Fishy Tales

It's been a while since last I posted. I haven't been crafty at all this summer! I baked some really nice pizza, some crappy butterscotch cookies, but nothing original or very creative.
The one thing I did make, or rather fix, was the bracelet I made for my sisters birthday. The catch broke, so she posted it back to me and I finally got around to it the other day.

I did take a trip South to Vík a few weeks back, in July. We just camped for the night there, but it was perfect. The weather was so good, clear blue skies, sun beating down. The town and campsite are right along the beach and the waves here are ginormous! The sea is much too cold for a normal person to swim in and with the waves, nobody gets in. The beach is a black sand beach, which makes you quite dirty, but feels great beneath the feet.
It had been my birthday a few days before the trip and Stephen had bought me a Lopapeysa cardigan! A friend of my friend Sj had knit it specially for me, all the way up in Saudarkrokur. It's a little big, but just how I like it :D I also picked up a beautiful grey Icelandic wool hat in the Vík woolen factory. Everything is made there, so I think I got it a little cheaper. They had some beautiful items and I would love a knitted blanket!




My friend A brought me out for lunch to Caruso, for a late birthday present. We had lobster pasta and it was delicious. I had never had lobster before. Well I have eaten lobster soup, but that was only tiny pieces. This was, to my eyes anyway, huge pieces!
For the quite high price, I think we got a fair amount of lobster, I even left some and gave them to A! I was so full.

Strawberries and Scones

When I was younger there was a Strawberry Fair held not too far from my village, every July. The area was called the Strawberry Beds, not quite a town, more a long rural road with a few cottages dotted along one side and the River Liffey flowing along the other. It was and is a very beautiful place and to be able to see "countryside" so close to my home always made me love where I grew up.
At this young age, strawberry was my favourite flavour in yoghurts, jams and sweets. The point of the fair was to dine on the fresh strawberries, so when I finally got to taste one of those delicious looking little fruits, I went for it, and was disgusted! This was not the same as my favourite jam or sweets! Something must have gone wrong, so I tried another... and no, I disliked it also.

Therefore from that day until yesterday, the 4th of July 2009, it has taken me roughly 20 years and only 1496.05km to taste another one. Egged on by watching Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's tv show Summer at River Cottage and also reading about the fresh strawberries delivered to Reykjavik, from the greenhouse in Fludir(where we used to live). I decided to give them another try.

I baked up a batch of cream scones(half white flour, half wholewheat) and whipped up some cream(no devonshire). I can now join the throngs of strawberry lovers. I can see where my 8 year old taste bud's were coming from, a little bitter and that is all 8 year old me would have tasted, but so full of flavour and just lovely on the scones with the cream.

I would love to try my hand at making my own jam, but considering the punnet I got cost 599kr/3.38e/2.89£, it's a wee bit pricey. Well okay, it may not seem much in the other currencies, but consider that would have been half that a year ago!! So, no jam for us :( Unless we grew our own, but I don't see that happening for a while.

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Here is a photo of the finished product.

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Looking through some of Stephens film footage, I found a nice still of my shrug that I knit. You can see it better than the previous photo and the lovely lace cuff.

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The Emerald Isle

I have just returned from a visit to Ireland. I had not been there for 4 years, so it was a great treat to see my hometown and my family again. My sister was making her Confirmation and back in December at my mosaic class I made her a present. So now I can finally post the photos!

Working out how the design will go.

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Finished :)

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My sister also turned 13 the day of her confirmation, so I made her a gift for that. I found out the colour's of her confirmation outfit and used them in the jewellery I made. I had bought some Swarovski beads and used them.

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I made these earrings for my mam, I used the blue Swarovski beads in them. It actually turned out the dress she wore that day was the exact colour's of the earrings, and they matched perfectly.

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On my last day in Ireland, the weather was brilliant and we took a trip to Glendalough. I hadn't been there since I was about 10, so it was great to get some new pictures of it.

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This is my village.

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The old house by the weir on the river Liffey.

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Two Shrugs, One Woman

I finally took the plunge into circular knitting last week. For some reason the mere sight of 'circular needles required' in a pattern made me shiver and get goosbumples. Now that it's all over, I am in love with circular knitting and cannot wait for more!

I found a really interesting and friendly website called The Purl Bee, it has amazingly beautiful patterns for knitting, crochet, embroidery and some of the most thorough and pretty(if that's possible) tutorials, for every imaginable obstacle you could come across.
This is where I found the perfect pattern I had been searching for, a lovely shrug.
It knit up like a charm and the wool is so soft, yet thick enough to keep my arms warm if a slight spring/autumn/Icelandic breeze should blow.
I needed the shrug, as I am taking a trip back to Eire for a week in May. My sister is making her confirmation and seeing as it will be 4 years(to the day) since I last visited the motherland, I thought hey, why not? Courtesy of my fabulous parents of course ;)
Anyhoo, the dress I will wear is a sleeveless one and as I am unsure of the rules of the church these days, thought it best to cover up ;)

Here are a couple of photos of the shrug. I have not blocked it yet, so the lacy cuff part is curling over, when it's blocked it should lay out flat.. I hope!!

The wool is Aran, from this post, this wool was also the first time I have had to deal with a hank of wool, meaning I had to actually wind it up into a ball myself! Considering how much it bloody well cost, that's quite a cheek!

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This next item, is a long sleeved top that was so badly made, I could never wear it. I found a very cool project on Cut Out and Keep. Here is my version:

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Peach Cobbler and Homemade Poptartys

I have been a busy bee the last few days. It feels quite good when you are being creative like that, especially in my case when it involves either finishing old knitting projects or re-using something that previously had no use!

The knitting project I finished was a little knitted kitten that I started a few months back, with this random ball of wool my mother brought over last March. I knit it up real quick, but had misplaced my darning needle.. so off to UFO corner it went. I was rummaging in my knitting bag yesterday when I found the darning needle and quickly grabbed the kitten parts and seemed her up.
She is not perfect, but is now a nice little desk buddy for Stephen, who insisted on calling her Caren.. So far Tara the real kitty has left her alone.

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Last week on our day off, I baked a peach cobbler. My friend Wendy had been talking about making her own and it really made me crave some. She passed along the recipe and I whipped it up. Along with some delicious vanilla ice cream, this was so good. I am not a huge peach fan, but in this pie they were scrumptious. Also the way the cobbler forms is quite cool.

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This evening we were both craving something sweet, but there was nothing in the kitchen, so I scoured my bookmarks for something tasty. I found these homemade poptart things. Using this site for the pastry recipe, I whipped up three of them using Icelandic blueberry jam and marmalade. They were so delicious! I still have a lot of pastry left over, so I will definitely be making more of them. Great for a quick snack.

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Mash Up

I bought some gorgeous wool the other day, it's from Artesano and it's called Aran wool. It's so lovely and doesn't seem like it would irritate my skin. The colour is twilight, a turquoise colour with some light flecks of purple and other colours. I haven't found a pattern I like yet, but I am going for a short cardigan style to wear when I visit Ireland in May.

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Here are two more sprites I made for Stephen. A koopa and Luigi, both from Super Mario World. I got the sprite images from this great site.

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During my father and brother's visit, we visited the small town of Stykkisholmur on the Snæfellsness peninsula, while we were there we took a guided tour of a new local brewery, that makes a beer called Jökull Bjór. Stephen and I had pre-arranged this tour through the companies website, having tasted their special brew for Þorrablot. We are not big beer drinkers, but we do like to try the new ones that come on the market, especially when they are local and mostly organic. From my perspective then, it is a nice light tasting beer, the seasonal one being a darker beer.
The woman who gave us the tour, is as far as I know, the manager/owner. They have such a small set up, so small, that two guys were in fact sticking the labels on by hand! They opened for business right as the kreppa took hold of the country, so as of our trip, they were hoping for expansion across the government owned wine stores. (my friend up North claims to never have seen them in her tiny store)
So I wish them luck. We also got a taste of some beer from their taps and along with a small fee of 500kr each, received some lovely branded beer glasses!

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I've Got the Fever

That's the hama bead fever. I have got it BAD! Stephen and I went to the shopping centre on Friday and he bought me lots of bags of beads! There were just so many colours, even glittery ones. He wanted to buy me the 35000 bead box, but the thought of looking through that box for one colour was enough to drive me mental. So I opted for single colour bags.

So I am sticking with a theme for the sprites, this one is Super Mario World, which is Stephen's favourite Mario game. There are still colours I am missing, but I can do without them for now by substituting other shades.

Anyhow, here is the finished Mario in all his chubby little glory.

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This is the necklace I made my mother for Mothering Sunday. It is a natural coloured shell in the middle, with small lava stone beads on either side.

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Stephen and I celebrated 11 years together yesterday, so I made myself a set of earrings and a necklace to wear with the new dress he bought me :)

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The necklace was made with a how-to on cut out and keep.

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