Happy Halloween, folks!

Just wanted to wish everybody a happy Halloween :) Wish I had something halloweeny to show off, but I haven't managed to make anything. Not sure why I've been trying so hard to get something done, though, I have never celebrated Halloween and not sure if I ever will. But hey, it's a good excuse to decorate your home, eat lots of candy, party with your friends and have fun :) Which is why my boyfriend and I stay at our undecorated home and watch somewhat uninteresting DVDs, with no candy and no partying :p

I have not been able to get onto my blog the last couple of days, maybe because of some server error, or maybe because my computer sucks.. But now it works fine, and I'll probably be back over the weekend with a new pattern or two :) See ya!

Yarn distress and a shortage of time...

Where to start.. *sigh*

Yesterday I found out that my favorite acrylic yarn is no longer sold in any shops anywhere near me, and I haven't found a good (read: cheap) online store yet, so it looks like a dozen of my projects are never going to be completed :/ It sucks.. I discovered this when I went out to buy some black yarn to make a Halloween cupcake, but that's not all.. There's really no good substitute for this yarn, and the closest has a very small color selection. I really wanted to get some yellow and light blue yarn as well, but the alternative yarn didn't have yellow or light blue.. All I could find was black (fortunately), a new pink and a darker green. I was supposed to buy some darker blue, too, but I managed to drop that ball on my way from the shelf to the counter.. Argh.. So now I'll have to go back there today just to buy that one ball of dark blue :/ On top of it all I have once again realised that Halloween is just around the corner, and I probably won't have time to make the stuff I've been planning. This is how it is every year, really, but do I learn? Nope...

It's not all bad, though. I have now spent a good while uploading pictures on Flickr, both new and old ones, and organizing my albums and stuff. It's good to have a day off to do nothing important :) In a couple of hours (after breakfast/lunch and a little tidying of the house) I'm going out to buy that dark blue yarn and a nice bottle of wine to enjoy all by myself tonight, while my boyfriend is out with a friend. Wine, a decent movie and crocheting all night long :)

Contest at Krimskrams!

Tävla hos Krimskrams! Tävlingen avslutas 17/11

Click on the link to get to the contest :) (It's in Swedish..)

Dinosaurs & cupcakes :)

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to see the Walking with Dinosaurs "live" show based on the book and the TV series with the same name. I have seen the TV series and own the book, so I just couldn't miss this. We arrived way too early in the morning (around 7 am), so we had almost 12 hours of waiting before the show started. We spent a few hours at the Museum of Natural History (just to get to see even more dinosaurs!), where I bought myself a very cute souvenir.

It's a plush Glyptodon, a very well-armored, prehistoric relative of the modern armadillo. Of course, Bollan has now adopted him as her newest friend and uncle for her kids :) I just need to come up with a good name for him.. Suggestions, anyone? :)

After the museum we sat a cafe for hours, while I tried to do some homework. That didn't work out too well, I had hardly slept on the train, so I was too tired to do anything productive.. I did, however, manage to crochet a little, and the result is this: a bunch of half-finished new cupcakes. When I'm done at school tomorrow I will try to finish a couple of the cakes and take some decent pictures, and the pattern will of course be posted on my blog :)

Anyway, when the time finally came and the show started, I couldn't stop smiling. I just sat there through the whole thing (including the break) with a great big grin on my face. Me and all the other kids and their parents. I count my relatively uninterested boyfriend as a "parent" here, but everybody seemed to be fascinated when it all started. The beasts were great, the animatronics were great, the sounds (which were obviously inspired by Jurassic Park) were great and the music was great :) The animals in the show are all life-size, which means they range from 50 centimeters in length (one of the baby Plateosaurs) to more than 10 meters in height (the adult Brachiosaurus). In one word: awesome!

Plateosaur babies

Brachiosaurus

I would go to see the show several more times if it hadn't been so expensive (which it was, for a student, anyway). Luckily we were allowed to take pictures, but not with flash, so most of the pictures are very blurry. Still, the important thing is to know that I've been there, and at least I know what's in those pictures :p I'm really happy that I took the opportunity to see the dinosaurs, I doubt they will ever be in Norway again.

Sadly I didn't get to buy any souvenirs from the show, because they were quite expensive. Mostly it was kids-stuff anyway, but I really wanted a T-shirt... Instead I got a plastic bag. You know, the kind you get your shopping in. It's not much, but it has the show's name and logo on it, and it was free :D

More photos from the show and the museum will be uploaded tonight, after dinner and homework :)

Shopping with the in-laws :)

There hasn't been much time for crafting this weekend, as we have been visited by my boyfriend's parents, and we've been out and about every day since Friday. Did a lot of shopping for our apartment, such as glass jars for my baking stuff and a dishwashing machine. I've never had a dishwasher before, so I'm very much looking forward to not doing the dishes by hand :) We haven't installed the thing yet, because we need to get some extensions for the water tubes (or whatever you call those things)..

Even though we've been busy, I have managed to make a couple of new cupcakes, which I'll post pictures of in a few days (and patterns, of course). Tomorrow night we're taking the night train to the capital again, to see the Walking with Dinosaurs show :) So exited I can hardly wait, dinosaurs have been one of my main interests as long as I can remember. I'm definately going to buy some souvenirs! Anyway, when we get back from the show I'll try to post pictures and pattern and stuff as soon as I can :)

Cupcakes!

Today I have been writing out the patterns for these cupcake pincushions. I scribbled down the patterns when I made them two years ago, but my way of writing patterns for myself is unintelligable to anyone but me.. So now I have (hopefully) made them clearer, if anyone should want to make their own. So far I've posted the patterns for the tiny banana cupcake and the blueberry cupcake, and the rest will follow when I find the time :)

A growing boy & two mushrooms

In between all the traveling, packing, unpacking, eating, sleeping and socializing this weekend I actually managed to do a good deal of crocheting. Of course I could have mentioned this in my previous post earlier today, but since I link my blog posts to my projects on Ravelry I try to keep my posts separate and tidy :)

Anyway, again I brought my alien boy with me, with the hope that I would finally finish him this weekend. I didn't, but there's not much left. One antenna and the bottom of his feet are the only things missing. And his clothes, of course. He's huge! I never expected him to be that tall.. He looks a bit freakish with nothing on his head, but I hope to fix that soon :)

As I can never stick with just one project for any length of time, I just had to do something else. I found some leftover yarn from a sweater my mother had just finished, and with the smallest crochet hook I had at hand, I made these two mushrooms in just one evening:

The yarn was a little bit thinner than what I normally use, so the 3.5mm hook I used was a little too big. A 3mm hook would probably work just as well, it would just make the mushrooms smaller. I have written out the pattern for these mushrooms and posted it here on my new pattern blog. Hope you like it :)

The weekend

This weekend my boyfriend and I were invited to my grandmother to celebrate her 85th birthday, and since it's a long trip, we decided to make it a long weekend. On Thursday we traveled north by Hurtigruten (great big ships that continually go up and down the West coast of Norway), which is the most comfortable way of getting home to my place. We travel at night, so we usually sleep most of the time. This time we got a cabin because it didn't cost extra, and I thought the night would fly by in a good bed and with a private bathroom and everything, but I hadn't accounted for the weather. Since this was one of the smaller ships ("Vesterålen"), it rolled quite heavily. I almost fell out of bed once.. So, of course I got sea sick and didn't get more than a couple hours of sleep :/ I didn't throw up or anything, so I guess that was good, but I hate not being able to sleep.

Eventually we got home to my grandmother, and spent Friday sleeping and not doing anything specific. On Saturday the rest of the family arrived, and we had dinner at a very fancy restaurant. The bill was more than 5000 NOK, which is a lot of money, but not really that bad for dinner, drinks and dessert for ten people. After dinner we went home and had cake. Well, we were supposed to have cake, anyway. Everyone were so full the cakes were hardly touched. I now have lots of leftover cake in the freezer :)

Yesterday it was back to Bergen, because I had school today. Man, the computer linguistics course is boring! *sigh* Just hope I pass the final exam so I don't have to do it all over again...

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that I met this gorgeous cat when I was home :) It belongs to a neighbor of my grandmother. His name is Achilles, and he's really sweet and cuddly and fond of people. I met him once before when I was home this summer, and I like to think he remembered me :) The first time he came up to me and rubbed against my legs until I sat down and petted him, but this time he came running and practically jumped up on me. According to the owner he refuses to sit on anyone's lap, but that's not the case with me :) I'm so proud! Now, I have mentioned that I am extremely allergic to anything with fur, and especially cats, so this really should have knocked me out. But Achilles is a Siberian, a breed that is suitable for people with allergies. He scratched me a little on my thigh and waved his tail in my face several times, and I didn't even sneeze! I so have to get a cat like this :)