Colourful pillow case

Two weeks ago I learnt from a tutorial in the internet how to crochet granny squares. Those things are quite trendy right now and people make colourful blankets and pillow cases and bags with them. I had a pillow which lacked a pillow case and looked boringly white, so I tried my luck with those granny squares and did 32 of them which I sewed together. The result is a colourful pillow case which I really like a lot. And I found out that those granny squares are not difficult at all to crochet. Mine are of slightly different sizes though because I am not used to crocheting and tried out different ways to hold my hands resulting in some tight squares and some loose ones.
Here is the result:

Kill it, dig it, eat it on Christmas

Last night I made some new culinary experiences on my first Icelandic jólahlaðborð (translating as "Christmas loaded table", meaning "table(s) loaded with Christmas foods"). Those Christmas buffets are very common and popular in all the Nordic countries. In Denmark, one of the MUSTs on the Christmas buffet is a big bowl of the traditional risengrød (rice pudding) with one almond hidden in it. In Sweden you're eating through fish and meat pastries, cheese, pepparkakor (gingerbread) and lussebullar (Lucia cakes). Delicious, (more or less) civilized foods. And then you move to Iceland and it becomes different. Well, you still have every Scandinavian Christmas food on the table you can think of (apart from the lussebullar). Lots of them. And you eat A LOT. But then it gets weird when you have a look on the countless meat slices and ask: "Ah, what was this one again?" - "This? Oh, that's the digged lamb." - "The what?!" - "Oh no, THIS one! Sorry, that's the digged horse."
So it turned out that this is the tradition. Kill the lamb, the horse, the shark, the skate and dig them and let them rot in the soil for some time and when Christmas comes closer you dig them out and eat them (apart from the shark which has to wait until February)! Sounds crazy? Maybe it is. Maybe not because this is a Subpolar island and these traditions made people survive in earlier days. Eating rotten skate is a crazy thing, though, in my opinion. Very NOT tasty. However, a horse which has been lying in the soil for some time is tastes - believe it or not - quite good. I will forever think of this when I see an Icelandic horse. Hi horse. Maybe you will soon be lying under the soil and rot for a little while. And become a delicacy.

Hi horses. Now you're standing on the soil, but maybe they will dig you in it for Christmas?

Bright is the winter night

I guess you assumed that the winters in a place just below the Arctic circle are long and dark. That's very right. The long nights of darkness have long arrived, and every day the path of the sun approaches the horizon a bit more. Soon it will completely disappear behind the hills letting it cast its long shadow for more than a month on the farm. Short are the winter days in the Subarctic!
Nevertheless, a few days ago I experienced the brightest winter night I have ever seen in my life. It had been snowing and the skies were clear and the air was crispy. Then the moon rose from behind the hills. A big bright full moon. And it casted a lot of light on the snowy wide landscapes making everything glow in a light blue light. It was crazily beautiful. I immediately put on my warmest clothes and headed outside. The landscapes were so bright that I saw every detail in them. The brown long grass halms projecting from the snow casting long dark blue shadows. Foot prints of the Arctic fox. The white mountains in the distance. I took a moonshine run that evening. There was no need for a light, quite the contrary, it would have destroyed this magical blue atmosphere. I ran through the moonshine bathed landscapes followed by my own dark blue shadow. (You don't see your moonshine shadow too often, I realized. And that this might be only possible in tree-less landscapes.) And I savoured the moment so much that I decided not to disturbish it by trying to take a photo. Enjoy the wide, glowing light blue landscapes with its dark blue long shadows in your imagination.

An artist is an author is a knitter is an artist on volcano island

I spend a great amount of my time crafting (mostly knitting), and most of the time I do this alone and by myself. Yes, I like a lot to create alone, I like the calmness and the possibility to let my thoughts run free and being myself. However, sometimes it gets boring and I feel like I am missing out on inspiration. After all, I am on ARTIST ISLAND (it is, just ask the internet about the density of Icelandic book writers and bands and painters) and it is an island of knitters. So a few days ago I decided to reach out and start connecting with other crafters here in Iceland. There is a little yarn shop in the little town Borgarnes which organizes a knitting café once a week and I decided to be un-shy and drop by. I arrived half an hour late, so when I opened the door of the yarn shop I was looking into a round of women who immediately interrupted their conversations turning their heads looking who was at the door. (And there my "un-shyness" ended.) They welcomed me immediately into their circle and served me coffee and liquorice candies. Shyness is a term unfamiliar to Icelanders. (I like this though I sometimes have a hard time learning this.) It was interesting listening to what they had to see. They spend about half an hour gossiping about Keflavík, the international airport's town, telling each other how over-fancy it was and how people were competing about all the time who has the coolest stuff and how people had become weird there. (Actually this might be true, Keflavík is a pretty special place after all. It's built on the tip of a big flat lava field and there is nothing there - apart from endless flat lava, the sea and well, a fancy international airport, so how to NOT become a bit weird living there?). And when you see it from an "international" point of view, it's a bit hilarious listening to people from an off-road Subarctic volcano island talking about how weird people on this volcano island are. ;)
However, my favourite moment was when somebody pulled a book out of her bag and started reading it aloud to us. "Like in the old times", I thought, "when women have been sitting together knitting and listening to the sagas." The book was written by an artist called Ásta (there you have it: an artist is an author is an artist in Iceland) and once she was working as a driver on night shifts driving on the ring road. To keep herself awake she spun a story in her mind and when the time was right, she wrote it down and released three books recently. (Well, as far as I understood.) The chapter we were listening to was about a guy who was working at the road traffic department in some middle of Nowhere in North Iceland and one night, when a snow storm was blustering and he felt depressed, somebody came with a jeep from the highlands and lost control of the car and slipped into an ice cold river. The guy run out of his little hut, jumped into the ice cold water and managed the grap the injured jeep driver. "What to do?!", he thought desperately, holding the injured man being trapped in the painfully ice water. At this point, the woman who was reading the book decided this was enough for the day and closed the book leaving me with a big unspoken "HOW CAN YOU STOP NOW?!" question in my mind.
Anyway, maybe I have a chance listening to the continuation next time. I discovered how much I enjoyed it to craft in a circle of other crafters and being read a story. And this is how many of the evenings went in older times here on volcano island. You told stories. Stories, stories, stories.
Sometimes I think there is so much to discover for me on story volcano island and I even haven't been starting digging into it. And there is a big treasure to find in the Icelandic arts and crafts. 
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By the way, here is what I made in knitting café:

My first crocheted granny squares.

These crocheted little "granny squares" are quite trendy at the moment among crocheters/knitters, and you can sew them together to a blanket or a pillow case. (I just taught myself how to make them. Thanks to the great amount of resources on the internet.)

Halloween kids

"Halloween accident kids."
This is how I call them, the three puppies that were born on 31st October in Gauti's family's house. They are accident kids indeed. Their mom, a lovely Border Collie/Icelandic dog lady, became unexpectedly and very fast pregnant in the beginning of September. Halloween's Day then brought a snow storm and three tiny cute puppies. A boy and two girls being a mixture of Border Collie, Icelandic dog, Irish Setter and Labrador. They are drinking milk all day long at their mom's teats, sleep, clumsily move around their mom and make cute guinea pig sounds when they miss a teat. I took some photos of the cuties yesterday.

The beautiful mom Tása with her three puppies, four days old.

I'm tired! The little girl felt asleep half a minute after we took her.

The little boy sleeping in Gauti's hands.

Very sleepy puppies: the other girl napping in the air.

I am cute and I know it!