Another Dec 25th has come and gone, it always goes to quick. This year we did not have any snow, but it was very cold, cold enough that the pond downtown was frozen solid. After opening our gifts, Stephen and I took a walk around town, walked on the frozen pond and took photos of the empty streets, the only other people were tourists and some dedicated joggers.

Here in Iceland, the folk celebrate christmas on 24th, going by the old rule of a new day begins at 18:00. So they open their presents and have their big meal on our christmas eve. Since we have lived here a few years, we also join in and have a big meal on the 24th, we have hamborgorahryggur, which is a sweet pork loin, served with caramelized spuds and veg.

Then of course we have our traditional Irish dinner on the 25th. Turkey, roast veg and stuffing. This year we followed Jamie Oliver's instructions from an old show and the show he did this year. One of the best things that we did, was making the gravy ahead of time! Cooking some veg in the oven and using the liquid from this mixed with flower, then storing it until xmas day, adding it to all teh juices from the turkey! Wow it was very good gravy. Everything turned out well, especially the roast spuds. yum

I can now post the photos of the lovely gifts I made for my family.
My sister who is 13, received two pairs of fingerless mitts.
The red pair:

The turquoise pair:

My dad got this hat, made with really nice DB Donegal chunky tweed:

I used the pattern above for one brother J, with DB cashmerino chunky:

This pattern I used for my brother P and for my OH Stephen :D, I got the pattern on ravelry.com. The wool I used for both hats is DB rialto dk. Grey and dark grey for P and black and grey for Stephen.

My mother's present was knit by someone else, as I do not have the skills yet to knit a a lopapeysa! It was a beautiful Icelandic cardigan, in shades of dark brown and creams. Very nice.

I knit this very cute little cardigan for my nephew Nathan. It was first proper item of clothing I knit. I got the pattern on ravelry again. I knit it with DB pure cotton. The buttons are very cute, once has a cat and the other a mouse, they alternate on the cardi.

My next project is a jumper with cables that look like owls, it will be for me and I plan to knit it in Alafoss lopi, maybe a dark green colour.

Wishing everyone a great 2010.

All of the christmas knitting is complete. I had a couple of firsts with these presents too, my first time using dpn's and my first item of clothing. I knit for my family members and for the newest addition to my boyfriends family.
I can't wait to post the pictures after Dec 25th, as I am quite proud of them all.

At the moment I am half way through a hat for Stephen, it's looking great. I have a couple of projects like up for the new year, starting with one for me! A beautiful jumper with cables, which look like owls! The pattern is available free on ravelry.com, which is a knitting and crochet site I joined recently. It's a really great site to find patterns for free and to purchase. They have a wealth of info on yarns and anything you need to know to get a project going.

I baked some piparkokur last week, but they more like ginger cookies, this week I am going to make the real kind of piparkokur, with actual white pepper in! Hopefully I will get around to baking some more rugbraud too.

I will post some photo's of the yarns I used. Out of all the wool I knit, I think the Debbie Bliss Rialto was one of the nicest to knit with, but Debbie Bliss Donegal Aran Tweed was probably my favourite overall, for texture and colour and general look.

Bread Baking

I have finally got my crafting groove back. Just in time for xmas gift season! Of course I can't post the details or photo's of these yet, but just know I am knitting a lot of new things, so it's a lot of fun.

I have two video's to post, both baking related. The first is from Sept, when I baked Icelandic rugbrauð (ryebread). My boss had given me the recipe before I started my summer holidays and I eventually got around to baking it.
It takes about 10 minutes to get everything together, but then 9 hours to bake!! The recipe makes three loaves and you pour the bread mixture into milk cartons! Quite a novel approach.
The bread was beautiful, very heavy though, so you would only have 1 or two slices at a time, with delicious Icelandic smjör (butter).
Here is the video Stephen made of me taking them out of their milk carton homes and slicing them up.



On Monday just gone, I baked one loaf of banana bread. Wow, one is never enough! We finished it today, it was so good. I used this recipe here, but substituted the butter for light vanilla yoghurt and used brown sugar instead of white.

Here is the video, from the beginning this time.

Fishy Tales

It's been a while since last I posted. I haven't been crafty at all this summer! I baked some really nice pizza, some crappy butterscotch cookies, but nothing original or very creative.
The one thing I did make, or rather fix, was the bracelet I made for my sisters birthday. The catch broke, so she posted it back to me and I finally got around to it the other day.

I did take a trip South to Vík a few weeks back, in July. We just camped for the night there, but it was perfect. The weather was so good, clear blue skies, sun beating down. The town and campsite are right along the beach and the waves here are ginormous! The sea is much too cold for a normal person to swim in and with the waves, nobody gets in. The beach is a black sand beach, which makes you quite dirty, but feels great beneath the feet.
It had been my birthday a few days before the trip and Stephen had bought me a Lopapeysa cardigan! A friend of my friend Sj had knit it specially for me, all the way up in Saudarkrokur. It's a little big, but just how I like it :D I also picked up a beautiful grey Icelandic wool hat in the Vík woolen factory. Everything is made there, so I think I got it a little cheaper. They had some beautiful items and I would love a knitted blanket!




My friend A brought me out for lunch to Caruso, for a late birthday present. We had lobster pasta and it was delicious. I had never had lobster before. Well I have eaten lobster soup, but that was only tiny pieces. This was, to my eyes anyway, huge pieces!
For the quite high price, I think we got a fair amount of lobster, I even left some and gave them to A! I was so full.

Strawberries and Scones

When I was younger there was a Strawberry Fair held not too far from my village, every July. The area was called the Strawberry Beds, not quite a town, more a long rural road with a few cottages dotted along one side and the River Liffey flowing along the other. It was and is a very beautiful place and to be able to see "countryside" so close to my home always made me love where I grew up.
At this young age, strawberry was my favourite flavour in yoghurts, jams and sweets. The point of the fair was to dine on the fresh strawberries, so when I finally got to taste one of those delicious looking little fruits, I went for it, and was disgusted! This was not the same as my favourite jam or sweets! Something must have gone wrong, so I tried another... and no, I disliked it also.

Therefore from that day until yesterday, the 4th of July 2009, it has taken me roughly 20 years and only 1496.05km to taste another one. Egged on by watching Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's tv show Summer at River Cottage and also reading about the fresh strawberries delivered to Reykjavik, from the greenhouse in Fludir(where we used to live). I decided to give them another try.

I baked up a batch of cream scones(half white flour, half wholewheat) and whipped up some cream(no devonshire). I can now join the throngs of strawberry lovers. I can see where my 8 year old taste bud's were coming from, a little bitter and that is all 8 year old me would have tasted, but so full of flavour and just lovely on the scones with the cream.

I would love to try my hand at making my own jam, but considering the punnet I got cost 599kr/3.38e/2.89£, it's a wee bit pricey. Well okay, it may not seem much in the other currencies, but consider that would have been half that a year ago!! So, no jam for us :( Unless we grew our own, but I don't see that happening for a while.

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Here is a photo of the finished product.

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Looking through some of Stephens film footage, I found a nice still of my shrug that I knit. You can see it better than the previous photo and the lovely lace cuff.

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The Emerald Isle

I have just returned from a visit to Ireland. I had not been there for 4 years, so it was a great treat to see my hometown and my family again. My sister was making her Confirmation and back in December at my mosaic class I made her a present. So now I can finally post the photos!

Working out how the design will go.

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Finished :)

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My sister also turned 13 the day of her confirmation, so I made her a gift for that. I found out the colour's of her confirmation outfit and used them in the jewellery I made. I had bought some Swarovski beads and used them.

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I made these earrings for my mam, I used the blue Swarovski beads in them. It actually turned out the dress she wore that day was the exact colour's of the earrings, and they matched perfectly.

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On my last day in Ireland, the weather was brilliant and we took a trip to Glendalough. I hadn't been there since I was about 10, so it was great to get some new pictures of it.

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This is my village.

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The old house by the weir on the river Liffey.

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Two Shrugs, One Woman

I finally took the plunge into circular knitting last week. For some reason the mere sight of 'circular needles required' in a pattern made me shiver and get goosbumples. Now that it's all over, I am in love with circular knitting and cannot wait for more!

I found a really interesting and friendly website called The Purl Bee, it has amazingly beautiful patterns for knitting, crochet, embroidery and some of the most thorough and pretty(if that's possible) tutorials, for every imaginable obstacle you could come across.
This is where I found the perfect pattern I had been searching for, a lovely shrug.
It knit up like a charm and the wool is so soft, yet thick enough to keep my arms warm if a slight spring/autumn/Icelandic breeze should blow.
I needed the shrug, as I am taking a trip back to Eire for a week in May. My sister is making her confirmation and seeing as it will be 4 years(to the day) since I last visited the motherland, I thought hey, why not? Courtesy of my fabulous parents of course ;)
Anyhoo, the dress I will wear is a sleeveless one and as I am unsure of the rules of the church these days, thought it best to cover up ;)

Here are a couple of photos of the shrug. I have not blocked it yet, so the lacy cuff part is curling over, when it's blocked it should lay out flat.. I hope!!

The wool is Aran, from this post, this wool was also the first time I have had to deal with a hank of wool, meaning I had to actually wind it up into a ball myself! Considering how much it bloody well cost, that's quite a cheek!

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This next item, is a long sleeved top that was so badly made, I could never wear it. I found a very cool project on Cut Out and Keep. Here is my version:

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Peach Cobbler and Homemade Poptartys

I have been a busy bee the last few days. It feels quite good when you are being creative like that, especially in my case when it involves either finishing old knitting projects or re-using something that previously had no use!

The knitting project I finished was a little knitted kitten that I started a few months back, with this random ball of wool my mother brought over last March. I knit it up real quick, but had misplaced my darning needle.. so off to UFO corner it went. I was rummaging in my knitting bag yesterday when I found the darning needle and quickly grabbed the kitten parts and seemed her up.
She is not perfect, but is now a nice little desk buddy for Stephen, who insisted on calling her Caren.. So far Tara the real kitty has left her alone.

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Last week on our day off, I baked a peach cobbler. My friend Wendy had been talking about making her own and it really made me crave some. She passed along the recipe and I whipped it up. Along with some delicious vanilla ice cream, this was so good. I am not a huge peach fan, but in this pie they were scrumptious. Also the way the cobbler forms is quite cool.

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This evening we were both craving something sweet, but there was nothing in the kitchen, so I scoured my bookmarks for something tasty. I found these homemade poptart things. Using this site for the pastry recipe, I whipped up three of them using Icelandic blueberry jam and marmalade. They were so delicious! I still have a lot of pastry left over, so I will definitely be making more of them. Great for a quick snack.

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Mash Up

I bought some gorgeous wool the other day, it's from Artesano and it's called Aran wool. It's so lovely and doesn't seem like it would irritate my skin. The colour is twilight, a turquoise colour with some light flecks of purple and other colours. I haven't found a pattern I like yet, but I am going for a short cardigan style to wear when I visit Ireland in May.

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Here are two more sprites I made for Stephen. A koopa and Luigi, both from Super Mario World. I got the sprite images from this great site.

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During my father and brother's visit, we visited the small town of Stykkisholmur on the Snæfellsness peninsula, while we were there we took a guided tour of a new local brewery, that makes a beer called Jökull Bjór. Stephen and I had pre-arranged this tour through the companies website, having tasted their special brew for Þorrablot. We are not big beer drinkers, but we do like to try the new ones that come on the market, especially when they are local and mostly organic. From my perspective then, it is a nice light tasting beer, the seasonal one being a darker beer.
The woman who gave us the tour, is as far as I know, the manager/owner. They have such a small set up, so small, that two guys were in fact sticking the labels on by hand! They opened for business right as the kreppa took hold of the country, so as of our trip, they were hoping for expansion across the government owned wine stores. (my friend up North claims to never have seen them in her tiny store)
So I wish them luck. We also got a taste of some beer from their taps and along with a small fee of 500kr each, received some lovely branded beer glasses!

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I've Got the Fever

That's the hama bead fever. I have got it BAD! Stephen and I went to the shopping centre on Friday and he bought me lots of bags of beads! There were just so many colours, even glittery ones. He wanted to buy me the 35000 bead box, but the thought of looking through that box for one colour was enough to drive me mental. So I opted for single colour bags.

So I am sticking with a theme for the sprites, this one is Super Mario World, which is Stephen's favourite Mario game. There are still colours I am missing, but I can do without them for now by substituting other shades.

Anyhow, here is the finished Mario in all his chubby little glory.

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This is the necklace I made my mother for Mothering Sunday. It is a natural coloured shell in the middle, with small lava stone beads on either side.

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Stephen and I celebrated 11 years together yesterday, so I made myself a set of earrings and a necklace to wear with the new dress he bought me :)

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The necklace was made with a how-to on cut out and keep.

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One more before bedtime

Okay, so I started another sprite tonight. Can you guess who it is?

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I would have had it finished, only I am missing a lot of colours, all shades of brown and many others that this sprite calls for.
I think a trip after work tomorrow to the book store is on!

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Here are some of my new organizational items.
This is for my hama beads. I am going to need something much bigger soon.

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This one is for all my jewellery making bits. I think it's my fave one too. Detachable boxes on the outside, a little removeable tray on the top and lots of space inside for wire etc.

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This one was my best bargain, bought in Rúmfatalagerinn for 990kr. A double sided hobby box.

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I still have another box of sewing stuff, which is in an old biscuit tub. My fimo is in a big sweet bucket and my glue/glitter misc stuff is in the old hama bead tub! I need a whole room for all this stuff!

Hot Springs & Hama Beads

I have had an interesting week, I had some family over. My father and my brother, so I was busy showing them around Iceland. It was my fathers third visit and my brothers first. It was so good to see them and we all had such a great time. They hired a car and Stephen and I chose places for them to visit. We climbed a glacier, soaked in an outdoor natural hot spring, visited a local brewery and went horse riding.
This is where the hot springs was(the arrow marks where the spring is)

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This is part of the glacier we climbed, Sólheimajokull.

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I cannot believe it is March already. I have been a bit lazy on the crafting front recently. Instead I have been re-organizing, I bought some new boxes for my sewing stuff, my jewellery bits and my hama beads.
I have been researching how to make bead sprites. I found out how to make an image I want pixelly, it's not very hard. You find the image you want and save it to your computer, then open it, I just used preview and zoom in until you get the right pixels. I made a few simple ones, but I need a lot more colours if I want to make more characters.

This first one is a band logo for my little sister, the band is Tokio-[sic]-Hotel. The clearer beads are glow in the dark! They glow a bright pink. I love them :)

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This is Link, from the Nintendo games The Legend of Zelda, of which Stephen is a huge fan. I am not entirely sure which game this is from, but I am thinking it's from an early SNES game. He is falling in this image :)

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This is a coaster for Stephen, it's a fire flower from Mario games.

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This one is for me. It is a kodama (Japanese tree spirit) head. I really wanted to make a full one, but alas I could not find an image small enough to make and I do not have any more bead boards to make a huge one. These are on my to buy list.
He is also made with the damn cool glow in the dark beads.

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He will just sit by me at my desk :)

There are so many things you can do with these beads, they are quite an addictive hobby, even if you don't do the whole pixel art with them, you can still be very alternative and make bead art. They are sold in one of the big dept stores here and a local book shop, so I can get my hands on them easy, but I am not sure they stock every colour, so I think I may end up buying lots on ebay.

I have one more item, but will not post it until after Mother's day next weekend.