Quimper Hittys

After the torrential rains, mushrooms burst out wherever we looked!

We went for a lovely walk…

…and saw all kinds of fungi…

…including poisonous ones…

…gigantic ones…

…and littler ones.

It was really really nice to meet up with my cousin again. We looked through some old photos and I “met” some of my other relatives…this group (I think from the 1920’s) was photographed in Katrineholm.

My cousin’s wife invited me to accompany her into the forest…

…where Arianell and Coriander helped us…

… scooping berries up with an old metal berry scooper.

We picked over 800 grams…

…and made them into delicious Lingonberry jam!

That was the last day of our trip, the next day we drove to Stockholm’s Årlanda airport, stopping about halfway there in Katrinehnolm where the old photo was taken.

There we found a really lovely little wool and fabric shop, and I bought another ball of sock yarn for knitting on the plane. I admired these socks, knitted by the proprietor or her mother who knitted all the models in the shop. The very kind proprietor made me a copy of the pattern (in Norwegian!) so I shall see what I can do with it this winter.

That’s the end of our trip to Sweden! We started in summer, but it is definitely autumn now. Birch leaves have started turning yellow and swirling down from the trees, and braided skeins of geese are flying south honking. Time for us to fly too – it has been just wonderful, but as the Swedish saying goes “ Borta bra men hemma bäst” or “away is nice but home is best”

Bye for now!

I bought a Zauberball of crazy sock yarn when I was was at the beginning of my trip to Sweden…cast on and knitted…

…finished them while still on the Juno going through the Göta Canal…

…and carried them around until…

…I could give them to my cousin when I visited him at his home in Vreta Kloster yesterday.

With the leftover (scrap) yarn, and by knitting here and there, I knitted one little…

…two little…

…three…

…very little baby socks. By knitting a bit in the evenings…

…and knitting a bit in the mornings …

…I eventually ended up with…

…almost four baby socks. “Almost” because I hadn’t finished the fourth sock before posting for Scrap Happy Day, but I am sure I will get it done before we leave Sweden in a couple of days.

ScrapHappy is a group of bloggers (links below) who post monthly about using up scraps! All genuine scraps are allowed, and any material. Blog posts are published on the 15th of the month – I really love to see what people are doing with bits and pieces saved from the scrap heaps! If you think you’d like to join the group, contact Kate who devised it with a Swedish friend – her blog is the first link below:

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Kate, Eva, Sue,Lynda,
Birthe,Turid,Tracy,Jan,
Moira,Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny,Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera,
Ann,Dawn 2,Carol,Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Tierney, Hannah and Maggie

We are getting towards the end of our trip, but wanted to visit a couple of places in Dalarna so in our rented car we drove through forests and valleys and little farms until we got to Sundborn…

Where we visited the home of Carl and Karin Larsson and their family!

It is such a beautiful home, inside and out, and preserved very much as it was when Carl Larsson’s paintings were made there in the early 1900’s.

This is the window from the outside that is in the famous painting showing one of the girls watering geraniums. We were only allowed to enter the house by pre-paying for a tour with a guide, and no photos were permitted inside, but…

…it was like being inside a living painting for the morning!

The weather has been slowly changing to fall! Arianell and Coriander were glad we packed their cardigans!

We were in the car for long drives but took a few rest stops. Then it started pouring rain! It rained all the way to Mora and our next stop…

…which was at the Dalahäst carving workshop and shop!

We watched a woman painting them!

…and of course the girls each got a Swedish horse to bring home !

We said goodbye to the cobbled streets of Gamla Stan (old town) Stockholm…

…and drove to the even older city of Uppsala, and the home and garden of Linnaeus!

The house was wonderful…

…the gardens amazing, laid out in the format of the 18th century garden but containing plants selected by Linneaus and following his systems of order.

I learned that he named Brown-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia) after his friend Olof Rudbeck!

We also visited the Uppsala cathedral and saw the tombs of kings and queens going back to the 12th century. The spires are visible in the distance from the next place we went to little further out of town…

…at Gamla Uppsala (old Uppsala) which had Viking burial mounds and a little Museum.

I bought three skeins of yarn, hand-dyed using plant derived colours by genuine (Viking garbed) interpreters on site!

Not Viking sheep, but so cute!

After the visit to Uppsala we drove northwest towards Dalarna of which more later!