Snow days & needle felting

A few days ago the snow had been melting for a while and it looked like spring was on the way, just like my crocheted groundhog predicted 🙂 Now, however, winter is back again. With a vengeance. It snowed for 24 hours a couple of days ago, and yesterday everything was chaos. The traffic stood still and the power was out some places. The plough has left huge piles of dirty snow on the sidewalks, walking to school feels like walking through narrow alleys. This is how our street looks right now:

Can you believe that underneith that mountain there actually is a car? It’s a fairly small sports car, but still… The poor thing’s been there all winter, I have no idea where the owner is. I placed my boyfriend by the heap for scale 🙂

Dug up my wool and felting needles today and I have started my latest project for the new hobby challenge. But, since I want the result to be a surprise, I’ll just post some pictures of my first attempts at needle felting from a few years ago. A horse, cow and a pig, a few sheep, a hen, rabbit and a ladybug. They have a sort of boxy shape, because they’ve been stuffed in a bag for a long time.

Anyway, my current project entails a framework of pipe cleaners, and I’m going to make it a lot more detailed than these old creatures, so I hope I get it right. If I do, maybe I’ll try making one of the dogs from this cute book:

It’s in Norwegian, but the English edition is called “Fleece Dog” by Nobuko Nagakubo. The book has instructions for 20 different dog breeds, including an Afghan Hound, a Poodle, Chihuahua, Scottish Terrier and a Dalmatian. I’d like to try making a German  Shepherd 🙂 There are color charts for each dog, and silhouettes that clearly show the shape of the dogs.

All I need is a few more colors and a set of these things, whatever they are called in English…

Well, not a dog brush like this, but the kind you use to straighten out the wool fibers. Handy for mixing colors, too. They’re just a bit expensive, so they’ll have to wait a while 

Groundhog Day!

Today, February 2nd, is the day when the groundhogs come out of their burrows and check out whether spring is coming soon or not. If they can see their shadow, it will be six more weeks of winter. If there’s no shadow, spring is upon us 🙂

My crocheted groundhog for the Groundhog-along went out in the snow this morning, and there was only the teeniest hint of a shadow, so his prediction is an early spring. It has to be said that if he hadn’t been in our backyard, he would have had a big shadow, since the sun was shining everywhere else. So, what to make of it, I wonder? I think I’m hoping for an early spring anyway 🙂

The picture looked okay on my computer at home, but on this library computer it’s very dark, so I hope you can se anything… Here’s a picture with flash, just in case, but it gives him a shadow and messes with the prediction, so it doesn’t really count!

Back to school

Woke up to 20 degrees C in our apartment this morning, almost comfortable :p I think it’s getting warmer outside as well, so I’m hoping the indoor temperature will rise to a survivable level during the next few days.

Yesterday I bought school books for more than 3000NOK (more than 350USD), the most I’ve ever paid for curriculum books in one semester (yes, books are insanely expensive in Norway), but then I haven’t taken as many courses before. Two linguistics classes, an Egyptology class and a full semester of Latin 🙂 I think all the courses adds up to about 2.5 regular semesters of credits… I’m going to be very busy this spring! This means that I probably won’t post as often as before, partly because my studies aren’t that exciting, but mainly because I won’t have time to do much crafting to blog about.

Today I have tried to tidy up my yarn stash, but with little success… I have too much! Bags and boxes everywhere, and nowhere to store them I think I’ll give up the tidying and start working on my Latin vocabulary instead. First class tomorrow, yay 🙂

Freezing!

Got back to the apartment today, and it was just over 3 degrees Celsius inside! No time to unpack, just to turn all the heating on, and then I curled up under a pile of blankets, with hot water bottles (yes, plural!) and tea. Lit lots of candles and had a very quick dinner, and now I plan to stay in my chair until bedtime 🙂 Poor Glyptodon had to rest on a hot water bottle, he was so cold. I still have both my alpaca hat and wristwarmers on, and I have trouble typing… It was actually warmer in the fridge! Now, a few hours later it’s almost 8 degrees, practically summer :p

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, hopefully the apartment will have warmed up a bit more, and I’m going to buy lots of new school books. Always the most fun part of the semester 🙂By the way, this is what it looks like when I go back from a holiday.

To start with, I pack very little yarn, a few balls only, because I know what I’ll end up with… The strange thing is that I rarely need to buy colors that I know I already have, so I don’t end up with several balls of colors that I use very little of. Quite practical 🙂

I’m dreaming…

Last night it started to snow, and today it was two inches of snow most places 🙂 Could it be? Will we have a white Christmas this year? That hasn’t happened for twenty years, if I remember correctly. If it snows at all before Christmas it always melts away after a day or two. Usually it rains a little Here is my grandmother’s garden covered in snow for once:

Of course the snow had to be tested! Glyptodon put on his new scarf that I crocheted for him, Bollan put on her knitted vest (made last year by my mother), and they went out to play in the snow 🙂 They wanted to make a snowman, but it was so cold they ran back inside right after we took this picture: