Back in town

For a little while, anyway.. Just enough time to let you know I'm still alive, upload a bunch of photos and write a few posts :)

The past week or so I've been staying with my grandmother. The plan was to help out with a lot of gardening and stuff, and to paint all the garden furniture white (we're tired of a very boring green), but the weather's been bad most days, so very little of this has actually been done :/ On Tuesday we did manage to dig up some stone tiles across the lawn that just didn't look good anymore. I carried the tiles away and used them to make a path and a small step up to my gran's new tool shed. Bollan and Glyptodon tried to reach the door, but even together they are a bit too short. Fortunately my grandmother is a little taller :)

Carrying all those tiles were hard work, and the next day I was so stiff and sore all over I could barely move! But the work was worth it. We dug up a new flowerbed and used the turf to fill in the gaps from the stone tiles, and voila - the lawn is all pretty again AND my gran has a new place to put even more flowers :)

Then it was rainy again for several days, until Sunday and yesterday, when I could finally start painting a couple of garden benches. There are lots more to paint, so I'll have work to do all weekend when I'm not preparing for the fair. Have I told you about that? Hm.. Well, it's a fair. Don't know what else to call it. There will be food and drink to buy, an art exhibit by local people (paintings, sculpture and photography), crafty people selling their stuff, and there will be some entertainment. Among other things there'll be a play, which I have two different parts in. Very scary. Thankfully we're not supposed to speak, because everything's been recorded beforehand :) Most of this will happen outside at the harbor on Sunday (want to keep some privacy, so I won't tell you excactly where it is - it's where I come from and it's a pretty small place). Since I haven't been outside much I've had plenty of time to finish the stuff I'm going to sell at the fair :) Here it is:

I don't count on selling all these things, but it's good to be prepared :) I have have so many different things that even if I only sell one of each, I'll still be half-way to a new laptop! Yay :D Tomorrow afternoon I'm going back to my grandmother's again and I probably won't return to civilization until the fair is done on Sunday evening...

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

The Oystercatchers have left the building...

But there's a new pair of birds in the house! Well, on the house anyway :) According to the comments there are actually several new birds on the roof, but the camera is now showing a nesting Common Gull (Larus Canus, the North American variety is also called Mew Gull). There are also two pairs of Lesser Black-backed Gulls (Larus Fuscus) with new chicks :)

As you can see the nest is not in the same spot as the Oystercatchers', but it's not very far away. The Oystercatcher chick is actually still roaming around up there, but it's a large roof, so I doubt he will be seen on camera again. Here are some funny pictures of the little darling:

Despite the parents' best effort to hatch that last egg (they even tried to feed it!), it never hatched, and on Thursday the family finally left the nest for good.

This week the egg was checked, and they found it had not been fertilized, which is sort of good. Another year one of the chicks had died just days from hatching :( But this year's chick (now named Tjeldrik) is growing and doing just fine! He has been weighed and ringed so we can find him again when he grows up :) He will stay on the roof for another week or two, then he'll jump the 20m down on the lawn and join his parents in the park :)

(Picture from Facebook)

Summer guests :)

Today my mother called me to say that our summer guests have arrived :) Larus and his wife have returned from winter migration to lay eggs and raise babies, and as usual they come to my grandmother's house where they sit on the lawn and beg for food and attention. We call the male Larus because that's the Latin name for the Herring Gull, Larus Argentatus, but the female doesn't really have a name. We just call her the female :) This is a picture of the pair from last year, eating scraps of dinner from a plate:

They are actually tame enough to eat from our hands! They are a little sceptical the first couple of days, but after that they will hang around every time food is brought outside. Larus has tried to land on the barbecue grill to get the hot dogs more than once, and he's even been inside the house a few times when we've left the door open :)

I can remember Larus from when I was little, I suspect he's even older than I am! He's been around for a long time, but it's only in the later years he has brought his mate with him to the house. The first year or two she was very shy, but now she's as tame as he is :) When their chicks are grown enough they usually follow their parents down to the house, but they have never become tame like them.

A few years ago we thought that Larus and his mate were about to get competition for the food, when a Great Black-backed Gull showed up and was almost as tame as they are. He took food from our hands and sat outside the house all the time, but unfortunately he chased Larus and his mate away... 

We named him Ramses Larus Martinus, but he was only there for a year, the next summer he was around, but never came close again. We suspect he was sick and had a hard time finding food for himself. Thankfully he seems to have recovered, and has probably raised many babies of his own. I look forward to going home for the summer and seeing them all :)