June 18, 2015

Do You Do Yoga?

So, I just finished my session of yoga for the day. I don't go to a class or group, but I did do that some years ago.
Now I follow Yoga With Adriene on YouTube. I love how she does her yoga. She's fun to listen to, has great videos and makes me want to come back for more.

Yoga makes me feel great. It can be challenging, exhausting, fun and soothing. It gives me energy.

I don't have a fancy yoga mat, I have a mat that my mother no longer wanted.
I don't have any special yoga clothes, I use my regular tank tops, singlets, sports bra and loose sweatpants.
I might knit myself a pair of yoga socks.

You don't really need that much to do yoga, and that's also one of the things I love about it.

Do you do yoga?

June 16, 2015

Cauliflower Soup With Butter-dough Bacon Twists

Tonight it was my turn making dinner.
I decided to make an simple cauliflower soup, and "spice" it up a bit with butter-dough bacon twists.

The soup is easy.
Roughly chop the cauliflower, and finely chop a small onion or two shallots.
Saute the onion in a small amount of oil in a casserole, add the cauliflower and cover with vegetable stock. Cook until the cauliflower is tender, then use a hand blender and make it into a smooth soup. If you feel it's to thick you can add a bit of cream or more vegetable stock.

The twists. 
Thaw the butter-dough. Divide each plate into 3, and place a slice of bacon on each. Then twist!
Place on a tray and bake in the oven until the bacon is crisp.


Beer Can Chicken For Dinner

So, last Sunday my boyfriend wanted to make dinner. And he wanted to make something we had talked about trying for a long time. I love it when he makes dinner, so I didn't deny.
And we ended up with the most wonderful Beer Can Chicken!

With the chicken we had roasted sweet potatoes, fennel, shallots and parsley root.
And the chicken was brushed with a marinade of red chili, garlic, salt, pepper and oil.

Took out the veggies and put the chicken under the grill for a few minutes to crisp up the skin a bit. *drooool*

As you can see, not much left of the chicken when we were done! It was perfectly tender, juicy and just plain YUMMY! I highly recommend trying out this. My boyfriend had a can of beer with the chicken, and the chicken was so tasty that he forgot he had beer. That's saying something!

June 15, 2015

World Blood Donor Day

Yesterday, Sunday June 14th, was World Blood Donor Day.
The bloodbank is of course not open on Sundays, so unless there was a big crisis, no one here in Trondheim donated blood yesterday.
They had set me up for an appointment today, so now I'm doing my duty.
I wish more people would donate blood, plasma and bone marrow.
I hear a lot of people say that they don't do it because they're afraid of needles.
But still they have bodies covered in tattoos and piercings everywhere.
Ok, some are genuinely afraid, and pass out at the sight of a needle. And the needle they put in your arm to donate blood is a bit thick.
But I still do it. And I have to lie down when they want a bloodsample at my doctors office. And the thin needles that they use when giving vaccines, don't even get me started...

So today I did my duty!
And it didn't hurt, and I got to drink lots of apple juice!


June 14, 2015

One skein

Sometimes I find that I only have one skein left after completing a bigger project.
And I can't be bothered to go to the yarn store to trade it in.
So I look for small projects that only require one skein.
This time I had a beautiful grey skein of an alpaca silk blend left. It has a lot of yardage, so I could probably make something a bit bigger than I did. But when I have one skein I often turn to baby hats.
Most of them are easy to make, and this time I even have enough left over after the hat to make mittens!
The hat I made is in Norwegian called a "djevel-lue", devils hat. Or ski-lue (ski hat) or hjerte-lue (heart hat). I used the free pattern from SandnesGarn, but there are several patterns out there.
I've made it so many times now that I really don't need a pattern any more. I mostly use it for size guiding.

June 13, 2015

Concert Review: Mark Knopfler at Sverresborg

Yesterday my boyfriend and I went to the Mark Knopfler concert.
The weather was awful, but Knopfler delivered nonetheless!
His hands got cold, and he tried to warm them up between songs, but during "Sultans of Swing" he missed a few chords. "A cold hands version of Sultans of Swing", the man said himself. But the crowd cheered him on, and he put on a jacket and continued with "Speedway at Nazareth".
I do really like the songs that he made after Dire Straits, but it's nice that he plays some of the oldies as well.
The local newspaper took notes of which songs were played.




All in all, even though the weather was awful with rain, wind and only +8 degrees celsius I LOVED IT!!!!! I really felt like it was worth standing there, getting cold and wet. The music warmed my soul, and if this was my only chance to see Mark Knopfler and his band live I'll die happy. 

June 05, 2015

WIP

For those of you that don't know, WIP means Work In Progress.

I have to many WIP's... Over 40!
So I'm trying to do them one at a time.
But of course there are loopholes for casting on new projects. Like going on a knitting retreat (I'll tell you about it in the next post).

Today I'm going to finish the Small and clever set from Pickles. I only have a sock left to knit, and sew it together and darn in treads.
No idea why I stopped with so little left to do.
So now it's time to do something about it!

I will update this post later when it's done.

ETA:

It's done!!!
Finally. Why does it always take so long to just finish the last bits?

The set looks cute, but I must say that I don't really like the shape of the hat and booties, and the mittens could have been a bit wider.