It's beginning to look a lot like..

Well, most people would say Christmas - the decorations are up all over town, and on Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent (so, I guess it's about time to check to see if we still have some purple candles left, and to see if the lightbulb in the star still works). Only thing missing - is snow.. Oslo isn't really much of a snowy place (more gooey melted, brown slushy-snow and ice, really..).

But the preparations are on! Ahem.. well, the planning of the gifts have begun, the thinking of what to do during the days off have not started quite yet (what? there are days off? oh sleep...), but the first couple of presents have been fixed/bought/made/started. ;)


First off, I don't remember if I ever showed a picture of these, but I ordered some fat quarters from Nuno-Plus a few weeks ago, and they're gorgeous, funny, cute (even BF thinks so) and I have no idea what to make of them. I kinda just want to keep them in the plastic wrapping and look at them every now and then. But, alas, I will use them for something - sooner or later. ;)
The first parcel to leave this building (haha - internal geeky joke) were for Donna's amazing Secret Santa Christmas Swap (I joined again - ofcourse). :) See for yourselves.


Just teasing. ;) They're wrapped.


Every single one. ;)

And now you might ask why there are two different papers used for the wrapping? Well, you'll find out - in about 28 days. ;)

In other news - I have officially started on the Butterfly Garden-quilt! Cheating, of course - as I did a little on the Truly Scrumptious.. Yes, I know, I'm a sneaky person.. that's why I play a rogue in World of Warcraft, I guess.. *grins* Anyway, I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about the BG quilt, about the colours and the fabrics, of the way it is designed, and I did some counting. 9 blocks, consisting of 9 blocks. 9 x9 = 81. 9 different types of blocks (according to my counting and grouping) - why not make the blocks of each type similar? So that's what I've done. I kinda like a bit of order and system in my things (although our apartment doesn't really give that impression at the moment) so I decided that I wanted to be able to see a pattern (much more clearly then in the original). Therefore I have now started on the heart blocks, and they will (all 8 of them) be in the same fabrics and more or less identical. And I like that idea. :)

So, to continue on the textmessage I sent to Quiltoholiker and my mom last night - 2 down 79 to go. :)

The cup is full..

Have you ever had a day when you think of something to do, start doing it, thought of something else that needs to be done, started doing that too, done this a couple of times, and then forgotten why you started doing things in the first place? I have. This is one of those days..

I was assigned the baking responsibility at work today - that's the punishment/reward for bringing cake to work (instead of gobbling it all up by yourself and gaining 5000 pounds in the process). Well, I didn't really mind. I like baking (I just don't like to be stuck with the results afterwards.. I prefer it to be eaten - all of it - and preferrably not by me, me and I) - and I like surprising others (my coworker has no idea that we've got a present for her (fixed by me) and cake (again, me). This will be fun! Only thing missing - a card (me again).

Anyway, back to the "one of those days again". I was on my way home from one store (had to buy pumpkin goo, aka canned pumpkin - I've only found this in one store here in Oslo) and I thought I'd better stop by home on my way to the other store to see if I needed anything else. Of course I did. Kinda hard to bake without eggs now, isn't it? And, seeing the almost empty bottle of deee-licious Christmas soda on the floor near the couch (no idea how long it's been there) I figured I could buy another one of those. So I grabbed my wallet and my keys, locked the door, and crossed the street to the store. Went inside, grabbed a basket, found.. sheets for baking (paper-thingys) eggs, hotdogs, hotdog buns, fried onions, looked at a carton of milk (but didn't bother buying it - had enough left) and started to move on to the register.. and figured I'd forgotten something.. hmm... eggs.. a ton of stuff not on my mental list.. Now what had I forgotten? It took me about five minutes before I remembered the soda (which they didn't have in today - all sold out..).

Gee..

Well, the cakes (yep, I did two.. or well something like that) are done. One Swedish chocolate cake - and about 50 small pumpkin cakes/muffins. The apartment smells absolutely divine!


And the reason for this divine smell - not to forget the results from my hectic and chaotic afternoon? Here you go.. Three large boxes with pumpkin cupcakes (actually made the same way as Pumpkin Woopies - but I never bother to make the cream..)...



And, one rather large portion of Swedish chocolate cake (with, as you may see, has absolutely no chocolate in it). :)

On the way home

I was on the way home yesterday afternoon when I thought I saw someone I knew.. and sure thing, the bus passed Abyquilt waiting for the lights to change so that she could cross the road. :)

I wonder if I'll see someone I know today..

Making ends meet

Last Wednesday - October 29th - was, considering that I live in Oslo, a very unusual day. Going to work in the morning, I noticed that the morning misty-rain was, in fact, of a more solid material then usual (it's been misty-rainy in the mornings for the past couple of weeks). Now, this first picture is taken with my mobile, and it's really hard to see, but there, against the streetlight (no, not the moon..) there's actually tiny, tiny snowflakes!

Now, this is kinda unusual in Oslo, at least in October. But there's more! Taking the bus out to work, the snowflakes started to get bigger, and Bigger, and even BIGGER! Now, the snow kept falling, and after about three hours' time, the picture below was taken - the view from my desk wasn't really much to brag about (except, I like snow, so it was all good to me).

Right after this picture was taken, a coworker of mine and myself went out on the office terrace and measured with a ruler. There was approximetly 8.5 cm of snow out there! (That's somewhere around 3-3.5 inches.)

Going to the guild meeting at Lørenskog wasn't quite as much fun. Well, the meeting was ok, kinda interesting, but getting home was like an adventure in it self. Quiltoholic and I left the meeting about fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to end, so that we'd be sure to cach the bus back to Oslo. We stood out there, in the cold and the snow, for quite some time, without a bus, before we figured that the previous bus must have been early. Okay, so we waited some more.. and some more.. and even more.. The next bus didn't show up.. Now, things started to get a litte (very) cold and wet.. After standing there for about an hour, a girl came walking up from the centrum of Lørenskog. She asked us if we were waiting for the bus back to Oslo. "Yea" we answered, increasingly suspicious. "Well, the bus from town just let a bunch of us off near the mall, and the driver said that they wouldn't be driving up the hill tonight due to the conditions." Not much to do, then, except walk down to the mall and see if the next bus came soon. Well, ofcourse we missed the first bus, but after waiting for close to two hours (since leaving the guild meeting) we finally reached home. Cold, hungry, and a little surpriced. I mean, this is Norway, it tends to snow here.. Coming from a family where the winter tires are put on the cars around the middle of or early October, it never stops to puzzle me when people in Oslo are "taken by surprice" of the "sudden" and "unexpected" changes in the weather..

In other news, I decided to test the shipping of goods from Japan to Norway, and ordered the four fabrics from the lovely shop called Nuno-Plus. Now, these little goodies arrived so quickly, I cannot wait to order more. I've fallen in love with the retro prints and cute little critters. :) And I do have plans for a few of them..

Now, work has been so busy and stressful and all that for so long, I sometimes just wish I could go back to this summer - two relaxing weeks in France with my dear BF. But, unfortunelty, I won't have the opertunity to take much needed time off for a while. Hopefully getting two more coworkers will ease the days a little for the rest of us..

In other news, my UFO's are coming along ok. I've finished both "Annie's Calendar Quilt" (as shown in a previous post) and the needlebook (not shown yet). I've also finished another UFO of mine - a white whole cloth quilt (or whatever one should call them) - will post a picture of that soon. And for the last two UFO's needed to be finished in time for Christmas, my mom has helped me with the quilting on "Winter Wonderland", so there's not much left to do there (well, I need to decide if I want to add some details or not), and the last one, the Christmas Mail Holder, is getting closer to completed (finished the beads, decided to drop some of the fancy beady-stuff on it - annoyed me to bits it did).

Oh well, back to work I go..