Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Into the forest on the leap day

@brittarnhild

February 29. The leap day.
Two of our kids were born in a leap year. Both of them missed the leap day by hours.
Øystein was born on February 26th in 1982.
Marta on February 27th in 1996.

As a senior it feels like every day is a leap day.
I don't go to work, I still get payed, every single month. I can do what I want to.

Well, kind of.......
The days are filling up. My old parents. Children and grandchildren. Volunteer work.

Anyway. I have time, a lot of time left for.......yes, what I want to do.

But don't let me talk myself away from the topic.
Today is a leap day and I wanted to make it into something special.
So I put my studded boots on and walked into the woods just behind our house.

A hike for no special reason.

Which ended up being a hug the trees hike.

A deep breathing day.

A perfect leap day.

Grandmother squares in the greenhouse

@brittarnhild

I need my stud shoes to reach the greenhouse these days. Still so much ice in the garden. But the sun gets higher and higher every day, and after lunch some time it reaches the greenhouse, and in almost no time it feels like spring in there.

   

I don't hesitate.
Soon you find me out there,
with a mug of tea,
with an audio book,
and of course,
with some crochet or knitting project.

My plan is to let this be my 2024 greenhouse crochet project.
Granny squares made from left over yarn in different shades of blue.
My winter sky blanket.

 

Art by our Queen

@brittarnhild

It is Winter holidays for the schools, and we decided to take our oldest grandson downtown. We all wanted to go to a café, he wanted to go to the library and Terje and I wanted to take him, and ourselves, to a gallery where they for the moment have Art Prints on display made by our Royal Highness the Queen of Norway, in collaboration with the artist Håvard Homstvedt.

Here you see our grandson in front of my favourite picture, "Monotypi"
Many of the pictures had ceramic pots in their motives, pots designed by the queen and used in her clay production.

   

The colours in these two graphic art pieces sang to me, and looking close, I was fascinated by the way the curtains were made, using simple, quite broad strokes.

 

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I am filling my life more and more with art these days. I am taking online classes, I read book and I visit galleries. It enriches my life.

 

My mornings

@brittarnhild

The morning is the best part of my day.
I am usually the first one up, and read while waiting for Terje. When he comes, I take a shower while he starts to prepare breakfast. We eat together, at the dining room table, and then move over to our two armchairs, bringing the pot of tea and two mugs with us. While drinking the tea we have a book from which I read aloud, and after the reading, then and only then, the day starts.......well, the day is already a couple of hours, so more correct is to say that the rest of the day starts.

Usually I sit for another hour, sometimes two. I make another pot of tea, and like today, eat a couple og homemade oatmeal biscuits with brown cheese. And I read more. A lot more.

 

 

Down by the fjord

@brittarnhild

On a glorious winter day, when better than to drive down to the fjord for a hike.

Blue sky, blue fjord, too cold for the sailboats to be out sailing.

Absolutely perfect for a hike.

Along the walk we stopped at this cozy place for coffee and vafler.

A few brave people sat outside, we decided to go for more warmth indoors.

 

 

Downtown, again.

@brittarnhild

For 20 years I used to work downtown. Every single workday I took the bus down, and I often used to go again on Saturday or Sunday mornings, for a hike, for photographing, for sitting down in a café writing.

I have been retired for almost four years now, and there are sometimes weeks between I go downtown. I do miss it, but somehow the days are always so filled with other plans and tasks.

But then there are days when we have errands to do. We could of course go to one of the many shopping centres around the city, but we prefer "the real stuff", to walk the old streets of the city center, take a coffee somewhere, lunch in another place, do our errands, and also go for an extra walk, just to enjoy the town.

 

 

 

Pancakes on St Valentin Day

@brittarnhild

Our grandson, 5 year old Milian has spent the afternoon with us. He wanted bacon pancakes for dinner, end since it is valentines day, I decided to make the pancakes heart shaped :-)

 

Shrove Tuesday

@brittarnhild

It is Shrove Tuesday, dinner is just over, and I am full.
Welcome Lent :-)

A salted leg of pork, mashed rutabaga, potatoes and jam made of fox berries. Oh, I love it!

Lent starts tomorrow, so today is traditionally a day with quite a lot of food, of fat food. I have been told that in England the days is called Pancake Tuesday. Pancakes, with many eggs and a lot of butter, rømmegrøt and pancakes are all traditional meals on Shrove Tuesday.

I would love to hear from you if you have any specific food traditions on this last day before Lent.

 

Blue Monday, with Lent preparations

@brittarnhild

Yesterday was Shrove Sunday, tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday. Today, the day in between, is Blue Monday. From when I have read it got its name from the Blue Cloth the priests  in the Catholic Church covered the altar with on the start of Lent.

Here in Norway we do not have any specific traditions for this day, but as a preparations for the coming 7 weeks of Lent, I have picked, from my shelves, a few books which will follow me through the Lent weeks.

Michel Pastoureau´s Blue, The History of a Color.
Victoria Finlay's Colour, Travels Through the Paintbox.
Nature´s Palette, A Color Reference System from the Natural World, by Thames&Hudson

 

What an amazing blessing to live in a world filled with colours. What if God created the world in black and white only? Can you imagine? I am looking out my studio window just now. A sky in a multitudes of grey shades, winter green trees, white snow, a red house up the road with stacks of logs piled up along the wall, birds in brown, yellow, splashed of blue (on the blue tits), a mother and her daughter coming home from school, the daughter with a happy, pink backpack, a man holding a red plastic bag. Colours everywhere.

Norwegian Mother's Day

@brittarnhild

It is Mother's Day in Norway today, and also fastelavssøndag/Shrove Sunday, according to the Christian church calendar.
Terje has given me a lovely bouquet of tulips, and he made us a lovely breakfast this morning.

Then, since we have two celebrations going on today, we had fastelavnsboller for lunch, some traditional sweet pastries for this day. They are filled with almond paste and topped with cream, and just as sweet as you can imagine.

The lovely winter weather continues. We had planned to go for a hike, but decided to just stay here and relax. And enjoy the view and the ocean and the birds and the quiet.

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Just a few words about why we celebrate Mother's Day in February in Norway. We know that "the rest of the world" celebrates on the second Sunday in May. May 17th is our Constitutional Day in Norway, we like to call it Norway´s birthday. It is a busy day with parades and games and food and celebrations all over, and traditionally it used to be a quite busy period leading up to syttende mai for all mothers, making sure the linen shirts for the national costumes were properly ironed, the shoes polished, and so much food to prepare. If Mother's Day came during these days there would be no rest for the hands of the mother's. And rest for the hands is what mother's day is about, isn't it :-)