Me and my man and............

Last summer we walked happy and smiling out of the church when DD1 got married.

And later in the summer we became the proud grandparents of a.................

FROG

Who is the most beautiful frog in the world.

And the son of DD2. 

Now, I have two sons and I have, ever so gently, told them that I would not mind if they met lovely ladies that were already mothers.

I LOVE BEING A GRANNY or as we call it  in Iceland AMMA!!!

                                Sunna amma.

Road trip.

This is Iceland, some say it looks like some sort of a beast.

And I live almost on the top of the head of the beast.

In Bolungarvik, on a farm just outside the town.

Here is the town and opposite it you can just about see few houses, that's our farm.

So, if you look at the map on top you can see that when I drive to the city I can choose two directions to get to the main (circle) road, lots of high lands and very bad dirt roads on the Southern part of the Westfjords or drive in and out, in and out............. all the fjords on the Northern road. Which is the road we usually choose.

Why am I telling you this, well my mother fell and broke her arm. At first she didn't want me coming, but then she changed her mind a few days later and I got the royal summons. Up in my car I went and drove to the city in a bit of a hurry, I needed to get there before the weather turned bad. I ended up staying for a week as the weather was not cooperating when I meant to drive back home.

My mother is doing well and I used the opportunity to bring her the quilt I made for her 75 birthday. she likes it very much.

The back is the rest of a flannel duvet cover (double size) that I bought at a sale years ago and have been saving for "that" special quilt. Makes for a warm and cuddly throw.

While staying in the city I bought all the Christmas presents, I was so last minute last year and don't want that to happen EVER again. Then I did some hemming for my mother on her old Bernina.

This machine is 50 years old and had been deemed beyond repair (from much use) some 15 - 20 years ago. Two years ago I told my mother about the repair man I use (in the city) who had told me he (with no charge) looked at machines and gave people estimates of repair cost and if it would be wise to repair them. 

So off my mother went and left her beloved machine with the man who later phoned and said the machine sure had some wear and tear, but that it had some year still to go. My mother got it back with little cost and I could hear the smile in her voice when she phoned to tell me she was sewing on her old friend again.

When I drove back home the weather was just beautiful and as I was unusually early on my way I decided to stop in Borgarfjordur (not one of the Westfjords) and have a look at the waterfall Glanni that I've wanted to see for years. I drove of the main road and parked at an empty parking lot and walked this nice path.

The land around me was beautiful moss grown lava, my favorite which I truly miss since moving to the Westfjords, they are the oldest part of Iceland and there is no lava there.

Moss and birch, beautiful any time of the year. Although I personally love it most when it's misting in the early summer.

Then I got to the place where you can view the waterfall. 

Huh, I have to admit it was a bit of a let down, it's so small. But still quite pretty.

On my way back to the car I had this beautiful view of Baula, one of Borgarfjordur most famous mountains.

Luckily I had my "mittens" with me because it was rather cold, but the walk did me good and was worth it.

Here I am approaching another fjord, Gilsfjordur has a bridge over it near the opening of it and a BIG thanks for that. 

Later when I was driving towards the highlands you have to cross to get to the fun in/out, in/out............ fjords it felt like I was driving into the sunset. Notice the hard packed snow on the road, there was much more than this on the high land road when I drove to the city.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I came up on the top of the road.

Here the sun had worked it's magic.

But as you can see it was cold up there. Ignore the dirt please but notice the time, it was getting dark and it's almost one and a half month until winter solstice.

This old hut was used by travelers of the old days as a resting place and shelter from bad weathers. The side walls are made of rocks, the front, back and roof of wood. On top of the roof is turf for warmth. This is how houses were made in Iceland and as there was so little of wood most roofs had only wood beams and then layers of turf. These houses didn't last very long so they were rebuilt over and over again. I don't know who takes care of this hut but it is in good repair, apart from broken windows. Some people just can't leave things be.

Okay, I'm down from the highlands before it's totally dark, which was what I'd hoped for, in this photo I was looking towards the bottom of Isafjordur (not the town which is in Skutulsfjordur) and this is the last photo I managed to take. It got to dark for my camera, but the weather was beautiful and my drive through all the fjords was magical, I saw a star crash as we call it and when it exploded there was one big red spark and one big green and then many yellow. Just WOW. And the Northern Lights. Sadly, not matter how I tried I could not get my camera to focus on them. I really need to learn to use it.  

Update, sorry, but you can't click on the charts and the photo of Bolungarvik I uploaded from the net to make them bigger. 

                             Sunna.

  

Pattern tester

Yes, I have become one, for Iowa Star Quilts.

This is a top I made late last spring for Cynthie. It's called Fenced in Bears and was much fun to make. I reversed the pattern for my top so the bear paws are light in my version, I think this would be a beautiful quilt in scrappy one color with light background.

I quilted it before the retreat and bound it by bringing the back over to the front. I've never done that before and am not sure I'll ever do it again.

Shortly before I quilted it my mother gave me this beautiful star fabric she found at Good Will. It had been a table topper in it's former life and fit just perfectly, there were maybe 1/2" scraps left after I was done sewing the binding down.

BUT, because the stars are painted on the fabric pushing the quilt around under the needle while quilting was unbelievable difficult. It was like pushing a baby stroller with the breaks on. I learned my lesson and will never use a painted fabric as backing again.

This quilt used up a lot of my 2 1/2" strips and squares, but somehow the box never empties.

                      Sunna.

Top done - Love it

Finishes and one WIP

Here are a few quilts I've finished in the summer. The first one is my Iceland History quilt. I'm in a charity quilt group on the internet and I did this quilt as a Block of the Months for the ladies there. Every block's name has a reference to the time period and the topic of that month's lesson. I set the blocks in Attic Window frames (of darkness and snow, it was after all December when I was finishing the top) as we were looking through the ages.

The back is an old duvet cover a friend of mine gave me.

Last year I finished up few quilts with blocks from swaps, this year I'm doing the same. Those blocks are since 2011 or 2012.

The back was a table topper I think, got it in Good Will.

Winter Attic Windows swap since 2011 I think. I still have to quilt the Christmas Attic Windows, I can't settle on a pattern. Sigh.

The back is an old table topper from my mother, I quilted swirls on this quilt because they remind me of the cold winter wind. DD2 fell in love with this quilt and claimed it for her son. It will be kept here so we can cuddle under it reading books when he gets older.

And lastly, I'm reading a wonderful, fun blog these days and it says there (in 2010) that progress photos should be included. So this is what I'm working on now between blog reading, blogging and as little household work as I can get away with.

This is a mystery from Seattle and a challenge for me as I've never done a two color quilt before. Sure I've done quilts with only two colors, but there has always been neutral background too. 

This is for my mother, she turned 75 a week ago and she chose the colors. Purple and moss green. I did not take any photos until today, it looked very chaotic at first and I will not tell you about the talks I had with myself and my mother in my mind. But I'm actually loving how it's turning out, really, I'm so glad the feeling I got when my mother named the colors proved true.

                   Sunna.

Autumn

This young fellow has been christened. 

Guðmundur Högni

(Gudmundur Hogni)

After his grandfathers.

Sleep is good.

WHO is this woman? always with a camera in my face.

+

Autumn is coming to an end as we are having the first  winter storm today. Round up is done, slaughtering and the tiring meet work is over, I just love freezers full of meat.

And the autumn retreat. Fun, fun, fun.

Here are a few photos to show you what was going on.

Oddny showed us this finished quilt she was working on at our spring retreat. (Only needs binding in this photo)

This was a short mystery on Friday night.

Sigrun has recently finished this top, a 12 years old UFO.

Johanna finished putting this top together that she started working on at the spring retreat.

Syta is making this one from a pattern from GE Desing.

And finally, swap blocks from 2009 that I wanted out of the box. I have since added one more row to make it longer and borders, when finished I will hopefully have seen the last of the fabrics in the Hour Glass blocks

The blocks in this top came from Arizona. From a member in an internet charity group I'm in. There are more blocks, but I wanted to play with this layout first. I think it would have been prettier with a sharper green in the shasings and borders, but it what it is. 

Lastly, I made progress on this top and got help in figuring out the size of the setting triangles. I also bought the perfect fabric for borders for this quilt. I will try to finish it before the end of the year, I plan to make it a late graduation quilt for a young girl, friend of ours that graduated from collage/high school last spring.

There was loads more going on, I just wasn't active enough with the camera. I thought it just splendid to upload the photos for this post while reading up on other blogs, not so. It took forever to upload and I'm actually very tired and cranky by now. Bed it is then.

                 Sunna.

Gas pollution.

If you didn't know it I can inform you that Iceland has lots of volcanoes and one is erupting at the moment. Although we are very far from the eruption it has started to affect our life.

With this.

This is a more normal view (although a bit cloudy) from the same direction.

On to quilty matters. Last winter I was involved in a constant "battle" with DS2 about MY sports bag. Every time I was going to the swim aerobics I had to look for my bag and empty men sports things out of it, phew, the smell of the shoes. So a solution had to be found, buy a sports bag for DS or sew me one. I didn't really have to think very hard about it.

I decided to make the bag in such way that DS would never get caught in the open carrying it. I also wanted to make it sturdy and long lasting so this was a perfect opportunity to use some of my thicker fabrics that have come to me from many different sources.

Here are the fabrics I used, no pattern, just made it.

And the result, it has never been used by anyone but me. YESSSSSS.

And lastly, I'm busy baking for the Christening celebration this coming Sunday when this beautiful boy will be given a name.

Infectious smile.

                         

                           Sunna.