Notice & Diamond
Back from an unplanned hiatus, thanks to three rascal kittens suddenly becoming potent and also needing all kinds of extra care, and the two-legged family members sharing a nice bout of gastric flu. I can't recommend combinging both, it's a tad exhausting. Ahem.
I'm also going back to filling the prompts with pictures from our Northland trip this summer.
Notice
The farthest east we've been was at the Russian border on the Norwegian coast. We went to a small, beautiful bay there, difficult to reach by way of a 10km gravel track with more potholes than actual gravel, and the potholes being of the kind you can hide small children in. Part of the road went alongside a river which is the border there, and everywhere there were towers, cameras, and these signs, explainig everything you mustn't do.
Diamond
We've visited any available Sámi museum as I'm fascinated by the culture. The Sámi are renowned, among others, for their handcrafts, and among these also for their colourful needlework of knitting and ribbon weaving. Variations of diamond patters are quite frequent, like at this ribbon in the museum of Alta/Norway (I think), or the mittens in the Síida museum in Inari/Finland:
I'm also going back to filling the prompts with pictures from our Northland trip this summer.
Notice
The farthest east we've been was at the Russian border on the Norwegian coast. We went to a small, beautiful bay there, difficult to reach by way of a 10km gravel track with more potholes than actual gravel, and the potholes being of the kind you can hide small children in. Part of the road went alongside a river which is the border there, and everywhere there were towers, cameras, and these signs, explainig everything you mustn't do.
Diamond
We've visited any available Sámi museum as I'm fascinated by the culture. The Sámi are renowned, among others, for their handcrafts, and among these also for their colourful needlework of knitting and ribbon weaving. Variations of diamond patters are quite frequent, like at this ribbon in the museum of Alta/Norway (I think), or the mittens in the Síida museum in Inari/Finland:
I'd be a bit nervous being so close to the Russian border. You're far braver than I.
- Erulisse (one L)
But there wasn't any reason to be nervous in the frontier area; we didn't intend to cross the border illegally, photograph military equipment, or to fish in the river (which is just allowed people living in the area for at least 10 years). It's just a frontier like any other, although for me as European for once a heavily protected one, which is unfamiliar. I suppose it would've been different when it was still the USSR, but on the other hand the road there was a perfectly legal road to get to a touristy spot.
I've learned it from my mother, but was ambitious enough to teach me knitting complicated patterns and two-colour knitting myself, as I wanted to do them. It's not really difficult once you've mastered the ability of having two different threads on your hand or hands at the same time, you just need more patience to deal with the continually intertwining balls of thread. *g* I don't do colour patterns often, though, because I hate darning in the thread with a passion.
The woven ribbon is really intricate, isn't it. And the mittens are very cute, especially the ones with the name of the owner knitted into the pattern.
Weirdly I had never really thought about there being a Russian/Norwegian border.