Spring in the North - So much better.

I've been like a mad woman in the last year or so, taking courses in all kinds of strange things.  Mostly old handiwork.  This is not typical of me.  It's kind of not at all like me.  I have always told myself that I can't be taught.  I'm too impatient and arrogant to take instruction from others.  Or so I have always thought.  But it turns out that I can actually listen to what others say and learn from them.  Of course I knew that.  It's not like I haven't learned everything I know from other people.

I spent last weekend with eight women in the north of Iceland, at an agricultural college learning to weave on a warp weighted loom.  This is the old looms that basically date from the stone age and were used right up until 1750 in Iceland.  By that time, weaving had, in Europe, long since become a matter of Guilds and was the domain of men.  Except here, where the vertical loom was found at every farm and women wove every piece of cloth that was used.  And all the yarn used to weave was spun on a drop spindle too.  Right up until the 1750 there were no spinning wheels in use in this country and no horizontal looms.  So it may come as a surprise that this method of weaving has almost become lost in this country.  But now there are at least 8 of us, who know how.

Maybe it doesn't matter that the old ways of doing things get lost.  Some people don't seem to mind.  Maybe most people don't mind.  I don't know.  I have no idea why this had started to matter to me.  But I feel privileged to have been a part of the small group that got to learn this.  And it's not that I was chosen or anything.  I just happened to hear about this course by chance and immediately got interested and signed up.  They needed six people, but had to cancel because they couldn't fill the spaces.  Even if I offered to sign my mother up if needed.  So I kept telling everyone about it.  In the end they had a waiting list.

This really is a most satisfying way to weave.  The loom doesn't take much space.  One can take it down and put it up again, without finishing the piece.  Something that can not be done in the modern looms.  The construction is quite simple and it's not really hard work, although progress is undoubtedly slower than on horizontal looms.

We wove with tufts of "tog" to make a type of cloth that was used in Viking times as a warm and waterproof outer clothing.  It made for a shaggy fabric that hippies would have been proud of in the sixtees.  But my little piece may end up as a cushion cover one of these days.

It took about 7 hours to set the looms up and then the going was slow since we were two to each loom and had to co-ordinate our weaving.  We all did pretty different pieces, some using the natural sheep colours and others using natural dyed wool.  One can weave quite complicated pieces on this loom, twill being the very traditional Icelandic fabric that was so well known in the olden days and was exported in large quantities.  Twill uses 3 shafts on this loom, but we only used one shaft and did a pretty basic basket weave.

I fell in love with this type of weaving and I'm almost planning to build a loom in the garden.  They really look quite good, rustic and solid structures made of sturdy branches and woods.  It would make for a really cool garden sculpture.

Handiwork

In my language we use the word handiwork when we talk about all sorts crafts, anything really that is done by hand as the word implies.  Although, the word tends to have a bit more feminine slant covering more of the things that women tend to do more than men, like knitting, crocheting, sewing and embroidery.

Handiwork was the name given to the class where they taught those skills in school when I was seven.  The boys learned something called "smíði", a word that might be related to the english word smith which means metal worker.  The Icelandic word has a more general meaning because it captures a lot of materials like wood, metal and stone, but not wool, fabric or yarn.  I like to do both and would have enjoyed going to the boy's classes if they had been open to girls.  But nowadays they are, of course, and girls are free to explore a wealth of materials in their creative work.

I still like the feminine materials and love to have some handiwork going.  I have been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting as well as spinning, dyeing and cleaning both goat wool and eiderdown (yes, I'm still doing that).  There is something very comforting in having something on the knitting needles (or the crochet hook as the case may be).  It's like having a great big book to read.  Something that one can turn to again and again.  But then all too quickly it's all over.  And there is a sense of loss and emptiness that needs to be filled.  This didn't use to be a problem because in the past I hardly ever finished projects, but I have found that as I get older I also get better at finishing what I start.  I now have two new sweaters and a growing stash of beautifully coloured yarn.

The Thirteenth

The last day of Christmas is thirteen days after Christmas day.  We call the day "The Thirteenth" (Þrettándinn) and it is celebrated in a small way.  We have bonfires, parades with elves and trolls and all kinds of strange beings.  This is also the day to fire up the last remaining fireworks.  Our Julelads (Jólasveinar), all thirteen of them have left, one every day since Christmas day and then, when they have all left, Christmas is all over.

I remember Christmases of my childhood with fondness.  My memories are mostly all muddled together and it's hard to distinguish one Christmas from another.  But one I do remember particularly well.

My sister and I were probably around six and seven years old.  This was in the days before we had overdrafts and credit cards, when ones wages just had to stretch till the end of the month.  My parents must have very broke, because instead of the usual expensive traditional Christmas dinner, we had the very inexpensive and traditional Meat soup (Kjötsúpa).  We only got one gift from my parents that year, and although we must have had a few other gifts from uncles and aunts, this one is the only one I remember.  It was the kind of toy one would expect to find in a gas station, 4 very cheap plastic bowling pins with a metal rod through them, on a stand and one ball to knock them down.  We were a little puzzled, since we were used to receiving one gift each from our parents.  But they, probably horribly guilt ridden, seemed to be really excited by this, obviously very cheap, toy and got down on the floor and started to played with us.  And they made it exciting and fun and we played all evening.  We had so much fun, I'll never forget it.  It wasn't until years later that I realized how terribly broke they  must have been and most important of all: That the best gift that children can receive is their parents undivided attention.

I do not remember the most expensive gift they ever gave me.  Not at all.  I couldn't even guess at it.  That's not to say that I didn't receive many very nice Christmas gifts from them.  They were very good at giving us very nice things even if they never were rich.  But that cheap plastic thing is the one I remember best.  I think we need to remember sometimes that money doesn't really matter as much as we pretend it does.  Most of my pleasure these days are not expensive.  Most of them cost very little and some cost nothing at all.  This year I plan to enjoy as much as I can, all the free things in life.  I will feed the birds, gaze at the sky and look for the Northern Lights.  I'll admire the sunset, pick wild flowers, visit old friends and take long walks in the woods, along the river or on the beach.  It's going to be a year to remember.

Old Years Evening

New Years Eve has a different name in Icelandic and with that comes a slightly different meaning.  It's called Old Years Eve.  It emphasizes the end of the old year rather than the beginning of the new.  The name may be why I find it an almost a melancholy time.  I think back.  To old times and old friends.  To people I loved.  The people who have died.  And then I think about myself, as one does.  I wonder if I have changed over the years.  Most of the time I don't think I have, but I'm pretty sure others would think so, not having the inside scoop on the logic of my life's journey.

The similarities between the chain smoking, cola drinking, make-up wearing, fashion conscious art student and the juice drinking, Pilates addicted, business woman-cum-back-to-nature-and-the-simple-way-of-life naturally graying middle aged woman may not be obvious, but I'm all still here, although neither smoking nor drinking cola, but still wearing make up and enjoying beautiful clothes and other materialistic things in life.  My curiosity about everything is still the driving force in my life and having mastered some skills during the first fifty or so years of my life, I am now tackling some that I was vaguely interested in back in the seventies (macramé anyone?) and others that I never gave a second thought.

I have to admit that my interests are centered around women and what women do.  Mostly, no actually almost exclusively, around women that are older than I am.  Their lives are interesting, their knowledge and the skills that they had to have fascinate me.  Most older women have lived lives that are far more interesting than any man's.  At least to me, but I have to admit that I find men rather uninteresting people.

I was at a friends's birthday party the other day.  It was a fairly large gathering, with many "important people" there.  I'm not one of them and only knew most of the guests in sight.  But I did find wonderful company in a lady in her eighties with whom I shared the major part of the evening.  She was much more interesting company than any of the politicians or business people who were there.  I got to hear of her life as a poor married student living in Germany in the late fifties, driving across America with her husband and three children (the northern route) to live in Palo Alto in the the early sixties, driving back across America (the southern route), this time with four children, moving back to Iceland and then moving to El Salvador with all four children to live there for a year in the seventies.  I also learned a few tidbits of her life as a teenager, a bit of her handsome husband's infidelity and consequent divorce, her work as an efficient CEO, mother and housewife as well as her political work.  All quite remarkable, but unknown to most people.  I got to hear about her children, her second husband, their happy life and how he died from cancer in only two weeks.  This woman is still very beautiful, her skin is perfect (and I asked, she uses Nivea cream) she dresses distinctively and in a manner that makes anyone envious of her good taste.  What a wonderful woman and how I appreciated her willingness to share her life with me.

I think it is remarkable how women have kept traditions alive through the ages.  They have kept alive skills that modern society has deemed redundant and I would love to master more of them.  I know that growing dye plants and experimenting with dyeing is going to take up quite a lot of my time in the next year.  I am beginning to try my hand at spinning.  I will continue to make my own creams and lotions and I know I will make soaps, but probably always on a small scale for my own use and enjoyment.  I really did miss not having made any soaps for Christmas to give to people.

I also have six dining room chairs to refinish and I finally have what I need to make milk paint to paint those, as well as some other pieces of furniture that are half done.  I even have ambitions of building my own sofa.  I have yet to try out an old Iceland craft of card weaving and the same goes for bookbinding.      I have been doing more knitting and crochet lately, mostly because I have to do something with all that dyed yarn, but also because I enjoy having something going.  I also know that I need to sort through my piles of stuff, get better organized and try to stop acquiring more stuff.  Althought all of it is really wonderful old stuff that I absolutely love.  Oh, well.  Balance.  That sounds like a perfect project for January.  Happy New Year, to all my blog friends, I look forward to following you in 2013!

The Bigger Picture

Most people, when they look at landscape, look into the distance. They admire mountains and waterfalls, glacier, rivers and geysers.  The big stuff.  I was taught differently.  My parents would always concentrate on the details.  Their noses as close to ground as possible, they would walk across the landscape with their tiny loupes in hand.  And that is how I learned to appreciate the country and I sometimes wonder: Which is the bigger picture?

I went up to the north last weekend for a gathering-of-the-clan-thing.  In this case it was the descendants of my fathers grandmother and grandfather on his mother's side that gathered at the old farm, Svanshóll  (Swanhill) in Bjarnarfjörður (Bearfjord).  The last time we were there was in 2006 when my father came with us to celebrate his fathers centenary.  Later that year my father passed away, so that trip was very special.

I have been wanting to come back, so this opportunity was welcome.  I wanted to go to spend some time in the fantastic landscape, look for lichens which I knew are abundant in that area and even gather some.  And I did.

How to explain this purple stain on a rock?  One might think that someone took a felt tip pen and colored the stones.  There were a several purple stains on the rocks.  What they all had in common was that, on closer inspection, one could see at its middle a rather battered lichen (of the type Umbilicaria).  Well, I can only surmise that some bird left it's dropping on top of a lichen and the ammonia in combination with the oxygen developed that fantastic purple colour.  I know that purple can be obtained from this lichen and now I've seen it happen spontaneously in nature.  I wonder if this is how our ancestors discovered lichen dyes.
Umbilicaria proboscidea.  At first glance the rocks seem to have black flecks on them.  Then, when one looks more closely, one notices that it is lichens.  That there are more than one species of Umbilicaria isn't evident until one looks even closer.  U. proboscidea has the distinctive raised, white navel and black fruiting body.  U. arctica is larger and evenly colored and U. torrefacta is distinguished by having small holes in it's surface.
If one very carefully breaks away the thallus of the lichen, without taking the navel (the stem that attaches it to the rock) this lichen will continue to grow.  This way I managed to carefully gather some of the Umbilicaria which grew absolutely everywhere we looked.  I gathered at least three types, all quite common: Umbilicaria torrefacta, Umbilicaria arctica and Umbilicaria proboscidea.
Ochrolechia parella (I think).
A beautiful symphony of lichens.
Parmelia omphalodes (or saxatilis).
A fish head found in the grass.
I love the beaches in the north, full of driftwood from Russia, littered with old ropes and the odd shoe or boot and often you will find a small flock of sheep resting on the warm, black sands while Eider ducks swim with their young ones just a stones throw away.
That colour!
What texture!
The rhythm of the relentless sea.
I always stop at the churchyard to visit my grandmother's grave where she is buried with her two youngest daughter and the three other people who died with them in the avalanche that demolished my fathers home.
The gravestone
My older sister hasn't visited since she was about 6 or 7, so I took her to see Goðdalur (Valley of the gods), our grandfather's farm.  It is very remote.  The road is long and winding and very rough and we had to cross two rivers, one had a bridge, the other didn't.  Jeeps really are a necessity in this part of the world.
Goðdalur, the farm.
Quietly crumbling.
Eventually becoming a part of nature as everything must.
I miss my father.  I think he would have liked my interest in lichen. But this is how my sisters and I always remember my parents:  Together,  heads close, loupe in hand looking at some plant and discussing the details to be able to identify it.  Both of them have found new species of plants for Iceland.  I'm very grateful that they taught me to look closely at the world.  It really is only when one looks at the details that the bigger picture reveals itself.

Happy summer

Today is the First day of summer and the sun is shining even if the temperature is 6C or 43F. But that is usual for this time of year and is actually quite warm for the time of year.  Today is an old traditional holiday and we give gifts on this day.  I received a gift myself yesterday when I found some timber that was being thrown out.  I got permission to salvage it and took it to my Allotment garden where it will become more raised beds.

Last fall, well it was November actually, I built some raised beds out of very similar timbers that I also salvaged from a skip.  Since I had some more wood I also knocked together some frames to use as covers.  I just need to get glass or plastic to cover them and then I have the perfect cold frame.  I have also made a primitive deck out of pallet wood, so  mom and I can sit in the sun and admire all our hard work.  I just need to find a good small table.  Or I could build one.

I wish I could say that I have a green thumb, but to be honest I have quite a few miserable failures.  I did sow some seeds about a month ago and although most of them sprouted I tend to leave them to long before I prick them out.  But "better late than never" so today I'm salvaging the rest .  I have pricked out about half of my seedlings, the Sweet Peas (Lathyrus odorous) and the pretty pink Morning Glory (Ipomoea), also an annual of which I save the seeds from every year.  They are doing well and need to go into larger pots.  I also managed to pot the Lily bulbs I bought, Lilium regale, and also the Sarah Bernhardt Peonie which I don't already have in my garden for some strange reason.  I'm going to keep her in a pot for the time being.  I don't want to loose her to the cold.  I was also given some Foxglove (Digitalis) rosettes which grow like weeds in a friends's garden.  I have tried to sow its seed, but never had any luck with getting the plants to flower, so now I'm excited.

I haven't really started the vegetables yet, although I sowed some basil, lettuce and spinach, but I killed some of them off with neglect.  So I need to start those again pretty soon.  This year I'll sow the regulars, carrots, broccoli, beets, cauliflower, lettuce and kale.  I bought seeds of the dark green Italian Nero di Toscana, which tastes amazing.  I want to grow a few plants of this and make chips from it.  And I think I'll try turnips this year.  I had never tasted them until I decided to try them recently and I really, really like them.  Not to forget the most Icelandic of crops, the rutabaga, or swede.  I've only grown it once before, they take up a lot of space, but they are so good when homegrown that it's worth growing a few.

I also sowed some dye plants, and I plan to dedicate a portion of the allotment to those.  Some are perennials and the rest tend to be invasive annuals so I should have plenty of materials in years to come.  I have Madder (Rubia tinctoria), Woad (Isatis tinctoria), Japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorium), Calleopsis (Coreopsis tinctorium), Dyers Chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) and Weld (Reseda luteola). I need to plant these on and perhaps sow a few more seed.  I may live to regret this, but I don't think one can have too many dye plants.  Oh, by the way, it it a pretty good indication that a plant is a good dye plant if the second part of the latin name is "tinctoria" (or similar) in the same way that "officinale" designates medicinal plants.

Just because I thought you'd like it.

The mailman brought me a package the other day.  It was a gift.  Just because she thought I'd like it.  That is just very nice.  It's actually incredibly and absolutely wonderful that she would do that for me.  Just out of the blue.  It came at just the right time to cheer me up and give me the warmest glow of gratitude.

The Usnea lichen is the most wonderful lichen and it doesn't grow here.  So receiving a thickly padded envelope was just fantastic (not to forget the Bay leaves that have been flavoring my dinners - lovely:).  I have been holding it and touching it and suppressing the thought that I can't possibly use it.  So I did use a part of it, precisely because I felt so reluctant.  I decided to put one third of it into alcohol for a tincture and I actually managed to do that.  The tincture will take about 6 weeks and then I have a wonderful medicine.  Usnea tincture is antibiotic, antibacterial, antifungal, astringent, antiviral, and diuretic.  I just finished a dose of penicillin to get rid of a constant fever.  No high temperatures, but just a little bit that didn't go away and made me lethargic and disinterested in everything.  So now I have to suffer the consequences of killing off every friendly bacteria in my body.  So lots of yoghurt.  I look forward to trying the Usnea next time I need to treat an infection.  No nasty side effects.

I had been blaming my genes and winter for my low.  I am inordinately proud of being a quarter German because here most people are just Icelandic.  Icelanders can trace their ancestry back to about 800 A.D. and sometimes even a bit further, usually to Norwegian kings.  Of course, wouldn't you know it, I'm really a princess!  And we are all pretty much related.  If you take any two Icelanders, you'll usually find a common ancestor in the 8th or 9th generation.  My husband and I are really far apart, only with common ancestors in the 10th generation.

But all that aside.  Americans were of course, when I moved there, not very impressed since everyone there is originally from somewhere else.  And I do not think the British, that I met when I lived there, were too impressed either.  But I enjoy being a bit different from my countrymen.  And it is with a bit of pride that I point to my German genes as an explanation for my dislike of cold weather and intolerance for the dark.  My German grandmother was very brave to marry my grandfather and move to Iceland in the 1920's.  They met when my grandfather was studying electrical engineering and working in the Siemens factory in Berlin.

She was a factory girl and she was poor.  Her father had shot himself in front of his wife and three young children after gambling, probably not the family fortune, but pretty much all they had.  So my grandmother, despite protestations from her family, who naturally didn't want her living amongst eskimos in igloos, left Berlin and moved to Husavik, a small village where my great grandfather was the owner of the local store and fairly well off.  My grandparents soon moved to Reykjavik and had three children, my mother being the youngest.  My grandmother did get to travel back to Germany and her family (tante Lotta and onkel Walter) came to visit her.  My grandfather was a senior civil servant, so they were comfortable.  But she died of bone cancer at 59.  I was four, but I have a few precious memories of her.  She was beautiful, she loved pretty things, and at the same time she was wonderfully thrifty.  I like to think I got that from her too.  My mother has the same reaction to winter as I do, but my father, who was from a very remote area far north, never seemed to feel it.  Of course that makes sense, it's just survival.  I'd have withered away and died in the middle ages up there.

But back to the Usnea.  The rest will go to dyeing wool.  A part will be used for dyeing some Alpaca wool in a water bath and a third (and what is left of the water bath lichen) will be fermented in ammonia to see what comes out of it.  I'm really feeling an excitement for dyeing now.  So much so that I was inspired to order a book about lichen dyeing (called Lichen dyeing) that I've been wanting, but has been out of print for the longest time.  And just magically it was available on Amazon.

And then the casing for my duvet arrived from Germany.  And it looks really good.  I love it and really, really want to get a new duvet soon.  Which will not happen since my recent bout of inertia has been rather all-encompassing and I haven't touched the Eiderdown, so still 200 grams.  Only 800 to go.  But I'm back in the swing of things, thoroughly fed up with doing nothing.  And Cocobong - thank you :)

Eiderdown

I am the happy owner of 3 kilos of uncleaned eiderdown.  I originally bought a small bag, perhaps 600 grams, of Eiderdown at the Good Shepherd, a local thrift store.  Even if I knew that, cleaned, it would yield only 300 (10,5 oz) grams and a duvet for a full grown person requires 1000 grams (or 1 kilo/35 os/2.2 pounds) I thought it was worth it.  I had to pay a bit of money for it, probably about 60$, but Eiderdown is incomparable when it comes to duvets.  Mine is old and getting to be rather thin.  So I had the idea that I would start to collect eiderdown for the duvet that I would have for the rest of my life.

Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to find some more Eiderdown at the Good Shepherd.   This time it was 2,5 kilos of uncleaned down so I knew that I had all the down I needed for my new duvet even if more than half is straw, seaweed and feathers.  I couldn't believe my luck.  And this time I only had to pay around 40$, making the total outlay for the down about 100$.  Eiderdown is truly a remarkable material.  Somewhere I saw it described as the Fabergé egg of comforters.

Eiderdown is gathered from the nests of Eider ducks, Somateria mollissima.  The female ducks pluck their breast in order for their warm body to get in better contact with the eggs and then arrange the down in the nest itself to insulate the eggs from the cold Icelandic summer.  Farmers watch over the nests, protect the ducks from birds of pray, fox and mink and in return carefully remove a small amount of down, replacing it with straw which keeps the nests dry.  It is generally a happy arrangement for all.  The 4-5 ducklings go to the sea with their parents when they are old enough and the parents return each year to the same nest.  The eiderdown is left for the farmer to pick before it is blown to sea.  Each nest provides less than 20 grams of down.  So it takes down from more than 50 nests to make one single duvet.

I started to clean the eiderdown just after the New Year and soon realized that it would take me absolutely ages.  One needs to go over the down very carefully to extricate the delicate strands of fluffy down threads from straw, moss and a few feathers.  After spending every evening for a week, I weighed the results of my hard labour and lo and behold, I had almost 20 grams cleaned.  That is 2% of the weight I need for the whole duvet.  At the same speed it would take me a year to fully clean all the down.  I now understand why an eiderdown duvet costs thousands of dollars.

I have found someone who will clean the down for me in a machine.  It doesn't cost very much, but picking the feathers has to be done by hand and I have to do that myself.  It takes a skilled worker almost one day, so it'll probably take me a week.  But I'm actually quite excited.  I would prefer to clean all the down myself, but it takes too long.

I am now in the process of trying to find down proof silk to sew the cover.  If I'm to have this perfect, most light and fluffy material I need it have have the most glorious fabric cover.  I read somewhere that silk has the same thermal qualities as the eiderdown.  I have been admiring some photos on the internet that I have have found of vintage duvets.  They have the prettiest flowery material and I have to admit that I would love to find something like that in 300+ count silk.  The traditional color for duvets here in Iceland is a mid blue cotton.  It's nice enough, but I think I have to find silk for this one even if it won't be flowery.  I can't wait to get my new duvet.  I'll probably never get out of bed.

Im memoriam

Five years ago, today, my father died.  He, like all fathers, was the most handsome man who ever walked this earth.  I worshipped him when I was a little girl.  I woke up with him very early in the mornings and ate porridge with blood sausage and sipped cod fish oil from the bottle.  I was going to marry him when my mother died because I knew that he would need a wife to take care of him.  I collected plants and he taught me how to dry them and label them correctly.  He also taught me to play chess and appreciate both classical music and Faroe Islands folk songs although the latter was more of a: If you can't beat them, join them.

He loved to watch Opera and sports on TV.  He would watch the Olympics and World Cup soccer and practically every major sports event that was shown on TV.  And he was serious about it.  He would take vacation time and wake up in the middle of the night to watch if he had to.  He was also very interested in politics and loved a hearty debate.  And he had a great sense of humour.  He bought us Donald Duck magazines (in Danish back in those days) and always read them himself first.  He'd come home with some candy and tell us that it was from our dentist.  I believed that for years and thought we had the nicest dentist.

It is always amazing to me how much more difficult it is to loose a parent than I ever thought it would be.  I thought that old people (because I am now an old woman by my own definition as it was some years ago) didn't feel the loss of parents that much.  I mean, everyone is old, the parent and the child and old people die.  Everyone knows that. So it shouldn't come as a surprise and it shouldn't hurt.  But it did.

Tomorrow is his birthday.  He would have turned 78, an age that was once ancient to me, but is now not that old.  I will spend the day with my mother.  I always buy her flowers on this day and I probably will also do that tomorrow.  But even nicer, we will go for a coffee in Keflavik, a small fishing village since we are driving my 83 year young aunt to the airport which is right there.

I am very fortunate in that I like my mother very much.  She has been my best friend for many, many years.  She isn't perfect.  She is a lousy housewife and a horrible cook, but she is very intelligent and very funny.  And she is the best grandmother anyone could ever wish for.  Probably because she was a very good mother.  I look forward to tomorrow even if it will be tinged with sorrow and hope that we will have many, many more days together because I can't even begin to think what I'd do without her.

Cut!

The yellow soap turned out a very dark yellow and to be truthful I like yellow when it's mellow.  But I still like this one very much.  The smell is heavenly and although I tend to think that soaps look their best just poured into the mold and freshly decorated, I still love the way it looks.  A bit frou frou and old lady.  It is going to look absolutely horrible once it gets wet, but who cares?  It'll look very good as a gift and then it'll still smell really nice.

I have been on a roll, making more of these, but in different colours with different fragrance blends and I plant to make a few more.  I've already done one white and one black and I want to do one blue and another pink.  I'm just waiting for a fresh shipment of oils so that I can mix the fragrances that I've imagined for those.

I've also lost it!  I'm going to be in a Christmas market next weekend with my soaps and some jewelry that my sister-in-law makes.  The market idea just happened and I have no idea how it's going to go.  I won't be selling the special blend soaps, but I've made some lavender and lemongrass ones with flower decorations.  We have been selling soaps to friends and last week one friend took some samples with her to work and we got an order for about 25 soaps.  That is a lot for us and we were thrilled.  I guess it went to our heads and therefore the market seemed like a good idea.

I went today to scout out the territory.  It's quite cute actually and since we've just had the first snow it looked really nice.  It's this place where people can cut their own Christmas trees and then buy some coffe and waffles with cream and jam and also some crafts.  Everything that is sold in this market has to be made or designed by Icelanders, so we fit right in.

I've been so busy printing labels and getting myself organized for the market that I didn't have time to do the Advent wreath today.  Oh, well I'll get in done tomorrow, or the next day.  There's plenty of time...  isn't there?

Lichen: Parmelia saxatilis - Obsession nr. 4

Parmelia is the lichen that has most commonly been used here in Iceland to dye.  It gives rather nice yellows and browns and even over to reddish browns.  And it leaves it's wonderful scent in the wool.  As with other lichen, heat will make the colours more brown so dying cold is actually quite smart.  There are three varieties of Parmelia that grow here and all are used to dye wool.  They all look very similiar, but P. omphalodes is slightly more brown in colour than the others. P. sulcata has a wrinkly kind of surface.  I think the one that I collected is P. saxatilis which is known as Shield lichen or Crottle in English.  Crottle was also commonly used in Scotland to dye wool.

I came across this lichen by accident.  Even if it is quite common here, I hadn't quite figured out where to go to look for it.  But my husband and I were taking my mother in law for a drive to see a place where we sometimes take the dogs for a walk.  It's a lovely place, only minutes from the city and there is this river and a few small summer cottages and there is also some lava rock that is covered in moss and also Parmelia saxatilis.  I sat on the rocks and as I touched the rock to steady myself I felt that it wasn't actually a rock, but a lichen.  It looks just like rock.  That is so cool!  I am always so grateful for these little gifts from nature and in that spirit of gratefulness I gathered a little bit.  Just enough to cover my palm really.  Because there wasn't that much of it in that place.  I'm not dyeing large quantities, only about 20-25 grams of wool at a time (there are about 30 g to an oz).  I'm just curious about what colours I can get and I want to document that.

There isn't that much written about lichen dyeing compared to dying with plants, but what there is in Icelandic is about Parmelia.  There isn't usually any difference made between the different Parmelias in dyeing literature, but I'm interested in the subtle differences.  But the problem lies in identifying them correctly.  I may have to look to one of my father collegues for help one day because I just may be wrong about the particular variety.

I did the same with this lichen as I do with all the others.  I first simmer it in water and coloured some wool.  That gave me a mustard kind of yellow.  It's very nice even if I'm not a fan of the curry yellows.  There just simply doesn't seem to be a lichen colour that I don't like.

Then I tried to steep it in ammonia, but that didn't really do anything special.  At least not yet.  It's still sitting there and I'm still shaking it.  This can go on for weeks.  Up to 16 weeks I've read, so patience is needed.  But, I'm not expecting purple from this one.  It would be more of a maroon, or in the best case a burgundy colour.  But we'll just have to wait and see.

I had rather high hopes for this in a soap.  It somehow seems logical that a light yellow liquid will give much less colour than an orange one will.  But...  You'll have to wait for the next post.  There was a bit of a mix up and I couldn't find my notes, so this soap you may have seen before in my Peltigera post.   That was wrong.  This soap, the one that I decorated with Gallium verum, is made with Parmelia water, not Peltigera as I thought.  And it only produced a slight blush of a colour.  And no mustard tone to the soap.  It really amazes me how unrelated the yarn and soap colours are.  I would have thought that there would be more of a correlation between the two.  Because even if I have been using the exhaust baths to colour the soaps, there has been quite a bit of colour left in the water.  But I'm sure I'll have to try the lichen decoctions fresh in soaps one of these days.  For now this is just experimentation for fun.  And I have a lot of soaps that smell of Vetiver and something.  Oh, yes this one does have Orange Essential oil and Vetiver.  At least I got that right.

Going back

I've sometimes wondered is it is possible to go back.  You know, to visit the past.  I think I read somewhere that you can never go back.  It's never going to be the same and it's bound to disappoint.  And I have tended to agree with this viewpoint most of the time.  I know that when I've gone back to visit places where I've worked it's always been kind of awkward.  Even if I was there on genuine business and not just to visit old work mates.  But then again, I recently met an old friend that I hadn't seen in ages and it felt like we spoke just yesterday.  So I don't know.

Nostalgia is a positive thing in my mind, although I've never really looked the word up in a dictionary until now.  I just did and I guess my husbands view of it's meaning is more correct than mine.  Wikipedia says it's a: Yearning for the past, often idealized.  Hmm.  I don't feel that way about the past.  To me it's more of a celebration.  A happy feeling.  Memories of an adventurous life, strange places and foreign people. A realization that I was very young once, not that I knew it at the time, and probably made some mistakes.  But that's all right.  That's life.  "Je ne regrette rien" and I certainly don't long for the past to come back.  As much as I love to look through my albums at my old photos (and it always brings a smile to my face) I do not want to relive it.  It was happy, but not all the time.  Any given stretch of time is bound to have it's ups and downs, it's life.  That's the way it is.  Messy, but wonderful on the whole.

So anyway.  I got to go back.  To this place that I first saw 31 years ago:  Colorado.  Wonderful, wonderful place where I spent five years of my life.  And it celebrated my return with the most glorious blue sky, bright sunshine and wonderful autumn colours on the trees and a lovely unexpected 80 degrees.  I even got parking spots downtown without problems!  So, yes.  It is possible to go back.  It's not the same as it was, but I didn't expect that.  I didn't even want that.  Part of the fun of going back is to see what has changed.  The roads are wider and there are houses everywhere, where there were none before.  And new shopping malls.  But the Pearl Street Mall is there and the Hill, and The Harvest House and Boulder Canyon hasn't moved an inch.  My apartment building is still there and the Denny's is still on the corner.  The Dairy Queen has moved from the shed into a better building and now there is a Starbucks close by, and Whole Foods.  And a Goodwill store.  Perfect!  I could move right back.

But, no.  I'm back for real now.  To my life, the one I live today.  I already coloured some more wool and I have planned a soap session with my cousin tomorrow.  It doesn't matter how much fun it is to travel, either in time or space, it's always best to come home.

My neck of the woods

I went for a drive on Friday. There is this place only about half an hour from the city called Hvalfjördur (Whalefjord).  It's a long fjord that used to be the major road to the north, but has now been replaced by an undersea tunnel.  It's a very deep fjord and I remember how tiring it was to drive it on the way home, first all the way into the fjord and then all the way out again.  But it is a really nice place to go to, especially now that there is hardly any traffic there.

I had the idea to just wander about and look at the plants and see what I would find.  This is of course a slightly crazy time to go to the countryside, the plants are dying and all the leaves are turning yellow.  And red.  Glorious reds and oranges and it's just all very pretty.  I'm not much of an autumn person.  It's my least favorite time of year.  But this autumn has been quite nice and we haven't yet has a powerful low pressure system blow away all the leaves.  But it's getting a bit cold and as everyone knows it's always really windy out in the country.  So I dressed in my trusted ski overalls (bright red and easy to find should I get lost and have to be rescued).  I also made myself some sandwiches and took some cookies and something to drink and drove off.

I hadn't planned to pick any berries.  In fact I hadn't even thought about berries at all, and even if I had, I would have been sure that they were all gone.  But I saw so many fat and juicy berries that I had to pick them.  They were Empetrum hermaphroditum, which I understand are called crowberries in English. We call the plants krækiberjalyng and they are the most common berry that grows here. I will make saft from them.  Saft is just the juice with a bit of sugar to sweeten, but I thought using honey would be nice. It will be very healthy with all the antioxidants of the berries and the the antiseptic properties of honey. I like to have berrysaft to take in the morning, one tablespoon a day, with the fish oil.

I also found some lichens. Actually I found a lot of lichens and I collected some. I'm not quite sure what type they are, but suspect one of them is a Parmelia. I need some more lichen dyed wool for my someting-soft-and-warm-around-the-neck-this-winter-project. My mother also gave me an Umbilicaria lichen that she collected for me.  My mom wrote her BS thesis about moss and lichen that grow on the graveyard wall that is a stones throw from where we lived . I'm very excited to try to dye from that. It could give me that elusive purple.

And I wasn't alone in the fjord.  I had the company of the local sheep that still haven't been rounded up for winter.  I love the way they look, so haughty and arrogant.  Like they own the place.  And of course they do. I was just the visitor.  This is where they live all summer long.  I thought it would be nice to post a picture of them in their natural habitat.  So if you see Icelandic lamb in Whole foods, you can be sure that you are buying mountain lamb.  They are almost like goats they climb so high.

When I came home I went to the store and bought some fresh lamb's liver for dinner.  I used to get inards, like liver, hearts and kidneys for dinner very frequently as well as whalemeat and seabirds.  But so many people have stopped eating that although I don't know why.  My husband wasn't used to this type of food, but I've gotten him to like both liver and whalemeat, but he won't eat the kidneys and hearts, but the dogs love those.

Liver is really delicious and very easy to make.  We use lambs liver almost exclusively here, but calf liver is very popular in Italy and I think some nations eat liver from grown cattle.

But I think that if you can make a delicious meal with just salt and pepper as the only seasoning, then that food is the best.  So here is my liver recipe:

Slice one onion and brown it on a pan until it is soft in half olive oil and half butter.
Cut the liver into fairly thin slices and brown them on both side in the pan.
Pour some water over the whole thing and let it simmer for about 10 minutes or until the liver is no longer pink.  But don't cook it longer than that, check it by cutting into the slices.  Liver gets very tough and unappetizing if over cooked.
Thicken the liquid to a sauce by your preferred method, I use a maizena thingy from the store.  I also add a bit of cream to the sauce if I have some.
Season with salt and pepper.
Serve with boiled new potatoes, fresh salad greens and red currant jelly.

So now I just have to make the saft, make some Rhubarb syrup from the last of the Rhubarb stalks this year and then make fruit rolls from the left over mash.  I'm also wondering if I could make fruit rolls from the left over mash of berries.  And I'm all out of yoghurt and the sourdough bread is almost gone.  I bought a lot of broccoli at the store since they had them on offer and I've started to eat this delicious Broccoli soup for lunch.  So I'm making a lot of soup and freezing it.  And then there is all the timber that I got for free and plan to use to make raised beds for the allotment garden.  And I'm crocheting that warm thing and also a jacket type ting from the sweater that I unraveled last week.  I really wish I had another weekend coming.

Lichen: Peltigera canina - Obsession nr. 1

Lichens have totally taken over my life for the moment.  They are so weird and different that it's hard not to be fascinated by them.  There isn't that much information around about lichen dyes and what little there is is often without latin names and that makes everything difficult.  I use latin names a lot although I realize that some people think that is very snobbish.  It isn't.  It's the only way to talk about specific plants without causing confusion.  I read about plants and dyeing in many languages and common names are very different from country to country and they tend to be quite arbitrary so that translating them is no help at all.

Lichens are totally different from other organisms and not much is understood about how they work. They may look like they are a single organism, but in fact they are two or more partners that form a symbiotic relationship. One of the partners is a fungus (mycobiont, for those who are interested) which makes the vegetative body of the lichen which houses the other partner, the photosynthetic (photobiont) one. The photosynthetic partner (there can be more than one) is usually green algae or cyanobacteria (cyano is from the greek kyanos=bluegreen) and it's funtion is to produce energy for itself and the fungal partner.  Cyanobacteria is quite well known to most soapers: Arthrospira platensis and A. maxima are the latin names of Spirulina which can be used to make green soaps.

There are about 13,500 species of lichen on the planet, but only 750 are found in Iceland.  Lichens are basically of 3 types:

1. Foliose - which means that they are leaf like in their structure.
2. Crustose - those are like a crust stuck to a surface and are usually very thin and tightly attached. These are about 75% of all lichens.
3. Fruticose - these are branched structures.

One of the problems with lichens is that they can be very hard to identify, but at least it's fairly easy to classify them by the above and work from there.

Since lichens grow very, very slowly I am careful to harvest only common lichen that I find growing abundantly.  I have a rule of never taking more than 1% of any plant material that I collect and therefore I have no fear of collecting too aggressively.

I have known about lichens forever, as my parents taught us well and especially about the more unusual plants like lichen and moss, my fathers specialty.  But I wasn't all that interested in them although I remember noticing how many different species of moss and lichen can grow on one tree trunk in one of the last trips I took with my parents about a year before my father died.  He pointed it out to me and showed me how different things grew on different sides of the tree trunks as well as at different heights and on different tree species.

Peltigera canina isn't a particularly good dye plant.  So why did I write a post about it?  Well, about a year ago when I noticed this lichen growing on a rock in the woods on my evening walk with the dogs.  Something about it fascinated me, and I was hooked from then on.  I collected a little piece and took it home.  I was quick to identify it as the very common Peltigera canina.  It has been used as a medicinal plant to treat treat wounds, urinary disorders, thrush, tuberculosis, and rabies. I later found it growing simply everywhere in the woods and in many other places.  It is amazing how a whole new world opens up when we discover something new.  And what a wonderful world it is.

It will give a light yellow colour to wool and silk.  There are lichen that will give reds and purples, so yellow isn't all that special, but I love it anyway.  It's soft and natural and it goes well with many other colours.

I have been using Icelandic wool (Lopi) to dye, but for the lichens I decided to use alpaca wool.  It's so wonderfully soft that it's obscene.  I need something soft and warm for this winter.

Seaweed salt soap - and my icy cold hands

I went to pick seaweed with my cousin and mother the other day.  We timed it carefully since we wanted to pick a particular kind of seaweed, Pamaria palmata.  Dulce is the common name in English, but we call it Söl in Icelandic.  Dulce has been used for ages here as food.  They are very nutritious and are sold as snacks and some people used them in green drinks.  This is why we were going to collect some, because my cousin uses them in her nutritious morning drink and it is rather expensive at the shops.  Self sufficiency appeals to me, even if I don't really eat that much of the stuff.

Dulce grows at the very lowest point of the beach where there is movement of the sea most of the time and in order to pick it we had to wait for the lowest tide of the month and we were fortunate that this month it happened to be a Sunday.

We only had to drive about an hour from the city to find a nice place to collect seaweed.  There are these two really cute tiny villages with tongue twisting names (Stokkseyri and Eyrarbakki) and old houses made of timber, clad in corrugated iron and painted in vivid colours with white windows.  I really love those old houses, no matter how impractical they are in the modern world with their low ceilings and tiny rooms.  They have some really nice restaurants in those villages, but we didn't stop this time.

We had to walk pretty far out on the beach to find Söl, the species we were chiefly interested in.  We could hardly sea land by the time we found some and had almost given up and turned back.  It was really hard to walk on those round seaweed covered boulders and we had had to leave my mother behind pretty early on.  I left her, bless her heart, sitting on a rock, hoping she would make it back on land without braking any bones.  I had made sure to take some refreshments with us but unfortunately I had the car keys in my pocket, so she was left stranded alone on the beach with nothing to eat and no phone (that was is the car with the food).  She wasn't upset at all, but started to collect plants to show us when we returned.  Still teaching me about plants, like she did when I was little.  So I learned all about the few plants that grow by the sea.

Even if the sun was shining it was pretty windy and cold and we could hardly see land anymore.  But all that was forgotten when we started seeing the Söl.  We managed to collected three bucketfuls before we started to work our way back to safety, with the tide rising steadily.  I was beginning to get a bit worried that we would need to be rescued, but we made it back safely, if a bit tired and cold (did I already say that?).

We didn't just collect dulce. We also saw these really pretty green seaweeds that I now know are Ulva lactuca, or Laver.  I collected some because I wanted to use them in soap to see if I could get the lovely green colour.

That soap just had to be salt soap, I mean how could it not be.  Sea. Salt.  No brainer!  It did turn out green and a nice green at that.  The photo doesn't do it justice.  It will probably not last too long, but I'm enjoying it all the same.

I had decided to make about 2/3's of it non-salt and have the rest a salt soap.  So I poured quite a lot of soap into the mold and them dumped some salt into the soap batter I had left.  It turned out to be the exact opposite.  More salt soap than not.  I should have tried to get some fancy blending of the two.  But I thought it was going to be a straight line.  Oh well!


I used a lot of coconut oil to see if it lathers.  So the recipe is quite simple:

Cocoanut oil      50%     250g / 8.8oz
Olive oil            40%     200g /  7.0oz
Cocoa butter     10%       50g /  1.8oz

Seaweed blended with 200g / 7.0oz of water.

I scented it with a blend of Peppermint and a hint of Vetiver.  It's quite nice and appropriate for this sea inspired soap.  I used fine sea salt.  I like that a lot better than coarse salt.  It makes a smooth rock hard surface that doesn't scratch.   I look forward to trying it.  I kind of like salt soaps.  They are so different and this one is very authentic with real-live-seaweed that I picked myself from the sea with my icy cold hands.  Did I already say it was cold?

Fairy candy - Strawberries

Strawberries are Fairy candy.  Or they could be Goddess fruit.  Definitely they are otherworldly good when you grow them yourself.  Much sweeter and juicier than store bought no matter if they are imported or grown locally.  I think it's because they are picked just a little too soon so they don't get damaged in transport.

This summer I got a bowlful of my own homegrown strawberries for the first time.  A whole bowlful!  I've had a crop of strawberries before, but it's always been one or two at a time, but not a full bowl of fully ripe strawberries, deliciously red and sweet and juicy.

I have two varieties of strawberries.  Some nameless one I bought in a garden center (they never seem to care about named varieties here) and a named variety that I grew from seed so the name was on the packet, but I have since forgotten it (but I think I have the empty packet somewhere).  The seeds came from Denmark and the flowers are pink and the fruit is large and dark and juicy.  This variety flowers well and doesn't try to send out runners like the other one does.  That is a good thing since that means it will concentrate on flowering and producing lots of fruit.  But I lost most of the plants last winter so I want to propagate the plant that I still have.  So I saved a few seeds to sow and am hoping to raise a few more plants.

Strawberry seeds need to get a period of cold in order to germinate, so I put them into the freezer after cleaning them well.  I only have 11 seeds, but I find that it never pays for me to sow too many seeds at a time.  It only results in way too many seedlings and consequently neglect and death.  I prefer to sow a few seeds and take very good care of them all.  Putting the seeds in the freezer somehow doesn't feel very kind, but if that's what they want...

I grow them in a long and narrow box that I built and hung up on a sheltered wall in the garden.  I used some left over timber that I had, screwed the whole thing together and hung it up with some chains.  I take the box down in autumn and keep it close to the house, right under the balcony so it doesn't get soaking wet in winter.  That way most of the plants survive until next spring.  I gave them very good soil this spring and added lots of well rotted horse manure as well as some water retaining gel.  I also mulched with the manure and I have fed them with comfrey fertilizer to boost flowering.  I seems to have paid off.

The nameless variety sends out a lot of runners and this is not good for fruit production but I can easily get lots more plants.  I almost can't keep up with sticking them in pots.  I'm growing them to give to my younger daughter (her apartment has a garden) so that she too can harvest her own next summer.  Her husband doesn't really like strawberries.  Why is it that it's just girls that like strawberries?  Most guys seem to be able to take them or leave them.  My husband doesn't really eat them.  I'm not complaining, I would be devastated if I had to share my berries.  There really aren't that many of them.  And after all they are Goddess fruit, so really not for men, are they?

My Icelandic sweater - Dyed with Rhubarb root

I finished knitting my Icelandic sweater.  Knitting it didn't take that long, less than a week.  It was finishing it off that was a bit fiddly as I have never done one that is cut up in the middle.  Like a cardigan.  I actually only knitted one Icelandic sweater before and that was many years ago.  So I'm no expert.  They are usually knitted from rope roving which we call Plötulopi.  It's not spun and it pulls apart very easily.  But you can also just as easily twist it back together.

There are fashions in these sweaters as in everything else and today they are usually knitted with a pattern only around the shoulders rather than at the front of the arms and the bottom of the sweater as well.  The fit is also tighter.  Although I have to say that some of the older patterns are beginning to look quite good to me.  I used a pattern called Héla that available free on the internet, but I adapted it to suit my needs.   I made the sweater longer and changed the rib to a proper rib and I added a steek.  That was new to me.  I found really good instructions for that at the excellent See Eunny knit website.

I made the pattern myself.  It's just flowers and hearts and something.  I wanted to make it girly because I thought it suited the colours.  The sweaters are usually made from naturally coloured wool, so this is a nice change.  I really enjoyed dying from Rhubarb root.  I got very nice colours and there is something really soft and gentle about the colours that is completely different from synthetics.  I also loved to be able to knit with colours that I made myself.

I know my husband wants a sweater so I may start to knit him one soon.  His will not be girly at all and I don't think I'll use my natural dyed wool for his sweater.  It'll be quite traditional with natural sheep colours.  I know that he wants a light background colour and probably brown tones rather than gray.  Now I just need to find a nice pattern.  Since his is going to be in the round it'll take much less time.  I should we able to finish it in one week.

I like to have something to knit or crochet although I only do it sporadically.  I have been crocheting a pattern for a hat from the 40's and am looking forward to putting that together.  I love 40's hats.  I bought one in a charity shop that I absolutely love.  It's black and I use it when I go to funerals.  I used to wear hats all the time in the early 90's, but I guess that went out of fashion.  The one I'm crocheting now, I'm doing it in a shiny red yarn and it could look good.  Or just terribly silly.

I love blog awards

Topcat of Titania's Dreamy Delights awarded me with a blog award. Thank you for that :) Getting an award is just really nice.

The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award are:

1 – Make a post and link it back to the person who gave you the award

(and include their website address)

2 – Share 7 random things about yourself

3 – Award 7 recently discovered bloggers with this award and

contact them to let them know they have won.

The hardest part is to nominate 7 blogs.  There are so many to choose from, but the good thing is that I get to choose someone who hasn't been nominated and I decided to nominate a few blogs from far away. Many of these I can follow by using Google Translate and although I know the translations are sometimes quite approximate (to be kind) I wouldn't be able to understand anything at all if not for those translator. Thank you all international soap makers who delight me regularly with your wonderful blogs.

Happy Tiny Bubbles - Finish blog: http://happytinybubbles.blogspot.com/
Les savons de Lavandine - French blog: http://lessavonsdelavandine.blogspot.com/
Grön Sape - Norwegian blog: http://gronnsaape.blogspot.com/
Delicate Matter - Russian blog: http://tmateria.blogspot.com/ I had a problem posting a comment to her, so I don't know if she'll see that.
Gioia Made Soap - English language: http://gioiasoap.blogspot.com/ Also problem to post comments here, but...what can you do?
Sapo Onis - Spanish language (I don't know from which country) http://sapo-onis.blogspot.com/
Monchi Soap - Japanese blog: http://monchisoap.blog102.fc2.com/ I just have a hard time posting a comment on that site so I don't know if she'll see that.

The seven random things about myself:

1.  I have two Bichon Frise dogs.  They are Perla, the mother, and Táta, the daughter.  Perla is my sweetest darling, she is most beautiful, well mannered and dainty.  Like me, she is a fussy eater.  Táta is very boisterous and she'll eat anything that crosses her mouth and as a result she is a bit chubby.  She's constantly ona diet, but it's hard because she'll eat the bird food and the goldfish food (and her mothers food if she can).  She loves to get wet.  And she loves absolutely EVERYONE.

2.  I like to wear white.  Specifically White Levi's 501's, White Jockey T-shirts and White Keds.  I got really bored with all the black clad women here in the dark North.  I mean, I know black is sophisticated, but when EVERYBODY dresses in black ALL THE TIME it just gets depressing.  So I rebelled.  I wear my whites when I garden, so sometimes, technically, I wear brown also!

3.  I'm 5 foot 10 (177.5 cm) like Princess Diane.  I wanted to be small and blond with curly hair and brown eyes when I was little.  I added: A smaller nose and bigger boobs to that list when I got to be a teenager.  Now I'm just really happy with the way I am "warts and all" so to speak.  I even made peace with my straight hair.

4.  I love American Country music.

5.  I sip cod fish oil from the bottle every morning.

6.  I work out with a good friend of mine 3 times a week.  We lift weights, go to spinning classes, do Yoga and Pilates.  My favorite form of exercise is Pilates, by far.  I think it's because it's easy and it doesn't have to cost anything (have I mentioned that I'm a closet cheapskate).  I used to do it at home, on the floor, every day for an hour.  Boy did I look good then :)

7.  I am a HUGE fan of Terry Pratchet.  He writes fantastic social commentary books in the form of Fantasy literature.  Best known are his Discworld series.  My favorite characters are DEATH and the  Wiches, particularly Granny Weatherwax.  I plan to be like her when I get old.

Was that too much information, perhaps?  Oh, well!
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