I’ve been very pleasantly busy these last few days and therefor have not posted anything. My dear friend Isadora has been paying me a visit and I was so glad to see her! Of course I always am, but this time it has been more than commonly long since the last time we met!

We had a great time; talking and catching up on each others lives, taking long walks, baking, and also watching some nice period dramas! We realized, when we were going to decide which period drama to watch (that we should watch anything else was never an option ), that we had many she had never yet seen. Unfortunately her visit this time was not long enough to enable us to watch them all, we had to content ourselves with two: Under the Greenwood Tree and The Way We Live Now. She’ll simply have to come back soon again to watch the rest! We had a good time watching those two though, we were oohing and aaahing over the dresses and the the romantic scenes. Oh the joys of friends who share these passions of mine (what would I do without you all eh?!)!

Isadora and me with the fantastic (though I do say so myself) Late-Summer-Cakes we baked.

Hoping you’ll all have a great week!

I was looking around my room this morning (my tiny room!) and thought about all the different Austen things I have there. I decided I’d take some pictures of some of it and show you some of my nice “stuff”.

First of all here are some of my precious books!

And a close-up of the strictly Austen books (sorry you can’t see them too well…):

Some of my (ok, not only “my” films….) lovely period dramas!

My (yes, these are only mine!) fantastic music books! Highly recommended!

In my room, a couple of bonnets and a bonnet-to-be. As well as my folder (?) of Jane Austen Regency World Magazines.

Writing desk in my room.

Here follows a few close-ups of some of the Austen things surrounding my desk:
The Darcy chocolate-chip-cookie jar! I admit, we bought this only for the sake of the jar! And my Jane Austen pen.

Here are the nice Jane Austen post cards I bought at the Jane Austen Center a few years back. Love them!

Jane Austen Center ribbon used as decoration.

And then my program from last years festival. Soon I will have another one to add to this collection…!

I’m do have more Jane Austen stuff than this, but this will do for now. I do love my Austen things! I can’t seem to get enough of them!

A friend of mine (you know who you are ) just posted a part of this poem on facebook and that reminded me of it and got me to read it again. It is such a sad but beautiful poem, I decided I’d post it here. Enjoy!

Ode to a Nightingale

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

~ John Keats

Yay, this ticket came with the mail yesterday!

It even had a personalized letter that accompanied it!

Can’t wait for the 25th of September now!

I haven’t exactly been secretive about my wish to make another Victorian dress I believe. I’ve just now finished it! The dress that is…

I have no occasion planned (yet) for wearing this, the reason I made it was just purely because I wanted to. Seeing as a dress like this requires quite a lot of fabric, and as I did not at that moment have so much money to spend on it, I needed to find some fabric at a reasonable price. My mom and I went to this store where I have found good cheap fabric before, but when we came there we discovered that they had long stopped selling it! I was terribly disappointed and was just about to rush angrily out the door again when we saw these bed sheets that were on sale… 100% cotton, many different colors, at very good prices. My disappointment was instantly turned to delight and I must say that I have never before felt so excited over bed sheets!

The color of the material I chose was a very pretty blue. And that blue reminded me very much of a dress that Bella Wilfer wears in the BBC series Our Mutual Friend. It is a dress that I really like, and seeing as the color was so similar I decided to make something in that style.
Here is Bella’s dress:

And here is my version of it:

Here is a closer picture where you can see the ruffle thing around the neckline better. As well as my darling Prinsen!

It’s not exactly the same of course, but I did use that dress as my inspiration. As for patterns I had a couple of different patterns that I used, for the base of the dress if you will, and then added my own touches and alterations to it. The patterns I used were one from Truly Victorian and the other was some old costume pattern that I had lying around.

I didn’t have any real problems with this dress. It took some time to make, but I was ok with that because I had said to myself that I would let it take whatever time it needed, so I could make it as neatly as I could. Believe me, I sometimes get really impatient when I sew! So I let it take time. I even went so far as to attach a long ribbon on the inside of the skirt just to cover the unattractive ruffle seam. I had to do that by hand and since the skirt is something like 4.5 meters around and I had to do that length twice, it took time… But it was fine since I could do that at the same time as I was watching the World Cup. And I am glad I took that extra time, because like I said, I’m very pleased with it!
Getting the hooks and eyes to work properly was a little bit challenging. I seem to always have trouble with those. But I think I got it to work ok in the end.

Closer view of sleeve details. The lace I used is some “Nottingham Lace” that I bought when we were in Nottingham a couple of years back. It was two pieces that were made to go round the neck, but I always sort of wanted to use them for sleeves. So that’s what I did. It wasn’t quite long enough, but I think it works ok. Buttons are covered in same fabric as the rest of the dress.

View of the back.

As for the historical accuracy of this dress I don’t know if it is all true to the time. For example I haven’t really been able to find any sleeves like these in a dress like this one in any pictures or fashion plates that I have seen (my research has not been the thoroughest however and I do not claim to be an expert), but I went for the look of the dress in the film rather this time. And I must say that the “poofy”  sleeves that you find on most of the dresses from this time don’t really appeal to me so much…

Here is yet another close-up where you can see the lace better.

Once again my dear sister Viktoria helped me with the photos. Thanks Toy!

Boring book? ;P

Thanks for looking!

So are any of you planning to go to Bath for this years Jane Austen Festival?

Ever since I left Bath the last time I was there I have been looking forward to coming back again this year. And stay for the whole festival this time! And now it looks like I’ll be doing so! I’m awfully excited about it!

I’ll be sharing a house with 7 Dutch ladies for the time I’m there. They are all coming to attend the festival and have been kind enough to let me join them in this house, which is located right in the center of the city. I have never yet met any of these ladies, but the all seem very nice! I’m looking forward to getting to know them better! The other great thing about renting this house (apart from having company) is that the accommodation cost will be so much lower than what staying in a hotel would be! Since there will be 8 of us splitting the cost. For all 9 nights the cost will come to about the same as what I paid last year, that time for only 5 nights! So that’s fantastic!

I haven’t yet booked my plane ticket, and not all the events either. But it is something I will do soon. I have however bought my ticket for the Grand Regency Ball hosted by Farthingale’s in the Assembly Rooms on the 25th of September!

Anyone else planning on going? Will I see you there?

I haven’t written a lot about Swedish books on here have I. The reason for that is probably mainly that I hardly ever read any Swedish books. And why? Well because when I can I prefer to read books in their original language, and I just happen to read mostly English books for some reason. There are so many more books to chose from in English! Swedish is a very small language after all. But even so we do of course have our fair share of books and classics too.

A few that I thought of…

Selma Lagerlöf is one of our all time greatest authors. She was the first woman ever to be awarded the Noble price in literature and her style of writing is very special. She is a fantastic story teller and she weaves in all these myths and legends into the books.

She has written many books, but so far I have only read a few of them. One of them, which I  read and really liked, is Jerusalem which I wrote a post about a while back (you can read that here if you want to). Another one, her most famous, is Nils Holgerssons Underbara Resa Genom Sverige (The Wonderful Adventures of Nils). This is the story of a boy from the south of Sweden, who one day is mean to a little gnome/goblin/creature he comes across, and this little gnome/goblin/creature punishes him by turning him small. And with small I mean really small. But the thing is that when this happens he also suddenly begins to understands the languages of animals. He ends up riding on the back of a goose across all of Sweden, to the very north. Of course they have lots adventures along the way and you get to read about all these different places they come to. One of the places they visit is Katrineholm, which is just some 20 – 30 minutes from where I live. In the book they call this place “the garden of Sweden” something which Katrineholm to this day tries to live up to by planting lots of flowers and stuff around the town…

The book was actually first written as a geography book for school children, but now it is one of the most famous Swedish books ever. And it’s really good! Another proof of how big it is here is that both Selma Lagerlöf and Nils Holgersson (on the back of a goose) are featured on our 20 kr. bills!

Wilhelm Moberg has written some other very famous Swedish books. Most famous of which are his books about a group of people from the south of Sweden emigrating to America during the Victorian era. These books are called Utvandrarna (The Emigrants), Invandrarna (Unto a Good Land), Nybyggarna (The Settlers) and Sista Brevet Hem (The Last Letter Home). I have read all but the last of these ones so far. I’ll read the last one too sooner or later, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. These books too are very good. But I have to say that they are rather depressing. There is a lot of hardship and struggle for the characters in the books and they are not really happy, feel-good kind of books. But they are good! And the books are based on real people, the great-great grandparents or something like that of the author.

These books have also been turned into films, but those I have yet to see. I’d like to see them. And it has also been made into a musical. Björn Ulveus and Benny Andersson from ABBA made the musical Kristins från Duvemåla based on it. The music to this one is fantastic!

A slightly more modern series of books (modern in the sense that they were written quite recently) is the Arn trilogy. Written by Jan Guillo these books are called Vägen till Jerusalem (The Road to Jerusalem. Hm, there seems to be a lot of Jerusalem in these books…), Tempelriddaren (The Knight Templar) and Riket Vid Vägens Slut (The Kingdom at the End of the Road).

Set in the 12th century these books tells the story of how Sweden became a country. There is this young man, Arn, who is raised in a monastery where he not only learns about religion, languages and how to read but is also trained to become an excellent warrior. In the second book he is sent to the Holy Land to serve as a Knight Templar for 20 years. That book is divided between following him there and also following his fiancé who is waiting for him in Sweden. In the third book he returns back home and this book is about how he strives to establish peace in a Sweden under constant war.

There is a forth book as well which isn’t about Arn but about his grandson (according to the book) Birger Jarl. Birger Jarl was a real person and very well known in Sweden. On of the things he is known for is being the “founder” of Stockholm. This book is called Arvet Efter Arn (The Heritage of Arn).

The first three of these books were turned into two films a couple of years ago. They were the most expensive films ever made in Sweden, and they are very good!

There was a time some years back when I didn’t speak any English, and then obviously all the books I read would be in Swedish. There is a Swedish children’s books series that I really used to like, (I don’t know how famous they are, but at least I liked them) the books about Kulla-Gulla. There are 12 books in the series written by Martha Sandwall-Bergström about a girl living in the beginning of the 20th century. She is an orphan and in the beginning she lives on an orphanage. But she then comes to live with this family with lots of kids and work for them. After a while you find out that she is actually the long lost granddaughter of the rich old squire on who’s estate she lives and works. So suddenly her life completely changes, but she still continues to take care of these kids as well as other people around her.

They’re nice books that I really used to enjoy when I read them! Unlike the other books I’ve mentioned though I do not think these books have been translated to English.

And then of course we have the most famous Swedish books of all; the books by Astrid Lindgren. In a way you can say that Astrid Lindgren has raised the whole Swedish population. More or less everyone has grown up reading her books, listening to the stories, watching the films, singing the songs. It is my guess that Astrid Lindgren has the most well-known voice in Sweden, it is a voice that everyone recognizes!

When Viktoria and I were little we had these tapes with the story of Alla Vi Barn i Bullerbyn (The Children of Noisy Village) that we would listen to every day! It was our favourite  and apparently we listened to it so much that our parents got really tired of it… ;P We would then play games pretending that we were the children in those books as well.

But Bullerbyn was far from the only Astrid Lindgren we liked. Vi på Saltkråkan (Life on Seacrow Island) was another great favourite, as was Ronja Rövardotter (Ronja the Robber’s Daughter), to mention a few.

Astrid Lindgren’s most well-known work is of course Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking), but even though we liked that one too it was never one of our favourites…

Obviously there are many more good Swedish books, but I’ll just take these ones this time.

Ok, I know that it has been shockingly long since I posted last. Shame on me! But I have to say that this past week I have been so busy spending time with all the people we’ve had here that apart from when sleeping I don’t think I’ve spent more than half an hour in our house each day.

This week has been a total blast! We’ve had such a good time! I don’t know exactly how many people we were because I haven’t counted, but I would guess somewhere around 60-70 or so. Most of them Swedes and most of them homeschoolers. But we did also have some people from Norway and some from England.

Like all the previous event that we’ve had here this one has also been just a great week of spending time together, playing and talking. The first days we had lovely warm weather and played lots of football (soccer), went swimming and had water-fights and those kinds of things. Then the weather changed and we had really rainy and stormy weather for a couple of days. Not as cozy perhaps but it worked too and didn’t stop us from having a great time!

During the weekend there was some more “organized” discussions. Mostly the adults joined in on this and talked about and shared dreams and visions and goals with each other. Offering encouragement, advice and support. It was much appreciated by everybody I think.

Like I said, there has been lots of playing and talking. LOTS! Lots of fencing too. My brother Aron organized a sword-building workshop where those who wanted could make their own soft practice swords. That was a big hit and a great idea, because with these swords the kids could play as much as they wanted without anybody getting hurt!  One man who was here did woodcarving which a lot of people joined in on as well. There has been cookie baking, card playing (quite a bit of that) trampoline jumping (a lot of that!) grilling over the campfire, and like I said football playing and swimming. Aron and two of his friends arranged a sort of treasure hunt in the forest late one night. It was a very advanced treasure hunt with them three dressed up as and playing various scary characters. It was so well done, we were all very impressed! And it was also rather scary, and exciting!

Here follows a sample of all the pictures Viktoria (mostly) took during the week. Enjoy!

Fencing

Playing football (soccer)

Trampoline

People in the outdoor kitchen

Playing “Clue”

Playing “Warhammer” (this is a figure game that Aron plays a lot)

Tug of war

Making crepes for everybody

Rain…

Discussions

More of the same

Camp-fire

Me with two little friends. I really like this picture!

Me reading to a few more little friends

Utter adorableness! These three guys are just SO cute together!

If I said that these three guys are cute too they would probably never forgive me! ;P I’ll use the word fearsome instead… Aron, Gustaf and Ari dressed up for the treasure hunt thing.

Waving goodbye for this time!

I don’t know if you remember, but a while ago (quite a long while ago) I posted a list of the 100 “best books of all time” according to a survey The Guardian had done…?

A few days ago we went to Uppsala and took the opportunity to visit our favourite bookshop here in Sweden, the English bookshop that they have there. Upon arriving there we were at first a bit shocked; ’cause the shop was gone! Luckily though it wasn’t actually gone, it had only moved half a block or so, and it was now twice as big! Yay!

Anyway, why I brought that up was because there they had this list, the one I posted before, on the wall. It was fun to see it again, I had totally forgotten about it. I liked that list though and wanted to see if there were more lists like it out there. A quick search assured me that there are plenty!!! I didn’t read them all, (far from it) but I did read this list of 100 most loved books that BBC published a few years ago: BBC – The Big Read
Now on the previous list Pride and Prejudice was number one, on this one it wasn’t. It was “only” number two…
One thing I like about reading these list is that you get so many good suggestions! Out of this list I had read 29 I think, so plenty more to go! One I’ve been wanting to read for quite some time now is War and Peace. I’ll just have to get it first, and the time for it…

Now I know this is really hard (at least I think so), but if you were to put together a list of your top 10 books, which would those 10 books be? I would love it if you would leave a comment and let me know! They don’t have to be in any specific order, unless you want to of course!

A week ago the Jane Austen Festival of Louisville, Kentucky took place. I wrote about this event a little while back but unfortunately I wasn’t able to go this year, much as I wanted too. I have heard it was a wonderful event, and it sure looks like it from the pictures I’ve seen! If you are interested there are plenty of pictures you can have a look at on THIS site.

And to read an account of the festival from one of the participants check out “The Doctor’s” blog HERE. Thanks for the links by the way, and I hope it’s ok that I borrowed a couple of your pictures.

I think it looks like a great event, and hopefully another year I can actually go myself!