Hello from Norway - land of knitting

 Hello, it's Sunday the 9th of August so I've been here 10 days, halfway now through my trip.  I flew into Bergen, did the Norway in a Nutshell loop to Flam/Gudvangen/Voss (staying two nights in Flam), then caught the ferry from Bergen to Alesund, then the ferry from Alesund to Trondheim which is where I am currently.  It's been a really great trip so far.  Some countries arent what you expect/hope they will be, but Norway is ticking all the boxes.  Even in bad weather (of which there has been much) the scenery is wonderful.  And it's all so clean and well kept, once again a foreign country throwing the UK into a bad light.  On the con side, it is extortionately expensive.  I am just having to go 'la la la' and try not to mentally convert too much - I have paid £20 for a baked potato, and a cup of tea is typically almost £4.  I am trying to keep costs down but it's not easy.  The sights are wonderful, I have had two fjord cruises so far (Flam to Gudvangen, and a day trip to Geiranger - the former in sunshine and the latter in steady rain) and the scenery was just incredible.  So majestic and unspoiled, so remote and beautiful.  Even just cruising up the coast on the ferry is amazing, with the colourful little houses nestled on the coast or up the slopes of forested mountains.  And there is so much history everywhere that I have been so far, lots of well kept period buildings, great open air museums, they seem to really value their history and traditions.  The weather has mostly been wet but so changeable.  Today was typical: it started out chilly and heavily overcast, graduated to light drizzle for most of the morning, then suddenly the clouds cleared and the sun came out and we had about 45 minutes of blue sky and hot sun, then it's gone and the temperature drops with an icy wind, then it suddenly rains quite heavily for 20 minutes or so, then we are back to the drizzle.  I am basically carrying half my wardrobe around with me all day so that I can put on or remove layers of warmth, waterproofing or sun protection as required.  But I dont mind, I grew up in a rainy climate and I have the right clothing with me.

I have been finding knitting and handicraft shops everywhere, knitting is hugely popular here and the shops stock almost entirely wool. One shop worker told me that Norwegians don't want to buy acrylic because it's not warm and it's plastic and not sustainable.  There is a lot of Norwegian made wool as well such as Rauma and other brands. It's not eactly cheap, but considering how expensive most things are in Norway, the wool isnt much more than in the UK.  Between £4-£5.50 for a 50g ball of Rauma for example. There have been branches of Husfliden, the shops of the Norwegian craft association, in all the bigger towns I've been to - they sell and make the traditional Norwegian costumes which are beautifully trimmed and embroidered, but also other Norwegian crafts and products including a good selection of knitting yarn such as Rauma Garn.  In Bergen there were four other knitting shops to visit, plus I took the bus up the coast to visit the Norwegian Textile Industry Museum in Salhus  - a former knitting mill that processed fleece from raw product into fine knit fabrics that they then sewed into items such as men's long underwear and t-shirts.  It also had a shop selling some of their spun yarns. In Alesund, in addition to Husfliden, I found Maskeriet AS which had more unusual yarns and fibres, and also got the bus out to Ultrad in Spjelkavikvegen.  Here I finally caved and bought four balls of Rauma Finull (fingering weight) to cast on for a Norwegian style hat pattern I found on Ravelry, and also a kit to knit a pair of Selbu mittens.  I had asked at most shops if they had any hat patterns with typical Norwegian motifs but apparently this isnt something that they knit - normally they knit traditional patterns on jumpers and mittens.  So I was able to cast on for the hat on my next ferry ride.  Here in Trondheim there was a large knitting shop called UniQ Garn and an even larger one called Garn Huset around the corner.  And by large, I mean the size of a small UK supermarket.  It's just amazing, and stuffed full of wool and other natural fibres such as alpaca and mohair.  I had really wanted to visit Selbu itself to see the small museum of Selbu knitting there, but just couldnt make it work between the museums opening hours and the sparse bus schedule from Trondheim.  So I was pleased to see some Selbu knitting at the Sverresborg Trondelag Folk Museum here in Trondheim today.  There were a few mittens and socks on display in some of the historic houses, and in the shop they had books of Selbu patterns and some Rauma 3-ply yarn.  I bought one of the books because it's a paperback, the other two were coffee table books so too heavy.  There is a Selbu shop there as well but only open on Thursdays unfortunately. There was also a lovely elderly Norwegian lady demonstrating in one of the historic buildings, she is a multi-crafter like me and had brought wonderful examples of everything from traditional wool embroidery, to tatting and band weaving.  She knew a lot about the Selbu tradition and showed me some of the Selbu mittens and a wonderful cardigan that she has knit, I showed her some online pictures of my attempts and we had a nice chat.  There's also a branch of Panduro here, like a European version of Hobbycraft.  And I've seen examples of cross stitch, hardanger embroidery (but not a shop yet for that), crochet seems popular, nalbindning, tatting, wool and silk embroidery and so on - in antique shops, craft shops, on display in historic buildings and museums etc.  I guess with the long dark winters, hobbies are important.

So I'm having a great trip and feel Norway really lives up to the hype.  I'm not going to attempt to upload photos because I already have several hundred on my phone and I need to go through them at home on a big screen, also  it is laborious to reduce file sizes to use on the web on a phone, or at least it is for me.