Traveller's Love of Lace

                Do you remember my basket collection? Baskets collected from all corners of the world. Well, baskets are not the only thing I look for when I travel. In a glass cupboard in my studio (may be I should call my studio a travel museum.....) I keep a special box with lace, in the box I also have books, postcards and pamflets about the old lace industry from a wide range of places.

                Vadstena in Sweden is known for its bobbin lace, and in the Elsa Peterson Bobbin Lace Shop I found this 87 years old lady selling the most beautiful pieces of handmade lace. She soon recognized my interest and told stories and showed me the different patters. I left the shop with a handkerchief and a bookmark, small, perfect pieces which I let glide through my fingers from time to time. True eye candies.

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          April 2007, Marta, Terje, my dear Austrian friend Dagmar and I visted Burano in the Venezian lagoon. It was hard to look at anything else than the colourful houses on Burano, but if I did, my eyes were drawn to old ladies sitting outside their houses making lace. I don't think I will ever understand how they manage all the thin threads which are used the make the intricate patters.

         A tablecloth, handkerchiefs and bookmarks are my memories from several visits to Burano.

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          It was the summer of 2005. My mother celebrated her 75th birthday that year, and decided to give a special birthday gift to her family -a trip to Malta/Gozo. There were 18 of us, the oldest was my mum, the youngest was a bouquet of cousins celebration the fun of their lives. Tedre, on the small island of Gozo, I found a lively lace tradition. Old and new pieces, small and big. And some found their way into my suitcase.

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India is less then two weeks away. I wonder what I will find there to bring home as travel memories.

_______ALMOST FORGOT__________________

          Woooops, I almost forgot to mention Jesurum in Venezia. They have an outlet store close to "my flat" in Canareggio, and I go, see, buy every time I am in Venezia.

          Who can resist their Botticelli Collection?

 

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Another lace lover is Pinar in Istanbul. I am hereby making her blog my Blog of the Week.

A friend is coming

                        _____________________________________________

I dance when I clean the house, a song find its own way out to fill the kitchen while I bake an apple pie, the best lace is ironed, it is a pleasure to decide which china to use, the garden offers me some blue. ......A friend is coming to tea. A far away friend who is home for the autumn break. We haven't talked in a long while and I am looking forward to a couple of best friend's hours.

Orchids

I have collected orchids for many years. Just because they are beautiful! And because when I started to collect them it sounded so exotic!

          

 I have ten plants now. Some periods of the year most of them are blooming, but right now only two are overwhelming me with their beautiful flowers.

For years I used to fill our house with plants. There is no time for that any more, not enough time to take care of so many plants, so together with a few big plants for decoration, the orchids are the only ones. They are so easy to take care of, and pay me back with such a remarkable amount of beauty. I will not trade them for anything.

There is a special orchid nursery here in Trondheim where I have bought a few of my plants. Now orchids are getting more and more common everywhere, so I haven't been there in some time. But when I have finished my exams of this year I will treat myself with a visit and may be buy a new plant or two.

Only the most common of my orchids are in bloom now. I enjoy their beauty, and meanwhile I am tending the other ones with green fingers. Suddenly one day one or two, or may be even more of them will surprise me with the gift of new flowers.

_________________________________________________

This is one of the first posts I wrote after moving The House in the Woods from blogspot over to typepad in April 2005. I had then been blogging on typepad for four months. Little did I know when I wrote my first blogpost what blogging would lead to. Little did I know of the circle of world wide friendships which were waiting "out there". Now I know, and I look forward to many more years of blogging.

My 1000th post is coming up in a few days, and I plan a very special giveaway. Just wait and see :-)

_______________________________________

I will keep on growing orchids, and now they might get a few camelias as friends. Thank you for the overwhelming response from yesterdays posts, comments and emails and seeds soon on their way to Norway!

I have collected orchids for many years. Just because they are beautiful! And because when I started to collect them it sounded so exotic!

          

 I have ten plants now. Some periods of the year most of them are blooming, but right now only two are overwhelming me with their beautiful flowers.

For years I used to fill our house with plants. There is no time for that any more, not enough time to take care of so many plants, so together with a few big plants for decoration, the orchids are the only ones. They are so easy to take care of, and pay me back with such a remarkable amount of beauty. I will not trade them for anything.

There is a special orchid nursery here in Trondheim where I have bought a few of my plants. Now orchids are getting more and more common everywhere, so I haven't been there in some time. But when I have finished my exams of this year I will treat myself with a visit and may be buy a new plant or two.

Only the most common of my orchids are in bloom now. I enjoy their beauty, and meanwhile I am tending the other ones with green fingers. Suddenly one day one or two, or may be even more of them will surprise me with the gift of new flowers.

_________________________________________________

This is one of the first posts I wrote after moving The House in the Woods from blogspot over to typepad in April 2005. I had then been blogging on typepad for four months. Little did I know when I wrote my first blogpost what blogging would lead to. Little did I know of the circle of world wide friendships which were waiting "out there". Now I know, and I look forward to many more years of blogging.

My 1000th post is coming up in a few days, and I plan a very special giveaway. Just wait and see :-)

_______________________________________

I will keep on growing orchids, and now they might get a few camelias as friends. Thank you for the overwhelming response from yesterdays posts, comments and emails and seeds soon on their way to Norway!