Plaster, sand, repeat

So instead of finishing painting this weekend, I am repairing the wall that was primered too soon after the joint compound was applied and started to peel off in chunks. I am no good at this home repair thing, and it doesn't help I was given bad advice. New advice was given, and I am taking my time with applying patching plaster, sanding, checking, and I'll do this until I think it's PERFECT, and then I will wait a day to primer it. I can have help after I come back from my trip, so my dining room may look like a construction site until then. Maybe I need to hang some road signs around the house. And get a hardhat for the cat.

Since it's starting to look like we MAY be able to have the wedding in September after all (got a letter that the paperwork would be sent to Reykjavík within a week), and the party is to be at the house, the pressure is on. And that means I've been knitting away at Hálfskák again. (looks about the same as when she was modelled by the cat.)

But just to break up monotony, I thought I'd share some more pictures. Here is the Jaywalker sock I started on the plane for my mum. I ended up doing a lot of reading, so I didn't get all that far:

Luckily, she doesn't read the blog, so I can post pictures of gifts.

Also, Ingi bought be some Moomin biscuits when I was there. It's not fair, really, we get that brand over here, but they don't sell the Moomin ones. (Probably because I am the only one over here who knows who the Moomins are.) They have that nostalgic little kid snack flavour.


(Hehe, I just saw from that Wikipedia entry that there is a Moomin theme park. Elskan mín, kannski við þurfum að fara þangað! ;)

Trip Pics At Last

Well, I finally got my trip photos and I put them up on Flickr. Rather than hog my blog with them, I'll put a few below and you can go there to see them. (Start with the one in the link and go right.)



I haven't gotten a whole lot of knitting done lately, been working on my mum's sock and the bear sweater sleeve. It's been SO HOT. And I was trying to paint the dining room, which turned from a weekend project to a NIGHTMARE! First, there was secret hidden wallpaper. I stayed up until 4 scraping it. Then my sister's friend let us use his sander to sand the walls, and he skim coated it with joint compound. But then the other day I noticed it was peeling! Argh. So I was supposed to finish it this weekend, I have sanding dust ALL OVER MY HOUSE, and now I don't even know what to do. I want it over with. But I'm glad I haven't wasted any paint yet.

Amazing Lace Challenge #4: What I would do with my lace if I bound off now

It's simple, really. I have a cat who is embarassed about the fact that his whole body except his head and front ruff were shaved. So I would use it for cat fur-replacement. (Would you call it a cat-pee instead of a toupee? ;))



See how much less embarassed he looks, now that he's not quite so bald on his back.



He liked it so well in fact, that he was actually upset with me for removing it. Normally cats (including mine) don't enjoy being tortured by being forced to wear silly clothes. But he was enjoying it. Maybe it was that soft icelandic wool.

APPROVED!!!!!

OK, I promise to start posting some knitting content soon, instead of just personal news, but this was too exciting to wait on...

I got an email at 5:45 this morning saying our visa application is approved!! The next step is it goes to the national office for 2 to 4 weeks, then they send things over to the Embassy. So we still don't know exact timing, but I am so excited anyway!

If it's Tuesday, it must be Hafnarfjörður

So I just got back from my whirlwind-quick visit to Iceland (I get pathetic vacation time, and I am going later this summer, so this was a very short visit). The flight out was kind of annoying. We were ready to take off and, sitting on the wing, I smelled something weird (like an old motorboat or something, not what you expect from a plane). A minute later, the plane said the engine on my side needed to be looked at. After a few minutes, he announced we were going back to the gate and he hoped it would be ready soon. The mechanic worked on it for a while and we ended up taking off 2 hours late. When I got there, we went shopping for all the things I can't get here: bra for the wedding (and you know you have a great guy when he'll deal with bra shopping with you!), Neutral lotion and bathsoap, bláberjagrautur, lýsi, remolaði, and Lush (well you can get that here but it's still a far drive to get it). We went to visit the new baby, which was very small and cute (and mom appreciated her gifts so that was nice). Then my future mother-in-law made us a dinner of boiled svartfugl.

We then proceeeded to drive 1000 km in 2 days (he told me the mileage but I forgot, I think it works out to 630mi). Up to the westfjörds to Djúpavík, where we stayed in a nice hotel there. On the way, we ate our sandwiches in a little teeny town called Borðeyri (table eyri, how appropriate) and went to the Witchcraft Museum at Hólmavík. The next morning, we stopped at Bjarnafjörður to go swimming and we saw the other part of the Witchcraft Museum, the Sorceror's Cottage. The pool at Bjarnafjörður is fed by a spring that was blessed by Bishop Guðmundur Góði, so it's supposed to possess healing powers. And we went in a natural hot tub there which was just great (it's made of rocks and the water just naturally comes up). We stopped at Hólmavík for lunch at Cafe Riis, which had surprisingly good food (for the one restaurant in a small town) and amazing coffee. We meant to stop at the Blönduós Textile Museum on the way home, but sadly we got there a half hour after it closed. (Between being pokey, and having to wash mud off the SUV at Hólmavík, and slow service at the restaurant, etc etc it just took us longer than we wanted it to.) So maybe some other time. It seemed nice. The good part about missing that is that we ended up exploring Hrutey, which is a little nature park on a little island at the Blanda river. It had just opened after being closed for goose mating season, and you see beautiful flowers, and nice trees, and it has nice paths, and the weather was like 20C and just lovely, so it was a really nice place to go. (So if it's not goose mating season and you go for the museum, you should check it out.) Then we decided to have dinner there at the one restaurant, Við Árbakkan, which was once again, surprisingly good (the menu was really small but the food was great), although their coffee was pretty awful.

At this point, it was around 9:30 and we decided to head back through the Highlands, since we had his dad's SUV. It was really fun, this is what SUVs are meant for. Actually, a lot of the mountain roads were actually BETTER than the roads in the fjörds, but then it turned to sort of a dirt road thing and I couldn't imagine driving a regular car there. It was bumpy and just exciting, and it was a great view, even at midnight. (For our trip, we had the 2 nicest days that have been there in a while, the paper (and his dad) said there had only been 6 dry days in June). We ended up getting to town at around to in the morning, and I have never been SO HAPPY to see Pizza Hut! It was good that we had ended up coming home so late instead of staying another night, because the next day was so rainy the drive back would have been so boring.

So Tuesday we walked around in a park and went to Hafnarfjörður to look at the reservoir and the tree parks nearby, and went for coffee. We ended up running into his coworkers when we were walking around and some friends in the coffeehouse. (Weird it was both on the same day). Then his mom made rack of lamb (lambahryggur) (she really is a great cook, I have a lot to live up to) and we made that cheesecake we made on Easter since the ones at Hagkaup were furry (ewwww).

And then the next day it was time to go back. His dad gave us an antique clock that is in a glass dome. We struggled over how to pack it. Finally the glass dome got filled with my dirty shirts and wrapped in a Lush bag, and then in more dirty clothes and crumpled newspapers into a box, which got taped and "For God's sake, if you open it please put it back the way you found it" written on it, and then that was packed into my suitcase. And a fragile sign was put onto the bag. The whole way back I prayed that no one opened the box and left it poorly packed (I know they would have done this at Logan), and that no one threw the suitcase around. When I got to the parking garage, I took out the box, peeked, and it seemed OK. Once I was home, I checked and it was just fine. Whew!

So what knitting content is there from the trip to the land where the baby sheep nurses in the middle of the road, and the cool sheep stand around next to the car like "Yeah, make me move!"? Just that I worked on that sock for my mother on the plane. I brought it along on the ride but I ended up not knitting in the car. We looked into a yarn shop near 10-11, but she didn't have much (the sale yarn was really nice, but I never know what to do with an odd skein of this or that). Maybe when I go back next month.