My birthday girl from yesterday.

I was going to make this post yesterday but there just wasn't the time. Twenty years ago this beautiful girl came in to this world five weeks early. That did not hold her back in any way. She is an extremely determined character, but most of the time you can talk her around. I can't find her box of photos, it's in a moving box somewhere that won't be unpacked until she moves in with her big brother so my photo choices were limited.

"I can SO use little sister as a doll"
(Three years old)

Here she is with her big brother, two years old at Christmas wearing her wedding dress.


That look on her face says it all. Wearing her Icelandic costume at Christmas 1994.


Confirmation spring 2003, here she's wearing another kind of an Icelandic costume. The jacket was her great grandmothers (on her fathers side) and she was absolutely not going to wear it, having a big bow on her chest like some ridiculous clown. No way.

So we compromised, she would wear it at the ceremony and later for the celebration she could wear a beautiful lace dress over white quart trousers her granny made for her. She got so much attention at the church and comments even from people she did not know about how gorgeous she was in the costume that she ended up wearing it for most of the day.


I took this photo last May when I was in the city and took her to my favorite pizza place.


And here she is at my favorite hamburger place, wearing my glasses so she could see her "teachers look". What a change.


We had a fine party yesterday evening with family and friends, but of course I forgot to take photos. Same old story. Lol. Happy birthday Steina.

Sunna.

Autumn weather.

When we got up this morning we saw this looking out the window. Not something we are used to on July 24. It got me thinking about the man who named our country Iceland. Floki Vilgerdarson came here in the summer of eight hundred something and because there was so much fish in the fjord they stayed in (in the western parts of Vestfirdir) they got busy fishing instead of making hay, so in the winter all his animals died. The next spring was a cold one and when he once walked up on a mountain and saw over the northern fjords (where I live) and saw ice on the sea in the fjords he named the land Iceland. What are you willing to bet he was not in a good mood at the time. I know the man was a great viking, but what a looser.


The snow will hopefully be gone tomorrow as it's supposed to get warm again after today. Our cows were so happy when we let them stay indoors last night and this morning after milking most of them layed down, a clear hint: We are so not going out today. Lol. I've never understood men that insist on letting the cows out in a cold weather just because it's summer. And when the cows get sick those men get angry ... at the cows. What a loosers.

Today is a perfect day for sewing and reading, my favorite things.

Sunna.

I'm done, haymaking that is.

Yep, we finished just before one in the morning (today). Two weeks, it's never gone so fast before and with no rain in cut grass and all the hay got a lot of sun it it. We are very happy and also a little out of steam or something, waking up this morning to loads of sunshine and no hay work, it just wasn't normal. Lol. We are usually beating rain by minutes (or not) finishing it all.

I can't find the memory card for my camera, note to self: do not loan my camera unsupervised to my DD1. lol. So I can't show you what I've bin up to in my spare moments (often during minor but very annoying break downs repairs) Instead you get to see what was intended as my vegetable garden. I made this space one summer next to the stable where it gets sun most of the day, ready to use the next summer, but... here comes the but. Our dog was so happy with the new private place I had created for her, I swear that corner was covered white with her droppings the next spring, and all the springs since. Yikes, I will never put an edible thing in that garden, well apart from the Chives that grow near the wall and are always clear. Maybe she doesn't like the way it smells. And the strawberry's grow in a rectangle made of wood which the dog leaves alone too.

The photo was taken in late June and the lavender? colored flowers are almost done blooming now. I have not bin able to find the English name for them or the other flowers behind them, but there are three roses also scattered around there.


And what I've bin up to... I love scrap quilt mystery's and have done two of Bonnie's, then last winter I saw another one at Mary's (you can see it finished in March 31 on her blog, so beautiful) and wanted so much to do that too, but where Bonnie is all about 1.5", 2", 2.5" and 3.5" strips, Cynthia, the creator of this mystery uses mostly 2.3/4" strips so as I've bin doing a much needed cleaning out of my sewing room I've bin cutting strips in that size as I refold and put my fabric in a new storage place. I don't really have much fabric but when I figured it was time to fold the strips (sorted in to colors) I got a bit of a shock.... Well, that's okay, there is already a new mystery started. Lol.

Now I'm off to milking, but if I beat Hubby to the computer this evening I will answer comments and e-mails and do some blog reading. I've really missed that and the friends I've made here.

Sunna.

Hay making and a difficult bird.

We are very busy making hay now. Finished the fields on our farm a few days ago. Then it rained for two days so today we started cutting the grass on fields we rent from another farm (where there is no farming anymore) and hopefully we will be able to go straight on to another farm where we rent two fields because they're not needed by the farmers there.

Later we will start cutting on a farm that belongs to the town (no farming for years). We cut most of the fields there too. So lets hope there will be no rain. Please.

I want to tell you about one of the birds that make our job a bit harder and that's Kria or Sterna paradisaea, the English name is Arctic Tern. It's a beautiful bird as you can see here and here but it always amazes me how they can year after year lay their eggs in the most difficult (for us) and fatal (for the chicks) places. Here is one egg almost on the road.



And here is the parent, I could not get a photo of it attacking me, they are very aggressive when parenting.


Hubby doesn't like them at all (one had just taken a dive at him there), but I saved two little chicks (one was wet, just out of the egg) from the field and the thanks I got was droppings on my head and shoulders. Come on, where is the gratitude? Lol. Well at least they didn't peck at my head.


Those are our hay cutting machines. My tractor is a Case 575 or 585, never can remember which and hubby's is a Massey Ferguson 690.


Here is DS2 on another MF. Hubby made that one out of two broken down tractors (we bought just the parts we needed), the front part is an 265 and the back is 500 something. The machine is for turning the hay so it will get dry. This photo and the ones above are taken this evening. (About 10 o'clock)


But the following photos are taken after midnight almost a week ago. First is DS1 driving the MF 265 / 500 something. I don't know the name of the machine but it makes the hay go in to lines.


Then comes hubby driving the MF 690 with the baler. (He's fixing some minor glitch there)


Followed by me and my Case with the wrapper.


Then we had friends over from another farm. They had a problem with their baler and had borrowed our old one which had then broken down (after baling over 100 bales) So, it was conference time. You know, men and broken down machinery. An endless fascination.


Well, they figured out what was wrong with their baler, it wasn't really broken, just needed another way of working through the hay lines. So the conference payed off. We came home at two thirty in the morning and I was absolutely bone tired.

I've bin off the computer and will be for some time to come, but that's life.

Sunna.

One more swap.

I've joined another swap group on yahoo. It's new and started with a launch swap that twenty women signed up for. We were split in to two groups of10 and are to make one 12" block for each swapper in our group. We choose the pattern and the fabric.



I put my blocks in the mail today. I wanted to make a difficult pattern that I've longed to do for some time and five blocks were like that. Called All Hallows Variation from quilterscache.com



Then life got overly busy, first I had to finish a graduation quilt with another one popping up at the last minute, a sudden wedding with 12 quilted table mats (partly paper pieced, yuck) for a present and my DD1 got mono last winter and with it her tonsils went berserk so they were removed 10 days ago. (At a hospital in the city)

Here she is before the operation with her new dark hair. I know she's not happy with me saying this but I want my blondie back. And I know the t-shirt is just awful, DS2 thought it was such a great joke and bought it, then grew so fast that it got to be to small for him. My girls use it when working on the farm (Their aunt really hates seeing them in it so they make sure to wear it all the time) Lol.


She was by the book in getting most of the problems that follow a tonsil removal. Could not keep food or pain killers down and on the fifth day (after she got home) she started bleeding and had to go to the hospital (in next town) for 48 hours where she got much needed nourishment and meds. (Liquid in a vein)

Although she's almost 20 years old and very mature we found it so hard knowing how bad she was feeling and we were not with her. She's getting better now but has lost 4-5 kilos and is so pale and her voice is so different and thready that people are always thinking she's about to cry. And that really makes her grumpy. Lol.

Anyway, back to quilty matter, I thought I was falling on time so I made five more blocks using another much easier pattern. This one is named Album, also from Quilterscache.com although I changed the dark/light setting a bit. I hope the blocks will arrive in USA before July 15.



I got a letter from Germany in June that had bin 28 days on the way and another from Canada that took two months to get here. Oh, and then one that took three months to travel from Canary (Spain) duh. Well okay, that one had taken a sight seeing tour to Finland but still....

Sunna.

In an after thought I think it's best to mention that I got lots of mail from Canary (my mom) that took only just over a week to get here, also three other letters from Canada and one from the Netherlands that arrived after a normal length of time. Also got a packet from USA days before some Canadian ladies got theirs that were mailed out at the same time. So there. Can you tell I'm a Libra. Lol.