Physical work

Heh. I suggested we renovate the laundry room at level -1, which you go through to go to the bathroom. Dozens of years ago (the house is from the 1930-ties, but it has been growing by bits here and there - with no plan, obviously), someone squeezed a tiny -and only- bathroom at level -1. It's not very comfortable to have to go there all the time with all the stairs, and it's also extremely small, so H. is planning on developing the WC near the entrance door at level zero this fall/next spring to turn it into a big, comfortable bathroom. I was surprised when he accepted my suggestion to renew the laundry room; he wasn't planning on working on there before some time. As I wrote earlier, he listens to my suggestions and agrees to some of my ideas after some thinking time LOL! Not that all my ideas are good, far from that. Most require lots of money and that is something we're missing at the moment. Here in Norway people do most of work inside/outside their houses by themselves and with the help of friends. Not like in Poland, where I think most people just pay for the services of a building team. But also - whatever they do, Norwegians use a long time on it, and do it very detailed and neat. In Poland I'd venture to say the result is rarely good and works need to be redone within a short time. How come Polish building workers are praised elsewhere in Europe for the quality of their work but that in their own country they're too lazy to deliver a good job? Pfffff! ;-)
Anyway. That laundry room, like most rooms in this house, hasn't been touched for at least 30-40 years. Yes, years. And H.'s mother loved to pick impossible colors. In the case of the laundry room - dark grey on walls, dark grey on ceiling, dark grey on the floor. Makes for a lovely atmosphere! :-)
We're putting antique vanilla on the walls, white on the ceiling and light grey on the floor. In a year or two the floor will be redone with floor heating and tiles, but now we're doing emergency work :)
Actually we're doing it quite detailed and it'll take us a week or 10 days to have it done. Plenty of holes to fill in, surfaces to smoothen etc.
There are moments when I am so pooped that I ask H. why I had the wonderful idea of renewing this room? LOL
I am leaving in less than 2 weeks and it'll be wonderful to have done at least that room plus a lot of small sorting and cleaning here and there, (re)planting plants in the garden etc.
I can't wait to see that room clean, shining and full of light, I just can't!

On the picture, you can see the color of the walls and how damaged they were. Not anymore like this! :) Hakon was ordering a pizza yesterday... and the pink heart post-it is where I put down the phone number to Peppes Pizza for him, it's the biggest Norwegian pizza chain. BTW, what does a large pizza cost in the US? Here it amounts to 40 usd about, plus the delivery. In Poland that would make 4 large pizzas at least and the delivery is free. I toldya, Norwegians are nuts! LOL

Progress on The Spring Thaw Afghan

Here's what it looked yesterday! Still haven't got my order from the US, so I keep on working on the afghan. Not that I enjoy working on it, mind you. But if I can't finish and give H. his personnalized sampler in November because the order is lost, well, then he'll get the afghan and... hmmm... to be totally honest I am sure he'll love it much much much more than the sampler LOL!

And to the right, the picture shows what the sampler will look like, one day ;-)

If you find it absolutly kitschy, I do agree with you!!! :) :) :)

I'll explain: several hears ago, while we were hiking in the mountains around Zakopane (my old aunt was with us that day), we met a bear mummy with two cubs. The most adorable little creature you can imagine. No stuffed toy will ever recreate that sweetness LOL! I won't venture into a long description now, but the whole experience was life-threatening - actually there aren't that many people in the world who survived a meeting with a bear mother with 2-months old cubs and extremely scary. The bad side to it is that I now tend to be very afraid in the wild nature even when I don't show it. Before that, it didn't occur to me that animals can do harm to me unless I do something very stupid. Now I know that meeting an animal is not always funny, especially when it is accompanied by its young kids. In Norway, I think no human was hurt by a bear since 50 years at least. Or more :) In Poland, each year takes its toll. Our bears are used to people, to getting and finding food at villages and towns, and there are even places where it often happens that people can't get to their cars at the parking because a bear is sleeping on the engine because it's nicely warm! Of course, this only happens in the mountains in the south of the country. And people meet and see bears regularly. I've even heard of a case where a bear was regularly taking food from a trash bin for years and the day when the owner lady decided to stop putting it there, the bear forced its way trough the door and destroyed all the inside of the house, including ovens and other permanent equipment, with one slam of the paw. The poor lady had escaped to the upper floor and called rescues. Here in Norway bears avoid people and seeing one is an event of its own.
The point I am trying to make is that when I saw this chart, I almost shouted :-). It shows the scene where we met the bear mom almost identically to the way it happened, including the view in the background. The only wrong element is the eagle - unless there was one and we didn't see it LOL!

I know that when H. sees the finished afghan, he might not believe his eyes!! :-) I can't wait to see his reaction!!! Well, then we'll have to find a place to hang that "thing" - it's not exactly something I would hang in my living-room! ROTFL

Prairie Schooler 2006 Santa (kit)

I finished it 3 weeks ago, in just a few evenings. It's okay, but I am not fond of it. I wanted to stitch it as a companion piece to last year's kit, and I like the 2006 version a lot more, but I can't help it - I don't like when the fabric shows through the stitches. My mistake - I should have used the threads from the kit but picked my own fabric, in lower count. Oh well. It'll land in the "finished" pile till I put it into the priority pile of finished pieces to frame.
Still raining today. I observed an unhappy squirrel jump from tree to tree (I didn't know they can "fly" like this!) while I was working this morning and I can't keep wondering - is this the same squirrel I see all the time in the garden, or its partner, or a totally different one? :-) One of those questions one will never get an answer to. LOL!
H. is back from work. After dinner we'll attack the laundry room on level -1. Today we'll be sorting and throwing out stuff, then over the coming week we'll be cleaning and scraping the floor, then painting. I still don't know how I managed to have H. want to do this room now because he has his own little plan when it comes to renewing this old house (it'll take a century, I'm afraid) and most of the elements of this genious plan are not things I can discuss! :) :) :)
That said, I learned that instead of forcing my ideas on him, it's better if I say my opinion (many times, insisting voice LOL!) and he says NO, then the next day he comes to me to say he thought it over and yes, we can do it the way I suggested. And that I was right, of course, but that he needs time to process the idea :-)
Very often this involves getting rid of smthg he loves, but which is awfully old and useless. We often pack these jewels up to the other garbage-house.
Small victories :)

Three more weeks in Norway. We bought my ticket back with Happy. Poor doggie, one more trip aboard the monster (aka a plane in human-speak). I know he'll be okay, I just hate thinking of him alone before the departure and then in the luggage section of the plane. Speaking of him, I wonder how he'll adapt to my tiny flat in Warsaw. Here, at H.'s place, he wants to be out in the garden permanently LOL! He's such a jewel... we can't believe how lucky we were to pick this "model" from the shelter last year. He's the most affectionate, the most clever, the most wonderful dog one can dream of. Only "bad" side - he's not very much into defending us or the house, much too friendly for that. Last week we ordered pizza on a very busy afternoon and the delivering person was just delighted with that lovely doggie... which means that basically we can forget about having him guard the house. Ah, also almost each time we're back and he was left alone in the house, we arrive with the car (loud noise), we walk to the door (noise), we open the door (more noise) and still no dog! Sometimes he then runs down the stairs waving his tail madly, but sometimes H. manages to go to the upper floor in silence just to find him snoring on one of the beds... :)
I realize I haven't been blogging much lately but I must say I can't manage to get into a routine day here... Each day brings either work, or walks, or travels, or cleaning, or stitching, and I just don't seem to be able to respond to emails. I am sure that will change as soon as I am back home.

On the topic of cross-stitch, the news are upsetting. Okay, I finished the new Prairie Schooler kit 3 weeks ago but I don't like it that much. The sad thing is that two packages seem to be lost on the way from the US to Norway. One is the bookmark my partner stitched for me and the other an over 200 usd value order - the French Alphabet Sampler and Gloriana silks for it. Money is on the low side this year and time is running. I can't afford paying again for the supplies at this moment, even if I get the sampler chart sent to me again, I won't be able to complete it in time for H.'s birthday. And that was the whole point. I am soooooo upset. I don't even know if it's the store that's cheated on me or if that package is really lost, but since the bookmark from Christina hasn't arrived either after a whole month, I have reasons to think both envelopes have been stolen - somewhere. I got an order from Amy/DSL okay, and fabric from Silkweaver for the sampler as well. So what happened? :( :( :(
The good side of the story is that I got a lot done on the Spring Thaw afghan for H. I first hated every stitch I put in. I found it hard to handle the voluminous fabric, I found it heavy on my knees and uncomfortable in every way to stitch. I started working on it early this year and left it aside. There was even a moment when I thought it would become an UFO. Then I decided to bring it here for as The Summer Project and I am almost done with the 2nd row of five! I'll upload a photo tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be ready in time for Christmas!

Oh, and I have tons of photos to upload. We stayed 10 days in the wilderness, same place as every year, in the wonderful cottage we love so much. We extended the stay by two days in another small cabin and made wonderful walks. For me a 7-hour fast walk in this difficult region was not smthg I would expect I can do, but I did that and more, and I can't wait till next year to repeat that experience. Needless to say I was barely able to walk the next day LOL!
Unfortunately Happy had a hip problem because of that, he couldn't walk at all and woke us up in the night crying, I spent a sleepless night trying to comfort him but he was just soooo sad... H. had his heart broken just looking at him. We brought doggie to the vet as soon as it opened in the morning and he got a shot after being examined. Some muscle inflammation most probably, nothing more serious - but painful. Followed by 8 days of pills. Yeah, Norway is the most expensive country in the world, and I experienced that once more... Vets are unaffordable! The check and the injection cost us around 100 usd. Just that!!! Without the medecine. Norwegians are nuts. Then we thought - how much would we have to pay if the case was *serious*? Geee.

My Norwegian is improving. On Friday I met H.'s mother on my way to the food shop. She lives in the house next to us, we're just separated by a small road where cars are not allowed to drive. We managed to communicate for about half an hour, which was an exploit for me! Last year I only understood a small percentage of her talking, and this time I manage to understand most of it! And as she doesn't understand English at all (a very rare thing for people in Norway, but she's from an older generation), I was very proud of me. She questioned me about lost of private stuff related to H. and I, but she really wasn't nosy, I didn't feel it that way. And she said "You know I would love to have you as my daughter-in-law, don't you?" I was soooo shocked I made her repeat it because I wasn't sure I understood it right!! But yes, she said that and lots of lovely things too, and this was a very stressing talk for me because of the language barrier (I was almost reading her lips so much I was concentrating on trying to understand as much as possible) but also this was probably the most lovely things a girl can dream to hear from her partner's mother! I am so happy she likes me... Because she's not the easiest person on Earth and things could have been very different.

I need to get up in 5 hours to do a text I haven't even started during the week-end, stupid me, so stay tuned for more babbling tomorrow! LOL

Nite nite...