Bazaar at the Swedish Church

For years I have wanted to visit the Swedish Church's Christmas bazaar - and this year I finally did it.

 

The truth is - that I actually got really dissapointed. They had run out of a Swedish traditional drink, that I had really hoped to taste and there really was not anything new that dazzled me. I was hoping to see something a little more Swedish - or was something Swedish present without me realising, Our Christmas traditions in Scandinavia are shared/mixed, so we have adapted a lot of Swedish decoration and them a lot of ours.

 

For instance, they sold something with weaved hearts motifs, and that tradition is originally Danish.... the list with similar findings going both ways could be really long if lifting them. Has the presence of internet and worldwide shipping made the traditions less local as they are easily shared? Leaving us with not many surprises when it comes to various countries' traditions?

 

Now I can at least claim, that I finally visited the bazaar - but future visits: I think not.

My Home Team

When it comes to football, this is my home team - FC Copenhagen. Well why should it not be, considering that I was born in Copenhagen and that I currently live in Copenhagen. And it has been a couple of years since I went into Parken (the local football stadium) to watch a game..... remember we call it football where some countries call it soccer.

The lion did not sleep tonight .... it roared as we beat Viborg 4-1 - first goal already after 38 seconds :o) A local tv-station claimed afterwards that 14.227 were watching the games while freezing..... well that is not quite true as some of us had been lucky to get box seats = more comfy seating and indoors. We could not help noticing the jumping hardcore fans: were they jumping to cheer our team or merely to stay warm?? However, they did create a great atmosphere with their cheering, jumping and singing....

Basic Knitting

One of the local nightschools offered a knitting course less than a mile from where I live, taught by a creative knitter, who often get published in Danish magazines with her knitting a crochet patterns, Stine Hoelgaard Johansen.

 

I knew the basics: stich, purl, cast on and cast off - other things I have dabbled with but not mastered. Well I just took her four sessions to change all that. Her inspiring way of teaching you various techniques is mindblowing - you can actually start learning to knit from basics and then end up doing cable knitting and other patters, that I once thought to be incredibly difficult to understand

Well the following photos shows you my attempts at two of the newly learned techniques:



Cable stitch

Seaman's pattern

Some of us have opted for 3 extra sessions to learn more - the price for those sessions is a bargain compaired to what we learn, so tonight is the last of the extra knitting night.

In through the front door - running round the back - peeping through the window  - off comes Jack! (Kitting rhyme)

The Big Knit (Den Store Strikkefest)

Den Store Strikkefest

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The Big Knit

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Mets ton bonnet

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Das Grosse Stricken

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De Goedgemuste Breicampagne

 

Knit a hat for a smoothie and 2 DKK will be donated to DaneAge Association (Ældresagen) whensold. Seriously it is about knitting funny hats for those smoothie bottles - miniature hats of course - but thought it sounded too funny to be missed. Once the deadline was reached the hats are mounted on bottles that will go into stores soon.
 

Knitting for good causes - there are actually a lot of interesting ones out there, but this kind I have never heard about before... untill reading about Innocent Drink's Danish campaign. Looking around, there is actually a lot of inspiration to be found - and not much yarn is needed to make one of the hats, the Innocent Drik campaign website even shared tome basic patterns to get people started.
 

Me, I only have one "but" with innocent drink - actually with a lot of other smoothies - most of them contains banana, which is a total no-go for me (allergies) and have a hard time finding those without banana flavour. On the other hand I applaud the use of banana as sweetener instead of artificial additives/sweeteners. The model in above photos was donated to a friend who enjoyed drinking a smoothie :o) Donated 4 mini-hats this year - but think it will be more when the party re-opens in 2014 - a great use of left-over yarn from bigger projects.

Kvinden i buret aka. The Keeper of Lost Causes

The movie of the first Department Q book by Jussi Adler Olsen (Danish title: Kvinden i Buret, English title: The Keeper of Lost Causes) - those of us that have read the books published so far have eagerly awaited this film. Some with raised eyebrows, since they thought that actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas (you might recognize him as a villain from the movie "Angels and Demons" based on Dan Brown's book) is too young to play the part of Carl Mørch - and most are convinced that is is a good choice after seeing the trailer.

Just saw the movie, and the casting of Nikolaj as Carl is just perfect and annoying (Carl's character can be annoying) - and even though I knew the plot, I was at times sitting on the edge of my seat. Usually I can not help comparing the book and the movie while watching the filmed adaptation - but this time I completely forgot to do it. I know that they are filming the second book in the series right now and can not wait for that movie to come out.

The movie is about Carl, that gets reassigned to the new Q-department, after a serious incident when he was shot and a colleague got paralyzed. He is now to go throgh all the cold cases from the past 20 years along with a new partner Assad and close 2-3 of them per week. He stumbles over a 5 year old case, with a Danish politician that apparently died on the ferry from Germany to Denmark: suicide by jumping off the ferry. Carl's initial gut feeling tells him that something is wrong: Why would she bring her mentally sick younger brother on the ferry if she was suicidal? Is his intuition right or is he just loosing it?