Grateful

This post is a bit different from the usual things I write about - the reason: reading a young mothers blog, who has cancer and doesn´t know if she is going to live to see her 2 children grow up, really made me think about my own life and feel so very grateful for what I have. Reading about problems like this young woman has, always makes me feel like I don´t have any real problems or things to worry about... it also motivates me to keep on following my big goal: doing things I´ve always wanted to do and never had the time to do until now.

I´m thankful for: my good health - every moment I spend with my two wonderful boys that make me smile every day no matter if we are together or apart - for my best friend and husband - for my family: parents and 3 sisters - for my home, even if it´s getting much too small for the 4 of us :-) - for my wonderful and loyal friends that have always been by my side, even if I´ve spent 11 years in another country - for my husbands good job that he has kept throughout the crisis...

I´m also grateful for all the small things in live like good food, a cup of coffee all alone in the morning when everybody has gone to kindergarten and work, the sound of the raindrops falling on my balcony, the smell of icelandic wool, sauna, a walk by the ocean.. there are so many things to be happy about - you just have to notice them!

What are the big and small things you are grateful for in your life? Spending a couple of minutes thinking about this, might make your day... 

my love...

   

a walk by the ocean... 

 

good food... 

 wool...

Madder root and mustard yellow

At the moment I´m working on several projects at the same time like always... last weekend I started a new shawl, Hyrna Herborgar - a shawl I´ve made once before together with RodPrjonar and Gummi. I really love this pattern - it´s quite quick for a lace shawl, looks so beautiful when finished and it´s a traditional icelandic design. I´m using icelandic lace (einband) dyed by myself with madder root. It really is amazing how much colour you get from madder root - this yarn was the 4th dye... and all in all I dyed about 6 times with the same material. How amazing is that??

madder-root-yarn and my Hyrna Herborgar:

I´m also still working on my crochet-skills - and I´m happy to say, that I'm starting to develop a good sense for my crochethooks. What I like about crochet is, that once you´ve finished a piece, you´ve got the feeling that you´ve really accomplished something special... maby it´s because I'm a beginner in this field?
Yesterday I learned how to make a new square, using a chart from this site. I used cotton yarn in mustard-yellow (from Söstrene Grene), because I've got a thing for this colour at the moment... It might turn into a pillowcase once I´ve finished more of those - I´m thinking of joining 2 different kind squares, using this mustard yellow together with grey... just love that colour-combination!

 my new square:

pretty colours: 

Have I already mentioned in this post, how much I like mustard yellow at the moment?  Because of that, I just couldn´t help myself and started a new kind of collar, using this yarn ;-) I´m very excited to see how it turnes out...

my new collar in progress:

Seaglass

Growing up in the West-side of Reykjavík near the ocean, I loved to play at the beach. Every beach is different, with it´s different kind of shells, conches, seaweed, stones... and if you are lucky enough: seaglass! I used to pick seaglass at my favorite beach, just 5 minutes away from my home and fill bowls and dishes with those beauties. There ist just something very fascinating about it - so soft, polished, wonderful colours...

I had almost forgotten all about it, when Freyr´s preschool teacher mentioned it the other day, telling me how much fun she had with her son, picking seaglass at the beach, where I used to spend so many day´s of my childhood. On the following weekend I decided I had to do the same thing with Freyr and Bidenam. The two of them where really enchanted and Freyr even screamed: "this is so much fun".

Now we have 2 pretty jars, in the livingroom, filled with seaglass. The boys love to take the colourful glass out and make patterns out of it, just holding it in their hands, looking at it... like I said: there really is something fascinating about seaglass! In the beginning I wanted to make something out of it together with my boys (mobile, candle-light-jars or mosaic-pictures)- but maby we´ll just keep it in the jars - we really love it that way!

My boys at work:

F. showing me the seaglass he just found:

Serious Bidenam picking seaglass:

wonderful patterns in the sand:

we also found some cheramics, tiles and other pretty stuff...

Our seaglass-jars:

Lucky me and my boys, together at the beach of my childhood:

Hama pearls and plötulopi

The other day it was my mothers birthday and we decided to make our own birthdaycards for her. I´ve told you before that I really love making my own birthdaycards, but this time we wanted to do something very special and totally different. Inspired by all the wonderful Hama-pearls-projects on Pinterest we came up with this:

I made this one - a classic star from the beautiful icelandic patternbook

"Sjónabók"

Freyr (4 y.) made this pretty thing:
Bidenam (5 y.) made this free-style-Hama, I really don´t know why, but it´s a shoe :-) He thought a lot about the colour-combination!

Of course, we had a lot of fun, crafting together - but what I also liked about the Hama-pearls was, that it really helped my boy´s working on their patience!

We gave my mum/grandma this (among other things) mason-jar-crochet-candle-light, I used my own hand-dyed einband (blueberries)

At the moment I'm working a lot with plötulopi, or icelandic unspun wool from Ístex. The interesting thing about this material is, that it is so versatile. You can use as many threads as you want to: just one thread (single) and than you get a feather-light but at the same time very warm garment that you can wear underneath every jacket or coat. If you use two threads, your garment becomes similar to léttlopi (worsted weight), three threads are similar to Álafosslopi (bulky) or just as many as you want to, depending on your project... the fun thing is, that you get really interesting colour-combinations if you use thread in different colours - like in this hat:

7 threads of plötulopi and 1 thread of einband (lace) in 2 different colours - very warm, bulky and cozy and the colour is so very alive!

It has also been very popular to use one strand of plötulopi and einband (lace) together. I´ve never quite understood why that´s any different from using 2 strands of plötulopi or léttlopi - until now. I just finished my first project, using this yarn-combination and now I really do understand why it´s so popular - for many different reasons:

1. single, unspun plötulopi is very fragile while knitting and splits very easally. One thread of the much stronger einband (lace) solves the problem.

2. Using einband opens up endless possibilities in colour-combinations! This way I get the possibility to use my naturally-dyed einband, since I can´t dye the fragile plötulopi with plants like I did here:

1 thread light grey plötulopi and einband, dyed with rhubarb.

3. This yarn-combination is so much lighter than I thought - it´s nothing like léttlopi. It´s feather light, but at the same time very warm and will last for a long time because of the strong einband.

4. It has a wonderful texture... I just love it! It might even become my favorite plötulopi-yarn-combination!!

Homemade pesto

There is nothing like homemade pesto... once you´ve tried it, there is no more turning back - promise! The best thing about pesto is, that it´s really simple, quick and it´s almost impossible to do something wrong. It´s also very versatile: try using some walnuts or pistachios instead of pine nuts and you have a totally different tasting pesto.

I´ve never used a recipe and just been trying out my own combinations. But yesterday I wrote down a recipe for my pesto for the first time ever... just for lucky you!

How to use it:
Of course, pesto is perfect with pasta, on fresh bread (f.eks.. bruschetta), on your sandwich together with some veggies, marinated chicken (I really recommend it for grilled chicken-breast - what a perfect combination!), marinated and grilled feta-cheese (wrap it in alufoil and grill it - yummi!!) , mix it with yogurt and you have a really tasty cold sauce or do it like my husband and older son: just eat it with a spoon if you love it like they do!! :-) (they call it "frog-sauce"/froskasósa because it´s so very green)

You get a lot of pesto (at least I think it is a lot) using my recipe, but if I make this sauce, I really like to make a lot of it at once and use it for different things...

Ruccola-basil-pesto:

75 g ruccola (1 bónus-ruccola-poki)
100 g basil (2 pakkar)
50 g pine nuts (1 poki)
200 ml olive oil
80 g fresh parmesan (rúmlega hálft stykki)
8 garlic cloves (more or less depending on your taste)
salt and pepper

Put those ingredients in a blender (or food processor) and mix them up until the blend looks smooth and yummi...

Of course you can just use only basil and leave the ruccola out. The reason why I started using ruccola for my pesto is simple: in Iceland, basil is really expensive. Ruccola has a very special and strong taste... just perfect for pesto... I´ve even tried using only ruccola and left the basil out - it really tasted good too and not bitter at all.

Please tell me if you try my recipe out and how you liked it!!! :-)

my knitting-project at the moment:

Cardigan-restyle and still knitting

Do you have a sweater (or maby more than one), that´s too short and too tight? Well... some months ago, I found a new blog I really love: "Delia creates" and a very cool post (good tutorial) about a cardigan conversion (here). What a creative lady!

Ever since I read this post, I´ve been looking for the perfect sweater for this project and the other day, I finally found one and only paid 200 icelandic krónur for it!! Since I love lace, I had to add some, which makes the cardigan very feminin and girly - and the best thing is: wearing it feels like summertime! I really like the way my new cardigan turned out - it´s a perfect match for my IKEA-dress I showed you in my last post...

my cardigan before:

after:

ahhh... lace and pretty buttons! (It was my first time, making buttonholes)

love my new cardigan... thank you Delia!!!

on the inside: I was thrilled to be able to add some owls... :-D

I also wanted you to know, I´m still knitting like crazy, I just can´t show you anything just yet... but here you have a glimpse of one of the things I'm knitting: