Birthday & goals for the new year :)

It's my birthday today, or it was, since it's now well past midnight. I really should get to bed, because I have to get up early tomorrow and pack. We're going back to our apartment to start everyday life again next week.

I celebrated my day with a nice breakfast (the mother had boiled eggs for me), then I got a couple of presents. One was a gift certificate for a music/movie store and the other was this cool cat bowl which I will probably use for candy:

Later we had taco wraps for dinner and I made cookies for dessert! I got a cool set of cookie cutters from Ikea the other day, and I wanted to test them :) Slightly burned (but very tasty!) hedgie cookies:

Tonight we went to visit a friend who's had the flu lately, and I brought the cookies to cheer him up. Who wouldn't get better from hedgehog cookies?! :)

So... The new year has begun, and I'm about to start a whole new education. Feels sort of like a new beginning, so I've decided to make up some goals for the new year:

* Study hard and try not to let my urge for crafting take up precious study time (this will definitely be the hardest - when I get a crafty idea it won't leave my head until I've tested it, which makes it very hard to concentrate on math...)

* Try to find a job (preferably part time - but only a little income would help our economy a lot)

* Make up a budget and spend less of it on craft supplies that I really don't need (I tend to go all out and get lots of supplies as soon as I find a new hobby, and then I get tired of it and never use the stuff again)

* Try new food & eat more vegetables (we plan to be mainly vegetarian from now on)

* Work out a little (walking to and from school doesn't count...)

* Lose some weight (only a few pounds would do, and hopefully the above goals will help with that)

* Try to control my temper (I will never be completely zen, but I can at least appear less grouchy)

* Learn to sew (I have a sewing machine that's been in the closet for at least five years & has been used once! Very sad. I really want to learn to sew useful things that are not made entirely of felt, like bags and stuff)

Hmm, I think that was it. I will do my best with all these resolutions, but I also have to try not to be too angry or disappointed if I fail at any of them. At least the minor ones, my studies naturally take priority :) Hope you've all had a nice start of 2011, and that you have lots of good things coming! :)

The beginning of my summer holiday :)

I know I've been ranting a lot about how busy I've been the past week, so I thought I'd make a little post about it :)

On Thursday last week my mother came to visit me and my boyfriend in Bergen. The next day I had my final exam in an Egyptology course. I think I did well :) Afterwards we went out to celebrate with fancy dinner at one of our favorite places.

Saturday I baked a ton of bread while my mother went shopping, and we had bread, cheese and wine while we watched the Eurovision Song Contest finale in the evening. 

Sunday we visited the botanical garden for a little while before we went to see the new Robin Hood movie. I liked it a lot. It's definitely not "men in tights", but it's also very different from the Kevin Costner version. Darker, dirtier and with more chaimail armor :)

Monday was the day we'd been waiting for. The Guns N' Roses concert in Bergen! We warmed up with lunch/dinner at the best burger place in town, and then we went to the show. The warm-up band just left the stage as we arrived, and then we waited for two hours... It was so hot in the hall that I was nearly extatic every time someone walked past me and created a little breeze! My feet and back hurt really bad, but when the band finally came on stage it was all worth it! :) 

They kept going for a little more than two hours (which was a little short compared to the other shows on this tour), but it was still great :) The show ended with fireworks, confetti, and this is how the floor looked after it was all over:

I spent most of Tuesday packing up my stuff to go home. And I have a lot of stuff! This time I only packed clothes and no books or other stuff, but I still needed to bring a lot of yarn and two bags of stuffing, since that is practically unavailable where I come from. I filled a small bag with finished amigurumis to be sold this summer, and half the rest of my luggage is just yarn! It's a little insane :)

My boyfriend stayed behind in the apartment, and my mother and I took the bus home on Wednesday morning. I slept most of the way, and didn't do half the crocheting I had planned. When we arrived home I discovered that my mother has killed my cactus! :( Poor Gustav... Another cactus, Carl, is on the floor behind the couch... (In case you wondered, they are named after the Swedish king!)

Yesterday my mother and I went to get new tattoos! Yay :) My mother got a tribal thingy on the back of her neck. I got a small one on my wrist of three Egyptian hieroglyphs meaning "Life, Prosperity, Health", and a larger one on my leg of Bollan! I thought this was a great opportunity to combine two of my favorite things, so I drew her knitting, with two balls of yarn and a crochet hook :D 

I drew Bollan myself, and the knitting and yarn I adapted from some clip-art I found online. I'm very happy with it!

I've talked to the lady who's going to be my boss this summer, and I don't have to start working until next week, so now I'm just enjoying the holiday and doing nothing except amigurumi :D

Weekend visit & shopping

This weekend we've had a visit by my boyfriend's parents. They brought LOTS of chicken/turkey hot dogs and chicken filets, our freezer is now completely full :) The mother's birthday was just a few days ago, so I made a cake, and I finally got to use my dinosaur sprinkles!

We went out shopping one of the days, the mother was looking for an 8mm crochet hook to make the Olympic hat, and we ended up getting new yarn for me to make more hats :) 

After I tried my first Olympic hat I fell in love with the yarn (DROPS Eskimo) and the spimplicity of the hat pattern, and I wanted to make lots of them to sell. I have now developed a pattern of my own that I'm happy with, and I'll add it to my pattern blog later :)

I also got the biggest Easter egg I've ever had, it has room for both Bollan and all my candy!

Happy Paddy's Day :)

Not a holiday I normally celebrate, since I'm neither Irish nor Catholic, but I take it as a good reason (or excuse, if you will) to drink lots of beer and make green stuff :) Not that I actually drink beer, I leave that to some other creatures in this house... By the way, dyeing beer green with food coloring makes the beer flat and according to my boyfriend also makes it taste funny :/

I've crocheted a leafy scarf for Piggen, and a Leprechaun top hat for Iggy.  Pattern for the hat is here, and the leafy scarf pattern will be posted later :)

The hat turned out to be a bit floppy, so I felted it.

The scarf was originally intended for Bollan, but it looked more like hair than a scarf, so I gave it to Piggen instead :) It can also be used as a really big bracelet :p

I have even made cupcakes for this occasion! Like the rest of my baking, they're not pretty, but they are at least tasty :) And green! Pistachio and yoghurt cupcakes with green sugar frosting. Well, almost green.. Almost half a bottle of food coloring and all I got was this horrible minty green :/

The weird shape is because I crammed too many cakes onto one tray, and then I overfilled the cups because I wanted to use all the batter instead of making a second tray... I never pays off to be lazy :/ Anyway, in the oven the batter of course rose over the cups, and when finished they looked like this:

Yay, am I a baker or what...

Cookies :)

We made cookies today :) My grandmother has made several other kinds before I even got here, but these I just have to make every Christmas. My favorites :) The first ones we call "flat toads", because the first time we made them the dough/paste was much too soft and runny, and the result was very flat and sticky cookies. I loved them, of course, I'm not a fan of crispy food. The name "flat toads" stuck, and is much better than the original, which would translate as "almond blobs". I like almonds, but blobs are not tasty :p

These are called chocolate sweethearts, basically the same dough as the previous cookies, but somehow different. (They look pretty much the same this year, because we made a mistake and put chocolate in the toads, instead of just on top.) The sweethearts are supposed to be glazed with chocolate, but we never do, it's too much work. They are also supposed to be all hearts, but we use other shapes as well, like bats, squirrels, frogs, people and pigs :)

This last kind is something my mother usually makes, and I tried to crochet one that turned into a Ferrero Rocher :) They consist of crushed oats, cocoa, butter, coffee and sugar, mashed into a paste and rolled. Easy and delicious :)

The Boll helped, as always :) She felt there should be a hedgehog cookie shape, but I'm not sure... I don't think we'd be able to eat them, they'd be way too cute! :)

Happy birthday to us :)

Yesterday was the birthday of a friend who's visiting us right now, and my boyfriend's birthday is on Saturday, so we decided to celebrate them both together. My birthday is in just a month, so I got a present, too :) I got a set with figures of the main characters from the Mouse Guard comics by David Petersen. If you haven't read it or heard about it, you should definitely check it out! It has also been made into a roleplaying-game, which I intend to play some time soon, if I can get my boyfriend to be GM :) My boyfriend got a t-shirt and a plush brain cell from Giant Microbes. Our friend also got a t-shirt, and she was very happy with a red and black owlet keychain I made for her.

Anyway, we went out for dinner at a Sushi place (I have eaten eel!), afterwards we went home and had home-made muffins for dessert, and then spent the evening listening to music and surfing the internet on our laptops. Yes, we are very social people :p

I haven't really been up close to sushi before, I've only seen the knit and crochet patterns for sale on Etsy, so now I want to try and design my own patterns, based on the photos I took at the restaurant. Don't know when that will be, but I'll definitely give it a try some time.

The muffins were the perfect opportunity to try out my newest food coloring: BLACK! The muffins aren't that successful, but with black frosting and sprinkles they look pretty good :)

On Monday we went out to celebrate that my semester is over and had cheeseburgers at the best burger place in town. The Great Boll joined us, of course, she loves that place. It's a rock place, and all the burgers are named after heavy metal songs. I always have the Paranoid with tzatziki dressing :)

Ice cream cone pattern :)

The pattern for this ice cream toy is now posted on my other blog, you can find it HERE :)

I know it's a little out of season, but I came up with the idea and wanted to try it. That's just how I am, I just have to do something with my ideas right away or I get frustrated.. Anyway, I think the top scoop kind of looks like Frankenstein's monster, so maybe it's a little in season after all :p

I have also posted a little tutorial on how to make a rattle from bells and Kinder-eggs, found here if you should be interested :)

Finally!

The Chinese zodiac Tiger is finally done :) It was a lot more work than I thought it would be, with all the embroidered stripes. And buttons for eyes. I hate sewing in buttons, I find sewing thread too fiddly to work with... But here he is, in all his glory:

Despite being very busy with homework for tomorrow, I actually found the time to do some baking :)

Yummy :)