Ravenhill

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone is having a great day! I made these dolls recently with the patriotic 4th of July colors in mind.

Fru Larsen and Fru Bryhn are in my shop.

I have to tell you we have been HOT! Yes, the heat wave continues. We are keeping cool as best we can.

 

Here the children are trearing down to the beach at full speed ready to plunge into the cooling fjord waters.

 

Actully the early mornings are quite nice as temps do go down considerably at night. We were one of the first to arrive and Lilly paused to look at the birds. I love this hat on her. Mom made it for her to go with a dress that she adored to wear but has outgrown. I am delighted that she can still squeeze into the cute sunhat though.

We are so fortunate to be able to celebrate the 4th with my brother who is visiting this week! He is a great Uncle and the kids adore him. He let the kids douse him with water again and again. He got them back good when he found a large bucket... We all had a ball and cooled down nicely.

These aren't such patriotic colors but they are the dolls I made after my recent shopping spree at Katrine's fabric shop. I am so loving the Japanese prints I bought and used on these dolls. (The dolls are in my shop).

I was happy to find my matryoshka featured on Anna's For the Love of Cute blog here. Thank you Anna, it is sure a treat to have my matryoshka mamas and babies turn up in such good company. I am positively bursting because I have been asked if my dolls could be featured on another very prominent blog. The problem is that I shouldn't let the cat out of the bag yet.

Happy creative weekend!

A fresh Marie Claire is perfect inspiration. The magazine always has some fabulous embroidery that quenches my never ending thirst for eye candy. I think it was what finally motivated me to take out my supplies and I played with some variegated threads in some free-form embroidery with no plan or purpose other than to try out the pretty flosses.

My subscription to this French magazine must have run out because this summer issue is in the shop but not my mailbox so I bought it at the kiosk.

I don't usually make anything in the magazines but the colors and patterns can spur me on to action.

 Isn't this a delightful splash of color?

I am positively silly over buying new threads lately. It is embarassing really, but if I embroider all day and night then I can likely use them in my lifetime. Well, maybe with Lilly's help...

Embroidery seems better than knitting with wool in this unusual heat wave here in Oslo, Norway. My brother is coming to visit in a few days, traveling all the way from cool and cloudy Maine. What a shock he is going to have when he gets off the plane. Norway seems to have gotten tropical.

My first roses are in bloom and the kids are already picking blueberries! The berries are typically ripe a month from now. I wonder what has happened to the usual month of cool and rainy weather we get this time of year?

I hope my adoration of colors and threads will inspire you to do some creative play of your own! Happy weekend!

 

A skirt for Lilly

I thought I would surprise my dear friends, family and readers with a blog post this morning! I have really been terrible lately about finding time to sit down and blog. The sunshine and perfect weather have been calling me outdoors. We just run in once in awhile when we are hungry. Our little pool is filled up and the kids are splashing and sqealing out there from as early as 7 am many days. Sorry neighbors, such summer joy just cannot be suppressed!

Here they are bright and early today. This morning my husband is taking the children to visit Oldemor, my husgand's grandma. I would have liked to have gone too but I needed the day to myself even more. Lilly is wearing the brand new skirt I made for her.

I was just going to put the one yellow yo-yo on there but she insisted on 3. She also chose the fabrics for the skirt. I picked the vintage ricrac. I think we make a good designer team, don't you?

My matryoshka creations end up all over the world. The other day I had an order from someone in the town next door to my hometown! I thought that was fun and even more fun was seeing Fru Herland on this blog. I hope you will read her post because it was so delightful! Thank you so much Rhea. I will definitely drop by and visit Alewives and visit with you when I am in Maine!

Before I run off and do whatever I please I wanted to tell you that I have new needlebooks in the shop.

You might also want to hurry to Jennifer's as she is having an amazing give away that ends tomorrow, June 28 at 5 pm. Please tell her I sent you!

Now I have a custom order to finish. I haven't painted a face in months and am a bit nervous about it. It is probably like riding a bicycle though I will remember how when I sit down to do it. Doing this embroidery on the back was really fun. I really love it when someone asks me to embroider something special on a doll. 

Thank you so much to everyone who wrote such lovely messages on my last post. Your kind words really meant a lot to me. I hope you will have a wonderful weekend!

Knit one miss you

My closest friend in Norway is moving away tomorrow. It might be just for a year but more likely it is for good. I have had many moves myself over the years and many good friends move away but it is still very sad to say good bye. Funny that her moving seems to have inspired a big knitting craze, because not only had we both moved from the US to Norway, married Norwegian guys, had kids the same ages, etc etc we also both love to knit and that is what we did nearly every time we got together as we chatted up a storm. So the needles would fly and our we could chat about everything under the sun for hours. So I suppose this stack of yarn I bought over the weekend is an attempt to cheer myself up.

Sebastian joined me on an the train to downtown. It only takes 5 minutes to walk to the train and then the ride is 12 minutes. We were going to go to the library but we never ended up getting there. We did some window shopping, went to see what was at the toy store, and found a couple of summery sweaters for me and socks for him. The most fun though was going to the yarn store together. I blew my entire birthday gift card from January on buying yarn for making Sebastian's long list of winter gear that he wants.

 

I picked up this new PT pattern book with some great tradional Nowegian Selbu inspired patterns. The colors my dear son picked out were far from traditional and are making the knitting ever so much fun.

 

So this is his sock so far. Aren't those great colors together? The best part about it is that for now, when he grows out of hand-knitted socks I can use them! He is growing like a little weed and has feet nearly as big as mine so I am knitting these in my (our) size.

I can't really say that the knitting will begin to fill the gaping hole the departure of this dear friend will make in my life, but they do say that knitting is therapeutic.

Actually, it is hard to find time to dwell on anything sad with my children around! Summer vacation started today and my little one doesn't even have time to get her face washed after her lunch before she runs off to play. I only caught her in the camera here, but she was playing in a little tent with a friend when I took this and the house was filled with giggles.