astrid82

Summer vacation plans!

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:28:33 GMT

We have ordered flight tickets for our summer vacations this year - and we'll be going to Scotland!

Together with 3 other friends, my boyfriend and I will stay for 8 days, and do some sight-seeing in Edinburg, do some hiking in the Highlands and visit Isle of Islay (where we'll be going to a Whisky destillery or two...) I am really excited about this, we have been talking about making a trip like this for years, but when you are 5 people, some working and some studying, it's hard to find a time that fits everybody. But we managed this year :-)

If anyone has recommandations for things to do and see or stay, please let me know ;-)

Magical Quilt-blocks

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:03:50 GMT

I was planning on mailing the bushfire quilt project block I made last week, but I forgot to bring it to work the day I was planning on stopping at the post office at the way home. But that might have been a good thing, because now I have made another block to mail as well... So I'll be mailing the two blocks tomorrow, and post a picture of the new block when I stop being lazy ;-)

I do however have some pictures to show today. I have had these pictures at my computer since the weekend, but not gotten around to post them. I am making a quilt for the baby of my boyfriend's sister, which will be born in early July. I am using some patterns from the book Spellbinding Quilts (the ones below) and one or two of the patterns from sewhooked.

Bushfire quilt project

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:35:00 GMT

ofenjen wrote about the Bushfire Quilt project on the hp_paperpiecing site last week, and this weekend I made a star that is ready to be mailed :-) Since I have almost only done paperpiecing before I decided to try something new, and made wonky star. It was quite easy, so I think it was a nice block for me to make. And here is the result:

So now it's ready to mail - and it will be very fun to see it together with the blocks the others make in a finished quilt at some point :-)

Christmas presents

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:00:27 GMT

I was too busy before Christmas to post anything, but I have some pictures of Christmas presents I made that I wanted to post. So here they are - better late then never ;-)

This is a tablerunner - and I made two that were almost similar, one for my grandmother and one for my boyfriends mother. They both liked it :-)

One of my two sisters said that she needed a new apron, when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas. And when I had made the first one, I decided to make one for my other sister as well!

The pocket has a paper-pieced piece of cake, and it's actually a pattern that I made myself! I searched for a pattern like it, but could not find exactly what I wanted so I decided to try and make one myself. I'm pretty happy about how it turned out. The cupcake is simple applique, so that was a bit easier.

Although making Christmas presents made things busy before Christmas, I really enjoy making home-made gifts :-)

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:20:14 GMT

I spend some time crafting this weekend. I wanted to make something for the TLC craft-along, and thought it would be a good idea to send it a bit earlier than they required, since the mail might be a bit slow before the holiday season. And here are some pictures.

When I saw the new challenge for hp_paperpiecing - a Very Harry Holiday - I spent some time looking at the pictures of the Harry Potter blocks on sewhooked to get some ideas. And after a very short time, I decided what to do!

So I took the block with parchment (but mirrored, and printed at 150% to make it a bit larger then 5 inch)

Added some embrodery:

I later remebered that "Happy Christmas" might be more of a British thing, and that you americans might use "Merry Christmas" more. At least that's my impression. But anyway, this is Harry Potter -themed, and he is British :-)

So what did I make? Since there always are more owls arriving before Christmas, I decided to make something to keep all the holiday wishes in. So I ended up making a wall-hanging with pockets for Christmas cards. And this is the final object:

(The postcards are only put in for the picture.) I hope Doris will like it!

I also made some traditional Norwegian / Scandinavian paper Christmas ornaments. First some stars:

and then some Hogwarts-themed heart-shaped baskets to put on the Christmas tree and put candy in. (Unfortunately I could not find bronze-coloured paper, so I used the same paper as for the gold in Gryffindor.)

That's it! Hopefully I can get it in the mail before the weekend :-)
(ofenjen , I'll send you an email with the picture for the challenge )

A question about books and languages

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:49:09 GMT

Just a small question, because my boyfriend and I started discussing this at breakfast today, and I thought some of you might know... Is it only with Harry Potter that there are differences between the text in the US and UK edition, or is this common for other books as well? Is there for example a difference between a British and an US edition of "Lord of the Rings" or "His Dark Material" or "Twilight"?

Just wondering, since we usually order books from the UK amazon when we want books in English, because the postage is much cheaper. But would we get different books if ordered from the US amazon (other than different cover and maybe some different illustrations)?

Halloween

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 19:56:12 GMT

Halloween is not a big holiday here in Norway, however it has been getting more popular over the last couple of years. 5 or 10 years ago there were no kids going trick-or-treating - but now there are some. Last year one group of kids came by our apartment, and this year there were 4 groups - with better costumes as well :-)

So some friends and I decided to do something to celebrate Halloween a little bit. None of us really felt like having a party, so instead we had a quiet night with making dinner, carving a pumpkin and making treacle tart for dessert.

None of us really knew what treacle tart was before we made it - we had only heard about it from the Harry Potter books. But it sounds really good, so we decided to try it! And it was as good as it seems like from the books :-) The 4 of us almost managed to finish the entire cake!

More knitting

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:58:09 GMT

After I finished knitting the dishcloths for the swap, I couldn't stop :-)

First, I used up some old yarn that was laying around knitting hats. I made some of these this spring and the rest now. They are already in the mail to a yarn store in Oslo collecting knitted items for a charity, and will eventually find their way to an orphanage in Russia. I think they should be really warm, which I guess is good for the winter :-)

Some friends of mine had a daughter last week, and I have made her a little jacket. I started knitting this summer - it's nice to know if the baby is a girl or a boy in advance ;-) - and had it finished just in time. Since it's all knit stitches, and not a very complicated pattern, it was perfect to knit when watching TV. I watched the entire BBC Sense and Sensibility series while knitting this! And I am really happy about the buttons I found for it, I think they're really cute, and knew right away when I saw that they were perfect.

And finally, something for me :-) Since I saw this picture this summer I wanted to knit the hat Hermione is wearing. I had almost figured the pattern out by myself, when I found this pattern for free online, so I decided to use that instead. But I used a bit smaller needles so I had to adapt it a bit... Anyway this is the result:

I finished it over the weekend, and as it is already quite cold in the mornings here, so I can start wearing it right away! It was a really fun thing to knit, it's been a long time since I did anything with cables. Also, it was the first time I followed a knitting pattern in English, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be :-) Good to know when I am looking for new projects!

Dishcloth swap

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:59:48 GMT

I have now received all the dishcloths from the swap I was in,

In upper row, there is the dishcloth borrowed from the Hogwarts house elfs I received from hp5freak, and the dish clothes from
sunnyelf778 , cass_errol and ofenjen (with a really nice button). In the next row there dishcloths from
starytrip , jewells68 , lezlishae and a tudor rose from calypsobard . The last row shows a heart from archerpren and a dishcloths from karli_ratte . (I hope I managed to get this right ;-) )

They all look really nice - Thank you so much everyone. I am really looking forward to starting using them!

If anybody who received one from me would like to get the pattern, please let me know!

A broomstick

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:09:50 GMT

Finally a new block!

The colours are a bit of in the picture unfortunately, but I did not bother to get out my camera again...

small shoes...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:58:48 GMT

My cousin became a dad a couple of weeks ago, so I knit these baby shoes to give to them - and decided to post a picture here before mailing them.

I don't really understand how they can fit anybody, being so small, but my boyfriend - drawing on his experience as an uncle - say they should fit!

It was a nice and easy project - it's not often a I can finish a knitting project in just one evening :-)

The Whomping Willow

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:36:46 GMT

Finally I had time to make a new block for my Harry Potter quilt :-)

Rambling...

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:37:20 GMT

Finally I am having time for my own life, and not just work... But the conference I went to was great - it took place in Rome, Italy (a place where I had never been before) and although I spent most of the time there at the conference center I did have a couple of hours to walk around one day, so I got to see the Colosseum, the Vatican and the Trevi Fountain. And have a lot of really great italian food!

But now I want to have some time for sewing - fortunately I don't have a lot of things planned for this weekend! I've been away from my sewing machine for too long, I didn't know when I started that quilting could be addictive! Maybe they should start putting a warning on sewing machines ;-)

Invisibility...

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:24:04 GMT

Last week I made another block for my quilt, but I did not post it here at the time. But here it is...

I had quite a hard time choosing the fabric for this block - how to use muggle fabric to make an invisibility cloak? This is the result:

Since things are quite busy at work for the moment, I think it will be a while until I get time to make another block... But next week I will be going away for my first work-conference, and I am pretty excited about that :-) Even if it means I'll not have much time for other things than work the day the 800 words on the card from JK Rowling is published online...

New block

Sun, 25 May 2008 14:41:11 GMT

Some time and energy for sewing this weekend - fortunately ;-) - and the result is a new block:

I didn't get it to line up as perfectly as the last couple of blocks I made, but I'm still pretty happy with it. Now I'm off to enjoy the nice weather outside :-)

Stitching bookmark

Fri, 23 May 2008 21:06:12 GMT

I have had a cold these past few days, and spent most of the time after work on the sofa. So I needed a small project to do that was sofa-friendly - for when my eyes hurt too much from watching the screen on my laptop ;-) I've been online more than usual as well, which is why there is another update here...

So since my boyfriend is a huge Terry Pratchett fan, I decided to make him a bookmark that goes well with the Discworld books. But I think it will work for other books as well ;-)

I have not done a lot of stitchery like this before, but a lot of other types of embroidery (although not so much the last couple of years). But I really like it, and since the pattern is drawn on the fabric there is no need to count threads - as it often is in embroidery. So then it's perfect to work on while watching TV! I need something between my hands when listening to audio books or watching TV :-)