Ut på tur...

We are just back from our first boat outing of the summer! It is a glorious day outside, so we decided to just go for it, despite being nervous about getting everything to work. It was absolutely lovely!

Here we are hugging the shore on the east side of Nesodden, checking out all the fabulous summer houses along the water line. Sigh. What I wouldn't give to own this property (for example--there are dozens that I was swooning over). After we got home I started making the Lentil stew from a previous post again. It smells so good I could pass out. Here's a peek:

It's time too for an update on what I am calling E's "Steinerskolegenser" (Waldorf school pullover). Thus named because it is turning into such a hippy sweater:

As you can see I'm almost done with the first sleeve. I'm running a little low on yarn, but I'm still hoping there's enough to make a turtleneck at the end.

As I was uploading these I discovered the few snapshots I took while on the conference excursion to the Österlen region of the Swedish province of Skåne, and some turned out kind of fun, so I'll post them here. First up is a couple of the old timbered houses in the town of Ystad, which is also home to Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series:

The second is purportedly the oldest existing timbered house in Scandinavia, and it also happens to be the childhood home of the late Ernst-Hugo Järegård. He's the actor who played the angry Swede in Lars von Trier's Riget.

After our guided Wallander-tour of Ystad, we drove to Kåseberga, where we had a gourmet lunch on the seaside patio at Vendel Ales Stenar restaurant and then walked up the hill to view one of Scandinavia's most impressive Viking age sites, Ale's stones:

It was swarming with people, but still impressive on such a bright and sunny day. There was a whacked out self-titled tour guide there pontificating on his theory about the original function of the stones, which are set up in the shape of a large ship. I have no patience for that kind of new age pseudo-science, so I didn't stick around to listen or pick up any of his home-produced brochures.

Storsand

Some friends invited us for a visit to the beach house they're renting for the week a little further south on the Oslo fjord, so we spent all day there yesterday. It was such a treat! I had been thinking that Nesodden is already so idyllic in the summer that there was no need to go anywhere else, but it was really refreshing to go even less than an hour's drive for a change of scenery.

The sun was out all day (a rarity lately) and it was warm enough for those of the Norwegian persuasion to swim. I, on the other hand, engaged in a veritable frenzy of beachcombing. I was amazed at how much beautiful beach glass I found on one short stretch of beach. The last time I tried to look for beach glass was when visiting a friend in Southern California, who told me that because plastic had replaced almost all commercial use of glass it was becoming almost impossible to find any more. Here I could pick up three or four pieces every time I bent down.

The snapshot above is from an early sorting. I ended up with an entire freezer box full of glass, after sorting out the ceramic and brick pieces (which I left behind). I got a great range of colors, including two little dark blue pieces.

The larger rocks along the beach where absolutely phenomenal too. The variety of pattern and color was so great that I started to feel a little frantic trying to take them all in. I know nothing about geology, but I have heard occasionally that Norway is particularly rich in geological variation, and boy did we see that on the beach yesterday! We took a short little walk (like half a kilometer) down to the local café to buy ice cream, and we probably spent an hour one way, stopping to look at rocks and skip stones ever few steps.

E was really sweet, tagging along with the two bigger boys who were with us all day. It's great for him to get that kind of exposure--it stretches him physically and mentally I'm sure. At one point in the evening they all ran off to play something, and E came trundling after with the roller suitcase he had packed his toys in. It looked so ridiculous that it became the running joke of the evening--E with his security suitcase!

I'm sorry (well, not really sorry) to say that I got so absorbed in the day that I didn't take many pictures, and the black tunic is still not memorialized, even though I wore it all day yesterday. It functioned perfectly as the light summer tunic I was hoping for. The loose gauge is a little bit of a problem in that it snags very easily, but otherwise I'm really happy with it. It is sweater number 10 for the NaKniSweMoDo.