♥ 24 ♥ Merry Christmas - and the winners are...

So, we have winners!

And they were drawn the old fashioned way:

 By my two youngest boys:

 In front of the newly decorated Christmas tree:

It turns out the gifts stay in Norway:

Linda won the scarf.

Ragnhild won the mittens.

And Vibeke won the hat.

Congratulations!

(Send me an e-mail with your addresses,

you find mine in the right sidebar, in the welcome text.)

And Merry Christmas to all my readers!!

Thanks for visiting my advent calendar,

hope you have enjoyed it.

I think it has been fun,

but I can't promise to make it a yearly tradition...

♥ 23 ♥ "Not a very nice house"

.. was the reaction from the 6 years old.

And many agree with him: The Lambda building won the competition for a new Munch Museum in Oslo in 2009, and people have been arguing about it ever since. Recently, the city government of Oslo decided not to build it (Norwegian link). But I doubt that is the end of the story.

Anyway, the end of our house is just a week or two away, if we manage to keep it away from two small Christmas guests, that is..

And now, off to draw the winners of the give away! Keep your fingers crossed if you have entered! And have a nice day, everybody!

♥ 22 ♥ The King's Ginger bread recipe

I don't know if the king makes ginger bread cookies,

but my mother's old ginger bread recipe is called

The King's Ginger Bread

My mother has written a warning -

"these are the good cookies,

but the house falls down if you put a chimney on top of it"

As you see, this house from 2003 has no chimney.

Later I became more adventourous,

this is the church from 2004.

Here's a castle from 2005,

inspired by Harry Potter.

Last year we made a wind mill.

Photo is taken before the wings broke.

So probably my mother had a point about the chimney note.

Remember today is your last chance to join the

Ginger Bread Give Away!!

Tomorrow I hope I can show you the 2011 Ginger bread house!

♥ 21 ♥ Do you really think your readers are interested in another pair of mittens?

You're probably tired of reading about mittens now, but on the other hand, if you are reading this blog, you're probably above average interested in knitted mittens, so here you go, another pair of Ginger bread mittens. New charts of the year are moose and butterfly. If you have purchased the pattern, you will have gotten an update with the new charts. Details on Ravelry. The yarn is new to me, Rauma Mitu, a mixture of wool and alpaca, soft and warm.

♥ 20 ♥ Gnomes, santas and maybe a lamb

 The gnomes and the santas are in place!

I did not make any of these myself.

Some are bought, many are gifts.

They stand here every Christmas,

some are added,

some have not survived since last Christmas.

I have not made this nativity crib either.

But I have purchased the booklet,

it arrived quickly and was not expensive,

from  UK Knitting Patterns



Maybe I'll start with a lamb?

(I'm probably inspired by the book, "Julemysteriet"

by Jostein Gaarder, "The Christmas Mystery"

where we read one chapter each day in advent.)

♥ 19 ♥ A local Christmas tree

Close to where we live, there is a small farm where they sells Christmas trees. It feels very good to buy a local grown tree.

Earlier, we have occasionally bought trees imported form Denmark. Sounds weird when you see all the trees around here. Never again...

The kicksled is perfect for transporting Christmas trees!

♥ 18 ♥ Eye candy - Ear candy

Every year I am amazed by the beauty of the Amaryllis.

And here's a beautiful Christmas song by a young, Norwegian artist.

Try to stress down and listen to the music!

♥ 17 ♥ Hippocampus KAL

I'm so flattered that the "Stranded group" on Ravelry has chosen my pattern for their knit along starting on December 26. It was chosen among many other wonderful pattern. It did have the advantage of beeing a free pattern, of course.

The KAL is organised by Nanette. If you're interested in colourwork, you should check out her blog, she has lots of nice links.

I was surprised to read about the KAL on a Spanish knitting blog. Asunción is translating the pattern into Spanish. It is also available in Portuguese and French, in addition to English.

This is my most popular pattern. You can see some versions in my Flickr Gallery and even more on Ravelry.

You can join the KAL here. I'll be there too, maybe knitting a third pair.

♥ 16 ♥ Mittens and places #2

I hereby present...

 the unofficial Lillehammer mittens!



♥ 15 ♥ Stella polaris ear flap hat

A heavily modified Stella polaris hat for someone who wanted a thick and warm hat with earflaps.

I casted on 3 sts on needles 5 mm with two strands of Lett Lopi.

Worked in garter sts, increasing 2 sts (after the first and before the last sts) every 2nd row till 25 sts.

Cut yarn, and made a second ear flap. Then worked another increase row (=27 sts), casted on 18 sts, joined the other ear flap, worked increase row, casted on 8 sts (= 80 sts all together).

Joined in the round, and worked garter sts for 14 rounds.

Then with two colours but one strand of each, worked the Nordic star chart 5 times (in stead of three in original pattern). Then six rounds with a small pattern, end decreasing 8 sts a round four times (= 48 sts). Then worked top decreases as in original pattern to form the star on top. Hope the receiver will like it!

♥14 ♥ Christmas gift along - December

Last year, I got a mitten book from my husbands family. I made two pair of mittens for my nieces during the holidays, and this year the grown ups are getting theirs. We usually don't give each other gifts, but exeptions are allowed. Two of the pairs I have shown before. And here is the one for my BIL

Pattern: Fugl Fønix by Annemor Sundbø

Size:  man

Well, the pattern description is for a woman size. Then it says to go up one needle size for a man, use Hifa 3 in stead of Hifa 2, and make them longer if necessary.

I used the Hifa 2 that I won last year. And needles 3,5 mm (US 4). My gauge was then 26/10 cm, and I think they're wide enough. I added one pattern repeat of the palm pattern, hoping they will be long enough. 

I also omitted one stitch from the palm pattern. Again, the pattern was not symmetric, and I don't see why, it was so simple just to omit one stitch. But then I might be a symmetry freak. I made the thumb 2 sts wider.

Remember there is still time to join my Give away!

♥ 13 ♥ "Lussekatter"

Today we celebrate St. Lucia. It's more a Swedish tradition than a Norwegian one, but we happily adopt nice traditions, especially the "Lussekatter". I use a recipe I found many years ago. If you search the net, the recipe is offered on many places.

I'm not sure if this is real saffron, but it is yellow, at least.

A fellow Norwegian knitting blogger, originally from Sweden, posted about Lucia celebration this morning. I hope you had a nice day even if it's not the same as in Sweden, Wenche!

♥ 12 ♥ A quick knit

My new mitten pattern,

Stella polaris mittens.

A quick and thick knit,

resulting in warm, cosy and soft mittens.

 Yarn is Hubro from Dalegarn, a super bulky yarn,

but really soft.

$ 3

Buy the mitten pattern together with the hat pattern, and get 1.50 off.

Click here to get the discount.

♥ 11 ♥ Mittens and places

A friend of mine has been to Kongsberg. Knowing that I am above average interested in knitted mittens, she sent me s couple of photos of her friens's mittens, the official Kongsberg mittens. Kongsberg is an old Norwegian town, famous for its silver ("sølv") mine.

We wondered about the criteria to become an official mittens, but googling, we found that there hat been a competion organized by "Husflidslaget".

(I'm afraid all the links in this post are in Norwegian..)

I then wondered if there is a Lillehammer mitten.

I found one pattern by Dale, made for the Olympics in 1994.

I don't know if the motifs have anything to do with Lillehammer.

And then I found a pattern called Lillehammervotten,

from a book called Norske votter by Lillill Thuve.

I found some links to this mitten, it's nice enough,

but has nothing to do with Lillehammer,

it looks like alle the patterns in the book

are named after places in Norway.

(The pattern page on Ravelry shows a different mitten

than found everwhere else, so I think that must be wrong, btw. )

Our neighbouring town does have an official mitten: Hamarvotten.

So don't be surprised if you see a Lillehammer mitten here in a while, official or not.

Do you have a special mitten where you come from?

♥ 10 ♥ Finally snow

and if this doesn't look like Christmas, I wonder what does!

I can use my favourite means of transportation, the "spark"

(wearing my Vaila sweater and my Kanagawa mittens.

Lilletorget, Lillehammer, Decemter 9th

"Gågata" (pedestrian street), Lillehammer, December 9th