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!

This is a beautiful city, sprinkled around on many islands big and small. The part of town where we are staying has old old buildings…

…cobbled streets…

…and a café around the corner every time you might feel like a cup of tea and a bun.

At this bakery in a 17th century building, we saw a jaw-droppingly beautiful painted ceiling, and had tea and cakes while we admired it!

We went to museums every day! The Vasa Museum houses an entire ship that foundered in 1628, and was raised in 1961. Coriander and Arianell were in awe of the 1:10 Scale painted model of the ship (just their size!) …

…and the humans were in awe of conservation job, starting as soon as the ship was raised from Stockholm Harbour in and ongoing. There are still many things to learn as scientific research methods are refined.

Carved wooden figures festooned the exterior of the ship, but most were warriors and princes, and not inclined to chat to small dolls.

Between museums we trotted down narrow streets to find shops and eateries…

…and up stone staircases to find our accommodation at night.

We spent an entire day at the open air museum at Skansen…

…and admired the living history experts who were dressed in appropriate clothes doing activities of days gone by. This woman is making cordage out of bast fibre from Linden trees!

…and these young women were scutching and hackling retted flax plants to make linen fibre.

Skansen was filled with Swedish families enjoying a Sunday outing…

…and costumed interpreters going about their daily business. The experience was wonderful.

Arianell and Coriander met some little wooden toy animals,

And got to experience what it might have been like to sleep as families did in the old days-siblings crowded but warm in the same little bed.

We enjoyed four days and three nights on the Juno…

…there was always something new to see, even on a rainy day…

…passing through farmlands and little towns…

We got off to walk…

…and watched the Juno make her way through the “lock staircases”

There was a slow progress through the locks at Berg…we were able to walk for over an hour, and my cousin who lives 20 minutes away from there, popped by to have a cup of tea.

In the morning we were on the Baltic sea!

…where we visited the Viking settlement and fortress of Brevik…

…and saw a sprang loom!

…and later that day we arrived in the beautiful and busy city of Stockholm!

The trip on the Juno was a wonderful interlude, I’m so glad we were able to include these few gentle days in this trip, and in my life!

Coriander and Arianell are beyond excited to be starting on the next part of the trip…

…we’re taking the canal boat Juno from Göteborg to Stockholm!

We will travel 190 kilometres and pass through 58 locks…

It was all very exciting!

Some locks are very small…this is the view on the port side…

…and here is the starboard side of the same lock!

We were allowed to get off the boat and walk in certain places…

…so we did!

At one of the stops we found a patch of wild lingonberries!

But we didn’t need to forage for food, we were very well fed!

…and we had our own little cabin to sleep in at night!