Iceland Part Three

Samples of beautiful Iceland scenery along with a cute kid enjoying some ice cream.

(1)B.emerges from a cave which is at the site of this fissure. Water is running inside this cave. (She wished she could put a rubber ducky in the river, and someone somewhere would find a rubber ducky floating along... haha!)
(2)Fissure opened up over time due to earthquakes between the years of 1975-1984. This is where the American plate and the European-Asian plate are separating.
(3)I am standing on both sides of the planet: one foot on the American plate, the other foot on the European-Asian plate.

Members of our tour group doing the straddling of the earth's tectonic plates. - photo by GEG

(1-2)This crater happened during a 1700s volcano eruption. One hundred years later the water was still boiling. Now in 2017 the water is cold.
(3)Icelandic horses are unique. They can do a gait that no other horses do. It is called Tolt (umlaut over the o). It carries the rider in a very smooth ride, no bumping up and down. She is showing that she can carry a full glass of beer during the Tolt, but during a trot, the beer spills all over.

One more post coming -- see Iceland Part Four.

Book Review: The Rent Collector

The Rent Collector by Camron Wright takes place at a garbage dump in Cambodia. It's not as hard to read as one might think. The real story is about literacy. I just loved this book. The characters are so well developed. As the story unfolds, the depth of their characters is slowly revealed. It's just a wonderful, very well-done book. I encourage everyone to read it.

Iceland Part Two

(1)Icelanders love to swim. Even tiny towns usually have an outdoor pool, heated by the natural geothermal hot waters of the earth. They use these pools year-round.
(2)A yummy lunch of lamb soup and rolls. I loved the bread in Iceland! Oh, so yummy, and it inspired me to start making home-made bread like I used to do.
(3)Friends Sally and Maureen. Notice the lovely weather we enjoyed. We were told that it was by far the nicest weather they'd had so far this summer. Most days the high was in the low 60s. I often got hot from hiking and walking so much, but evenings cooled down beautifully and wearing a jacket or sweater was in order. Also, depending on where one goes, it could suddenly be very cold and a person would need mittens and a hat! We stopped at a huge waterfall where this was the case. It was VERY windy there, and cold. But just a half kilometer down the road, it was not windy, and the temperature was much warmer.
(4-5)random pretty views
(6)four friends at a quilt shop (wow, fabric there is very expensive.. in our money, about $22-24 per meter).

(1)trolls in Aukureyri.. the troll folklore is a big part of their tradition
(2)Icelandic sweaters. They are beautiful and are sold everywhere. Yes, I bought one. Also bought mittens and a hat.
(3)a church in Aukureyri
(4)our hotel outside Aukureyri.. it used to be a chicken processing shed or chicken barn, or something about chickens.

This sequence of photos was taken from about 10:30 to 11:30 PM. I don't think the sun ever went lower than it is pictured here. It then starts rising as it moves along the horizon to the right. It was odd and fun to experience 24-hour sunlight. It got dusky at night, but never dark.

Check back in for Iceland Part Three in a day or two!

Jaeja! Iceland!

I went to Iceland! It was an amazing trip. I had a great time from beginning to end.

The trip was led by quilter Gudrun Erla Gisladottir. Originally from Iceland, she now resides in Minnesota. This is her second Gudrun-led tour into Iceland; her first was last year, 2016, and she has another one going later in August 2017. If you get a chance to join her future tours, I suggest you sign up and go!

I'm still ruminating on all that we did. The names are hard to recall, because at first when looking at any words in Icelandic language, it's hard for this English-native-speaker to even recognize what is being described. The only Icelandic word I recognized was Reykjavik. And it took me a long time to learn how to spell that without relying on spell-check.

So, it's still hard to tell you where we were, but suffice it to say, we saw a lot and had a great time. The landscape there is so interesting. I felt like I was at a primeval birth of a planet. Iceland is an island of active volcanoes, and all the landscape is lava rock (basalt). Some spots are covered with large lava rocks and boulders, others are more meadow-like with grasses growing, and there are also mountains, waterfalls, lakes, natural hot water ponds, geysers, and a marked absence of trees. Fascinating!

The population of Iceland is 330,000. Two-thirds of that population lives in Reykjavik. The second-biggest city is Aukureyri which I learned to pronounce in Icelandic. Just ask me next time you see me. I love to say it. The other inhabitants mostly live in tiny towns or on farms, plopped here and there, seemingly randomly, sometimes in the middle of.. I hate to say nowhere, but they are definitely isolated.

Almost all the island uses natural, geothermal heat which is right underfoot. They just dig down, and there it is: hot water for heating homes, and water power creates electricity. Because of this natural source of heat and electricity, the country is clean and unpolluted. They are very happy and content. They are proud to be Icelanders and are strong family and community-oriented people. They were the first country in the world to have a democratically-elected female president, and the first to have an openly gay female prime minister. They are accepting and unpretentious. It's a lovely place to be.

(1)Photo is by a FB friend who happened to be in Reykjavik for one day and got a better picture of this church than I did.
(2)me getting a panoramic view of Reykjavik
(3)view from first night's hotel in Borgarnes
(4)I ate arctic char (and over the next days also ate lobster, shrimp, crab, cod, raw scallop pulled fresh out of the ocean, and fermented shark).

(1&2) Icelandic quilter (Sigrid?)shows us two bags she made and a quilt. We're standing in front of a sauna.
(3) a quilt by Gudrun
(4-6) me showing a tiny quilt (no room in suitcase for anything larger)
(7) Sue from ND showing her pretty quilt whose background she ice dyed

(1-2) along a beautiful hike we took at Arnarstapi on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula

(1-2)Arctic Terns nesting on rocks (see the babies?) and a Puffin whose nest is in the hole behind it
(3)Boat captain called this an abandoned summer home and that people are no longer allowed to live on this island. When I got home and uploaded this photo, I saw that there is laundry hanging on the front porch, and there are two people wandering around in other photos of this same spot. Hmmm.
(4)very cool volcanic rock formations
(5-8)they dragged a net and collected a big pile of scallops and other sea life. The scallops were eaten raw, about two minutes out of the ocean. Yes, I had one. It was good! The other sea life was returned to the ocean.

a visit to the Textile Museum in tiny town of Blonduos (population 800).. woman who knitted those dresses lived to be 108 years old. Beth tries carding and spinning yarn on hand spindle. I teased her that she made "rope" but then I did not give it a try to see whether I was any better.

This post is getting very long, so I will post an Iceland Part Two in another couple of days. Til then, tata.

Book Review: Estonia

When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen is a book about Estonia. It takes place during the change of regimes; first Estonia was taken over by Soviets, then Germany, then, at the end of WWII, back to Soviet rule. It was an eye-opening book. I knew only a very small bit of Estonia's history. This one follows several characters through the years of change and upheaval. There are times of despair, hope, turmoil, and uncertainty.

Though it took me a while to read this book, I rate it highly. It was a little complicated and a tad depressing.. about a long and dark period of Estonia's history. Nevertheless it was an enlightening and interesting book. We here in the USA sometimes forget how lucky we are to have the freedoms we do: to speak our minds, behave as we wish, and feel free from sudden removal from our homes.

If you read this, I recommend making a list of the characters as they are introduced, and how they are related or intertwined. This will help you keep track of people as the years and events go by.

Book Review: The Girl Before

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen... I liked the book; I had a hard time putting it down. I would give it 3.5 stars out of five. A young woman is taken into custody and interrogated about her life. To her, it's a complete mystery as to why she was taken and what they want to know from and about her. Gradually she begins to realize what her life has really meant. It's obvious she was embroiled in something sinister, yet she remained blissfully naïve and blind to most of it. It's amazing how indoctrination can shift a person's perception of the truth. I won't explain much about what this book is about other than what I've already said. Although the subject matter is tough, I think most adult readers would find it worth their while to spend a couple vacation days with their nose in this captivating book.

Finding Pieces, Making Quilts

Lately I have been trying to neaten up my sewing room. When I do this, I always find bits and pieces of projects that I started. I may have forgotten about them or just set them aside, and finding them is a joy of reuniting and being re-enthused.

I often don't make a lot of progress cleaning, because finding the pieces is so much fun. My creative juices start to flow, and I sit down to sew, even though the cleaning isn't done. Here are a few things on which I have made progress because of this method of "cleaning."

This started out as house blocks that I made for fun. Then I decided to make them into a neighborhood. Each house shares a little something with another house.. a chimney here is part of a door there, for example. It's a sharing neighborhood. I wasn't sure I wanted to keep it as a circle, but I'm glad I did. It's about 44-inches in diameter.

This one started out as a barn block that I made several years ago. The block pattern was being passed around the internet or maybe it was in my guild. I can't recall. Anyway, my barn with its barn quilt sat around for a long time until I finally made it into this. The improv-piecing to the left of the barn was something I picked up from the Free Table at my guild. Again, this was quite a while ago. Just today I decided they would look fine put together. After this is quilted, I think I will donate this quilt to the clinic which my guild supports with quilts for Baby Boxes.

Last month at my guild meeting I found a box of strips, mostly beige, on our Free Table. That came home with me, and I made this little purse. Then I made a pillow front. My small group met and worked on making pillows that close with a zipper. I couldn't get to the meeting because of FIL's illness and death, but I had already made the pillow front, so I finished it off my normal way, with overlapping flaps in the back. That method works fine for me.

I have more projects that I want to work on thanks to un-earthing pieces. I love this feeling of being enthused for sewing!

RIP, FIL

My father-in-law died on July 2 at age 97 years and five months. In June he fell and broke his hip, and he never fully recovered after that. In the end he decided to stop eating, and he died a few days later, with many children and grandchildren having been there to see him and say our goodbyes. He went on his own terms and peacefully, exactly as he wanted. One can't ask for any more than that. Now my mother-in-law must try to adjust to her new normal. They had been married 67 years, so this is a big task for her.

Here they are in January when we celebrated our family Christmas. I'm so glad I took this picture.

Rest in peace, H., knowing you left a legacy of your wonderful five children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. We shall carry on with love.