I Made This!

I've been crocheting a blanket!  Yes, really!  Because if summer's about anything it's about making things that can make you even warmer.  This beast was started a few years ago when I was trying to get through a great northern winter with my sanity intact, then I stopped when it got so large it was starting to create a shadow observable from space (and possibly speed up global warming), and now I've started it up again, on a quest to actually finish it this time.  Did I mention it's huge?  Like super-California-king sized huge?  Because it is. The photo's a little misleading, the colours are a little darker and brighter than they appear here.  Burnt orange, a yellowy-leaf green and a more orangey egg yolk yellow.  It looks like the seventies came along when I was asleep and threw up on it. It is THAT awesome.

How's your summer been so far? For me summer so far's been puzzling.  Lots of rain, thunderclouds and perplexing lack of real summer weather.  The few fantastically sunny days have been spent in the outdoors grinning like an idiot (I love summer) and the others have been spent scooping my bottom lip up off the floor at the disappointment of yet more rain.  I hope this stops soon.  I don't survive winter for this nonsense in the summer.  Please let someone in charge know.

As you were.

Land of Ice and Sea

Last week I had the dubious pleasure of sleeping in four different countries, on four consecutive nights, one of which wasn't even a blip on my itinerary. This wasn't really something on my "to do" list exactly, it just worked out that way in a sort of unprecedented clusterfuck of travel plans gone awry. Sometimes these things provide interesting diversions, when everything's just so out of your control you can sit back and attempt some level of enjoyment, knowing there's nothing else you can do.

The view from my hotel room. It was light like this till 1am.

The second, and most interesting, of those nights I slept in Iceland, a consequence of flight delays leaving me not a chance in hell of making my connecting flight and instead being bussed to a very nice little hotel in the town of Keflavic, where I had 24 hours to wander around aimlessly with no currency, no clue where I was going and a dwindling phone charge due to charger incompatibility. Despite all this is was fun and interesting.

Who expects to be in Iceland?  Not I, at least not for more than an hour while I drag my tired self to my next flight. If I'd known I might have been more prepared. Too bad I didn't have enough time to troll around Reykjavic or check out the famous Blue Lagoon hot springs.

Yeah there's no fake sleeping going on in here!

"Do you have any rather uninteresting photos you could show us, Veg?" I hear you not say? Why yes I do.  I also have some rather fun aerial shots of Greenland and a story about the day I ended up in Denver drinking a margarita at 10:30am, but that's for some other time.

Barren and volcanic

Icelandic coastline

Creepy...built into the hillside

A monument for sailors lost at sea? I couldn't understand the plaque.

I don't know either, but I kind of like them

Blue flower by the monument

Starting to look a little stormy... Iceland's weather looks just like Scotland