Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

I know you are waiting........

I know you are waiting for me to pick the winner, or three winners actually.......I will, I will.......but first I must prepare dinner. Ingrid phoned the other day; "Mamma, I'm coming home for dinner on Friday, Marius is at Vegårdshei, ski jumping, so I am alone the whole week-end. Can you make foccaccia and spaghetti carbonara?"

I love calls like that from the kids, so here I am, wonderfully busy preparing a dinner for five, cousin Mathilde is also coming.

The winners will soon be picked.......later tonight, or tomorrow. And if you really, I mean REALLY want to win, you can of course post several comments :-)

A giveaway and a knitting post in progress

 I am planning another post about my knitting, with alot of photos. Had origianlly planned to work on it today, but there is no time. After work I went to a cafe where I sat down to work on my book (cafes are where I work best), now I am home and will soon have dinner with Terje and Marta, and a little later I will go to a concert with Trondheim Symphonic Orchestra. A friend gave me two tickets and I have invited my mother to come with me.

But I promised you a giveaway and here it is; two pairs of miniature mittens, one miniature hat in Selbu knitting. leave your comments and I'll pick three winners tomorrow.

 

Look closely......yes, I am in Selbu, the land of the Selbu knitting

Have you heard of Selbu? The land, the village of the Selbu knitting, the Selbu mittens, the Selbu rose. I have spent two days there on a meeting, and of course, during every break I have looked for knitting patterns, for inspirations, for new designs. If you look closely at this door and the sign above, you can see the eight pointed star, selburosa. The photo was taken last night when I came back to the hotel after a night service in Selbu medieval church.

The days have been more than filled with meetings, but during our 55 minutes lunch break today I decided it was full time to squeeze in a visit to Selbu Husflid, the art and craft center.

 
I persuaded the few other women in the group to go with me (I needed one of them to drive me, and honestly, it is always fun to go shopping and exploring together). We ate our lunch in full speed, and when the waitress came with the dessert we loudly let her know that she had to give us first, before the still hungry men. After all, we had some important business to do, didn't we....... The men didn't quite look like they liked this, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do........

We had about 15 minutes at husfliden, just enough for me, as long as I knew what I wanted to buy.......a pattern book and yarn. Now I am going to knit Selbu mittens!

 
I ran around in the store. There is hardly no limit to how much money a girl can use in 15 minutes, is there?

I even had time to look around, and to take photos for you....... Did I say mittens? There is so much more you can knit, using the Selbu rose.

And it wasn't my fault was it, that when we came back to the hotel at 13.00.09, the men already sat around the meeting table, tapping fingers on the tabletop, wondering where we were. I am sure they sat down already at 12.55 to make sure to be ready before we came back. I sat down, rose my hand and asked: "Excuse me dear bishop, when will the next break be? I need to go to the toilet" (......of course I had no time for such a thing during lunch break!)

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By the way, I did buy a few treats which I will use as giveaways. Come back tomorrow to have a look and to leave your comment.

 

  

Cutting vegetables, cooking memories

I was in the kitchen cutting vegetables for our dinner. No onion this time, so there were  no tears......but broccoli, carrots, cabbage and garlic. Preparing a meal is a good time for letting your mind wander, dwelling on memories, meals you have shared with friends, foods from travels.

The moose steak was already out of the oven, cooled down, salted, ready to be cut, the foxberries just needed a little sugar. I found a casserole, filled it with water, a little Maldon salt (from my dear friend Carol in Maldon outside London), then the vegetables.....and while the green, orange and white softly boiled (very Italian tese colours :-)), I once again opened my computer to look through my photos from my three weeks in India.

An intense longing for Carolyn and Hossy, for once again visiting the vegetable market with Carolyn, for spending a quiet morning reading on their balcony, for.......... I don't know if I will every go back to India, to Mysore, to my dear friends there. But I have my memories, and they will live forever. 

Carolyn with her handwritten cookbook

I want to take you with me to Mysore today, to a morning buying fruits and vegetables with my dear Carolyn:

The Gift of a Custard Apple

 

The food here is in almost every colour imaginable, and we eat loads of fruits and vegetables for every meal. Alot of it is from Carolyn and Hossy's garden, but also alot comes from the market. Carolyn took me to her "vegetable man" the other day, and I couldn't stop taking photos and asking questions. What is this? What is that? Is it a fruit or a vegetable? How does it taste :-)

 

The vegetable man got a broad smile when he realized my interest in his stuff, and people from other boots nearby came to have their photos taken when they saw my camera. I am collecting portraits.

 

My weeks here are a holiday, and I spend hours on Carolyn's porch, reading, writing, painting or listening to stories from Carolyn and Hossy's life.

From their stories and from books and magazines I learn all the time. Custard apple was a word I had never heard before. Then I went to the market and actually got one, and then I came home and read from "A Vision of Eden by Marianne North, a Victorian Englishwoman who travelled the world around 1870 to paint trees and flowers:

Some of the wild fruits are very good, though the English seldom eat them. The custard apple was an especial favorite of mine; it was a green horny heart-shaped thing growing close to the stem of the tree, with a creamy pulp and black seeds, and an acid pineapple flavour.

 

The vegetable man gave me a custard apple as a gift. Now it is laying on the fruit plate waiting to be ripe enough to eat.

Soon I can make Marianne North's words mine.

 

We use alot of fruits and vegetables at home, and I considered myself an expert. But what did I know?

What is your favorite fruit? Is there a fruit you have heard about but never tasted?

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For more India stories, use this link.

And for a lovely post about another handwritten recipebook

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When I marries, almost 30 years ago, I bought an olive green notebook for my recipes. One day I will make a post about it.

Caffe Avec is updated.

I had alot of fun yesterday looking through hundreds of old photos in a separate harddisk at home. I was searching for photos from mexico for a special update on Caffe Avec.

 

I found so many lovely photos, which again created so many lovely memories. Like this one, taken on a hike near our cabin, the summer of 2008.

 

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I crached a harddisk once, and lost thousands of photos. Now I have them saved both on our camputer and on this special harddisk. And many of the photos files from travels I have burnt on cds. Still I am considering buying one more harddisk, for yet another backup.

 

How do you keep your photos? Your writing? Everything you are afraid to lose?

 

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Welcome over to Caffe Avec :-)

Booktalk on a Sunday 33. This and that!

Sunday, and no plans untill tonight. Then Terje and I will go to a concert with Trondheim Symphonic Orchestra. Untill then the hours are laid out in front of me, like the white snow I see from my studio window. Time is a blessing, and I plan to let the day flow while I wrap myself in words - through books, through letters, through writing.

I even have most of the dinner ready. Last night I put a moose steak in the oven, on low temperature. It has spent the night in there, now it is moved over to a pot of cold, salty water. When it is time for dinner, the cold steak with be smooth and tasty, accompanied with broccoli, potatoes and foxberries.

I am not a one book at a time kind of girl. I can switch from one to another to a third, accordiung to my mood. Up here in my studio I have Ferdinand Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet which I have only just started. This book is so totally different from all I have read before, fascinating in its own way. I also have three books by thre Haitian author Edwidge Danticat. She has written several, but at the time I visited Haiti back in 1998, her three books were: "Breat, Eyes, memory", "Krik? Krak!" and "The Farming of Bones"

Then there is my monthly Dickens. Well, actually I finished Hard Times last week, but have started a second one this week, Oliver Twist. As a preparation of my upcoming visit of course :-) My next Charles Dickens will be.............well, it is still a secret. It is also connected with an upcoming travel (Lieselotte, you know) and I will tell you about it when the time comes.

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I would love to categorize my book collection some day. Write down all titles and name of autors in an exel file. My collection is growing big, it is growing fast, it is hard to keep up with what I actually have. May be if I make myself a goal of 10 books a day.......how long will it take till I am finished?

I get new ideas for books and writers all the time. Yesterday I read the blog Life at Willow Manor, as I often do,  and there I learned about a poet, so far unknown to me; Czeslaw Milosz. I googled the name and from what I found, it didn't take me long to continue to amazon.co.uk to order one of his books. At the same time I ordered a book for my upcoming February theme (which you will get to know more about later on) and also one more Dervla Murphy. I do think I have most of her books now, but there might be a couple more left...... 

Before I stop this Booktalk on a Sunday (I can't believe it is two years since I lest wrote one) I want to take you to the lovely book blog of Valarie Budayr; Jump Into a Book. If you are like me, you will find hours of great fun there.

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Have a nice reading Sunday.

www - wonderful winter world, part 3! Photographers everywhere

I am focusing on photography in January (every month a new theme, February will probably be William Morris). Today I finished Susan Sontag's book On Photography, and have now just started Camera Lucida - Reflections on Photography, by Roland Bathes and Richard Howards. Then The Photography Reader, edited by Liz Wells is waiting. Not easy books to read, a theme not too well known to me, but very interesting.

I have also become a member of RebBubble, and love to browse photos there.

I wonder why I see photographers everywhere these days. Is it like seeing pregnant women everywhere when you are pregnant yourself, or is it because of the extreme winter wonderland beauty here in Trondheim and its area?

Anyway, here are a few shots for you:

  

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First photo - Spain in September, last photo an image of the blog photographer, all others different photograpgers capturing the beauty of Trondheim   

www - wonderful winter world, part 2! Cathedral in mist

It might not be the biggest cathedral in the world, but it is "mine", and it owns a big part of my heart.

I had my confirmation here. I got married here. Now I work here as a volunteer.

I pass the cathedral twice a day, on my way to work in the morning, on my way back home in the afternoon.

I never pass the cathedral without looking up, enjoying its beauty.....

   

....though there was one time, the first day back home after my first visit to Rome.......

....the cathedral felt so small......

The next day it was back to normal again. My own amazing cathedral.

 
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There will be more www - wonderful winter world tomorrow, and by the way - I LOVE your comments.

 

www - wonderful winter world, part 1! Home from work

Several days with cold and mist have turned my world into a winter wonderland. My camera is with me everywhere, and I have tons of photos only from the past two or three days. I don't like the cold, really I don't. But the beauty mesmerizes me. Totally. White is the absolute dominant colour, then some blue here and there, and when darkness comes, the yellow from the street lamps. I've never seen Trondheim like this before.

The coming days I plan to share my Wonderful Winter World with you, starting with my walk home from work today. I left work at 3.30pm, and spent about half an hour walking up to where Terje works. There we do our grocery shopping, and then we drive home together.

Today the walk took longer. I stopped for photos. Off with my gloves, shooting, cold, stiff fingers, on with the gloves again, walking a few meters, off with the gloves........and so it went :-)

So what do you say, do you want to come along with me?

Leaving the Archbishop's Palace......

......and the cathedral.....

Dusk came while I walked.....

 
Street lamps were lit.

   

I walk here several times a week. Never have I seen this beauty.......

Almost there now. It is time to phone Terje and ask him to turn off his computer.

 

Then I am there. Thanks for walking with me.....

All photos from my walk today, from the city up to Tempe.  

Haiti, a travel memory, and how we can help

In a small corner of our livingroom I have gathered some travel memories. I look at the items and my mind wanders to Eritrea, to Laos, India, The Dominiac Republic, Italy........and today most of all to Haiti.

It was October 1998 and I was asked by Norwegian Church Aid to go to Haiti and The Dominican Republic for two weeks together with a small group. The goal was to bring back information to the churches in Norway in connection with Norwegian Church Aid's annual Lental Campaign.

It was my first travel out of Europe, I left Terje home alone for two weeks with four kids, the youngest one, Marta, only 2 1/2. But the most exciting and kind of frightening part was that we were going to visit a country only days after Hurricane George which killed over 400 people and destroyed 80% of all the crops in the country.

I am sitting here with my travel diary from the two weeks. A diary filled with strong impressions, with memories when I wanted to close my eyes and take the first plane back to Europe, but also memories of a beautiful, strong, fighting, though shy (in my eyes) people.

We divided the two weeks between Haiti and The Dominiac Republic, and most of out time in Haiti were spent in Port au Prince. In a small, charming hotel with a swimmingpool where we could rest between our meetings with people and organisations. There I could pray for the children we met at the orphanage run by The Salvation Army, there I could cry out my "why" to God after seeing the sufferings in the prison we visited downtown, where prisoners lived for years without trials, without hopes. There we could laugh and cry, sleep and eat.......though most of my nights were filled with thoughts and prayers rather than sleep. And there I could linger on sweet memories from a night at Hotel Olafsson, where Graham Greene sat his novel The Comedians.

One day we drove out into the countryside, where the hurricane had done severe damage. We slept overnight at a guesthouse and I spent the whole night listening to the strange noises of a world so completely different from my soft security at home.

I am reading my travel diary tonight, and my thoughts go to the people of Haiti.

Right now they are in need of almost everything, and we can all help. Norwegian readers, you can read more at Norwegian Church Aid's pages, international readers, please find the way your country (through UN, Red Cross, CARE and organisations like them) is giving their support. 

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Later tonight I plan to start rereading Edwidge Danticat's books;

 

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Krik? Krak! (Vintage Contemporaries)

The Farming of Bones