Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

One of my favorite men

@brittarnhild

I don´t know about you. In my life there are quite a few favorite men though. Take this cute little fellow for instance, a grønnfink, or an European greenfinch as wikipedia tells me his English name is. His wife, Mrs Greenfinch is all brown and kind of boring. The Mister himself has a vivid greenyellow colour, making him shine like the sun.

There are many of then in my garden these days. Patiently they sit there, eating sunflowers seed for hours.

If another bird comes and want some seeds, Mr Greenfinch just flaps with his wings and then he has the meal all by himself again.

Quite rude, but still, he is a favorite :-)

 

Back to winter. Or is it a beginning spring?

@brittarnhild

First a lovely spring weekend in Stockholm. Then a lovely spring weekend in Moi, southwest in Norway. It was a bit hard to come home to winter and snow and cold. But it is still only March, a winter month in Norway. And in less than a week I am flying down to Italy to stay for the month of April. So I have no reason at all to complain.

Winter or spring.......the snowdrops have started to bloom in the garden.
Spring is on its way here as well.......eventually.

A weekend filled with memories

@brittarnhild

We have been back to Moi, the small village south west in Norway, where Terje was born, for the weekend. A sister in law´s 60th birthday gave us the perfect reason to fly down for a few days.

Father in law´s house, the place where Terje was born and lived till he moved to Trondheim, the place we have spent our summers for almost 40 years, is sold now. We passed it, we took photos for our kids to see. But we never wanted to go inside to see what the new owners are doing with it.

Some doors are meant to be closed. Some frames are meant to be empty........we have our own paintings which we will bring with us. Good memories, shaping our lives.

A visit to the churchyard.......

.......and outside the vicarage I found a perfect spot for some knitting photos :-)

 

Long winters, long knitting

@brittarnhild

My new knitting blog has made my fingers busy, from morning till night.
Here is today´s post:

 

This is what I woke up to. And it continued to snow throughout the day. Winter in Norway lasts for more than half of the year, good for me then that I can wrap myself in soft, handknitted wool.

We are ready for another weekend away from home, with travel time for knitting. This time we are flying south west in Norway, to Stavanger, and will drive a couple of hours from there to the little village where my husband was born. The reason - a 60th birthday celebration. I have several socks to be on needles, all perfect to bring with me on a travel, but something I saw in a craft store in Stockholm last weekend inspired me to start a knitted scarf.

Alpaca yarn from Drops, two shades of grey, 100 stickes on needles #3 1/2.
I´ll keep you updated.

 

 

A small part of eternity

@brittarnhild

If you take a look in maskerade you will see that today I have finished a secret knitting project, a pair of wrist warmers, decorated with old buttons. After I finished the wrist warmers yesterday afternoon, I let Leander help me sorting the old buttons. Most of them inherited from my grandma Olga, Leanders great great-grandma.

AS we sat there my prayer was: dear God, let me be for Leander what grandma Olga was for me!

 

A pop-up restaurant in Södermalm

@brittarnhild

"For lunch I want to take you to my favorite Japanese restaurant" Torgeir told us, "but for dinner I have somethink completely different in mind. There is a brewery basement storeroom which is turned into a pub every Friday night, and once in a while a friend of mine, Danny, and another guy, make this a pop-up restaurant."
Torgeir knew we would never in a million years find this place by ourselves, so he wanted to make it a very special adventure for us.

We could not refuse of course, and bravely followed Torgeir down into the dark storeroom.

Down there Torgeir took us to the temporary kitchen where Danny and his friend were busy with the very last preparations for the night´s dinner. Danny told Torgeir that last time they had the restaurant open, it was so popular they had ran out of food in less than two hours. They did not want this to happen again, so both of them having regular jobs as well, had been up all night the night before, making sure they made enough sausages.

"Look here!" Danny´s friend proudly shows us the homemade sausages.

Homemade sausage, coleslaw and a sweet potatoe salad, all washed down in the brewery´s beer. Well, Torgeir was right, we would never find this place on our own, and if we by chance would happen to pass by we would never go down. But.......WE LOVED IT! We loved the adventure, the atmosphere, the chance to experience a little bit of Torgeir´s life in Stockholm, and last but not at all least - WE LOVED THE FOOD!

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Torgeir has a travel blog which you can find here:
TravelTorgeir

 

Workers in Gamla Stan, the Old Town in Stockholm

@brittarnhild

 

Torgeir had work to do on Friday morning. Terje and I stay in a very charming little AirB&B in Gamla Stan, the old medieval part of Stockholm, and spent the morning strolling around here. The main streets and the market place can be cramped with tourists, and very busy, but turn a left here, a right there, pass the school yards where happy children are playing, and soon you find yourself almost set in another century.

As so often when travelling, I found myself enjoying the work of the lokal workers. Like these tow men doing the precise and time consuming work of setting the old cobblestones.

And when the cobblestones are set, they must of course be kept clean.

Or the more brave men (?), who work up in the sky.......

As our walk went on, Gamla Stan woke up, and soon it was time for our first coffee of the day.......

.......but that´s another post, and may be even another blog :-)

 

The weekend with Torgeir

@brittarnhild

In January our oldest son Torgeir moved to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. You can fly directly from Trondheim till Stockholm in about one hour and 20 minutes, and that´s what Terje and I did after work yesterday.

Torgeir met us when we arrived, and on the way to our AirB&B in the Old Town, Gamla Stan, we stopped at a food court to have something to eat.

I had never been to a consept like this food court before. A lot of tiny little kitchens making food from different countries. You could sit down anywhere you found chairs and a table, and order from whatever kitchen you wanted.

We started with Chineese dumplings and then went over to Thai baguettes.

 

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More posts from Stockholm will come.

 

To all knitters out there

@brittarnhild

Six days and six posts. My knit blog is a toddler, steadily walking along. But it need more readers.
If you are a knitter, why don´t you come over to leave a comment, to let me know that you are there, and also share it with knitting friends of yours?

You find the blog here

 

Here is today´s post:

Knitting is supposed to slow down your heart beats. That´s what I´ve heard and that´s what I believe......or believed. Yesterday it did not!

Over the last couple of years my oldest daughter has become qjuite an avid knitter. I taught her to knit when she was a girl, like I have done with all our four childern, but she never continued, not until she got pregnant and started to knit tiny garments, first for a baby, now for a toddler. From time to time she needs a little help, just like she did now, and came to me with a pair of wool pants she was making for Leander 15 months. "Mom, the rib is too wide, it looks like a kind of a balloon on him. Do you think you can help me?"

Of course I could help her. "Just leave the pants here with me and I will unravel the rib and knit a new one!" I told her very confident.

It didn´t take long to prove how wrong I was. The upper rib was where she had started the knitting, and unraveling from "the wrong side" is impossible.

I started out very optimistic. But it took me only seconds to realize that I was about to knit myself into a deep mess. After a while I could feel my heartbeats speeding up. After some more time I couls hear them, and soon my husband could hear them too. Then he knew it was time to come to my resque. Together we cut, we unraveled and after a lot of work I was ready to reinserting the needles.

I was back in paradise again :-)

And in paradise everything is easy. Soon the new rib was finished, and today I was ready to try the pants on again.
Yes, they are perfect, and Leander and I can enjoy our grandmother and grandchild day.

A young couple moving in

@brittarnhild

For Christmas 2015 I got a very special present, a bird house with a camera inside. We hung the house out in the garden and started to wait for birds to move in. Last year this didn´t happen.

The bird house is hung so I see it from where I sit in the living room, reading, bird watching or knitting.

And as I sat there yesterday, with my knitting, thinking about my new knitting blog, I suddenly saw some activity out there.

Sure, it really looks like someone are moving in.
Now I need to connect the camera.