Tag: trondheim

a new year

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A close-up of tree branches in the winter sunlight, with icy snow beginning to melt off. The background is blurred and the sunlight pours in from the left.

Happy new year to you all! It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? It seems I haven’t posted since August, and if I’m honest, 2021 feels like a year that just quietly slipped by. I can hardly believe Christmas and the new year have come and gone again already. Nonetheless, I wanted to pop by here to say hello, wish you all a happy new year, and share a few wintry snaps from my first long walk of the year.

I spent an hour and a half on Trondheim’s Ladestien trail today, on what was an absolute stunner of a day. Ladestien follows the shoreline from the eastern edge of the city center well out to Ranheim and beyond, so many parts of it are in shadow at this time of year, but I love being by the water, particularly as the other side of the fjord is beautifully sunny on a day like today.

An old wooden storage building sits in the shady snow. It's painted red and has decorative white trim on its pitched roof.
Snow-covered mountains sit on the horizon across the fjord under a blue sky.
A red wooden boathouse sits a the snow-covered shoreline at high tide. The water comes all the way up to the boathouse.
Light stretches down a path in the woods. The sun is low in the sky so the trees cast

I’ll leave you with that today, but you’ll hear more from me very soon!

thaw

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March and April have definitely brought signs of spring this year. I think this March was milder and less snowier than last year’s, something I’m feeling grateful for. We’re still in that in-between stage, where it sometimes snows, but it’s mild enough now that it never lasts for too long when it does. The daylight hours grow longer every day, and I find myself full of optimism when the sun comes out.

While I love winter, the springtime thaw always brings a specific kind of joy. Lately, my walks have been getting longer. I’m determined to do some more hiking this summer than last, and to explore some of the spots in my local area I have yet to hit up (there are plenty!). Even when the weather isn’t sunny, being outside at this time of year often makes me want to do cartwheels. The fresh air is such a boon after a long winter.

Today might be the nicest day of the year so far – April always seems to have a way of sparkling when the sun comes out, and today there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s the kind of weather that seems to draw everyone outside, as we share a collective sigh of relief. It puts a goofy grin on my face, and I especially love walking by the water in this weather. You can smell the sea salt in the air, one of my favorite smells, and when you breathe in deep you can almost taste it. It makes it feel like summer (and taking dips in the fjord) is just around the corner. I keep bumping into friends when out on walks lately as well, which only adds to my joy. This cultural experience of the good weather drawing everyone outside is something Norway has in common with Seattle, and I know from friends and family back home that Seattle’s also been enjoying a stretch of extremely fine spring weather. I’m grateful.

The other thing I feel as the days grow warmer and longer is that I feel so immensely lucky to be here. To get to live here. My days are not only full of joy – work is often tricky these days (it’s no secret that a PhD is no picnic) and the news of late has often been devastating. But it makes the joy feel all the more important, so I will savor those moments when I am fortunate to have them.

another year, gone

Dianna4 Comments

November and December have come and gone, and it’s stayed pretty quiet in this space. There were a few reasons for that – it’s been a very busy time both at work at the university as well as behind the scenes with Paper Tiger, but I’ve also been coping with the worsening condition of a herniated disc that’s been plaguing me since early spring this year. It’s actually been a much longer chronic issue, but the occasional flare up of pain has never been a super big deal until 2020. Long story short, I wound up having minor surgery for it on December 18th. It was successful and I’m totally fine, just taking it easy at home while I recover. (I wrote a bit more about that here.)

We had a quiet Christmas at home in Trondheim and will have a quiet new year’s eve as well. Waking up to a thin dusting of snow on Christmas morning was a welcome treat (although it’s long gone now), as was video calling our families later in the day.

I did release a couple of new patterns the week before my surgery, and I will share those here as well, but they deserve their own post, so I will save it for another day soon.

Like many others, I feel like I don’t know where this year has gone. Time always seems to move quickly, but somehow in a year almost without travel, where the days bleed into one another more easily than ever before, time seems to have lost all meaning. I don’t feel too much like doing any big reflections this year. I’m just grateful to be moving towards a new year with a little bit more optimism, even if there are many things that aren’t going to change as quickly as we’d like them to.

I hope your final week of 2020 has been restful and restorative. I hope you’ve been able to find some joy in the midst of chaos and sadness. And I hope you’re able to look to 2021 with a little bit more optimism too.

x

a few september snaps

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I know I’m not the only one wondering where the month has gone. (This year especially, that seems to keep happening.) September has been the wettest month in Trondheim so far – I think it’s rained nearly every day. Just weeks and weeks of rain. Yesterday we finally had a clear day for the first time in ages, and it was a real treat! But I did manage to grab a few snaps in the past few days when there were breaks in the rain. I thought I’d share a few with you today, in case you needed a dose of autumn beauty.

Although I didn’t feel quite ready for it when the first signs of fall started showing themselves, I’m definitely enjoying it now. It’s hard not to love this season in Norway, even when the rain clouds won’t leave you alone.

Yesterday’s clear skies gave us one more treat – I finally saw some proper northern lights in Trondheim! We were absolutely spoiled when we lived in Tromsø, since they happen quite regularly there. In Trondheim they’re less frequent, and there’s quite a bit of light pollution both from the city, as well as the farming region on the north side of the fjord which has a lot of greenhouses that cast a noticeable orange glow into the sky. But last night, there were a few minutes of pretty active aurora and we were lucky enough to watch from our balcony. I’ve really missed the aurora, so I hope we get to see some more this year.

september

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Late summer is giving way to early autumn.

You can feel the days growing shorter here in Trondheim, the sun sitting lower in the sky. While I enjoyed the long summer days, the return of night and the stars is welcome. The wildflowers have almost all finished and filled the breezy air with floating seeds. The rose hips are ripening and the rowan berries are turning bright red. A few eager leaves have even stared changing color.

I find myself moving back and forth between good days and low ones. Some days I feel like I’m coping relatively well with everything going on in the world and I can find moments of joy. Other days are harder. I’m sure many of you have felt similarly. It’s hard to know what to say beyond that.

I continue to take refuge in making, though, and I have finished a few projects in the past few months that I’ve been wanting to share as well. So hopefully you’ll see some more crafting in this space very soon.

In the meantime, I’m doing my best to soak up the lingering warm, sunny days we’re getting in between pockets of rain. I do enjoy a good mix of both, so I have no complaints there. And I’ll never turn down an excuse to enjoy an ice cream outside in the sunshine. As always, I hope you’re keeping well.

suddenly, summer

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Trondheim fjord in the summer sunshine, with sailboats on the blue water and flowering cow parsley in the foreground

Summer feels like it came out of nowhere this year. After we had several days in May of waking up to fresh snowfalls that would melt away in the afternoon, the weather turned relatively quickly. June has been hot, sunny, and dry. I’ve been swimming in the fjord once or twice a week for the past couple of weeks, which has been a real source of joy. I’ve been finding small joys wherever I can, given how much of this year has been so difficult. The coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone and it’s alarming to see infection rates continue to grow back in the US. If you’re reading this from somewhere where cases are still on the rise, I hope you’re staying safe. Additionally, the Black Lives Matter protests have been both inspiring, and in the case of the police brutality being directed at protesters, infuriating. It’s been a time of massive amounts of learning for a lot of us. At times I’ve felt overwhelmed, but I’m doing my best to work through whatever feelings I have so that I’m able to take action in the ways that I can. All if this is part of why it’s been quiet here for several weeks. But I want to come back to this space again.

A red boathouse in the sunshine fills the left side of the frame, with green grass and cow parsley growing alongside it. Trondheim fjord is visible in the background to the right under a blue sky.

My hand held up in front of a massive butterbur leaf

I’d forgotten how quickly things grow in the north in the months around the summer solstice, when night recedes so far away that there’s no real darkness. Pictured above is a massive butterbur leaf (although I prefer one of its other names, “bog rhubarb,” because I find it hilarious). Back in late April, there were little butterbur flower stems popping up all over Trondheim. There are no leaves at that point, and the little flower stems are low to the ground. But now these plants are maybe a meter and a half tall, and I can’t get over how huge the leaves are. Quite the transformation. Watching the flora change on the way into summer has been a source of joy for me as well – we arrived just before midsummer last year (June 17 marked one year in Trondheim) but now that we’re a bit more settled it’s been easier to watch the changes in real time.

A white horse grazes in a field of green grass. Wildflowers grow by a fence in the foreground and deeper green trees sit in the background.

A wild-looking rose bush with white blossoms blooms in the sunshine

The lilacs are just about done, but the roses have all started blooming now. The blossoms on our apple trees came and went and now there are tiny apples appearing. We’ve slowly been getting a kitchen garden put together as well. I started some things indoors earlier in the season and while it’s taking awhile to get things moved outside, I finally feel like we’re getting somewhere. Yesterday we assembled the little greenhouse we purchased back in March, so before too long I should actually have my tomato plants into their beds. I’m still such a novice at growing vegetables, but I’m finally not afraid of making mistakes and doing things “wrong” like I used to be – learning from experience is an excellent way to learn some things. At the very least we’ve done well with greens so far this year and have enjoyed some really delicious salads from our arugula and kale.

A birds-eye view of my planter box growing healthy kale and arugula. In my left hand I hold a jar of iced coffee, and my feet in brown leather shoes are visible at the bottom of the frame.

Orange and yellow primulas bloom in the sunshine

So I’ve been doing my best to soak it all up. I feel like these summer treats are how I’m recharging right now. I’m not getting enough sleep – the clear bright nights have been so beautiful it makes me not want to miss a thing – but I know that there’s clouds and rain on the horizon and there will be space for cozier summer days too (and a little bit more sleep).

I hope you’re keeping well, and I hope you have the headspace for a little bit of making or whatever is helping you recharge these days. We’re gonna need it.

A half-eaten lemon popsicle is held up in front of the Trondheim fjord at sunset

sewing in april

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I mentioned at the beginning of the year that I received a sewing machine for Christmas (after about four years of not having one), and that I was looking forward to getting into sewing again. January and February went right by without a stitch sewn, but by March and April the home isolation period seemed to offer the opportunity to pull my machine out and finally try sewing some garment projects. And so after a couple of weekends of sewing, I have two projects to share with you!

Before April, I last sewed a garment in 2015. I’d also had a couple of sewing experiences that year that I’d felt slightly frustrated by – having become a very proficient and knowledgeable knitter, I started to feel totally lost at sea when I came back to sewing as an adult, because I wanted to be equally proficient and knowledgeable in that skill. I first learned to sew as a little kid, and I sewed a fair bit in high school, but I wasn’t very fussy about details or finishing at that point in my life (and at that time, I was only knitting really basic scarves, so sewing felt like the more developed skill between the two). But as an adult? I was definitely thinking about details and realizing how very much I didn’t know.

So coming back to sewing this year, I really had to psych myself up before getting going on my first project. But I sewed two things in April! And I have more sewing projects lined up. So that’s excellent. I also decided to purchase the Learn to Sew Clothing online class from Closet Case Patterns, and I can absolutely say that’s been a wonderful investment. At first I felt slightly overwhelmed by the number of hours of video content available through the course – did I really need all of this? – but even though I know enough to sew basic garments, the course walks you through so much foundational knowledge, and a lot of it is exactly the kind of stuff I’ve felt like I’ve been lacking. I learned loads in the first three video lessons alone. Sometimes it’s really worth going back to basics.

But at any rate, here are the two projects I sewed in April:

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First up is the Berlin Jacket by Tessuti Fabrics. Now, I’m gonna say up front that this pattern only goes up to an XL, which is not great. (Size inclusivity* is something I’ve thought about a lot in the past year and I’m in the middle of working on expanding the size range for my own back catalogue of knitting patterns.) I would love to see Tessuti Fabrics expand the size range on this, because I know there are sewists above an XL who’d love to make it if it came in their size. I chose this pattern because I had a few meters of a boiled wool knit I’d ordered from a local shop, originally thinking I would use it for a dress – but at the last minute I decided it was probably too thick for that, and I’d do better to find something that specifically recommended boiled wool. I also wanted something that suited my re-entry level skills (in other words, simple and approachable). This pattern seemed to fit the bill on both counts.

Front view of Berlin Jacket being worn.
Back view of Berlin Jacket being worn.

The Berlin Jacket is kind of a coatigan, in that it’s lightweight and unlined, so it’s somewhere between a coat and a cardigan. It’s been a really nice layer for Trondheim’s spring weather, though. I cut the size medium and didn’t make any modifications. The sleeves are designed to have the cuffs flipped up, and while I do wear it that way if I’m wearing it indoors, if I wear it out on a walk (as in the photo at the top of the post) I find I prefer to have the cuffs flipped down for the extra length. At 6′ / 172 cm my arms are on the long side so extra length is always appreciated.

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Most of the seams are overlapped, so there are a lot of visible raw edges, which is why boiled wool is one of the recommended fabrics for this pattern (since it won’t fray). That meant minimal finishing, in theory, but it also meant I went back along some of those raw edges and trimmed any raggedy spots, since when I cut the pieces out I didn’t do the neatest job (I used shears, since I don’t have a rotary cutter). The heather grey is very forgiving, however, so even the edges that still aren’t that neat don’t look too bad. I’m overall really pleased with this project and it proved a nice first project to get back into the swing of things.

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Next up, I went looking through my (small) pattern library for a simple top, and discovered that I had the Tiny Pocket Tank by Grainline Studio. This is actually a discontinued pattern (I believe it was Grainline Studio’s first ever pattern), and it was replaced by the Willow Tank in 2016 (although the Willow has a slightly different silhouette and fit than the Tiny Pocket Tank). Both patterns only go up to a finished 46 3/4″ bust (to fit a 44″ bust), as far as I can see, so again the sizing is pretty limited. But again – this was making use of a pattern I already owned which was at the right skill level for me, and I liked the silhouette, so I decided to make use of it.

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I chose a mid-weight quilting cotton for this project, even if something slightly lighter might have been a better match for the pattern. I knew it would be easy to sew (and there are so many beautiful prints available) so it felt like a good choice for me. I skipped the eponymous tiny pocket, so the basic construction was dead easy – shoulder seams, side seams, and the hem was pretty simple to execute too. It was the neckline and armholes that took the longest. This pattern and the Willow both make use of bias facings, which I had never used before. I’ll readily admit to being one of those people who’s totally intimidated by bias tape, but I followed Grainline’s photo tutorial for flat bias facings, taking my time to go through every step, and it was worth it in the end. I did the neck first, which felt like it took forever, but the armholes went quicker and by the second one I didn’t have to check the tutorial anymore. If this were a solid color fabric with a contrasting thread, you’d probably be able to see that not all my seam lines are quiiiite as tidy as they could be, but in this fabric it’s totally passable and I’m really pleased with how well I managed to execute the facings overall.

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I made two modifications kind of on the fly, since I was trying it on as I went, and the fit was feeling a little weird when I got the main construction finished. The bust darts felt too low for me, and the front neckline on this pattern is notoriously on the low side as well. I ended up taking in the shoulder seams by a half inch, so the shoulder straps were shortened by 1″ in total, and I took out my shears and lowered the underarms by about a half inch as well. To be honest, I totally eyeballed that and I was a little nervous about the length of the bias strips still being right, but it all seems to have worked out okay. And after wearing the tank for a full day, I’m really pretty happy with the fit, so those adjustments seemed like a good call for me. Between the silhouette and the print, this is a garment that’s got me looking forward to summer, although I can wear it already as a layering piece. At the top of this post you can see it paired with the Berlin Jacket.

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Next up, I’ll continue with the Closet Case course, and I’m planning a project that ties in with that. When you purchase access to the course you also receive the PDF versions of the patterns from their Rome Collection, so I’m planning to sew a Fiore skirt. It will add a few more skills to the table which are technically all things I have done in the past (working with interfacing, sewing buttonholes and buttons), but the course is there to guide you through the tricky bits, and I’m eager to have that kind of guidance right now.

*If you’re not familiar with the size inclusivity discussion, I highly recommend checking out this interview Pom Pom Quarterly did with Jacqueline Cieslak, which was originally published in the magazine earlier this year. Jacqueline is amazing. You can check out her knitting patterns on Ravelry while you’re at it.

one last bit of housekeeping + signs of spring

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First up: this will be the last post before I migrate the blog to my new hosting platform, and as I can’t guarantee that the RSS feed will transfer seamlessly, that means that if you use a blog reader to subscribe to the RSS feed for the blog, you may need to update that to be able to see future posts.

If you’re a current email subscriber: luckily, I should be able to update the feed through that service, so you should continue to receive email notifications when new posts go live. That means you won’t have to do a thing! So that’s good news.

Either way, thanks so much to all of you who follow the blog. This space is first and foremost a place for myself – I have been documenting and sharing snippets of my life online for a very long time, and I enjoy being able to look back at what I’ve written in the past – but I am so grateful my musings are interesting to so many of you as well. I’m only sorry the existing comments won’t move over to the new platform with the blog posts, because there have been some lovely and interesting exchanges there over the years.

With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I thought I’d share just a few photos of the transition to spring here in Trondheim. Spring has well and truly arriving – while we had a couple of light snows in April, they melted away quickly, and over the past week blossoms have started appearing and tiny leaves have started to pop out of the tree branches. This time of year always makes me incredibly excited.

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I’ll be back very soon with more to share. I hope you’re all keeping well.

checking in

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One piece of housekeeping before I get into this post: I was notified a few weeks ago that my web host will be shutting down by the end of May. I’ll need to migrate the entire Paper Tiger website to a new platform, which will take me some time. I’ll be moving to WordPress over the course of the next two months. If you’re an email subscriber of this blog (or if you use a blog reader), unfortunately I’ll have no way to transfer that email list, but I will give you some warning before I make the final transfer. The website will still be paper-tiger.net, but links to other pages will be changing. So I anticipate some hiccups, as I’ll need to update links to blog posts or tutorial pages in a whole long list of places: pattern PDFs, YouTube video descriptions, and so on. So I hope you’ll bear with me through that process and forgive any bumps in the road. Now, on to the post…

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Hello, all. I hope you’re as well as can be. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned life upside down for us all, and it’s a strange time to… well, to do much of anything. The Norwegian prime minister held a press conference on Thursday, March 12, announcing a number of initial measures they were taking to try to slow the spread, including closing schools and universities and instituting the social distancing policy we’re all now familiar with. March 12 was the first day I decided to work from home, and the press conference came as a relief, to know the government was taking the threat seriously and once they decided to take action, it was swift. My physical university campus is effectively shut down now, and employees have been instructed to work from home if they can. Looking at the calendar, today’s day 11 of isolation/social distancing/shelter-in-place/whatever your terminology. I’ve been out for walks at least every other day, and to the grocery store once, but otherwise, my partner and I are just home. There have been ups and downs, as you might expect, but overall we feel very lucky – lucky to be where we are (in this house, in this country), to not be worried about our jobs or work for the moment, to be able to go outside. We’re incredibly fortunate. We’re also worried about friends who have already lost their jobs, whose livelihoods are threatened. We’ve only seen the beginning of what this whole thing will bring.

It’s hard to know what to do to help, but I’ve been doing my best to support small businesses, both local and further afield. Even though I’ve been eager to knit from my stash this year (and I still am), I’ve been buying yarn I had no plans on buying a month ago. Buying patterns. Buying music on Bandcamp. Buying books. And feeling grateful to be able to lend that kind of support in some small way.

I find it hard to work on my academic work at the moment, and those I work with have been very understanding. I am getting some work done, but I’m trying to be gentle with myself too. And when it  all becomes too much, I knit. Or bake. Keeping my hands busy helps with the anxiety.

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I hope you’re taking care of yourself and your loved ones as well as you can. I hope you’re taking social distancing seriously, but I also hope you’re able to get outside and take in some fresh air when you can. It’s difficult to try and find a balance right now, but do your best – connect with others using the means we have available, but take a step away and take some time for yourself when you need to. This is a really emotionally complex time. People lives are at stake. If you’re part of the high risk group, take extra care. We’re all in this together. xx

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a few snaps from january

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January felt like it went by in the blink of an eye, but I was better about getting outside for midday daylight walks than I was in December. Here are a few snaps from my walks, all taken between about 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM.

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January was pretty mild, and we had a lot of rain, so the days with peeks of sunshine felt extra precious. I haven’t minded the weather too much, though – I think that getting outside regardless probably helps with that. Here’s to keeping that up as the days continue to grow brighter!