Stockholm

I've been staying in Stockholm for the last few days. I ended up staying a bit longer than planned because I stupidly didn't book a bus home and they were all sold out once I arrived! We walked all around town in spite of the biting cold and we were staying in the Old Town, Gamla Stan. We went past all the Christmas window displays in the famous department stores and also had lunch at the top of the Film Institute where you can see the whole town.

Most interestingly, my friend Jennifer showed us around the Vasa museum, where her sister used to work. It is actually built around the Vasa, a viking ship that famously sunk in the Stockholm harbour just twenty minutes and less than a nautical mile into its maiden voyage on 10th August 1628. The ship was clearly unstable in the port but was still allowed to set sail. It foundered due to a wind putting it off balance because it was top heavy; it had far too much weight above the waterline. Then in 1961 it was recovered. It's recovery is incredible and it is unbelievable to think it was at the bottom of the Stockholm 'strom' for 333 years. However, the guide at the museum explained to us that they have scientists and archeologists coming to the museum everyday to try to come up with new ways of preserving the ship. Unfortunately it is rotting from the inside out and they fear it is short lived. One of the most recent suggestions that they will explore is stabilising the wooden frame with bronze bolts.

Stockholm Old Town

I am absolutely loving it here in Stockholm. The old town in beautiful and the centre of town is comprised of several 'islands' making it all the more picturesque as the wonderful views are usually surrounded by water. Having said that, it's freezing.
On our first few days of exploring I have fallen in love with the quaint little needlepoint shops, and surprise surprise, Alex has found a specialist beer pub called Akkura with some really delicious aged Lambic beers...

Fiskebäckskil

We visited a beautiful fishing village with the class, all 3 of us. Our tutor Elisabeth picked us up from Uddevalla station bright and early at 9 am after our 2 1/2 hour train journey; armed with coffee and sandwiches she drove us a further hour away to the village of Fiskebäckskil. It had 379 inhabitants in 2010 and consists of various sizes of sweet little coloured wooden houses. It is all quite surreal- there's not a single shop in site apart from the tiny general store and the whole place is immersed in fog. It's cold (as usual) but we get the opportunity to take some really interesting photographs. I'm particularly fascinated by all the nets that are strewn about the place. Some have just been randomly dumped and others are stacked very orderly. They have a great colour palette and I love how some of them are really deteriorating to reveal a whole spectrum of greens and browns. 

Fika!

It is the end of our experimental knitting project so we all have 'fika' at our tutor's studio. Her studio really inspires me to get one of my own. She opens it as a shop a few days a week and the stuff she makes is all with eco-yarns from Denmark. It is also nice to see that she only uses double bed domestic machines combined with a computer program we have been using called Design-a-Knit. It is a lovely end to a packed final week of the project and she has prepared us various cakes- always a way to get into my good books.