COUNTRY ANGEL

Every year I use to make a Santa, but this year I made an angel.

I had big plans this year about making some Norwegian santas called "Isolde Nisser", but this is how far I got, I have the book and a big box with wool and material, even a knitted outfit is done


Maybe if I start early in the New Year I will have one done for next year?

OUR TWINS ARE HERE!

Finally we can welcome our precious twins! A little boy and a little girl!
They were born on Dec. 14, at Woman's hospital of Texas.
We all got the best Christmas present ever and it is hard to believe that they finally are here, it has been such a long wait.

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

SHAWL

Finished the shawl on my needles, it took much longer to finish than I had expected. Here it is




Some other shawl I have made this year:



This is the flower basket shawl, made in some silk yarn I dyed with kool aid


This is made in Evilla yarn


Now I am knitting Christmas presents, this is some hats I made last week and I have two more on my needles

In my garden!

We have had some beautiful days here lately, this is the best time of the year in Houston.
Here is the banana plant that I got from my son last year, it has grown alot, they say that bamboo is the fastest growing plant, so I assume that the bananaplant is not far down the list.... I blogged the plant a year ago, have a look for yourself.





I love the moonflower with the big flowers blooming in the evening and they smell good too



Some seeds that I planted,


more flowers





I found Stella in the garden too.


On my knitting needles I am still working on my shawl, hopefully I will finish it this week end. Beside that I am working on an order I have on the cowboy quilt.

February Lady Sweater

It has been awhile since I blogged, as usual, very busy, I had a "Fallmarket" here at my house, and then I had visitors in for the Quilt Festival. I finished my FLS a couple of weeks ago and I am very pleased with it. It is knitted in Rowan Denim yarn, which is cotton. I don't like to knit with cotton, but living in a warm climate the jacket will be used more than if I made it in wool.
Here shown on my silent, headless girlfriend:



On my needles now I have a shawl. I knit with some wonderful yarn from Danish mohair goats.

SCRAP QUILTS

I love making scrap quilts! I empty my scrapbox and work with what I find in there. This time I found a pattern in a quilt magazine called "My Irish grandma", I did not look how big it should be, I just started, the background fabric was the only one I needed some extra yardage of.
It was on the floor in my sewing room when we went on our travel, so the cats had a nice time with it and I had to puzzle it again when we came back...



Here the top is finished, the quilt size is 69" x 84".




When I was working from my scrap box I also found these nice fabrics that I made into a small wallhanging. This one is small enough that I can quilt it on my sewing machine, the big one will be machine quilted by my "quilting lady".

HURRICANE IKE!

The day after we returned from Asia, the hurrican was on it's way to Houston. It was nearly empty on the shelves at Walmart Thursday afternoon...


This time the storm hit our area, and it was storm and rain all night. We could hear the roof was flying away. We were up all night, luckily we had electricity! The water started to come in after a while, so we had to put out alot of buckets. Here you can see the water is coming down inside the paint.


The next morning we could go outside and look at the damages, our house was the worst damaged in the whole neighbourhod.






Today we are cleaning up in the backyard, the hummingbird feeder came back up, and the hummingbirds were quick to come back to the feeder.


We also found this creature, whatever it is..
.

THAILAND!

We finally got to Thailand, the airport reopened and we only were delayed one day.

I was knitting too, and finished my socks



The trip to Thailand was a birthday present, and look how beautiful they had decorated the bed


And I got a birthday cake!


Some pictures from the resort where we stayed:







Every day they decorated nicely with flowers.


The closest town was 10 minutes away, look at the restaurant names, and we also found a Norwegian flag at the beach!

News around the world..

Watching the news today and a hurricane is on it's way to New Orleans, will it come to Houston? I doubt that, last month another hurricane was on it's way, alot of warnings on TV, people were even told not to go to work. The hurricane never came, it did not even rain where we live. My husband had a day off work and we had a nice lunch together. Hopefully the same will happen this time.
Here in Singapore we are concerned about the latest news about demonstrations and closed airports in Thailand. We are supppose to go there tomorrow for a weeks vacation, will the airport be open? The embassy is closed on Saturdays so nobody can tell if it is safe to go or not. Isn't life exciting....

Here we are sightseeing in Singapore:

This is Emerald Hill, a street with old houses that are renovated.

Visiting Chinatown.

This is from Sentosa, a small island connected to Singapore.

Raffles hotel, yes, we did go to the Long Bar to have the famous Singapore sling.

Another image from the hotel.

Travelling again!

It has been alot of travelling this year. I have been visiting Singapore more than Stavanger! Saturday we left Houston early in the morning, via Minneapolis to Tokyo. It must have been the food I ate in Minneapolis that made me sick the whole flight, it was awful. After an hour in Tokyo we flew to Singapore, spent 10 hours in a hotel at the airport, it was good to have a rest.
Then we flew to Jakarta, Indonesia. It was my first visit there, a place with amazing contrast. This is the view from my hotel room, on one side you see the beautiful garden and pool at the hotel, on the other side is the most nasty river I have ever seen, people actually had a bath and washed their clothes in it! If you click on the picture you can see a man having a swim!



We spent a few days there, now we are back in Singapore, ofcourse I brought my knitting. The hotel room here even has a massage chair...

SOCKS!!

I finished my socks from my week end project!


A couple of months ago a friend sent me this nice Kaffe Fassett designer yarn from Regia. She said that she never saw any socks in my blog, and socks are so popular to knit these days. So here I started, trying "toe up socks" for the first time.


I know how to make socks, the old fashion way. I grew up with handknitted, wollen socks. My grandma was knitting socks to all her children and grandchildren, and that was a lot, she had 8 children and I do not have the number on all the grandchildren. Her socks was nice and warm and we used them in our rubber boots to keep us warm. Now everyone is making socks with difficult lace and cable patterns, but who will see the nice socks in our boots?