Handspun wool

How to transform this:

The sheep at farm Þorgautsstaðir before cutting the wool.

Into this:

Socks for Ketill´s Dad knitted of handspun wool.

One has to do this:

Me handspinning wool in the evening.

And a few weeks ago I learnt how to do this and am currently busy spinning two huge bags of white and brown and black wool.

Fullmoon winter night magic

Some weeks ago, I have been writing about the fullmoon lightening up the winter's night so much that I could enjoy a little run through this magic without using a flashlight. Now, the moon is full again and the wide landscapes are covered in glittering white snow, and this time I went outside with Gauti's good camera (and a lot of warm clothes) to catch the magic blue moonshine landscapes.
I present the bright Icelandic december night:

Yes, this picture has been taken at night! "Our" farm in the wide bright moonshine landscape.

The horse and the river.

A moonshine ghost!

Giljagaur

The second one was Giljagaur,
with his grey hair.
He strode over the creek
And interposed himself into the cowshed.

He hid himself in the stall
And stole the cream
While the stable woman had
a talk with the stable boy.

 

The story of the Icelandic Yule Lads

Now 12th December has arrived and the day has come to tell you about the 13 Yule Lads, my favourite Icelandic christmas story (a bit rough and wild).

While in many countries Father Christmas, the Christ child or Santa Clause arrive on 24th or 25th December with loads of christmas presents, the story goes a bit different in Iceland. Between 12th and 24th December thirteen half trolls come down the highlands and plague the farms. They try to steal food and goods and cause trouble. Every day one of them arrives until all of them will have come by Christmas Eve. Then, every day one by one they will leave until the last one will be gone on 6th January.
Their mother is the troll woman Grýla living in the mountains being a dread to the Icelandic children which she loves to eat. Her companion animal is the so-called Christmas Cat which will abduct and eat all children which haven't gotten any clothes on Christmas. The Yule Lads' dad is called Leppalúði, and he is basically a lazy guy who doesn't have much to do with the terror regime of Grýla.
It is said that the Yule Lads bring rotten potatoes to misbehaving children which they put into their shoes. These days, they have become a bit more friendly towards humans and bring little presents to the children. Children put their shoes into a window and during the nights when the Yule Lads arrive they will place a little present into them.

Troll woman Grýla chasing children.

Here is the saga of the Yule Lads (freely translated from the little book "Jólin koma"):

I want to tell you the story
of the Yule Lads,
which came down the hills to scare
us on our farms at home.

They were seen up in the mountains
- as many know -
in a long row
on their way down into the country.

Grýla was their mother
and gave them troll milk,
their father was Leppalúði
- they were bad creatures.

They were called the Yule Lads
- on christmas they appeared.
And they came one by one,
but never two at once.

They were thirteen,
Those gentlemen,
Who didn't want to make trouble
All at once.

To the doors they sneaked
And pulled the latches out.
And they were eager to search their way
Into the kitchen and pantry.

Sneaky on their faces
They hid here and there,
To do mischieve
When nobody was close.

And like this, though somebody saw them,
They did not hesitate
to frighten people - and disturb
their home peace.

Today, on 12th December, the first of them, Stekkjarstaur, arrived, and this describes what he is up to:

Stekkjarstaur came first
Rigid like a tree 
He sneaked into the sheepfold
and played with the farmer's sheep.

He wanted to suck the ewe's milk,
This was difficult for him,
Because the poor thing had feet stiff like wood
Stealing the milk didn't go well.

Stekkjastaur up to no good.

Sheep Christmas Tree Balls

Yeah yeah, I created my very first crocheting tutorial! :D
Look what I made, cute little sheep to decorate the christmas tree!
Had some fun today creating the tutorial. Drawing. Writing. Scanning. Pasting everything together in GIMP. (The amount of time this took is incredible.) And now I published it on knitter's/crocheter's platform ravelry. :)
Here you go, little cute sheep christmas tree balls to jazz up your christmas tree!

 

Longing for Akureyri

Summer has been very beautiful in Borgarfjörður with endless possibilities for hikes in low mountain ranges and creeks, journeys up the glacier Langjökull and cosy walks through the birch forest at Húsafell and along river Hvítá. Not to forget a few trips to the nearby highlands Arnarvatnsheiði (the Eagle's waters) and into four(!) lava caves.
Winter, however, in my opinion, gets soon a bit boring here. Mostly because of the constant "snow on off problem" here. Since october, temperatures have been constantly varying between several minus degrees and several plus degrees bringing snow which the next day transforms into rain which the next day transforms into ice and into rain again. The landscape seems constantly switching from brown to white to brown to white and so on. Which annoys me a lot. I am very much a "Snow, yes, as much as possible, and crispy cold, please!" person when it comes to winter. But I think I am quite lonely with this opinion here. So am I with my cross-country ski. The type I have are no "real" cross-country ski since they require trails in the snow. And "real" cross-country ski wouldn't work well here either because there rarely comes enough snow to build up a solid cover. A lot of long brown grass halms are sticking out here and there. Not to forget lots of stones.  I recently did a little cross-country skiing trial and it was okay but not especially fun. It doesn't get so funny when you have to make big steps over little unfrozen water streams and ski through snow drifts.
Iceland is not a big island, however, the climate varies quite a bit in the different areas. In winter, the South, Reykjavík and a great part of the West get lots of rain and occasionally snow while the North and East get snow which stays for a great amount of time. And this is what I these days long so much for. Especially with the long stretches of darkness. Snow does lighten up everything so much  more.
The little town Akureyri in the North, cuddled between mountains. holds the biggest skiing area of Iceland which is open from December to April. And they have cross-country ski trails! In the beginning of November I made a weekend trip to Akureyri which was great! While the landscape along the coastline was mostly brown characterized by dead grass halms, Akureyri and its surrounding mountains were white. I had chosen the bus for this trip (the long distance bus network of many areas of Iceland is not too bad!) and was on a cosy ride for four and a half hours through the brown-white-brown-white-brown-white landscape (read: brown lowlands, white highlands). In Akureyri I had enjoyed a few cosy walks through the little town's centre. Visiting the book shop Eymundsson which holds a good selection of Icelandic and English books which you may browse through while enjoying their good coffee and cakes. I walked along the water side looking at the propeller planes flying in and out of the fjord. I bought a handful of tasty things in the local organic grocery store (I get very happy when I find an organic grocery store in Iceland). I walked the stairs up to Akureyri church and enjoyed the view over the fjord and the lights of the town glowing in the dark. And when I was there I didn't want to leave again. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera (I was practicing "travelling lightly" and only took a tiny backpack with me. But travelling without a camera is defintely travelling too light for me.) So I did a thing which I hate: I took some pictures with the phone on the journey over Öxnadalsheiði, the highland valley that has to be crossed to reach Akureyri. At coastline the landscape had been brown. Half an hour and several metres of height later, it was like this (in typical phone picture bad quality):

The weather prophet forecasted roof diarrhea

A language with a grammar so complex that the brain knots itself and an incredible richness of words of which many mean many different things is literally made for making the most weird mistakes.

I seriously dipped into Icelandic while I was in Sweden. I was always able to pick up the Scandinavian languages in shortest time and spoke Danish very well and wasn't bad in Swedish either - but I felt very lost with the Icelandic. It's old and very complex, oh yes, but it's a Nordic language after all, with plenty of similarities to the Danish and Swedish, so why didn't it come to me? Why didn't I understand a single word of it? A language course in Stockholm helped me finally. I realized how much words can change. But they are still the same words.
Words change with case. There are four cases, so in the worst case your term changes in four different ways. And they might change a lot. So when your name is Anna it's worth knowing that people are talking about you when they say "Önnu". And when your name is Egill it's good to know that "Agli" is the dative case of your name and not an attack on your appearance (since "Agli" sounds like the English "ugly").
And it's good to know that a guy saying "svangur" and a girl saying "svöng" talk about the same thing: they are hungry. 

So with a little bit of basic grammar knowledge I threw myself into the cold water and started speaking Icelandic in April when I moved here. Well, some kind of Icelandic. With many mistakes. But actually it goes quite well in most situations.

However, I never encountered a language where it's so easy to make to most weird mistakes and ending up saying the most weird things ever to people.

Here are my favourites which I gathered since April.

The other day an avalanche came down the roof and I talked about "þaksniðurgangur" which translates directly as roof diarrhea. I innocently assumed the word "niðurgangur" (down going) could be used for anything which goes/comes down somewhere.

Also I tell people to "burn the car" instead of "starting the car". (kveikja í/kveikja á, one tiny word makes a whole difference!)

Once I told Gauti's Dad innocently that there soon will be sex instead of "It will become dark soon." ("mök" meaning sex but "mörk" in the Scandinavian languages meaning "dark" and West Germans can't roll the R ....).

One night on our way to Keflavík airport the car broke down and Gauti talked about getting a "leigubíl" which made me very confused because I knew that "leigubíl" means literally "rental car" and I asked "And what shall we do it with while we are abroad, just abandon it somewhere?" which made Gauti very confused. Till we found out that he was talking about a taxi (leigubíl) and I understood rental car (bílaleigubíl).

Then for some reason people started grinning a lot when I talked about the "veðurspákona", the woman saying the weather forecast. And to understand this you have to know that "veðurspá" indeed means weather forecast and "kona" woman but that a "spákona" is a prophet. So they might have assumed that I don't believe in meteorology but in weather prophecy.

A problem of mine is that I acoustically cannot distinguish between christmas (jól) and a bike (hjól), the only difference being one almost mute H which only Icelanders seem being able to pronounce. So it would be difficult to talk about wanting a bike for christmas when people understand you want "christmas on christmas" or "bike around a bike".

Last but not least it´s too easy to confuse greedy (grádugur) with horny (graður) and I might have done that and it's probably good I haven't been told.
......................
I stop now. The weather prophet talked about upcoming roof diarrheas and I don't want to provoke them by biking on christmas.

Häkelschäfchen

The title for today's blog post must be in German. Because I don't know any English expression which fits better. (Häkelschäfchen translates as "little crochet sheep" but it seems there is no single word for a little sheep in English unless sheepling is a registered term. Sheepling. Hm. I like sheepling.)

The world outside has transformed into blurry white and grey layers since a howling wind is blowing an endless amount of snowflakes from West to East. Indeed, it doesn't snow down from the clouds. The snow seems to come from everywhere but from upwards. And through those whitish grey layers the outlines of the landscape first become blurry and then disappear completely. Often this happens within just a few seconds. When we did a little hike to Húsafell's guestbook in a low mountain range the greyness surprised us. While the view was clear and the weather calm on our way up it changed very suddendly on our way down: just within a few seconds the grey wall came from the West and let the landscape under us disappear.
The weather forecast is talking about a wave of biting coldth (-25°C) arriving on Thursday and Friday. And an endless amount of snow on Saturday. (Yes yes yes!)

While snow, howling winds and biting cold take over the land it's cosy to spend time inside and craft. Craft craft craft. I got two skeins of handspun yarn from Rúna, which is an old lady living in a low house hidden behind some cliffs who is spinning and knitting. (A bit like in a children's story. She started teaching me how to spin yarn recently, but more about that in one of my next posts.) I am not sure what to do with the two beautiful skeins of wool yet which come from a white sheep and a brown sheep, so I started playing around with the crochet needle and a bit of the yarn ... and it became a little sheep which I really like! This is the reason for today's title, my Häkelschäfchen, my crochet sheepling. I really like his eyes. It might be a promising starting point for many knit and crochet products. And he is so fast to crochet!

Well, here he is, my Häkelschäfchen prototype:

Sheepling Häkelschäfchen fits well on a granny square.