Mirthful – Page 15 – enjoying it while it lasts

Beginning to consider Christmas

October 19, 2010October 28, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I know it’s only October, but since I like to plan Christmas presents some time ahead, I like giving others the opportunity to do the same. So in the proud tradition, here we go:

Dear Santa,

I realise you may be a bit miffed that we’re teaching the lass that you don’t really exist, explaining that all the Santas she sees around are just people in costume and that her presents actually come from family and friends, but I hope you’ll forgive me and se your way to fix us up with some of the following anyway:

1. Peace on earth.

2. A Kindle. Preferably, I think, a Kindle DX, as one of the reasons for wanting one is to be able to read pdfs, and according to this review, the larger screen is a pretty good idea for that sort of use. However, the Kindle 3 with just wi-fi would also rock my socks. Other major benefits that I see immediately are A. downloading books from the Gutenberg project, in Kindle format, no less, for example Iphigenia which I really need to read after seeing the show at Trøndelag Teater on Saturday and B. reading in the rain by simple expedient of a cover (you could put a cover on a “real” book, too, but turning the page becomes complicated).

3. Health and longevity for my nearest and dearest and for the following authors/artists (and any others I may have forgotten): Robin Hobb, J.K. Rowling, Stephen Fry, Jo Nesbø, Ole Paus, Bjørn Eidsvåg, Alanis Morisette, Michael Wiehe, Michael Parkinson, Håkon Gullvåg, Lillebjørn Nilsen, Neil Gaiman, Bill Bryson, India Knight, Kate Atkinson, Bob Dylan, Jasper Fforde and the Top Gear guys.

4. A ten-litre pot that works on induction stove-tops.

5. An Overlock. Like this one. Or one of the Husqvarna Huskylocks they have here.

6. Anything from Gaver med mening, Gaver som forandrer verden, Oxfam unwrapped (look, you can buy “me” schoolbooks!) and similar sites.

7. Non-stop.

8. The Sandman books.

9. A Fuji Instax mini – and film – available from Photojojo amongst others. Other thingamabobs from Photojojo that make me drool a little: SLR pinhole body cap and The white balance lens cap. And pretty much everything else they sell, to be honest.

10. Dishes with the Moomins on them. We have a collection of cups (mostly from “giving blood-rewards”), but I’d love to have the deep dishes, too, then we could really use the set for coffee and dessert.

11. A Roomba!

12. Moomin casserole and saucepan and Moomin spoons – all from Hackman.

And for the lass, who really has been good, her own list:

1. “Solveig og Kosinus-sangen” – that is, the song from the tv-show. Seems to only exist as a single so far, a whole CD would be better.

2. A Queen CD all of her own containing “We Will Rock You”.

3. Toy Story figures, especially Jesse “livesize”. Also Toy Story lego.

4. Pretend food of all kinds.

My additions:

1. Pyjamas in size 116 or 122. Fleece pants and/or tops in size 116.

2. Good books (but check with us first, we have quite a few – understatement of the year).

3. DVDs: Disney, old children’s tv shows and newer ones (check what we already have).

4. Listen and read combination things – those books with the story on CD – if they still exist?

5. Doll’s clothes (pretty much any size doll) – hand made if you do that sort of thing.

6. Jigsaw puzzles of 30 pieces and upwards (the sky’s the limit, she’ll grow into them eventually).

As soon as I find my crochet needles

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I am making one of these:

I know everyone else is doing it, too, but how can one help oneself? Cuuuuute!

The pattern for the monkey rattle, in both Norwegian and English, is graciously shared by Kaptein Biff.

And if you can’t crochet – or can’t find your needles because you just moved – you can purchase a rattle from her Epla shop (if there are any in stock, they seem to sell the moment they are listed – but there are other designs as well, all equally cute, I might just die from the cuteness, actually).

Progress

October 19, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I got some art up on the wall in the kitchen. This wall is concrete and h*ll to make new holes in (we had to to anchor the whisky cupboards on the other side), so I just used the nails the previous owners had left. It works, though I would have rearranged the pictures (and lined up better) if I could do so easily. As it is, I suspect this is how it will remain.

The artwork is by various Trondheim-based comic book writers/artists (most by Mads Eriksen), and was purchased a few years back at an event in aid of a local comic showcase magazine. The husband had to work quite hard to convince me to stop at four, as they were (I thought) ridiculously cheap. The two in colour went for 300 kr, as far as I can remember, with the b&w ones going for less. Bargain!

The table and the one chair you can’t really see are inherited. My brother-in-law and his fiance had it before, and they painted it this dark blue colour, which is quite nice. However, especially on the table top it is quite worn by now. Also, the set (we had five more chairs, after some breaks I think we have four left) are originally teak (or at least teak-coloured), and I’ve been meaning to try paint stripper on one chair since we got them five years ago. Perhaps I’ll get around to it someday… They badly need recovering, anyway, so it would make sense to do both.

Catch of the day

October 17, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful 2 Comments

Possibly of the year.

This afternoon we thought we’d check out the flea market that was supposed to be at Stjørdal, and on the way there we stopped by Røde Kors-huset i Hommelvik where there was also a market happening. We browsed the furniture outside, but nothing really caught our fancy, then headed inside. The first thing I noticed, partly because it was right inside the door, was a loom. “Vev 350 kr” a note on it said. Well, I knew for a fact I didn’t have 350 NOK, and the husband had just remarked he didn’t have any cash, so I decided to browse the rest of the room. Nothing else caught our fancy, though, and as they had a sign up saying “bag sale from 1 pm, 50 kr a bag”, I figured they were getting to the point where they wanted to get rid of stuff. I checked my wallet and found I had a 200 kr note, so I thought i was worth a shot.

I’ll give you 200 for the loom – it’s all I have on me.

I guess by now you’ve realised that the answer was “OK”?

It’s what we’d call a “table loom”, as in you can put it on top of a table to weave. It also came with a stand, which we dismantled to get it in the car. All the essential pieces seem to be there.

Now, my mum actually has two looms (only one assembled, though), but they’re both pretty big. My mother-in-law also has a big one. So I can’t claim I needed my own to get to try weaving, exactly. However, having one’s own is obviously nice, it means I decide how to thread it. Since it’s pretty portable, too, I can take it to my mum’s to get her to help me and then take it home again to weave, if I was to “borrow” one of theirs it would mean sitting at their place to weave. Not quite the same thing.

So: Juhuu! All round.

Other than that it was mostly slim picking this weekend, though we managed 5 different flea markets. The on at Stjørdal was in an old hangar and was simply too big – or perhaps we were there too late and everything interesting had been sold? At least I couldn’t find anything worth buying. Saturday was somewhat better. Some books and some dvds, a couple of orphaned plates and a box containing 20-30 Bionicle figures (I haven’t attempted to sort though them to figure out just how many) for 50 kr, which has to be considered cheap. Oh, and a pair of Levis in the lass’ size for the humongous sum of 5 kr.

Mer skjerpings, vær så snill

October 17, 2010October 17, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

Altså. Hvis man skal blogge om interiør og design og i tillegg selge produkter innenfor denne varegruppen, kan man faktisk forventes å lære seg hva ordene man bruker betyr. Man skal aldri bruke fremmedord man ikke er adekvat* med, vettu. Derfor denne lille bloggposten i folkeopplysningens navn:

Retro = designet i gammel stil.

I motsetning til

Vintage = faktisk gammelt design.

Jeg er rimelig sikker på at ingen av disse stoffene er retro.

Dette er en noe essensiell forskjell, særlig fordi den skal fortelle leseren/kjøperen hvorvidt de kjøper noe som ble lagd i Kina for 14 dager siden eller som har vansmektet på noens loft i 30 år. Begge deler kan være kule, men det er en vesensforskjell.

Monogram = “sammenflettede forbokstaver i navn formet som et merke el. et ornament” (sitat bokmålsordboka)

Ingen av produktene i denne bloggposten er monogrammer.

Eksempel på monogram som vi muligens brukte i vårt bryllup (noe lignende var det i hvert fall, jeg føler at jeg kanskje burde huske dette…):

Fine steder å sjekke at de ordene man bruker faktisk betyr det man tror de betyr:

Bokmålsordboka på nett
Wikipedia

(I dette tilfellet vil jeg ikke anbefale Google, da det sikkert er mange nok andre som slenger i vei med ord de ikke egentlig kan til at søkeresultatene bare blir forvirrende.)

————————–

* For ordens skyld. Adekvat betyr slett ikke det det ser ut som ut fra setingen, men “dekkende, fullgod, samsvarende med”. Setningen er såvidt jeg husker en vits fra en gammel Pusur-dagbok. En annen variant, som benytter samme fremmedord, men i rett betydning, er “Hvorfor bruke fremmedord når vi har slike adekvate uttrykk på norsk?” Så sant, så sant.

Generell skjerpings etterlyses

October 15, 2010October 15, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

Mens Magnhild fortsetter sin Shabby Fredag-serie, til glede for noen og sikkert forargelse for mange, leser jeg interiøratikler i avisen. I dette tilfellet Adressa, som har vært på besøk hos Ingeborg Okkenhaug på Svartlamoen. Et ganske så sjarmerende hjem, skal jeg innrømme, selv om jeg er alt for glad i bacon til å ha åpne hyller på kjøkkenet.

Men å finne på billedtekster til slike reportasjer er tydeligvis ikke helt enkelt. Man finner, for eksempel, denne perlen:

Jakker på knagger? Jøss. Og hatter på hattehyllen, sier du? Det var virkelig orginalt. Og så jeg som alltid har oppbevart hattene mine i fryseren og jakkene slengt over tv’en.

Okkenhaug er designeren bak klesmerket Nordlys, som jeg såvidt har hørt om. Så da måtte jeg jo google litt. Jeg fikk litt alveoverload av nettsiden (altså, jeg synes det er ganske fint med “alveklær”, jeg, men det blit fort for mye av det gode), men denne jakken, for eksempel, den var da ganske kul?

Today’s flea market finds

October 10, 2010October 19, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

I think there might be a difference in shade on the two lengths, they seem to have faded unevenly, but I haven’t checked properly. The material is very summer curtainy, netlike, and not very versatile, but they were cheap and the print makes me happy.

I also bought a 1000 piece jig-saw puzzle, it was still wrapped in plastic from the manufacturer, so it seems likely all the pieces will be there.

Our new favourite shop

October 10, 2010October 10, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

For some strange reason it’s taken us months to check out Etikken, a new shop in the town center stocking organic and fair trade food, and recently also children’s clothes. Well, I suppose we can partly blame it on the moving thing, we’ve been trying to avoid buying stuff that would simply have to be moved.

This Saturday we had quite a lot of dry goods on the shopping list, and finally found our way to Kjøpmannsgata 51. I was quite prepared to be dissappointed, to be honest, but luckily my pessimism was put to shame. We got everything on our list, and more, much more, since it was a case of “Ooh, I’ve never seen that brand in Norway before, better get some!” and “Look, they have pinto beans! I’m buying the whole stock!” and “I’ll just have a look at the children’s clothes, too… Oooh, look!” and so on.

All the kinds of flour one could possibly want

We buy Wild Tracks direct from their website, but were glad to see it hanging prettily on the end of the shelves there, as that means we’ll have somewhere to send people when they want to try it – especially if they want to try something other than the darkly roasted espresso version we go for (because if that’s what they want, we just give them a bag).

What with meat and veg from the farmers market and most of our dry goods from Etikken, it’s going to be a lot easier to shop local, green and fair in the future. Yay for that.

Shabby fredag, og en kommentar om hvitt

October 5, 2010October 5, 2010 Mirthful 2 Comments

Jeg har ledd godt av Magnhilds “Shabby fredag” serie de siste ukene (foreløbig siste innlegg her). Jeg har jo, som nevnt, lest en del interiørblogger i det siste. Og for hver jeg har lagt til i google reader har jeg sukket og lukket minst to. For det er veldig mye shabby chic der ute. Og sånn romantisk fransk, helst stavet på fransk. Og pasteller. Og hvitt. Det er MYE hvitt. Man blir nesten snøblind. Og innmellom er det veeeeeeeldig mange bilder av omtrent samme saken.

Jeg mener, jeg tar en masse bilder. Jeg kan godt ta tjue bilder av samme ting. Og så tenker jeg at DET skal jeg blogge om. Og så kommer jeg aldri så langt. Eller, hvis jeg er heldig kommer jeg så langt, men husker ikke å finne fram bildene. Og hvis jeg er så usannsynlig heldig at jeg både husker å blogge og finner fram bildene samtidig har jeg sjelden tid til å bruke tid på å behandle bildene i særlig grad, utover å redusere oppløsningen. Og jeg har da i hvert fall ikke tid til å behandle tjue bilder av samme sak.

Hvordan gjør de det, egentlig?

Jeg, for eksempel, nøyer meg med sånt som dette:

Ja, hvitbalansen burde vært justert. Og jeg skulle kanskje ha flyttet unna litt rot før jeg tok bildet. Men jeg gadd altså ikke.

Jeg bruker kanskje tiden på å lese interiørblogger i stedet… Ikke vet jeg.

Og når jeg først er inne på Shabby fredag føler jeg at jeg kanskje skulle kommentert den tilsynelatende motsetningen mellom å sukke over mengden hvitt der ute og å male alt jeg klarer i egen leilighet hvitt… For det virker unektelig litt “flisen i min brors øye”-aktig. Jeg ser den.

Vel, ærede jury, her er saken:

Punkt A: Jeg er lat. Det er langt enklere å male alt hvitt, man slipper å vaske penslene (jeg bare pakker dem inn i aluminiumsfolie mellom hvert strøk/hver vegg) og vi trenger ikke kjøpe ett spann per rom/vegg. I tillegg slipper vi å stirre i timesvis på fargeprøver for å bestemme oss for om 1070-G10Y eller 1080-G30Y vil gjøre seg best, og vi kan spasere rett inn på OBS! Bygg og plukke med oss et spann eller to i stedet for å trekke kølapp og vente på at malingen ristes klar. (Det var det siste argumentet som overtalte mannen, forresten.)

Punk B: Vi har utrolig mye saker og ting. Vi har nok bøker til at de fleste veggene kommer til å dekkes med bokhyller. Og så har vi en og annen hyllemeterfull med whisky også. For ikke å snakke om et par bilder der rammen måles i m snarere enn cm som jeg gjerne skulle hengt opp. Og en del av den mindre typen også. Det kommer derfor ikke til å være så mye hvitt igjen å skue innen vi er ferdiginnflyttet.

Så det.

A propos hvitt, når jeg begynte å male dører oppdaget jeg at strien innenfor listene slett ikke var hvit, slik det så ut ved første øyekast, men lys blåbærsuppefarget.

Nå er dørene hvite.

Og jeg har fred i sjelen.

Painting, painting, painting

October 5, 2010October 5, 2010 Mirthful Leave a comment

Sunday I got some help with the painting — Søndag fikk jeg hjelp med malinga

Did I say painting? Perhaps I meant spilling? Oh, well, things got white, anyway.

I think she did quite well.

But, as with most instances where a three-year-old “helps”: I think it’d been quicker without her.

And I think I’ll need at least two more coats on this wall, despite probably managing with two overall on the others.

Ah, well. She had fun.