I am back!

Your favorite Polish stitcher is back... since a few days. I had to extend my stay due to a tough flu, cancelled planes (snow!) and I am now taking it slow at home, visiting doctors, making some awful tests (you don't want to hear about them!) and trying to cope with an acute medical problem. I was born impossible to diagnose and I guess I'll die the same way too ;-)

But enough of sad things. My stay in Norway was just fantastic... I'll post more pictures in the next days so stay tuned! I also have so many lovely things I received to show... and some of my own stitching. I did stitch - a lot!

In January, we made a short 3-days trip to Poland to celebrate my grandma's 100th birthday. Of course, our flight was cancelled (I'm very lucky this way) and we flew one day late but still in time... I'll come back to this, it was so special...


This year, there were tons of snow in Norway starting from middle January. The nature around looked like a fairytale... I so miss nature here in Warsaw. Almost every day, I walked with Happy and during the week-ends, H. came along... drove us to new places... revisited my favorite tracks, they look so different from the summer!

Just a week ago, we drove to Sørkedalen, a valley north of Oslo, also one of the starting points to hiking and skiing tracks, depending on the season, in the Nordmarka, a huge area of woods north of the town. I haven't been to that valley yet so it was a good occasion to discover and close my winter stay...

Happy was going nuts with smells despite the deep, deep snow. We soon learned why...

We played a lot with him. When I am in Norway in the summer, he has to be kept on the leash, which is less funny for him. There is a law forbidding dogs running loose roughly from the beginning of March till before the end of August. This time, Happy had all the reasons to be... happy! One of our games is that either I or H. hides somewhere far, and he has to find that person. On the picture below, he was told to wait but was so impatient to run and find! :)

Here you can see a little black spot running towards me at full speed!

Ah, another smell... what can that be?

Oh, I just love wintery scenery...

That cabin looked so cosy... but there was noone inside that day.



We met many cross-country skiers... What never ceases to amaze me, it's the people (especially young women) skiing with very heavy backpacks and sleeping bags, sometimes with tents... Most often, they'll spend a night or two in the great outdoors... sometimes, they head towards one of the shelters, attended (where spending the night costs just as much as a good hotel room in town, and mind you, Norwegian hotels are not cheap, not cheap at all) or unattended, where you need to pick up the key beforehand. Me, I still suck at cross-country skiing, so these folks are my true heroes.


We soon learned why Happy was so excited. There were many moose groups walking around. Back at the parking, a man told us he just crossed three, and when we drove back, we spotted one of them...

The pictures are lousy, taken from inside the car. The moose was very close to us and we didn't want to leave the car nor to use the flash. What a majestic, beautiful animal. They look so strong, but had you seen
it in the deep snow, when it started jumping and running... effortless, or so it seemed. When he crossed the road just in front of us, it stopped to observe us...The same evening, there were articles in the media telling drivers to be particularly careful... there are lots of moose on the roads. Because of the high snow, the leave the woods to walk where it's easier to walk... we were lucky to cross some :)

I'll leave you with an old traditional sledge...


A last snowed-in house..

And the ornament I made for Caleb, Cheryl 's newborn...

I knew I have to stitch that chart the moment I saw it. I find the words to be so touching, so sweet. Sharon, the designer, told me she was inspired by Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.
The chart can be found HERE. I stitched it with overdyes on a piece of R&R linen, the words 1 over one. It almost killed me but the result was well worth it!
I am so glad you like it, Cheryl, and many thank yous again to Sharon for that chart... I really have a soft spot for it.