A wonderful Christmas

We've had some amazing few days. Christmas Eve we went to my sisters to celebrate. In Norway Father Christmas comes to the house if you have young children and seeing my nephews reaction to Father Christmas' visit was fun. This is my youngest nephew, Storm, who kept looking at Father Christmas and touching his face.

There were a huge number of presents under the tree.

We stayed overnight at my sister's and on Christmas Day, after a huge breakfast, we all (all 10 of us) went out for a walk in the woods. The boys were on their 'snow racer' sledges and the girls joined in too.

This is Emily coming down one hill:

We stopped for a break and home made buns next to a beautiful farm.

It was about -15 celsius and Vanessa's hair went a bit frosty:

Yesterday and today we went out for walks in the woods and enjoyed the snow too. The girls went sledging just up the road from my parents' house while Simon and I went for a walk in the woods.

In Norway we have these things called 'Spark' which are great fun on snow. Simon and I took one into the woods with us and had a lot of fun going down hills. here's me coming down a hill:

 When we got back the girls decided to have a go with varying degrees of success. Here's Emily with Vanessa sitting down.

 I don't have my photo editing software otherwise I would have cropped these photos but this is Vanessa with Emily sitting down. Vanessa was struggling wiht steering and was heading straight for a snow drift.

 This is what happened next. The spark came to a sudden stop and Emily fell off and Vanessa went over the handles and landed on top of Emily. Once we'd ascertained that the girls were okay I got my camera out and got this photo with Simon running to help them.

Today we went out with the spark again and had a lot of fun going through the woods and down a long hill. We videoed each other with Vanessa's new video camera and if I can work out how to show it on my blog I will do another day. There was a lot of screaming and laughing. Its a bit warmer today, only -5 but no sunshine so it felt just as cold.

We all had some lovely Christmas presents. Among the things I got was a Norwegian book on 'Christmas Bauble' which has taken Norway by storm this year.

I think I will be knitting some of these for next Chrismas. I also got a book on natural dyeing which I'm looking forward to studying in more detail.

I've done some knitting too. I finished Emily's flip top gloves yesterday and she loves them. I could do with doing some moderations to perfect the flip top next time but she's worn them since I finished them yesterday. I  think she even wore them to bed last night.

I finished Vanessa's rather colourful socks

and my Mum finished a pair of Zauberball socks for Emily (the colour is all wrong here, they're pink and purple)

I've recommenced work on lace stole which has been hibernating for months. Will do a progress pic another day. I've also done a few rounds on my Fantasy sock (I'm just past the gusset on sock 2 and thought I was furhter down the foot) which I want to finish soon. Today I've cast on for a pair of plain Zauberball socks for me in black and red as I need some easy cinema knitting tonight. And doing the leg on a sock should be fine.