Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Married to a road engineer

@brittarnhild

When you are out driving with a road engineer, you never know what is behind the next corner. We are at our cabin now, after spending some days driving up from the southern tip of Norway. It is possible to do the distance in one (long) day, with a few ferries along the road, but why do it in a hurry when you can do it at snails pace?

Well, part of, or rather most of, the driving was done along main roads, but as soon as we had the possibility to drive along one of the old historical roads.......well, we did!

Taking pictures from the car when we are driving is not easy, and of course we could not stop every fifth minute. But Terje is a good guy, when I say stop, he stops (sometimes.......) and when I say jump, he jumps (sometimes.......)

Of course it took so much longer to drive these historical roads, but it gave us some fantastic moments.
Can you imagine being a road engineer a hundred years ago. Not to say a simple road worker.

Imagine meeting a car here, as we did many times :-)
Well, one of the cars had to back and luckily, drivers in Norway, on these narrow roads, are all very polite. Often both we and the other car backed. 

 

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Thank you for visiting my YouTube-channel 
And if you have not done so yet, well, it is never too late :-)

 

 

 

May I ask you a favour?

@brittarnhild

To be visible on YouTube, among millions of other videos, is extremely difficult. To be seen you need to be seen, you need to be seen and so on.......so today I have a favour to ask you. Will you please click on my most previous video, below and watch through it? It is even better of course if you give it a thumb´s up, and absolutely great if you subscribe to my Chanel (to do so you need a google account)

Super thanks in advance xxx

 

 

A hundred years ago

@brittarnhild

A hundred years ago, or so, a young woman left her home, a prosperous fruit farm, somewhere on the western coast of Norway, to go to Volda. She wanted to study to become a teacher. At the same time a young man left his much more humble home somewhere on the western coast of Norway, to go to Volda. He wanted to study to become a teacher.

The young woman and the young man met, they fell in love, a few years lated they married and after some more years they had 7 children. The fifth of these was the first boy. They named him Odd Inge, and he is my father.

Terje and I spent last night at Volda.
It turned out to be more emotional than I had expected.

The young woman, Ragna Josefine,
the young man, Johannes.
What if they hadn't met?
What if they hadn't fallen in love?
What if they had not had all those babies?
What if.......

Coincidence?
Written in the stars?
Meant to be?

Or may be as simple as LOVE.

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Here is a post I wrote back in 2016, when we visited grandma Ragna Josefine´s homestead.

 

Hunting for birds and flowers in Florø

@brittarnhild

42 years ago we put our rings on, outdoors.
We started our celebration today with a hike in a nature park in Florø.
Enjoying nature. Hunting birds and plants.

How many of the birds and plants can you name?

 

Florø, as far west as you get.......almost

@brittarnhild

After a wonderful week in the south of Norway, with our youngest son and his family, we are heading north again, up along the western part of Norway. This afternoon, just as the sun left us and the sky turned grey, we arrived in Florø, the westernmost town in Norway. We have travelled quite a lot up and down Western Norway, but we can't quite agree if we have been here before. If we have, it was back in 1983, when our oldest son Torgeir was a baby. We do agree that we were in the neighbourhood then :-)

We did a downtown walk before dinner, enjoying some of the many sculptures around. Like this grandma. 
You see two grandmas , you say? 
Well, you are right. I have titled the picture "when grandmas meet" :-)

Florø was built on the rich herring fishing. Our hotel is situated right on the harbour, with busy traffic, but I am not sure how many fishing boats there are nowadays.

Of course I had herring for dinner.
And shrimps.

This cute bicycle, covered in colourful crochet, was situated outside the tourist information.

The yellow building is our hotel.

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Have you not seen my most recent video yet?
Here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

A stool, a palette

@brittarnhild

This stool, splashed in colours.
The Norwegian late painter Jacob Weidemann used it as his palett when he painted.

Can you imagine all the amazing paintings hidden here.
Layer by layer.

 

When I knit I always keep even the tiniest piece of scrap yarn.
They can always be of use.......
.......some day.

Or they can be a reminder of what I have made.
Inspiration for new pieces.

The blue stool was part of an exhibition we visited at The Old Rectory.
I wish it were mine.

In one way it is.
Mine.
In my heart.

A source of inspiration.

 

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Some of my scrap yarn is used to make the snail tail snails.

 

Serendipity took us to The Old Rectory Garden

@brittarnhild

We are in Lillehammer now, after leaving our home in Trondheim this morning. Lillehammer holds some very good memories for us, our second son, Øystein was born here in 1984. 10 years later we came here to watch the winter Olympics.

It is less then 6 hours to drive here from Trondheim, so we had made plans for a couple of very nice stops along the road. We made the stops and had just about an hour left to our hotel when I got a message on my phone from my best friend. "We are in Ringebu now, visiting the most adorable rectory garden you can imagine. I wish you were here."
I hardly finished reading the message before I cried out to Terje. "Terje, stop the car, we passed Ringebu three minutes ago, now you need to turn the car and drive back, we are going to visit a garden!"

Lucky me, I have a husband who jumps when I say jump, so a few minutes later we found ourselves in the rectory garden, where our friends greeted us :-)

Pure serendipity.
No more.
No less.

The garden.
More than 150 different historical roses.
Perennials.
Herbs.
Fruit trees.
View.
Sun.
Bees.

And in the rectory, and also inside all the other different houses on the old farm, were exhibitions with art by a wide range of Norwegian artists.

We have had a very warm summer so far here in Norway, and most of then roses were already gone.
I still enjoyed it all, and when we left Terje said, "You know Britt Arnhild, we can always come back here another year, when all the roses are in full bloom.

 

Driving southwards

@brittarnhild

July is vacation time in Norway.
First thing tomorrow morning we will be driving southwards
(I plan to keep you updated)

Both Terje and I have spent hours and hours in the garden today.
And in the greenhouse.

We are lucky to have very good neighbours and they will look after our house and garden while we are away.

And of course, if they find anything they want to eat, they are welcome to do so.

 

Which way forward?

@brittarnhild

I still have my thinking cap on concerning may life as a blogger.
As you know I have had my YouTube channel for a few years now, started in English, continued in Norwegian and for 18 months now I've done both. I am slowly walking towards doing Norwegian episodes with subtitles, or episodes where I speak both Norwegian and English, and as weeks ans months and even years go by, it becomes more and more clear to me that I do not want to quit blogging.

Blogging has been an important part of my life for almost two decades now, and I want to continue.
I still have some thinking today about witch path to chose, but I hope to continue, best foot forward.

With this said (written) I also hope to see you over where I do my video episodes, Britt Arnhild´s World on YouTube. I am having kind of a summer vacation break for the moment, from my weekly episodes, but today I made a little bonus episode, with footage from our garden, from the cabin and most of all small films with my snails. And as always with my 91 year old mother playing the piano.

Hope to see you there:
(and please let me know what you think of this mixture of Norwegian and English)

The photos are of sunflowers in our garden today.

 

The snails and their tales

@brittarnhild

I am enjoying making snail tales this summer.
The snails are all knitted.
Now they follow me around, and every morning one or more of them whisper a tale in my ear.
They want me to share their tales.
They ask me to take images.
They as me to write words.

One day I hope to make a book or more for the grandchildren.