Happy New Year! Gott Ny År!

Do you love Moleskines as much as I do?  I use the unlined notebooks for my daily journals, and I get the minis for to do lists. I also have the Stockholm guide, which has awesome maps with clear things so I can write directions over the map without actually writing on the map. So cool, I use it almost every time I go somewhere new in Stockholm on my own. Subway map, pages to keep notes on directions or things I learn when I'm out and about. Awesome!

Check out this cute video, which stars 2011 Moleksine daytimers:



On New Year's Eve we went to a nice dinner party and at 11:45 we bundled up and ran out to a bridge with a bottle of champagne and glasses. Loads of other people were doing the same, and we all stood on the bridge looking at fireworks going off in all directions all over the city. It was snowing and so magical!

This isn't shot from the bridge we were on, but it shows that there were fireworks all over the city and when you're above street level you can see so much:



The julmust and pepparkarkar are all gone and I finally joined a gym for my time in Stockholm! Bring it on!

Julmarknad, snökaos, Jul i Sverige

I love Christmassy things!  We went to a few Christmas markets here in Stockholm, called Julmarknad. So snowy and festive!  There was a record-breaking amount of snow in most of Europe, you probably heard about all the cancelled flights in Paris and England. We had trouble getting a train out of Stockholm before Christmas, but eventually after a few delays and detours we got to the smaller town we were aiming for. The Swedish papers were calling it "snökaos" ... which you can probably guess is 'snow chaos' ... so cute!

first night of hiatus in Sweden!

Hejsan! I've taken 2.5 months leave from work and am spending it in Stockholm. I planned to be there before Christmas, then when I found out The Soundtrack of Our Lives were playing on December 16, I knew I had to get there on time for that. TSOOL is one of my very favourite Swedish rock bands, and seeing them 3 times in 3 nights in 2007 kinda kick-started my interest in Sweden. Now I have a lovely Swedish boyfriend and am temporarily living in Stockholm! funny

 

Today is the 14th day of visit! I vowed to take it real easy for the first two weeks because I was pretty burned out, and it worked! I'm just about 100% relaxed now!

Swedish Royal Wedding

Just another reason that great things come from exercise .... the Swedish Crown Princess married her gym trainer a few minutes ago! I watched it online, it was beautiful!

Swedish phrase of the day: kungligt bröllop it means "royal wedding."

Arlanda is the "Official Love Airport" this year, ha ha. I got smooched when I was there last month, so I guess it's true!


A lot of the stores were brimming with Royal Wedding souvenirs .... china, tea towels, chocolates ...



Victoria and Daniel paper dolls:

lots of postcards ... I liked this cute one:

and this silly one, "how to become a Swedish Prince" ... the text describe's Daniel's upbrining, gym ownershop and royal romance leading to his becoming a prince:

temporary tattoos of the newest royal couple:

and coasters of the royal family:

glass knick knacks, there is a lot of Swedish glasswork:

Victoria wasn't always the Crown Princess. She's the eldest child of King Gustaf and Queen Silvia, but when she was born, the law stated that the first born son would be heir to the throne. That law was changed in 1979. Too bad for Prince Carl Philip! Strikes me as odd because the Swedes seem to have a "gender doesn't matter" approach to everything, but I guess that wasn't so before 1979. She has studied in different countries, supports Swedish public radio and struggles with an eating disorder. I'm just learning about things Swedish, and I don't live over there, so I'm not bored of or annoyed with the royal family yet!

double medalist in the Knitting Olympics

Hiya! I got two projects done during the Knitting Olympics. I knit a cabled neckwarmer, in red for Team Canada. It's a bit too big so I'll probably re-knit it. I must have cast on too many stitches, which would make sense because I cast on in a rowdy bar with lots of knitters while watching the fantastic opening ceremonies! The cables are pretty cool and I love the true red colour. Then I found a fantastic wooden button shaped like a heart:


I sort of have dual loyalties with Canada and Sweden, so I also crocheted OS-mössa, the hat worn by the Swedish Olympians. The Swedes say "OS" for olympiska spel, which means Olympic games, and mössa means hat. Virka is crochet. This is the first time I saw the hats, I snapped a picture of the tv showing the Swedish Olympians in the Parade of Nations at the opening ceremonies. The mittens are really great too!


There were kits for sale in Sweden with the yarn and pattern to make these hats and there was a mad dash for them and they sold out fast. Here in Canada I bought the yarn randomly, used a pattern from a blog, and whipped it up in a couple nights, which was fantastic because it was the first real project I successfully crocheted! Crochet is so much faster than knitting!

Here I am wearing the hat and holding up a head of broccoli, because I thought the green flowers the medallists got looked a bit like broccoli, but they weren't.


I really loved the Olympics this time 'round. I always like them, but I got extra excited this time. The snowboarding! The freestyle skiing! THE HOCKEY! Both the Canadian women and men got gold again.

I got really into the curling, too. The Swedish women beat team Canada for the gold medal game. The Swedes had pink brooms! And they were in a rock video awhile ago. The band, Hammerfall, was in Toronto last week but I didn't go, but check out the video with the awesome curling team, it's pretty funny!

love me two times, Sweden two times

Long time no blog....again! I've actually been to Sweden twice since I last blogged. I went for a week at Easter. I landed early in the morning and was greeted with fresh baked bread at his place.


The spring weather was a glorious 15 degrees every day. (Did you know it was a Swede who came up with centrigrade, by the way? It was a guy called Anders Celsius.) I rented a bike for a few days to zip around, that was super-fun.

I love this bike, which was not to rent...it was just ornamental, outside the Gudrun Sjödén store:

I'm cut off in this picture, but I still love it, it was a good day:

I gave him this awesome bike bell but it got stolen :-(
I loved it because it's a map of Toronto and it shows the Danforth, and we met at the Danforth Music Hall.

There's lots of guerilla knitting in Stockholm:

Then I went over again for almost 2 weeks in August. The weather was lovely then, too...about 20 degrees every day and no humidity! The climate in Stockholm really suits me.

Magnolia and Bobbie Dazzler liked to read Pippi Longstockings. Pippi is their favourite Swedish role model for adventure and sass:

We went to see the history of IKEA exhibit at Liljevalcjhs, that was really great!

I liked the denim room best:

But the kids craft room was fun too!

And all the old catalogues:

And a hex key mural:

Did lots of other things, didn't really take many pictures though.