Under the August moon.....

I was hoping to do a lot of creative work this week. I took a few days of from work planning to go to the cottage and spend a few days there ....without any renovation in sight. Just me and my wool, yarn and some wire for my mobile and baskets. I so looked forward to a few days of creative frenzy! But nothing ever turns out quite the way you plan does it?. My bags were all packed and I was ready to go but then my eldest daughter got terribly ill. It started with a sore throat but soon she got worse and worse and when she couldn’t even swallow her own saliva we went to the hospital. It turned out she has mononucleosis or kissing disease. My poor girl! She is in such pain. She can’t eat or drink and her glands and face are so swollen that she can’t even turn her head. I feel so helpless because there is nothing I can do to relieve her pain. Just hold her hand and be there for her. And feed her ice cubes! Apparently this disease has a long duration, up to 6 or 8 weeks and you can feel tired and weak for much longer than that. And she has to visit the doctor once a week for blood tests due to the risk of complications to the liver and spleen. If you have any tips or suggestions that can relieve her pain please let me know!

Last night I went out in my garden and I felt so tired and helpless and sad. Then I saw this beautiful august moon and just stood there and let its beauty wash all over me. And suddenly I felt much better and I went inside and opened the window in my daughter’s room and we sat there together looking at the moon and eating ice cubes!

And when this is all over I’m going to wet felt that moon!

Nice Matters Award

Oh my.....I have been given another award. Dear Angela Louise thank you so much! Up until now my day has been really rotten and I have felt far from nice! I always try to be a nice person and treat others like I want to be treated myself. But today...Nice doesn`t work I thought. People just ignore you! Or even worse consider you stupid and OK to walk all over! My hope for mankind was below zero. So your award really made my day! I feel so much better and my hope in mankind restored! The reward goes right back to you of course :-)
and to my dear blog friends Clara and Gerda-Thyra. Two very nice and considerate ladies!

And a huge award also goes to all my non blogging friends. I know you read this....

Consider yourselfs hugged!

Crown in wire

When I visited Gerda-Thyras blog last I saw a beautiful crown in wire that she had made. I begged her to teach me how to do it and do you know what? She did! She made a step by step lesson at one of her other blogs. I didn’t have quite the right wire at home but just couldn’t wait ….So I made a “prototype” of the wire I had. I had to make it a lot smaller too since I didn’t have enough wire either. But I had so much fun doing it. Must get the right kind of wire this weekend and make a big one for my garden. I think the crown will look even better when it’s standing outdoors and gets a bit rusty!

Please visit Gerda-Thyras blog to see how the crown is really supposed to be. And do try making one. It’s great fun!

Thank you so much Gerda-Thyra!

Complaints choir

Do you know what a complaints choir is? Neither did I until a few weeks ago when I read about it in my local paper. The town in where I live have a big music festival every year and this year they where going to have a complaints choir. Anyone could enter and me and my eldest daughter signed up at once. We both love to sing and this was a once in a lifetime opportunity since it hasn`t been done in Sweden before!

The complaints choirs all got started during a winter day walk of Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the day that they ended up discussing the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else. Perhaps not directly into heat – but into something powerful anyway. In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression "Valituskuoro". It means "Complaints Choir" and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: "Wouldn´t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!" As complaining is a universal phenomenon the project could be organized in any city around the world. Birmingham was first and then came Helsinki and now complaints choirs have been initiated all around the globe.

The concept is the same all over the world. Community members send in their complaints and a text are made and the words put to music. Our choir was allowed only to practice 5 times and we perform on four different occasions ( and stages) during the festival. We had our grand opening Friday night– but on one of the smaller stages. Thank god! But tonight was the night! Our big moment of glory….. We where to perform on the biggest stage of the festival right in the middle of town.....




The stage! Huge! Soon I am to be standing up there were internatinal artist have been standing before me... Wow! My stomach feels like I`ve been eating butterflies for lunch… A few fans are waiting... Not for us I am sorry to say but for the artist performing after us :-)

We proudly present Malmö Complaints choir

Rock On! Me and my daugther are enjoying our moment of fame..

Even my dad had a few moments of glory when he was interviewed by the local TV station...


Part of the concept for the complaints choirs are that the performance is filmed to be put on Youtube and on the complaints choirs web site. I will let you know when it`s published so you can hear what we sounded like!


A great experience and a lovely memory for me and my daughter! Sometimes it`s fun to do something out of the ordinary. It brightens up your day!

Oh my gosh I have been given an award ! Clara thinks I am a Rockin Girl Blogger and I am so honoured and proud. Clara is one of my favourite “blogfriends” and a fabulous photographer and I take a sneakpeak at her blog everyday. Together with this beautiful pink award you get to nominate four other blogs that you think deserve to be a Rockin Girl Blogger. Of course I wanted to give Clara one right back but since she already had one..... So here goes:

Ta dah ! And the winners are:

Chelsea Blue Whispers
Angela Louise my friend - your wonderful blog is full of roses, beautiful photos and art! A blog full of inspiration and joy of life! And her charms......they are exquisite !

Janeville
If you want a blog full of colourful art this is the one to visit. Jane La Fazio is a talented artist and a constant source of inspiration for me. She brings the warmth and colours of San Diego right into my computer and my life. And her painted utility boxes.... Wow!

View from the oak
Lin my friend – your watercolours makes me want to start felting right away. A blog full of art, food and Lin´s funny comments! Always worth a visit

And last but not least....

Mossygreen
A picture can say more than a thousand words. So what can I say? Go take a look at her wonderful photos right away !

Lesson of the week

This weekend was going to be a renovation free weekend ¨( we ended up putting up the staircase to the attic anyway but that’s another story). When I woke up on Saturday morning the weather was warm and sunny for the first time in weeks so I decided to take a ride on my bike to the bakery. Well is not really my bike but my daughters and the bakery is in another village 5 kilometers away but what the heck the sun was shining and I was feeling adventurous…... Of I went pedaling through the beautiful landscape with my knees up under my chin (since my daughter is way shorter than me) and screaming weeeee with delight whenever I went downhill. Life is good I thought to myself


A lot of weeeing later I rode up in front of the bakery. And what a bakery! Yum, Yum, Yum! I bought bread like I was catering for the whole village! Have you ever tried riding a too small bike with to big plastic bags full of bread on the handle-bars? Well I can tell you this - It was a lot less weeeeing on the way back!! Uphill almost all the way and I felt like I was riding Tour de France on a tricycle.

Back home the rest of the family had already eaten breakfast and I collapsed in a chair for half an hour before I could even think of eating mine! But when I sat in the garden eating I thought once again that "Wow, life is good" !

After the washing up was done I sat down in the sun to try out something new. I had borrowed a book at the library about something that we call Luffarslöjd ( “Vagabond handicraft”) in Sweden. I think is`s also called Fil de Fer. You make utility goods, baskets etc in wire. It’s called Vagabond handicraft because the vagabonds used to make it and sell it at the doors to make some money or get a free meal. It was easier than I thought and great fun! Once I was started I couldn’t stop.

My candle holder looks a bit like the tower of Pisa and my little basket is a bit askew so evidently I still need a little more practice though!

In the evening we took the kids to the sea for a swim and then we watched the sun go down at Ale stenar. Ale stenar is a unique Stone Ship from the Bronze-Age, systematically constructed for the calculation of the 365 days of a year and the 24 hours of day.

When I sat there watching the sun go down I thought for the third time that day that life is good!

So what about the staircase? Well I didn`t think I was ever going to say this but in the afternoon I got a bit restless…so we put the staircase up to the attic. Next weekend though I will definitely do absolutely nothing ….

Lesson of the week : Doing nothing is harder than you think!

Roses for Angela Louise

One of the fun things with having a blog is all the new friends you get from all over the world. When I found Angela Louise’s blog Chelsea Blue Whispers I liked it immediately. It’s nice to share a little of someone else’s life especially when it’s on the other side of the world in a far away place like Australia. I always wanted to visit Australia but never had the opportunity but now I can” visit” whenever I like….

I love Angela Louise’s artwork, her photos and her ROSES! I would very much like to be able to grow some of them in my garden. As I am a very poor gardener ( although my father was a gardener in his profession)I console myself with the fact that it’s probably the perfect weather conditions that makes the roses so beautiful….. And it’s just due to lousy weather and not a hopeless gardener that makes my roses not looking anyway near hers. Fat chance! Do you want to know a secret? When my husband and I moved to our house ten years ago my father recommended green concrete instead of grass in my garden! And plastic plants! That’s how bad I am!

Anyway, back to Angela Louise! Today I finally had some time to sit down and do some felting and I made a few pink roses inspired by her blog. I love the text on her header so I made a quilt and added that too. So dear Angela Louise this is for you!

As you travel down life`s path.. always stop to smell the roses.

Third week

The third and last week of renovation went by so fast and now my vacation is over and tomorrow it’s back to work. Looking back at what we have accomplished I feel amazed. We actually held our timeplan! And we are still married ….Not bad eh? It’s still a lot left to do. Some central heating and hot water would be nice! And a bathroom ! And the second floor isn’t even build yet……But that will all come in good time. Now we know that we can do it together and that gives me great faith for the future!

And when I was desperately dreaming about a villa in the south of France and buying a vacation home in need of renovation seemed like a very bad idea then your nice comments kept me going. Thank you all so much! Now it’s back to more normal routines.and hopefully I will have time for some felting and sewing in the evenings. Oh joy!

How about some before and after photos?

The "master bedroom" looking it`s very worst....

...and looking alot nicer. I will add a few more items but not to many. It`s nice when it`s not so crowded!

The old stable is my new work room and this is the kitchen table to be....

.....and this is the finished result!

The floor in the hall was rotten and we found a rats nest under it when we tore it out. Yuck!

...this is much nicer and no rats in sight!

The best item indoors this summer was patience! And outdoors it was my beloved wellies. Don`t let the sunny photo fool you! It rained buckets all the time..almost!

Last but not least....the landscape!

I so LOVE it! I didn`t want to go back to the city today. I wanted to stay out here forever. Our neighbour, the farmer was harvesting and you heard the kites cry out all day long when they were flying over the fields looking for mice. Oh I so wish I had four more weeks of vacation. It sounds like I am leaving it forever. Silly me! I`m coming back this weekend...

So bye, bye for now dear house