Some pictures from the lass’ new room

Bed
Bed

She is well and truly installed now, and seems to like it better than her old room, despite the fact that it is noticeably smaller. She’s still in love with the wall colour, which is good. The lamp is a temporary solution, the walls next to the bed are masonary and hell to drill in, so we haven’t quite figured out how to give her a permanent reading light. For the time being, this works.

Bookshelves
Bookshelves

Two Billy bookshelves, purchased a few years ago while you could still get them 60 cm wide. We have a lot of children’s books. This is most of the ones with pictures, there are boxes and boxes of books for reading aloud or for reading to oneself once she gets to that stage, as it is she “reads” anywhere between five and thirty books before going to sleep every evening. It’s best to instill good habits early, you know.

I meant to take some more detailed pictures, in order to tell you a little about some of the books, but it seems I forgot. I might get around to it later. In the meantime, let me show you a nice little piece of furniture, purchased long before I even met the husband.

Isn't it lovely?
Isn't it lovely?

Yes, it’s child size. Found at a flea market in Oslo for a mere 100 kroner in 2001. My only regret is not buying its twin, too. I can’t remember why I decided to buy only the one, I might have been short on cash, I suppose.

Baking med en 4-åring

Ssssssslange
Ssssssslange

Vi bakte polarbrød forrige helg. Vi bruker oppskriften fra Alvebento-bloggen, bortsett fra at vi bruker vanlig melk. Denne gangen ble det også vanlig (økologisk) sukker og en del mer diverse grovt mel, siden det viste seg at vi ikke hadde fullt så mye hvetemel som vi trengte. Snuppa synes disse er kjempegode og spiser helst ikke annet brød. Fordelen fra mitt ståsted er at det ikke er noe skorpe som ikke blir spist opp – noe som er et problem ofte nok med vanlig brød – og at jeg har kontroll på ingrediensene. Sist oppdaget jeg at det funket vel så fint å bruke pepperkakeformer til å lage fordypninger med som å prikke – og det går dessuten mye fortere. Snuppa hjelper til å bake ut, med varierende entusiasme. Derav den noe uortodokse fasongen på det nederste brødet. Så lenge hun spiser dem opp er jeg ikke så nøye på hvordan de ser ut.

Inspiration

At the moment I’m about half way through crocheting a granny square blanket, which I discovered – to my delight – was a very simple thing to crochet. See, the problem with most crocheting patterns for my part – and with most knitting patterns too – is having to keep count and remember where I’d got to when I pick something up after a break. But with granny squares I don’t have to keep count, as it’s easy to tell at a glance where you are on a particular square. Lovely stuff.

Anyway, I’ve started collecting links for inspiration, and added a few blogs to my feed, too (most notably Bad Monkey and Kaptein Biff). For my next project I think I’ll try this pattern:

Circle in square pattern from Sols(tr)ikke (Norwegian)
Circle in square pattern from Sols(tr)ikke (Norwegian)

Unless I can find a good pattern for a square with a flower portrudin before then, as I’d like to make a blanket like that for a friend who expressed nostalgia for that particular type.

But I might consider another circle in square pattern that Bad Monkey linked to yesterday, namely this one:

Colorful Crochet

Which is called Circle of Friends. Aren’t those colours delicious?

Talking about colour, what do you say to these houses?

Awesomeness
Awesomeness

So, two new blogs for the feed, obviously:

Beæret

Det er hva jeg er.

Den godeste Namaste har slått sammen flere blogawards til en ny alt-inkluderende som heter Queen of fucking everything, og jeg er på mottakerlista. Det passer jo fint, for det er nemlig sånn at jeg har en magnet hjemme som ser slik ut:

Bilde lånt fra itskitsch.co.uk
Bilde lånt fra itskitsch.co.uk, som interessant nok har den som “Queen of everything magnet”, det mangler liksom et ord?

Det var en ting om meg selv som dere sikkert ikke visste fra før. En annen av magnetene mine, og det tror jeg er favoritten, bærer teksten: “Well, aren’t you just a ray of fucking sunshine”.

Jeg vurderer i grunnen teksten som kandidat for mitt neste geriljabroderiprosjekt.

Man skal vel egentlig skrive litt flere fakta om seg selv i forbindelse med slike utmerkelser, men jeg har skrevet så mange sånne innlegg før at jeg har gått litt tom for ting å si – i det minste trenger jeg “prompts”. Til glede for nye lesere har jeg derfor heller gravd litt i arkivet:

På den annen side begynner det egentlig å bli på tide å skrive en ny 100 things-liste. Enkelte punkter er utdaterte. Noe som er ganske beroligende, det betyr at det har skjedd noe de siste 8 årene…

A sense of accomplishment

I’m feeling a sense of accomplishment today. Before Christmas I received a promotional code for a photo book on photo paper from Japan Photo, and after a little deliberation decided it would be the perfect incentive to finish the very half-hearted start I’d done on an album from the trip to The Gambia in 2009. The promotion ended yesterday, and the album was ordered just in time. Considering I have a tendency to attack these projects with gusto and then have my enthusiasm fade away long before I’ve actually finished anything, having ordered the book feels like a big accomplishment.

Which is nice.

The best thing? I managed to pace myself sufficiently that I’m not sick of looking at and processing photos. The previous photo books I’ve ordered have led to a few moths hiatus on further layouts because of overload towards the finishing line. Not so this time, I think.

Once I get the book, I’ll post a few pictures of the result and get into what exactly I did. In terms of scrapbooking it was extremely minimalist, but a couple of resources need to be mentioned. I’ll get to that.

The next project, apart from finishing the hobby room (where we’ve run into a little problem, more on that later) involves the sewing machine and needs to be done by the end of the upcoming weekend. We’ll see how that goes.

The next photo-related project involves going through my supplies to create a faux Project Life (because I really don’t need to buy any more supplies) to see if I can’t get a “document life as it happens” thing going. If I get my act together, I’ll share what I do.

I dag konstanterer vi

At verden lar seg sjokkere med enkle midler. I hvert fall i følge dagbladet.no.

db_28012011

Selv er jeg muligens vagt forstyrret av det hunde-puppebildet, jeg vet ikke om jeg egentlig trengte å se det, Dagbladet? Men sjokkert? Nei. Og Andrej Pejic er jeg ikke sjokkert over i det hele tatt, og det later da vitterlig ikke moteverdnen til å være, heller, i følge artikkelen.

Kanskje det bare er Dagbladets ingressforfatter som er lett å sjokkere?

Reading

It should come as no surprise that I like reading. And books. And any art that involves either is immediately interesting to me.

For the hobby-/guestroom we had planned to get a Hemnes daybed from IKEA, furbish it with proper mattresses and quite a few pillows and a good reading light, so as to cater for guests (hence the essential “good mattress”) and reading (pillows and lamp, though the essentialness is a bit overlapping, obviously). The nice people of IKEA decided to have a 30 % sale on Hemnes this week, so we now have one Hemnes flatpacked on the floor, waiting for this weekend when we plan to move the lass into her new room, thus freeing up the space in the would-be guestroom.

Over the daybed, I’m planning to frame reading related “things”. I have som old (well, late 90’ies) ads from Waterstone’s (that I just LOVE), and I have one or two prints purchased off Etsy. I would like some more of the latter, though, so today I’ve been browsing, and tomorrow, once I’ve had time to consider which ones I really like the most, I’ll be putting in a few orders.

Here are some of the ones that immediately appealed to me:

read1

 

“The reader” by Majalin

read2

“Girl reading” by Belafonte (Emma Leonard)

read3

“The boy who liked to read” by TheExtentofSilence

read4

“One Story More” by trafalgarsquare

read5

“Books can take you anywhere” by TheLittleFox

read6“Reading is rad”/”Girl in green socks” by Artisjustfrozenmusic ( Carla Thursday)

Since it’s expected that the lass will use the space as well as us “grown ups”, I quite like the idea of mixing the styles a bit, rather than sticking to a more coherent collection. Since they have a common theme, I think they’ll work together anyway.

Have you seen any reading-themed illustrations lately? Please let me know in the comments, I’d love to get some tips for more candidates.