So glad that you enjoyed the winter walk :) Actually all the huge amounts of snow are still there since Christmas, we only got some snow showers after that. Now I hear Poland got the very low (-28 Celsius this morning) temperatures we had for 2-3 weeks. I'm leaving Norway in 10 days or so and I hope we don't get THAT again when the plane lands in Warsaw! LOL Here it's not so bad anymore but I miss sun, days have been mainly grey the past week.
I keep hoping for more time during the day to update this blog with presents I have received, other photos... but work seemsto inflow through doors and windows and I don't dare to complain after the terrible job slump I went through the last two years.
I already miss the cat-boys. It breaks my heart to leave them again soon for some long weeks. I'm hoping to return after 5-6 weeks but that's a loooong time, if you ask me. These two little creatures brighten every day we have. I'll repeat myself again, but I really didn't know cats can be *so* gentle, social, friendly, cuddly and dependent on people. They are around us all the time, whether to sleep on our respective work desks or to ask to have their bellies rubbed. Always so dependent on each other, always together, always caring about each other. They sleep together, eat together, go out together... you get the point. Beware if one brother is stuck closed in a room! Brother # 2 will let you know immediately. They start to show their individual traits as time passes, but one thing doesn't change, the special connection that ties them together. I'll have to set up a slideshow to show you what I mean.
I pulled an all-nighter last night to deliver a text on time in the morning and I only slept 2 hours during the day - more work was coming in. I just feel for finding my bed and crashing in there for the night, so I'll leave you for today with this short update.
By the way, Kathy Barrick from CHS has been listing lots of OOP charts in her ETSY shop since Sunday. Some are gone, so I'd recommend you have a look in her Sold section - I am almost sure you could ask her for them with a positive result. I picked some charts I didn't know at all, like Katy Horn (I absolutely love it!!!), and Fanny Small, and In the garden, and Sampler folk....Go have a look before it's too late! :)
I've sent my Blackbird exchange some time ago, so I hope to be able to show it soon.
In the meantime, here are some WIPs I started during by the end of the old year and that will keep me busy for some long weeks :)

So. Where do we start? First, a chart I got and kitted the moment I saw it. Vintage Lace by Rosewood Manor. Something about the colors I liked. Now, even on 36ct., the end result will be BIG and I am not sure I like it. Hopefully I'll find a place to hang it one day. The fabric is Lupine by Picture This Plus, who amazed me with how fast they sent it (next day) and how fast it reached me here in Norway (just one week). How do  you like it? There are 14 parts and I finished almost 3 so far. The charts are not always easy to follow and the bad light in this old house is killing my eyes, but I love the colors.

Next is my start on CHS Shores of... I only got so far, later distracted by the WIP above and other small designs. It's my first of the series I'm stitching and it's surprisingly agreeable to work on, like most CHS charts.

The boys have busy mornings these days. I couldn't get a good shot of Lucky, so here you can see only Felinek, very still, very dedicated...

The reason for all this concentration? Blue tits! I haven't seen them around a lot this winter, sadly. We've hanged the food balls on two trees for them but they only came a couple of times so far.

And just in case you noticed some icky spots on the kitchen window above, you were very right. Here's how this window looks like:

 ... little cat paws all over the glass... you see, snowflakes can be very entertaining and it's very important to catch each and every snowflake you see!

Till tomorrow, hopefully!

It's less cold this week-end, how nice! This week, I've beaten my life record: it was -28 (around 1 Fahrenheit?), totally crazy! The main topic in the Norwegian media was the COLD and when the Norwegians start to talk about cold, then it *is* cold. From what I am being told, it is not unusual to have -15 to -20 in the Oslo region for, say, a week during winter, but now it's been several weeks of much lower temperatures.
Hah! I'm brave. I wanted to experience how it feels being out at such temperatures and I had a 20 minutes walk with Happy at -24 Celsius. I can tell you it felt... special. He was fine as he had his coat on and even little shoes which he got used to quite fast. Beyond -20 he can't walk without them, it seems, he lifts his paws and is so suffering that it makes no sense to have him out other than a few seconds. And that's what we have been doing - we have a long line (20 meters?) that he runs on in the garden. We just open the door, he does his business VERY FAST and runs back home. And this many times during the day. Otherwise when it's warmer (-15 to -20) we have normal half an hour walks.
During the walk I started to write about, I experienced funny things for the first time in my life. That when you breathe (I had a warm cashmere scarf around my mouth), air freezes instantly at such low temperatures and 1) it freezes your eyelashes and glues them because of the vapor that covers them AND 2) that you get ICE in your nose.... Not funny! :)
Only later in the newspaper I read tips from the army winter-school in Elverum (where Americans and Brits are sent to just before they're deployed to Afghanistan, to prepare them for the cold and mountains) and other articles where they recommend to wipe your face from ice with your hand, skin to skin, once in a while, otherwise you can get frostbites (if you have your face covered with something). Lots of interesting tricks and tips. I didn't know either that wool is better than cotton as the inner layer against your skin (cotton is fine as long as it is dry).
Tell me, how did I land with a Norwegian better half? Me, who spent 11 years of my tender life in North Africa? Life is weird. From sun, sea and beaches to snow, cold and wild nature. But, the funny thing is, I love it.
My father would have screamed if I told him we sleep in an unheated room - I and H. both love it that way! The house has to be warm, sure thing, but we need to have it fresh in the room to sleep good, otherwise I wake up tired and sloggy. Of course, we sleep under goose feather sets, but no heating in the room :) I'd have opened the window a little bit but a) H. has his limits LOL! and b) they are frozen, the windows, with ice. So there.

Last week was so busy with work that I decided to spend this week-end doing nothing. N-o-t-h-i-n-g except for some cleaning, cooking, blogging and stitching, in good order.

Here is the ornament I sent to Ellen S. in the recent HOE Christmas ornament exchange. I love how it turned out and I just need to stitch it again one day for myself.

Homespun Elegance
"Festive Redbird"

I sent the ornament below to Hazel for the Prairie Schooler exchange.
Oh, that one took a good two weeks to stitch since I insisted on stitching it over one. It is done with DMC and overdyes of my choice. So glad that Hazel liked it!

Prairie Schooler
adapted from book #95 - Christmas Traditions

Some of you would like to see the cat-boys and I'll happily oblige! The photos below are of bad quality because I took them during the night.

They are always together. Always.

I mean, aren't the two brothers beyond cute?


Yep, they got a scratching post this week. When we drove to Sweden to do food-shopping (a tradition for Norwegians because across the border, everything is dirt cheap comparing to here!), we found this one for 1/3 of the Norwegian price. We're still thinking of buying a huge one one day, but on the other hand, won't they have more than enough climbing and playing opportunities in the garden once spring arrives?

So far, they love it... (well, excuse the pile in the background, H. is busy sorting old stuff)
I'll leave you with this picture of the enchanted winter world taken in the garden...


Have a cozy Sunday!

Sunny Wednesday...

Ah, there is justice on Earth. Sometimes :)
After days, weeks, what - over two months? of rain (really, I think we haven't had more than 10 days in total of real hot summer days - and I can't even remember now when it started raining.... what a summer!!), Wednesday was gorgeous. I checked and checked the weather forecast and it still showed full sun for today, so we drove 1 h west of Oslo for a full day out... wonderful! I'll post pictures tomorrow. Our feet are tired, but the trip was fantastic :)

Today, I'll just post pictures of the HOE Christmas in July exchange I sent out... haven't heard from my partner, but I checked with Jill so I know it was received last week, so I can post it. I wanted to stitch this chart since long, so when the occasion presented itself...

The Starry Wreath
designer: Bent Creek
from JCS 1999 Christmas ornaments magazine
- my choice of overdyes and Mill Hill gold beads

And this little bird flew to one of my best friends for her birthday tomorrow... Hopefully it will arrive in time.

See, I had to give him a little silk ribbon scarf for the trip, winds can be cold and tricky...The last time I saw it, it was ready to spread wings and fly to its new owner...


Meanwhile, in the cat world...




Here's them with Toska at the top level of her tolerance, but she has to be sleepy to let them be that close to her. Always a paw ready to slap the curious intruders... No maternal instincts :) Well, at least she doesn't chase them. They're really the first cats she lets live, my aunt can witness to that :)

That said, I'm really happy that they have the unrenovated part of the house to play in, they really have curious ideas!! Also, they are quite active at night, they start exactly when we go to bed, so we have to close the door so we can sleep. They were scratching the door at 5-6 am each day to enter and play again (playing means lots of running and making all sorts of things fall to the floor) and always woke up poor H. who couldn't fall asleep again, so a solution had to be found, a spray to keep cats off strategic points. After they bit off cables and unmounted the Internet socket by hanging on its cable, these and more spots had to be sprayed as well. Seems to work fine so far! Now we only hear thumping sounds like if it were a group of elephants running and not two kittens, but that doesn't disturb us from sleeping sound.
We were to a new vet yesterday, one that charges 50% for the 2nd cat, for any treatment - and that is a big economy. They got their second general vaccine, now it will be rabies in two weeks. They also got their claws shortened. Huggy (always ready for new adventures!) didn't seem to mind, but Felinek cried and cried like a small baby and it made our hearts melt.... He's a real softie, always a step behind gray brother, always careful...
This vet has her office in her own house and her prices are really competitive. AND the good news is - she seems to be really smart. When we mentioned Poland, she immediately told us that the long veterinary procedure is not needed [Poland has rabies, Norway hasn't] so 21 days after the rabies, they can go! Now, we haven't made our plans yet... and it also means that the decision about keeping Felinek or keeping both has to be made much earlier than December... will keep you updated. I still need to check with the Polish vet. authorities but after reading EU legislation docs for many hours, it seems she is right! If so, this means we only need to fork out 1/3 of the costs we feared and we would have been enraged to find out *afterwards* that all this wasn't needed! One more point in favor of the new vet.
We were thinking of driving the whole zoo by car to Poland, a first for us, we always take the plane, but it seems that this would require the long vet. procedure and much more hassle.... Indeed, while Poland is classified in Part B Section 1, Norway in Part B Section 2, Sweden in Part A of Attachement 2 of Resolution 98/2003......yada yada yada, and Danmark and Germany same as Poland, with different requirements and rules, we'll give up and most probably H. and I will fly on different days to transport our menagerie to my homecountry for the coming winter. Norwegian (the airlines) can only carry 2 pets on board of their aircrafts.
Needless to say, it was and is a big relief to find a home for one or both of them with my aunt..... she has a heart of gold.
Now, how did we end with 4 pets, 4 tails and 16 little feet you say? :)

Sunday smiles...

Remember the Easter little contest Lucy won? When I asked what Toska was looking at? It was a bird, Lucy guessed it right and here is the whole picture!

Isn't she funny? I swear she seriously thought it's a live bird, she was staring at it in a very concentrated way and I just had to take it away fast! I thought cats were more intelligent! :) :)
The bird was a birthday gift for my Polish friend Ela in France, among other goodies. I added a Tilda crown to mark the birthday occasion :) Ela liked it a lot and I was delighted! Some more pictures:






Seriously, Toska was perplexed...


Last week, I was on a jewellery-making course... another great evening. Our goal was to learn and make a matching necklace-and-earings set and here is the one I made, totally in my style, for more dressed-up occasions. The technique we learned was working with a steel wire, I've yet to learn everything else but it certainly was a great start! I'm such a jewellery junkie :) How do you like it?


I stitched a delightful little sampler by With My Needle (hope I remember right) - but I'll do the finishing on it.... in the fall, no time for that now. With all the birthdays in May/June within my family and stitching friends, I'm much too busy. Ah, and then all the exchanges too :)
The chart came with the backing sampler fabric, fabric and thread, and I must say I just love the way the colors play together.

Harmien's birthday giftie is still winging its way to her... I've heard the PO workers were on a local strike so I really hope the package went out as planned when I sent it last week.

Private stuff? As I'm mentioning on top of the blog, I'm flying to Norway for the summer on May 27th, in just ten days. We've delayed my flight from the original date this week because I was way too delayed in my preparations, all the visits at the doctors, checks etc. When you leave for 3 months, you gotta prepare well or else you'll forget on the table the one thing you can't leave without. And I'm sure it will take me a whole night just to prepare the stash I plan to take along!
PLEASE don't send anything anymore to Poland till September. Ask me or Mylene for my Norwegian address instead if you don't have it! Otherwise I'll make an arrangement with the person who'll take care of my mail to have some mail sent to me but I'd like to limit it as much as possible to reduce the burden on her.
My high blood pressure is still high but not as dangerous as it was (190/150) so I'm leaving... I've been put on zillions of pills and I just HATE it. Hate it. Fortunately, I'm starting to feel better but the first two weeks were atrocious, I was feeling week and out of breath whatever I did. Was told this came from lowering my pressure so much very fast. Still worried about the whole issue, but apart from modifiying my (already healthy) diet and exercise even more, what can I do? Loosing weight will surely help, but with the other doc talking about PCOS, that combined with an underactive thyroid, the task is very hard.
The week has been very busy again, so I apologize for visiting your blogs without leaving many comments - I certainly visit at yours! :)
Yesterday I had dental surgery to extract a nasty wisdom teeth. The whole op' took over 2h15... and I'll spare you the details, but it was gore and I was told "you know, it really happens extremely rarely, cases like yours". Humpfffff. It was pure torture being made on a live body ;-) but really, with the way technologies have developed, pain wasn't a problem for the most part. They gave me 9 injections in total to make it a pain-free procedure, at least that :) I was joking with Ela on Skype today that the fact that the surgeon was a stunningly handsome young man helped a lot too :)
So I've been keeping it slow this week-end, applying ice on the cheek, taking antibiotics and painkillers. Doesn't hurt but (not sure if it's due to how hard my case was) I'm still swelling after a day and a half, I have a head like a tire, really scary actually! :) I now have fiever and the cheek is very hot despite all I'm taking and doing against it, so I might have to show at the clinic tomorrow morning. Good thing they're on the next street. Aaack, it was a very complicated surgery. Do we all have FOUR wisdom teeth? If so then I hope it'll take some time before any of the others give any pain, with my luck! LOL
Wish me a speedy recovery :) and have all a lovely week!!