Panoramic views

I thought I'd share a few of the photos I took while my parents were visiting:

Nidarosdomen

Røros Church

View from Bymarka

View walking in Fossen

I also like taking panoramic photos (in case you hadn't guessed!)

Orange booties

I finished the orange booties for Annie's baby, Edward, before my parents arrived for a visit.

We then packed in loads of visits and trips and walks and a bit of gardening while my parents were here in Trondheim. I need to sort through the photos I took and then I'll post about some of the places we went to and things we saw.

We also did some thinking about wedding arrangements and some other possibilities that are going on at the moment - I think we're going to be pretty busy over the next few months.

Pasta breakthrough

I usually leave the food-type blogging to David - but I had to share this evening's success.

I love pasta, and we've been making pasta for a while - using one of these, but I've wanted to up the ante and make penne and other shaped pasta. David managed to find a pasta extruder and ordered it for me before Christmas - it didn't arrive. It's now managed to find its way to Norway (via Bath and Bristol), and arrived with Liz a few weeks ago. We've had a couple of goes using our usual pasta recipe of 100g pasta flour, 1 egg and a teaspoon of olive oil for each person, but quickly discovered that the pasta dough needed to be a lot drier in order to make the shapes and for them not just flop.

So, while David's been in Helsinki I thought I'd have a play. Yesterday was drier, but not dry enough. And today I had pasta breakthrough - I used 4oz flour (about 115g), 1 egg and a teaspoon of olive oil. The dough was so dry that it barely stuck together - but I gave it a go and.....

Hip

Hip

Hoorah

And to celebrate I made it into a carbonara - I thought it was only right.

knitting update

The yellow booties I finished a week ago or so have finally gone into the post to Jen et al - Jen had a boy on 12th July (a couple of weeks late), they've decided to call him Samuel Frederick.

I thought I'd better start the next pair of booties. These are for Annie - her due date has passed, but as far as I know she hasn't had her baby yet. (Update - I've just heard that she had Edward on Friday afternoon) Annie makes fun of David and I for both being red-heads, but as she's got a red-headed brother I'm sure she's going to have a red-headed son (she's blonde, and Tony is brown) - so I thought it only appropriate to make orange booties for junior:

Here's the progress I've made on konfekt 18703 - slow, but steady - it's starting to feel a little less "just started" than before.

I also have finished the first half of David's not grey socks:

And have cast on the second half:

My parents are coming to visit this next week - I ordered this book from Amazon, which they're bringing with them, which will hopefully give some inspiration for the next pair of socks to tackle. My Mum's also bringing some Jacob wool that she got locally. The plan is to make it into a cabled zip front cardigan, but I'll wait to see it before I completely commit.

I'm not sure what we're going to do while they're here - we've got a day trip to Røros planned, and probably some walks, and some playing in the garden, I just hope the weather's nice - we're having a few days of rain at the moment, but I don't think it'll last for too long (fingers crossed).

Squirrel

This last move we made has really shown me how dull it is to be moving lots of stuff - how long this feeling will last I don't know, but given that we're not very likely to be permanently in Trondheim, another move will happen sooner or later. This puts me in great quandaries considering what a natural squirrel I am.

I suppose it's as they say with most problems once you admit them then it's possible to do something about them - until you can manage to ignore and deny them again!

So, while I'm feeling this way I am going to make a concerted effort to take a look at my "stuff" and make some considered decisions about what to do with it - so far I've thrown out my maths A-Level notes and have put some photos into nice, simple, Muji photo albums rather than the huge metal drawer I had them in, which was too big to fit on a shelf.

I've also started to look through some of my craft stuff. I found an easy win to start with:

I have this cushion cover that I knitted when I lived in Knoxville, TN - so sometime in 2000-2003. I knitted it from a pattern in a Debbie Bliss book, in order to teach myself how to do cables. I like the cushion cover, but don't like the way it gapes at the top showing the cushion inner.

While starting to look at my stuff I found a bit of patchwork that I'd done - who knows when? that was mounted on some white backing and was accompanied by a rectangular shaped cushion made from curtain lining and stuffed with toy stuffing. I obviously got that far and realised that the shape of the cushion wasn't right and abandoned it before making the patchwork into a cushion. So to cut a boring story short, I've made the patchwork into a square cushion cover:

And put it inside the knitted cover - so now I have nice patchwork poking out rather than plain cushion inner.

You could say that it's a shame to cover up the patchwork - but I don't really think we need any more cushions, and it is pretty loud.

I've also finished the first of the PJ tops I was making. I'm really happy with how it turned out, considering I made my own pattern to my own measurements (with the help of the book I previously posted about). I had meant to have the stripes on the two sides of the front sloping in different directions - but it didn't happen!

We also had the first of the spinach out of the garden (along with a few more peas) - you really can't beat the freshness of veg that you pick from the end of the garden just before you want to eat it. Food miles? - food metres more like.

Let Rip

Hoorah for jam, hoorah for sugar, hoorah for rhubarb, hoorah for redcurrants, hoorah for more sugar, hoorah for rum...

We made some jam last night. It was fun to make - lots of bubbling sugar and yummy fruit in a preserving pan - I think we may have enjoyed the bubbling a little too much as it's definitely set. I'm sure a little warming before we put it on the waffles and it'll be fine. Or maybe we can use it as the basis for some rum - what do you think Jamie? Hoorah for rum.

We even made the label. "Rips" are currants in Norwegian, by the way. I think it's a terrible accusation that I fart all the time.

David and Dino also started some wine last night - David's been carrying around this large box of Shiraz grape juice that he was given when he left Bristol, and Dino managed to nag him enough to get it started - it's now sitting in the living room bubbling away.

Trollheimen

David and I went away for the weekend - we went about 1 3/4 hours out of Trondheim to an area called Trollheimen. The area is spectacular - rugged, snow capped mountains, fjords, U-shaped valleys ... I've been reliably informed that we walked nearly 50km with a vertical climb of 1.5km overall (to the top of Langfjellet (1264m) and Trollhøtta (1596)). David had been given a GPS for his birthday by his sister and brother and helpfully kept telling me that we were higher than Pen-y-fan, and Ben Nevis and then Sca Fell Pike. Thanks David! It was actually the down that hurt more - my poor knees. We stayed in two hytter - Jøldalshytta on Friday and Trollheimshytta on Saturday nights - which were really good. Very friendly, very clean, good food and beer to help the aches and pains (and bug bites).

Instead of posting photos of our trip to the blog, I thought I'd try linking to some photos here (I hope it works). We were really lucky with the weather and got some fantastic views - so do check out the photos.

Bergen weekend

We had a great weekend in Bergen with Mina, Arild and Lauritz. The weather was great, and it was good to see them again. We took the train north to Voss on the Saturday to see some of the extreme sports weekend, it was mostly paragliding on the Saturday:

It looked fun - but we didn't try!

On the Sunday we went to the Baroniet Rosendal - more my kind of thing! Beautiful rose garden, and a large (under construction) kitchen garden in a stately house in a beautiful mountainous, fjord-side setting, by a waterfall (if that wasn't enough!).

David also did a bit of this by where we were staying:

The weather since we've been back in Trondheim has been great - fortunately the rain and bad weather that hit the UK over the last few weeks has passed to the south of us. I took this picture this morning at about 7am:

In case you can't read it - or don't believe your eyes - it does say 43C! It's not a true temperature, but I thought it was pretty impressive looking - especially considering we're only 600km ish from the arctic circle!

The good weather has meant that are tomatoes are finally starting to fruit - this is our first San Mazano tomato:

With being away there hasn't been a huge amount of time for knitting, and progress is slow. David's not grey sock is making progress - I'm ready to pick up the heel stitches and get going with the foot.

I've also been working on konfekt 18703 - it's making slow, but steady progress - each row seems a long way round after socks.