Apologies and an explanation

I have been an absent blogger for nigh on a few months now. I'd like to apologise to the three of you that read my blog. Life has been exceptionally busy, my health has been interesting and I've lost my blogging mojo.

But I am determined to get it back. I have been busy with lots of craft projects that I desperately want to show off. I have been cooking a bit of low FODMAPs food that has been tasty. I've even made my own golden syrup because I was both bored and lazy. 

The most recent "interesting" health adventure in my life has been the return of my reactive arthritis. 14 years ago I had what was the first of 2 and a bit years of swelling in my left knee. It took six months to diagnose and meant I was predominantly sedentary for a good section of those two years. Two weeks ago the other knee kicked off with unexplained swelling and the left one joined in for shits and giggles. 
I can tell you that there is a distinct difference between being 20 years old and immobile and being 34 with a 3 year old at home and immobile. I now also live two storeys up with no lift. Negotiating stairs has been an entertaining experience. So long as you define entertaining as long, awkward and uncomfortable. 
The good news in this recent flare up is the following: it didn't take six months to diagnose. It took about a week. I saw a less than fabulously engaged Dr initially who sent me off for an x-ray and gave me some drugs without indicating how long to take them for or asking if I was on any other medication which may interfere. I then returned to see a much more engaged Dr who not only looked at the joint(s) for more than 10 seconds but checked all my ligaments and did a proper history. He even sent me off for blood tests to rule out rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory conditions. Bloody amazing. 
Since then I've had a failed aspiration of fluid and an injection of steroids into the larger of the two joints and a new prescription for a different anti inflammatory. I have already seen improvement in the last two days. I may even walk down my stairs today like a normal person and save my obliques from a hard few minutes work of lifting my hips up to help clear each step. 

I have a new word of the week coming tomorrow and a recipe for the weekend. I hope that my three followers will look forward to seeing them.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of my recent crafty pursuits. Another puerperium cardi for a newborn. This time I dyed the yarn for the stripes from the same lot as the grey and had a lot of ends to sew in to finish it. But the final result was super sweet and will now be keeping a brand new baby girl warm and snug in a Melbourne winter. So worth all the extra sewing in ends time, methinks.

I have a bike!

I got on a bike yesterday for the first time in seven years. Wheeeeee!

TWO was rather excited to be picked up from dagis yesterday and ride home on the back of Mama's new bike. She insisted that we keep riding through the drizzle, past home and onward to the bike path for a bit of a spin.

I already have plans to embellish Belle with some knitted items. Her name is Belle because her former owner (my wonderful neighbour) named her that. 

Apt Swedish phrase/word of the week - the drinking edition

Bakfull

Literal translation : back full/drunk
Actual translation : hungover

This was me on Sunday morning. Saturday night consisted of a party to honour my friend Elma who passed away at the end of January this year. It was a wonderful night with music, dance, joy and tears. I may have been drinking whiskey with friends while I was DJing. I may also have not got much sleep after slipping into bed at 2am and being woken at 6am by TWO. 

I felt entirely bakfull with a horrible headache and tiredness. 

Street art in the Swedens

On our walk to dagis every day TWO and I take one of two different routes. One involves a shared walking/riding pathway. Recently, the path has had extra markings, one of which I think is a nod to Easter. 

It makes the trip just that little bit nicer, knowing I will be seeing a pink bow and an orange rabbit on my walk. Especially considering they are at points of the trip that are uphill. I am a lazy bastard, and hills are my nemeses. Evil inclines making me work hard! *shakes fist*

In other news, we are attempting to toilet train TWO this Easter long weekend. We have discovered that as long as she is without anything on her lower half, she is more than capable to get herself to the toilet. The second that fabric of any kind is in contact however, we have accidents galore. Not sure how that is going to fly at dagis tomorrow. 

Crayon rolling

My newest go to gift for the toddler set has to be crayon/pencil rolls. I enjoy the process of choosing which of my scraps of fabric are going to be used. It's a bit like the principle I apply with the burp cloths I make for newborn babies. You don't need much fabric and end up with something functional and pretty. 

I made a whole bunch of them as gifts for three year olds on our trip back to Australia. But the one I wanted to show you today was for a friend's daughter, living in Seattle.

I bought the fabric initially as a remnant to make a wheat bag for my running buddy. I used what was left from that to make a knitting roll as part of a craft swap with my friend. There was just enough to make the matching crayon roll for her daughter. 



I really enjoyed this one because I added a layer of fleece in the middle and quilted it together with some turquoise thread. 



I am reliably informed that it gets a lot of use, especially when they are travelling. 

Grateful three

When I was in the midst of post natal depression after the birth of the wee one, I used to try and get a list of three things I was grateful for together every day. It was a way to help remind myself that there were positive things in the world and that everything wasn't as bad as I imagined.

I'm not depressed anymore, huzzah!, but I am currently suffering from a cold that includes much snot and a sore throat. So I've decided to bring back the grateful three here.

1. The boy is back from four days away in Korea for work and I am no longer solo parenting.

2. My strawberry plants have flowers.

3. I finished a pair of socks that are made from leftover sock yarn that wasn't enough to make a whole pair of socks on their own. They are the kind of socks that just make you happy to look at. 

Swedish word/phrase of the week

Sjöpungar

Translation : sea squirts
Literal translation: sea pouches or sea scrotums

The wee one and I like to head to the seafarers museum after dagis sometimes. She calls it the fish museum because the ground floor contains an aquarium. I noticed this sign there a few weeks ago and was immediately struck by both the image and my understanding of the word "pung". 

I present to you another example of why my brain is a bit like that of a 14 year old. I see smut and silly jokes everywhere. 

When clearing out your crap from your parents, you find the darndest things

When we left Australia in 2009, it was only intended to be a 2 year trip. Some five years later, we are still in Sweden. We have even been granted permanent residency and are allowed to stay indefinitely. 

So what do you do when you are only going to be away for two years? You leave some useful stuff behind that doesn't fit in a suitcase. Right? 

Exactly.


So amongst the pots, pans, crockery, cutlery and linen left in boxes in the shed, I found a lot of my old sewn items and sewing supplies. Including a little pin book I made and the pinking shears I used to make it. Score! Both items fit in my luggage on the way back and will get some good use in the coming months I'm sure. 

Here is the pin book:



It features an applique dog made from fabric I used to make a 1939 dress. And inside it uses the same fabric I used to make PJ pants from and then subsequently dribble cloths for TWO when the PJs got a huge hole in them. That fabric has done some amazing things in the last 9 years.


 

It even had needles and pins still inside and they were still sharp and useful. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! 

Running headband for running buddy - SQUIRREL!

I mentioned a while ago in my running post that I started running again with a friend last year. Said friend wanted a headband to wear while she was running to keep her ears warm. 

I happened to have a bit of knit fabric scraps from a pair of ottobre pants that I made for TWO and thought I could whip up a headband quickly. 

I was correct in my assumption and the headband came together really quickly. Just a tube sewn together really, a little bit smaller than her head measurement. To ensure that it was worn with enthusiasm, I added buttons with squirrels on them because she loves them as much as I do. 


Here I am, modelling the headband, back when my hair was pink. 

Knitted cushion cover

I have a bit of a cushion obsession. Our couch has far too many of them. But I like to have a vast number to choose from for various different scenarios. The different coverings give a different feel to each one. So last summer i bought some ridiculously chunky yarn in a lovely purple and went about making a cover for one of our cushions. 

I used a simple 2X2 rib and picked some large brown buttons to finish it off. 

I'm very happy with how it turned out. 

Green dream puerperium

to



I have made what could be considered far too many of these cardigans. But I think that a go to newborn knit is something worth having. I love knitting this pattern. As you may have seen here, here and here.

This ended up being for a small girl born in early January. 

I love the buttons I chose. It took me the best part of twenty minutes in the fancy button shop in town to pick them. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to have and finding that exact gleam in the buttons was hard work. Worth it though.

FOMDAPs friendly ratatoullie

When we were back in Australia my Mum had a weight watchers ratatouille recipe that she adapted to be FODMAPs friendly for me. It was incredibly tasty and it has been something I have made again at home a couple of times. Best bit is that it improves over time and I've used it in different ways. The photo does not do it justice. So tasty!

Ingredients

2 capsicums/peppers, diced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 eggplant, diced
3 or 4 large tomatoes, chopped or
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes, halved
haloumi*, sliced and pan fried
garlic oil
thyme
basil
oregano
*Haloumi contains lactose, which is a FODMAP. A few slices can be okay for some, less so for others. If you are sensitive you have two options, either omit the haloumi or take some lactase enzyme before having this meal. I risked a few slices and was rewarded with mild bloating but not a huge reaction.

How to do it:

Preheat oven to 180C.

Dice all the vegetables and place them in a baking tray with the garlic oil and herbs.

Cover the tray with foil.

Put the baking tray in the oven and bake for between 1-3 hours, giving the tray a shake every now and again.

Just before you wish to serve, fry the haloumi until golden brown.

To serve, dish up some ratatouille and place haloumi on top.


I have used this ratatouille recipe as a base for vegetarian lasagne. I've added some more tomato to it to make a pasta sauce. It's been a versatile and delicious addition to our repertoire. 

Swedish word/phrase of the week

With all the delightful weather of late, I've been to the big garden warehouse near our home. I saw this and was immediately amused. 

Fuktslang

Literal translation: moisture hose

Reason it made me laugh? 
Yeah, the use of fukt. I'm still actually 14 years old mentally speaking. And any Swedish word with fukt in it is inherently hilarious. Combining it with slang is just icing on the immature comedy cake. 

Roads and robots

Last summer we went to Munich for a week to visit my exchange partner and her family. I went on exchange to Germany when I was fifteen and we are still in contact now, some 18 years later. 

She had just given birth to her second child, a little boy. I wanted to make something for him that was appropriate for summertime. So I made a couple of pairs of newborn sized big butt baby pants, which have become a staple of TWO's wardrobe.

I like them because of the wide leg as well as the ample bum space for our once cloth nappied child. 

I had leftover fabric from a pair I had already made for TWO, a brown corduroy with cars and roads on it. I also had enough leftover from my first Geranium dress that I had made for TWO. 

I think they're cute, yeah?

SPRING

The weather has been so delightful this last week. The wee one and I had a picnic outside dagis on Friday and just soaked up some of the sunshine and ate strawberries. 

Here is the evidence. FLOWERS!

Swedish word/phrase of the week - Elma edition

This is a special Swedish word/phrase of the week because it features a phrase that I'm not entirely sure is commonly used, or even used at all, by anyone other than my friend Elma. But it has stuck in my head since last summer when we were teaching a lindy hop class together based around changing roles and improvisation. 

The world was unfortunate enough to lose Elma in January this year. I'm still trying to understand that she's not around anymore. I will be writing a bit about her to try and let the wider world get a sense of how amazing she was and how catastrophic losing her has been. But I want to start here, with a phrase that I learned from her and will always remember.

Det kittlas så skönt i själen

Direct translation : It tickles so beautifully in the soul

Translation that is a bit more idiomatically English in nature: I'm so delightfully tickled by this, deep down in my soul

I want to quickly tell you the story of how I came to learn this phrase. As I mentioned, last summer Elma and I taught an intermediate lindy hop course over a weekend. I say we, but I was mostly there as Elma's sidekick. When we met up to plan the classes, she had already determined most of what was going to happen and we just had to fine tune the details. 

One of the exercises she wanted to do in this class was something she had learned from an improv workshop she had attended. It was a kind of team building exercise (as much as I hate to use that term because it sounds wanky and Elma was anything but wanky). 

Here's the exercise, everyone stands in a circle, relatively close together. One person starts by clenching their fists and putting both hands into the circle and saying loudly "Maaaaaaaaa". Each person adds their "Maaaa" and fists to the circle in turn until everyone is doing it. Once the group feels that are at the end of their breath, they bring their hands in by their sides and finish the word together, ".......zunga".  

I have a very clear vision in my head of this Mazunga we did at that workshop. I can see Elma smiling, holding her hand to her chest and saying "Det kittlas så skönt i själen". And she was right. As much as I am generally not a fan of these kind of things because I feel like a bit of a dick, having Elma lead it and being involved did tickle me. It felt good and I left that weekend in awe of Elma and her ability to bring a group of people together and infect others with her joy. 

Potato cakes/scallops -FODMAPs friendly

I have a cohort of Australian friends here in Gothenburg. We have all agreed that the lack of potato cakes/scallops in Sweden is something that is a wee bit shit. 

So back in December we decided to make our own. We also tried dim sims from my FODMAPs cookbook, but we underwhelmed with how they turned out. They tasted fine, but using rice paper for the wrappers didn't really work very well. 

We discovered there were different recipes around for how one might make them and ended up with a mish mash of a few different recipes, combined with some of my old methods for making BBQ potatoes work. 

We used the opportunity of getting together at my house to also watch an episode or two of the Australian comedy Upper Middle Bogan. It was a very Australian Saturday afternoon and I look forward to doing it again. 

I present to you the efforts of our labour, and following that, how you too can do this at home and make FODMAPs friendly potato cakes at home. 

Ingredients

750g large old potatoes

2 cups spelt flour* or gluten free flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 3/4 cups soda water

oil for deep frying

extra flour

extra salt 

Method

Wash and peel the potatoes. 

Cut them into thin slices, 0.5cm and arrange on a large plate in a monolayer.

Microwave them for 1 minute on high.

While they cool, prepare your batter.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and make a well in the centre. Gradually add the water, stirring as you go to create a thick batter.

Once the batter is ready, get your oil to temperature. You can test it by dropping a bit of batter in the oil. If it sizzles and rises to the top, you're onto a winner.

Coat the potato slices lightly with the extra flour and shake off the excess.

Dip each slice into the batter to cover it well, removing excess on the side of the bowl.

Deep fry them a couple at a time, until they are golden brown.

Remove with a slotted spoon from the oil and drain on absorbent paper. 

You can refry them a second time, but we found it to not be necessary.

Sprinkle with salt because despite what my father believes, salt on potato cakes is a necessity. 

*I used spelt flour because I've found that I tolerate it well. If you are on the elimination part of the diet I would suggest trying gluten free flour instead to be on the safe side because I've known of FODMAPpers that have had difficulty with spelt. 

A knitted carrot and potato - a knitting commission

The back story:

Two friends of mine were in New Orleans around the time of the girl's birthday. The boy was buying lots and lots of music and the girl said "At this rate, you'll only be able to afford a carrot and potato for my birthday."

Lo and behold, on her birthday she was presented with a delightfully wrapped gift box, containing a carrot and potato.

Since then that gift theme has been reproduced at various time points. 

The commission: 

The boy cornered me at a PhD dissertation party in late November and asked if I could knit a carrot and potato for the girl for Christmas. I was enthusiastic about the project and went about getting it sorted. 

The execution: 

I found a tutorial for both the potato and the carrot. I also found some orange yarn in a shop, and brown and green yarn in my stash to knit them up. 

They were fun to make and very quick. I am most pleased with the outcome. Moreso with the carrot than the potato, but the potato did its job in looking vaguely potato like.

I was reliably informed that they were well received and I am really glad to have been able to bring a bit of fun to them at Christmas. 

Here you can see the finished products. I can see myself getting involved in making more fruit and veg in the future. Maybe some apples and pears, seeing as I can't eat them anymore.  

Ravelled here

On travel and illness and the small girl with the Darth Vader voice

We are just home after a month in Australia. The trip home was epic. It included the following features to make it as memorable as possible :

• I was travelling solo with the wee one (TWO)
• my period started the afternoon before we flew out
• we were delayed in Abu Dhabi for 18 hours
• TWO vomited on the flight just before we landed in Amsterdam
• the whole thing took 44 hours

The good news is that we are home safe and sound. TWO has unfortunately picked up some kind of respiratory infection and is currently wheezing in her sleep next to me on the couch. She has been sounding like Darth Vader since last night, which also included a fever and very little sleep.

What a delightful welcome home to Sweden. 

Back when it was sunny

So back when it was sunny, I finished making my wee one a pair of socks in some leftover sock wool. She has an enthusiasm for blue of late and fortunately this was a featured colour in this yarn. 

Can I just say that I love knitting socks for kids? Great, I love knitting socks for kids. So incredibly quick to knit up. Quite a contrast to making socks for adults with enormous feet. 

Here are the kid socks, in the sun. The sun that has been conspicuously absent from our lives of late. 



There are another blue pair that TWO chose the wool for herself floating about. But I am yet to photograph them. Perhaps an action shot, if she stands still long enough.