Friday Flickr Favourites :: Inspiration

1. swallowtail shawl, 2. Musta-valkoiset_pieni, 3. bunny apparel, 4. Ziggity Shawl

5. Eleanor, Delilah and Doreen..., 6. yes i sew. and i crochet, too, 7. Untitled, 8. les petits, 

9. misty weather 10. An Ode to the Goodness of Internet Friends, 11. Crochet stones, 12. Stack of Grannies for new blanket, 

13. Trio, 14. still life, 15. scalene, 16. babyshoes

Yarn Along :: WIP Wednesday

Yarn Along and WIP Wednesday are here again :)

Knitting: I've been reading more than I have been knitting this last week, so not much progress on my projects... I've startd to decrease on Endre's sweater, so I hope to finish it soon. My Counterpane socks have been untouched and so has Eirin's jacket. But, I have finished the shawl I was knitting on last week.

Reading: Finally the second part of The Game of Thrones is out here in Norway. The book has been given out in two parts here... Don't know why, but I guess it's just too squeeze more money out of us. I borrow them from the library ;) But it's a series I'm thinking about buying in english (as it's much cheaper) since it's not likely there will come another book in norwegian until next year.

Wordless Wednesday :: Feeding the birds

Wordless Wednesday

Capelito

Endre is home from school today feeling a little sick. So he's been going through our dvd's and pulled out a much loved one - Capelito. We bought the two dvd's we have when Erlend was a couple of years and I'm not wrong if I say that these two films are the films the kids have watched the most. Over and over again :) But Capelito is so fun and sweet, so why wouldn't they.

Capelito is a young forest mushroom, ingenious and somewhat scatterbrained, solves the craziest situations thanks to his extraordinary ability to transform his cap into just about any kind of hat, by simply pressing his magic nose.

Dragonfly Wings

I finished a shawl this weekend. It was an easy pattern to knit and I really like the lace part. But, it got a bit longer from tip to tip than I had thought it should be... So I might frog it and knit another shawl instead...

Pattern: Dragonfly Wings
Yarn: This took very little yarn, just 57 g of Candy Skein Yummy Fingering Superwash Sock, Colorway Blackberry
Needles: 4 & 5 mm
Modifications: In the stockinette part I haven't knitted the rows that makes the garter stripes. Or, I have knitted them, but forgot to knit them instead of purl them, so I have no garter stripes... Have to blame it on knitting and wathcing tv at the same time ;)

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Yarn Along :: WIP Wednesday

It's Wednesday again and time for Yarn Along and WIP Wednesday. Fall has really come now. It's been raining and blowing and the temperatures is around 10C. There haven't been frost here yet, but I guess it's just around the corner. We are putting on an extra layer of clothes when we're out and I've fired in the oven almost every day the last week. (Somehow I just don't think that sound right... I've fired in the oven - is that right??)

Reading: I'm still reading The Shamer Chronicles series and are almost done with the 3rd book. LOVE this series!! It's one of those series you don't want to end, but sadly there is just 4 books in it... In this 3rd book Dina is meeting her father for the first time. Sezuan, a possessor of the Serpent Gift for lie and illusion. And she is about to find out if she has inherited his"gifts" as well.
For the kids I'm reading the same books :) Ruffen is a lovely seaserpent and Endre likes him a lot. The book we have is a book with 5 or 6 stories. But i know you can get some translated into english at amason.
The Shadows (The Books of Elsewhere #1) by Jacqueline West that I'm reading for Eirin, is not so good. I mean I really like these kind of books, but I think some things have gone missing in the translation into norwegian. It feels like there is no flow in the language if I can put it that way. So it's hard to keep her interested in the story... But I'm not giving up, so hopefully it will be a bit more exciting after a few chapters more.
I'm not reading outloud for Erlend, as he is reading himself. But lately there haven't been any books that has made him want to read. Untill I bought the Wimpy kid books (in norwegian) and he read them from start to end without putting them down :)

Knitting: Endre's sweater is almost done. I have a few cm left on the sleeves and I think I have to knit a little more on the body too before I'll start decreasing.
The black jacket for Eirin has not been growing much... I'm not stressing with it as she has a sweater ;) The grey in the front are my Counterpane socks which I finally started for the Year of projects. Love them, but knitting on 2 mm needles is slow. And to the right is a beginning of a shawl. It's the Dragonfly Wings shawl. And I'm knitting it in a beautiful colorway from Candy Skein :) It's a little bit darker than I managed to capture in the pictur below.

So, what are you knitting and reading?

Counterpane

I joined the Year of Projects a few months ago with the goal of knitting five pairs of knee high socks, all from Barb Brown's book Knitting Knee-Highs: Sock Styles from Classic to Contemporary.
I have finally found time to cast on for the first pair - Counterpane. I love the pattern, but it's not a very fast knitting since I knit them on size 2 mm needles... But, I really look forward to have them finish. Just need to find a nice skirt to wear them with :)

Weekending

- planting Erika
- trip to the library
- visiting mom/grandmother
- rain
- crisp air
- playing outside
- finally casting on for a pair of socks for my year of project, more about that tomorrow ;)
- popcorn, made the old way in a casserole :) 

Friday Flickr Favourites :: Fall Rain

1. Autumn Rain, 2. Autumn, 3. Autumn rain, 

4. Autumn Rain, 5. Rain Droplets, 6. Autumn Rain, 

7. autumn rain, 8. Autumn Rain #1, 9. rain boots &; autumn leaves

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

{this moment}

Joining Amanda at Soulemama for this moment.

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.

He's not been crying, just an eyeinfection we're having trouble with...

Yarn Along :: WIP Wednesday

The days seems to fly by - it's Wednesday again and time for Yarn Along and Wip Wednesday :)

Reading: I'm still reading the same books as last time, but I've also borrowed the The Shamer Chronicles series by Lene Kaaberbøl from the library, and I really like it! I'm reading book 2 now and are almost done with it :)

Dina has unwillingly inherited her mother's gift: the ability to elicit shamed confessions simply by looking into someone's eyes. To Dina, however, these powers are not a gift but a curse. Surrounded by fear and hostility, she longs for simple friendship.
But when her mother is called to Dunark Castle to uncover the truth about a bloody triple murder, Dina must come to terms with her power--or let her mother fall prey to the vicious and revolting dragons of Dunark.

Knitting: I finally finished Eirin's sweater during the weekend, and I still have yarn left so I started on a sweater for Endre too - The Dance of Robots :)

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Eirin's sweater

Eirin's sweater is finally off the needles!
Both she and I are happy with the result, but as always she thinks all knitted stuff itches a bit. But I know she'll not feel like that when it gets cold ;)

Pattern: I found the pattern in an old magazine, and there it was named "Tøff genser til skolestart" and it's from Dale of Norway. It might have been in one of their old booklets with another name, but I haven't managed to find it...
Yarn: Baby Ull from Viking of Norway in the colours 329, 326 and 324
Needles: 2,5 and 3 mm
Mods: It's supposed to be stripes with "abc" knitted in above the people. And the sleeved was knitted and seemed in. I have knitted them together with the body and decreased stitches around the yoke.

Weekending

- playing with legos
- warm fall weather with temperatures around 15C
- tikka masala
- still sore throats and coughing
- knitting, Eirin's sweater is finally done. More about that tomorrow
- film watching, Hop with the kids and The Season Of The Witch with hubby
- roasted chicken with vegetables
- a bit of rain making a beautiful rainbow
- watching the forest turn into yellow, red and orange
- candlelights
- playing, arguing and making friends again among the kids
- picking flowerseeds in my father in laws garden, hopefully they will sprout when we plant them next spring
- planning new knits

Phoebe's sweater

Can you imagine knitting a sweater in just one day?
Love this little film :) I had to check a bit more, and you can read her blog here and here is a great interview with Johanna.  Just wish Eirin was a few years younger - then i'd knit her this sweater :)

Friday Flickr Favourites :: Fog

1. Fog at Sunrise, 2. Avenue of trees in fog., 3. early morning fog, 

4. Barn - Fog in Fall, 5. Lost in The Fog, 6. Foggy Fall Morning, 

7. fall color & fog, 8. the fog of fall, 9. Fog Flock

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Yarn Along :: WIP Wednesday

Oh, it's been a long week so far... I'm down with a cold, a sore throat and painful coughing :( So there have been plenty of tea and cocoa, but not so much knitting... Hopefully it will go over soon, but it looks like Endre and Eirin is up next, they've started coughing this afternoon... Hopefully they will not get is as bad as I have, because it's not fun to be sick now when it's almost weekend...

Reading: Well, I have finally just a few chapters left of The Endless Forest. Love how the story unfolds! For Eirin I'm now reading The Shadows, the 1st book in the series of The Books of Elswhere. I've also started the 3rd and last book in a norwegian fantasy series :)

Knitting: Since i haven't been knitting much, I haven't made much progress on the sweater... And I'm starting to get a bit fed up with it... But I'm determind to finish it , just need to get those sleeves on the same needle as the body so I can start the yoke. The black is the jacket, and I have managed to knit a few rows :) The pink is going to be a pair of baby bootees.

For more Yarn Along and WIP Wednesday follow the links :)

Weekending

- sleeping in tents with very little sleep and an early morning
- star gazing
- bonfires in the dark :)
- Gnomeo & Juliet I think this is the best animated film this year. The kids loved it too :)
- fresh shrimps, white bread, lemon, red onion and mayonnaise. Mmmmm, yummy
- knitting baby bootees for a friend of Hubby
- bread baking
- lots of laundry
- going through the kids winter clothes to see what they still fit. I really have to start knitting mittens
-

{this moment}

Joining Amanda at Soulemama for this moment.

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savour and remember.

Friday Flickr Favourites :: Fall

1. Autumn Leaves, 2. autumn, 3. October And A Lady Bug, 

4. Autumn Leaves, 5. Autumn’s Country Road, 6. Autumn is Back.., 

7. Orange Mycena, 8. Autumn Surrender, 9. Coming home..., 

10. fall_colors_09_4, 11. Autumn Glow, 12. Yum, 

13. Autumn's leaves and berries, 14. Autumn in Jackson Hole, 15. fall colors

Books read in August

These are the books I've read in August. As for right now, I'm four books behind on my goal for managing to read 100 books this year. But I think I will manage it. Fall and Winter calls for reading more books :)

Queen of Swords by Sara Donati

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The start was a bit slow, but when I had read a few chapter I just couldn't put it down at night. I've just started the 6th and final book in this series last night, and I'm looking forward to see how this will end :)

"It is the late summer of 1814, and Hannah Bonner and her half brother Luke have spent more than a year searching the islands of the Caribbean for Luke’s wife and the man who abducted her. But Jennet’s rescue, so long in coming, is not the resolution they’d hoped for. In the spring she had given birth to Luke’s son, and in the summer Jennet had found herself compelled to surrender the infant to a stranger in the hope of keeping him safe.

To claim the child, Hannah, Luke, and Jennet must journey first to Pensacola. There they learn a great deal about the family that has the baby. The Poiterins are a very rich, very powerful Creole family, totally without scruple. The matriarch of the family has left Pensacola for New Orleans and taken the child she now claims as her great-grandson with her.

New Orleans is a city on the brink of war, a city where prejudice thrives and where Hannah, half Mohawk, must tread softly. Careful plans are made as the Bonners set out to find and reclaim young Nathaniel Bonner. Plans that go terribly awry, isolating them from each other in a dangerous city at the worst of times."

The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book had everything I love in the same book. Love, history and a mystery. I have no idea about how it must have been to be living in a harem, but this book gives you a peak into a hidden world of love, hate, jealousy and intrigues.

"In The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman, graduate student Elizabeth Staveley is researching captivity stories from the late 16th century when she comes across a four hundred year old manuscript tucked inside of a book in the Oriental Library Reading Room at Oxford University. Knowing the treasured, never before told story she is about to uncover, she transcribes the manuscript before turning it over to the library staff.

While tied up in a frustrating relationship with a suspected womanizer, Elizabeth takes off from Oxford and flies to Istanbul to further research the story of Celia Lamprey, the daughter of an English sea captain who dies at sea leaving her to eventually be sold into the harem of the Sultan of Constantinople. While a controversial member of the Sultans harem, she discovers that her fiancee, Paul Pindar, whom she was supposed to marry prior to being sold into captivity, is in fact in Constantinople as the secretary to the English ambassador to deliver a gift to the Sultan thus opening English trading opportunities."

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Loved it! Although the ending could have been not so "Hollywood like".

"This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary story of a geisha -summoning up a quarter century from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan's dramatic history, and opening a window into a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Her memoirs conjure up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha - dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most land's powerful men."

De Fire og Han Som Gjør Galt Verre - Fortsettelsen by Hans Fredrik Follestad

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Great norwegian fantasy! This is the second book in a series of three. Can't wait to find out how this will end :)

"This is a fantasy novel that stands out from others by its unpretentious humor and by that the act is laid in the present. We meet five young people who are actually in the shape of animals:

The ferret Bambo Fohrtwo.
The pandabear Hutte Me Tu
The washingbear Pepper Bihf.
The moose Salt Ehfan
And the turtle Jesper Schtadig is He Who Makes Worse Worse

In contrast to the live wires is the ceremonial magicians from the Temple of Heaven. They have been waiting for the Four and He Makes Worsee worse for thousands of years and have suddenly found them in the Norwegian city PelsHeim, somewhere between Ålesund and Molde. The young people are brought to a different world in Nepal where they learned that the strong evil disciples is a threat to the good forces of Heaven. Perhaps they are about to get the upper hand and become a threat to world peace?"

2011 Reading Challenge

Hege has


read 61 books toward her goal of 100 books.

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61 of 100 (61%)

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