Today’s walk started from home at about 11:30. We have a very short period of daylight at this time of year and as today was sunny, it was important to get out in the sunshine. My husband and son were my walking companions today and our goal was a small beach on the east side of Skarnsund.
Our walk continued across farm fields, around the neighbouring farm and across another field. We have no snow on the ground and the temperature today was about 7 degrees Celsius.
The slope down to the water is quite steep and one needs to walk carefully. I prefer to do it now when I am with others, in case of mishap. There are other trails in the woods here, most of them would be made by the deer. This area has not been logged recently, so it is nice old forest.
At this time of year, there are a lot of dead leaves on the path, which can make it slippery. However, there was no ice on the path as we are under the trees. It is hard to take pictures that show how steep the slopes are here, but one does not want to wander off the trail.
Eventually we came to the stream that drains this hillside. There is even a little bridge to help cross it and a sturdy handrail.
It was lovely to just be on the beach for a while. The sun was shining and there was no wind. The water was calm. There was snow on distant hills, but nothing close by. We were also far enough away from the bridge that the noise of the traffic was almost not heard. There were no fishermen out today. Everyone here is busy getting ready for Christmas celebrations.
The beach is not sandy at all, but in relation to many places along Skarnsund, there is a place to walk for a couple of hundred meters before the next impassable section of rock comes. At high tide, most of this beach would disappear under water. We were there when the tide was about halfway between low tide (at 9:17 and 122 cm) and high tide (at 15:36 and 290 cm), so an incoming tide.
I don’t take this walk very often, but today was a good day to do it. Sunshine, no wind, plus degrees in the air and two good companions. We used a little more than an hour and a half on our walk.
Today’s walk took about 2 hours and one of my goals was to get some sunshine. In December, sunshine is a precious commodity and though our house gets some in the afternoon, the days are short. By heading outside, I was hoping to get fresh air, exercise and some sunshine on my face. All goals were achieved and as I walked, I thought about how important light is in December.
The first photo was taken at 11:40 and the last one at 13:17. Today, the 6th of December, sunrise was at 9:42 and sunset at 14:30.
In Norway, it is interesting to see how the coastline has been settled. The north side of a fjord will get more sunshine than the south side and therefore will have more farms and villages. As you look at the picture above, the peninsula sticking out into the water gets a lot less sunshine than the mountain tops in the background at this time of year. Height above sea level will also affect how much sunshine a place gets, especially in winter. Getting higher up, there will be less land between the sun and where you are. As I crossed Skarnsund Bridge and climbed up a side road on the other side, it was noticeable that houses higher up got more sunshine than those lower down.
I notice how the sunshine changes the colours of the things around us. Without sunshine, December tends to be a month of grey and white, with just a few dabs of blue and green. But when the sun shines on something, the colours turn more vibrant. Coniferous trees become very green and the sky was very blue where there weren’t any clouds. The brown grass and trees without leaves turn yellow and orange.
Quilting is the process of sewing several layers of fabric together. Finishing includes making the edges and corners neat.
Layers
Having now sewn the top layer of my place mat, the layer that shows, I need to make my place mats thick enough for their purpose. My place mats will be used a lot and need to soak up spills, deaden sounds on a wooden table, and tolerate a lot of washing. Making them with several layers, help them deaden sounds.
Before the backing material is attached, it is important to trim the edges of the place mat and make sure it is the size you want it.
I cut an old flannel sheet into the right size rectangles and used two layers of the sheeting to make a thicker place mat. This filling layer will not be visible in the finished place mat. The backing is made of a solid blue that goes well with the top. The edges will be folded over to the front to make good edges.
(Note: I am doing my sewing in November when there is very little daylight. I am mostly doing my sewing while it is dark outside. This means that most of the pictures were taken inside under various inadequate lighting conditions. Please excuse the poor quality of the colour in the photos. A few were taken outdoors and they will reflect the real colours much better.)
Quilting
Quilting is the process of sewing all the layers together so that they tolerate washing. There are many ways of doing the quilting, but with a geometric pattern like I have, I like best to follow the lines of the pattern. In this case I decided to sew only in one direction, and in the trough between two strips. I have chosen a contrasting colour so that it shows. When sewing in the trough, the stitching may not show up, if you use a colour of thread that easily disappears into the fabric’s own colour.
When doing the sewing, start in the middle of the place mat and work your way to the outside edges. As you sew the different layers may stretch a bit and by starting in the middle you can reduce unwanted tucks as you sew.
Many of the old-fashioned quilts were quilted with various flowery patterns in the sewing. This, of course, is a personal preference. With other place mats where I have appliquéd patterns, there is often more pattern on the back. This place mat has a very plain pattern. It is adequate to hold all the four layers together solidly enough to tolerate a lot of washing.
Finishing
Once I had finished the quilting, I worked on making neat edges. The backing was folded twice and pinned in place. I always have difficulties with the corners and I spent quite a bit of time trying to get them all the same and easy to sew so that they didn’t come apart.
Once the design has been decided on and the calculations made, it is time to get down to the practical work of cutting and sewing pieces together. My design at the moment is geometrical, using squares and rectangles in three colours of fabric.
Tools
If you are going to do much of this type of creative work, it is important to invest in the tools that are needed. Cutting a lot of small pieces with scissors is both time consuming and inaccurate. A roller knife along a flat edge will give a much straighter cut and cut down on the wear and tear on your fingers. Use a self-healing cutting mat. The one I have has metric measurements on one side, and inches on the other side. You can choose the measurement system that suits you best. I have been metric since before I moved to Norway in 1980.
Using a roller knife, you can cut through several thicknesses of fabric at the same time. Make sure you have extra blades for the roller knife as they can get dull quickly if you are cutting a lot.
Cutting
I was using leftover pieces of material that were often odd shaped, but I was able to use up quite a few of these pieces. The challenge can be to get the squares and rectangles matched up with the grain of the fabric.
First I cut long strips 4 cm wide, then I cut the strips into the correct lengths.
I ended up with over a thousand pieces. I made a few extra of each colour and size in case any turned out uneven or unusable. It was a bit of a challenge to count how many were cut, but I did them in groups of 10 and that helped. With persistence the job gets done.
Remember that accuracy when cutting is very critical to the look of the final piece of work. I use a 1 cm sewing allowance on all sides. So if a finished block is to be 2 cm by 2 cm, I cut it 4 cm by 4 cm. This is all done when doing your calculations during the design of the project. Using a roller knife and a long ruler helps make the edges very straight. By using the lines on the cutting mat, you can make sure that corners are at 90 degrees and that lengths are as accurate as humanly possible.
Sewing
The best procedure when making geometrical patterns is first to sew the small pieces into strips, then to sew the strips together to make a larger piece. You want to think carefully how you do your sewing so that you don’t get a lot of material bunched up to the right of the sewing needle.
To reduce the amount of cutting of thread that you do, I suggest that you feed the small pieces into the sewing machine with a couple of millimeters between them. This saves both thread and time. I cut the pieces apart when I ironed each piece. I worked on making 30 strips at a time. I find it easiest to work with the strips if I press the seam allowance to one side before I add the next piece. It means a lot of moving from the sewing machine to the ironing board, but I find the moving around is good for me.
Accuracy is very important when both cutting and sewing pieces together. When making a strip with 8 pieces, if each piece is out just 1 mm, you can be out 8 mm by the end of the strip. I had one strip that ended up being much too short and I had to pull it out and replace it.
Once I made all the strips that I needed, I arranged them in the correct order for the place mats. This can be a good time to check that the lengths have all come out close enough to use.
In the next blog I will explain how I have made the backing and done the quilting.
Wednesday is my usual day to go for a walk with a girlfriend. The weather forecast was for sunshine so I was looking forward to today’s walk. As I went out to the car, I noticed fog rolling across the water, coming out of Skarnsund. As I stood watching for a few minutes, the fog rapidly moved out over Trondheim Fjord.
I had agreed to meet my friend at her house in Straumen and I was anxious to see where there was fog and where there wasn’t fog. As I had hoped, the fog was mostly on the water and if we walked uphill, we would be in the sunshine.
We choose to walk up to Øyna, a hotel and restaurant located near the top of a hill in Straumen. (See their website for more information about them. You can also get information about them in English here.)
Even on a foggy day, the views from here were good though, of course, not as good as on a sunny day. In the picture below you can just see the top of the spire of Sakshaug Church, sticking up from the fog. This picture is taken looking between two of the new units of the hotel, so this is the sort of view there would be from the hotel rooms themselves.
I had a most enjoyable walk, including a good climb up the hill in Straumen, an exploration of an area I hadn’t seen for several years, and lots of sunshine. We used about 75 minutes on our walk today.
I am in the process of sewing 1068 small pieces of material together with the goal of making 6 place mats for our kitchen table. I don’t mind the sewing, but my mind needs something to do while my fingers to do the work. So this series of blogs has been written in my mind several times before actually sitting at the computer to do the writing.
Several years ago I started making a series of place mats using patchwork and quilting techniques. The first series was autumn leaves, the second series was winter and the third series was spring tulips. We use the autumn series and the tulip series regularly, but the winter series I wasn’t that happy with and they have been taken out of active service.
In July 2020, we bought new dishes for the kitchen, a beautiful blue (my favourite colour) from IKEA. However they didn’t look very good on either the orange or the green place mats, so I started thinking about a new set of place mats that went better with the new dishes.
Already the day after I had bought the new dishes, I went hunting through my boxes of leftover material and looked for a variety of materials that went well with the new dishes. I set aside the ones that went well and then the ideas of what to use and how to use the material had to mature for a while.
Eventually I decided on three materials that I would use on the top of the place mat and a plain dark colour for the backside.
Time goes by and the idea sits there and I have to decide on what sort of pattern to make. I decided something more geometrical this time and decided on a zigzag pattern, using the three chosen materials. The lightest colour is quite bright, so small amounts of it.
In the bottom right-hand corner I calculated the sequence of the pieces of material. One square on the paper is 2 cm, so three squares means that the finished piece is to be 6 cm long. X and A refer to the light blue material. The shaded squares and C are the dark blue material and the blank squares and B are the patterned material.
Next came the detailed calculations of what size pieces I would need and exactly how many I would need for 6 place mats. Some are 4 x 4 cm, some are 4 x 6 cm and some are 4 x 8 cm. All pieces have 1 cm on each side for seam allowance, so a 4 x 4 cm square will come out as 2 x 2 cm in the finished place mat. The total came to 1 068 pieces plus a few extra for good luck.
The next blog will be about sewing the pieces together.
It is now October and winter weather is around the corner. My friend and I had looked up at the tall mast last week and agreed to walk up to it, if the weather permitted. The weather wasn’t that great, but we did the walk anyway.
I’ve been trying to find information about the mast but the information I have found is a bit limited. The building is located at 401 meters above sea level. The mast is a transmitter for several Norwegian television and radio stations and was built in 1973. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skavlen_Transmitter )
We drove along Fv 192, towards Saltvikhavn in Mosvik, drove about 1.5 km past the turn to Salvikhavn and found a parking spot on the side of the road. After all, we wanted the uphill walk for the exercise. We parked about 2 km from the mast at an elevation of about 200 meters above sea level. The temperature was about 3 degrees Celsius and there had been snow at higher elevations in the night. There was some slush on the road, much of which is a gravel road. Thankfully my friend had already changed to winter tires on her car.
Though I enjoyed the walk, I would definitely recommend doing the walk when the weather is clearer. I plan to do the walk again next year, in the summer months of the year. The walk was a little over 2 km each way and we used a little over an hour.
A few days later I was able to take this photo of the mast, taken from the other side of Skarnsund. Though it shows up well for the naked eye, I had problems getting the mast to show up in a picture, even when I zoomed in a lot.
Today was a pleasant autumn day, with no wind or rain. I went for a walk with a friend. We meet most Wednesdays and enjoy walks in various parts of Inderøy.
She parked her car near the school in Mosvik and we walked around the farm called Stor-Grande and were soon in the woods. Though we started off heading towards one particular check-in place, we ended up changing our minds and going to Korpåsen which has a beautiful view. We used about an hour and a half on today’s walk.
Today the temperature was about 9 degrees Celsius, so we didn’t sit long at the top. There was just a bit of a breeze and after climbing uphill we cooled down quite quickly. Soon we were walking again and heading down the hill to the car. It was a very pleasant outing with a good friend. This is a recommended walk, with many variations if one wanted to take an even longer walk. See the map in the picture above for suggestions on a round trip in the area. We walked back down the hill the same way we had gone up.
I enjoyed today’s walk in the October weather. There was a bit of a wind, the leaves are turning yellow, gold and red and being blown in the wind. It was cloudy, so not so very bright, but no rain either. Today’s walk took about one hour. My two walking companions today were my husband and my son.
This walk is suitable for anyone. One could park closer to the gravel road than we did, but there were few cars on the asphalted road along the lake. There were no steep climbs and few muddy areas.
I made a decision a while ago to buy locally produced food when it was conveniently available at a competitive price. I don’t buy everything that might be available as it must be things that we use.
Two of the products that are produced on local farms in our neighbourhood are eggs and milk.
I started buying eggs quite a while ago now. It is a short walk up to the neighbouring farm. We get 30 eggs at a time and we can also buy double-yoked eggs or cracked eggs at differing prices. I buy just the regular eggs.
In addition to eggs, I can also get cucumbers at the egg farm, though the cucumbers are produced at another farm in Inderøy. Though I don’t purchase it, I can also buy honey here, produced by the farmer’s wife. I find their price a bit high, so have only purchased it once.
I also buy my whole milk in a bottle at a farm that is just a little bit farther away, but still within walking distance. I usually get two liters of milk at a time. One pays a deposit on the bottle on the first purchase and after that one returns the empty bottle and only pays for the milk itself.
In both cases I use a small backpack to carry home the food. Eggs are put into 12-egg cartons which nicely fit in the backpack. Two or three liters of milk also fit nicely into the backpack, though not both eggs and milk at the same time.
To pay for what I purchase, I can use my telephone to send the money while I am at the farm. No invoices or delayed payment. I pay when I take the food. I often meet the farmers and it is nice to chat to them for a few minutes.
This is one way that I can contribute to farmers trying out new marketing ideas.