Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

Nearly every year it's the same. You get one year older, and suddenly you don't want to make a big fuss out of it, and so you decide NOT to celebrate it. Which is exactly what my beloved boyfriend really didn't want to do: celebrate his 29th. Despite this let down, I charged in like a house on fire, and invited a few people over for "a quick cup of birthday-coffee" yesterday. Now, as you might know, me and Micke eat paleo, so I was a little unsure of how to make a birthday cake that didn't contain flour didn't contain 'normal' sugar still was good to eat is cheap and fast to make And then I had the perfect solution: paleo panna cotta! If you use ground vanilla powder, and use honey instead of sugar, then the panna cotta itself is paleo. I know some of you paleo-people don't like using milk, but we do. And, since panna cotta need something else that's also 'sweet' to go with it, I took and put cut fruits in the glasses I mad...

I had borrowed this book, called " Fast Knits Fat Needles " written by Sally Harding, from the library. The theme of the book is to get to try out knitting project  where you get to use knitting needles larger than 10 mm. I only happened to have a pair of 9 mm, since I've inherited most of my needles from Mom and her sisters, but nevertheless I thought I'd try my hands on something simple from all the projects in this lovely book. Since, you know, I'm not that great a knitter. The simplest project in the book is one where you use long strips of rags to knit a rag rug. I happened to have some rags I cut from some of my Mom's old T-shirts not long ago, and they seemed perfect for the this project. It didn't hurt that you only had to knit for this project (I still get a bit confused when I have to purl), either. Needed : pair of BIG knitting needles strips of rags Project notes: size nr 9 mm knitting needles were a bit small, next time I do this I...

... studies English. So if I would -ever- need someone to talk to about either English literature or the etymology of any English word, she'd probably be the one. But I wonder if she knows the meaning of this word: frogging Naaah, no cheating using any online dictionary. No answer to be found there. I would still be searching for the meaning and how/why of the word, if I hadn't come across the explanation in a book I borrowed from the library. You see, when knitting/crocheting, you might by mistake create something (*gasp!*) that you think looks awful. If giving it away is not an option, and you want to reuse the yarn... what do you do? Of course, you de-construct it. How? Well... you take hold of the end of the yarn, and start to rip it, rip it, rip it, rip it .... Hence the word frogging. So, I have this other acquaintance, who posts on her Facebook account photos taken of thing she has found at yard sales/second hand stores etc. Last thing she posted was of the ...

... an umbrella doesn't help you much. The rain is blowing ever which way, even downwards up, so you get soaked nearly instantly. It's more like walking into a wall of water, instead of it raining. Why, oh whyyy, didn't I put on my rain coat and pants? No matter now, as I got home and could change into something dry immediately. Micke still has the flu, and has been both coughing and blowing his nose like crazy. He actually woke me up at 3 a.m., because his cough sounded like him dying. Horrible. Thanks to the rain though, lots of different mushrooms are growing splendidly. The ones on the photo above is from the lawn on the other side of the green fence. In swedish, these mushrooms are called "bläcksvamp", lit. translated as ink mushrooms. Did people really use them to make ink, I wonder? But, now I'm going to go and lie down, and enjoy as much orange juice and Daim-chocolate as I can. The chocolate has to be shared with Micke, but since he was so s...

Today, it's been raining a little like crazy. In fact, it's been raining all day. *listens to the drip drip drip on the windows* Rain brings out both the best - and the worst - in people. Since everyone can be both a rain-lover and a rain-hater simultaneously, I'll just share a few personal things about rain. For starters, me and Micke only have one umbrella. A cheap one we bought from IKEA. A long time ago, we had at least three, but they broke or were lost one at a time. Sadly. We do have two perfectly okay rain-coveralls. One banana yellow, and one green/blue outfit. I think they're terribly practical and very nice (even though they are man-repelling). Naturally, Micke hate them both. He will rather be miserable under an umbrella, than happy and dry in a banana yellow raincoat with matching banana yellow pants. I think he's being just a tad bit silly :P But I still let him have the umbrella, because I don't have any qualms about going out in public...

This weekend was a bit hectic, as I had made my (our) Saturday as busy as possible. First, shopping at the open air market, then off to Wiklund to buy a pair of nylon-stockings, then the Ravelry-knitalong at Kerttu, and finally a trip out to the Turku Fair center to see a bit of this year's Erotics Fair. I'm so glad that they put in extra busses when there are fairs at the center, because otherwise every bus 'normal' bus would be filled. I didn't want to bring my "horrible" knitting project with me to Kerttu, so I instead started on this small "rag rug"-project. Since I didn't have that many skeins of rags, it was a reeeally small project. I think though that I might actually do something out the rest of the rags I've cut, because knitting with huge needles was really nice. It's fast! And I like fast results :) So, about this year's Erotics fair. Me, Micke and Mimi went, and I think S and D would have liked to come to, but ...

So, yesterday I noticed there's some birthdays and the like coming up, and since I don't like buying ready-made cards, I spent 2 h on making some. materials: cardboard colored (hard) paper paper glue random things to decorate with marker pens in different colors inspiration: the random things to decorate with the book " The Complete Book of Papercrafts " I made both gift-tags and some birthday/other occasion cards. Next time I go to Tiimari though, I think I'll buy some glossy paper and more glue. I'm not that happy with how every card turned out, so I have to get some more things to decorate with. Some people make really amazing (and expensive!) cards . Gift tags etc. Birthday/Occasion cards

A few weekends back, while visiting Micke's brother in Helsinki, we managed to squeeze in a quick visit to where my family's summer cottage is located. There's a few trails you can take a walk on in the forrest, so I forced Micke to borrow some boots, and then we went exploring. Look at all the leaves that have already fallen. My borrowed red boots, and the ground. Already, some (but mostly non-edible) mushrooms are growing. Micke, coming out of the forrest. I think this photo is one of the best I've ever taken of him :)

"The net is truly vast and infinite." While I was searching for patterns for both knitting and crocheting, I stumbled upon Ravelry.com . It's a site intended for those around the globe who want to both be a part of, and contribute to, the (apparently) growing interest in knitting/crocheting. Since I'm all for (smart!) social online platforms, I really like the site. Since the -reason- behind any such platform is to bring people together and allow them to interact via common interests, I must say that during this past month I've learned a lot. This is thanks to all the persons (mostly women) who I've met during a few knit-alongs here in Turku. Most of you know I speak swedish, but since finnish is the language of the majority, I suddenly realized that I really need to practice speaking it. And during the first of these knit-alongs I found out how terribly degraded my knowledge of finnish has become. But no more! About three times a month now, I'll be att...

All hail the Queen of the Losers! For the third time this summer/beginning of fall she has fallen off her bike! But, luckily nothing more bad happened than two scraped knees, one scraped hand, and a lot of bruises. It could have been much worse.

...I dreamt three nightmares in a row. Or at least, three that I know I've dreamt. First one was something that ended with me being bitten in my right index finger by a rat. It really hurt, and when I woke I was SO sure we had a rat in out bed. Luckily we didn't. Second dream I don't remember all that well, but the third one was one where I just HAD to get an acute appointment with the dentist, because my teeth were.... iuh! They were both rotting and falling off at the same time. I woke at 1 am, 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, 6 am and finally: at 7 am when I woke I was finally READY to really sleep. Poor Micke. His night was as bad as mine.