School is out for the summer! Yipppeee!! A plus of life in Sweden is finishing school mid-June, instead of the late-July as I was used to in the UK. It has been hectic lately – work, life, study – and my knitting and this blog has suffered. At last, time for an update! I have to study Swedish as a second language to level B/level 2, roughly equivalent to A-Level standard in English terms. I need to pass this course to convert my teaching qualifications from the UK and to be fully accepted as a teacher within the Swedish education system. Long story short: it is not easy.
Now that the school hols are here I have at least some time to devote to my creative side, thoug, as ever, the Swedish grammar, reading, essays, etc are piled high to one side, demanding much time and attention.
As soon as I was able I took a short trip northwards to see my folks in Jämtland and my dear Swede joined me (some days after) so we could celebrate midsummer together, a big day in the Swedish calander. It was this wettest and coldest for midsummer festival for 51 years! Brrrrr! Still it gave us the perfect excuse to snuggle up and have a cosy time with my cats (who live with my folks.) It was also perfect knitting weather and I was greeted by my parents with a lovely present: a denim bag filled to the brim with cotton yarn and a hand-carved wooden owl they bought on their recent holiday in England.
We flew back home yesterday. I took great comfort in the woven seats in the departure lounge at Åre/Östersund airport as I nervously awaited our flight. I am a nervous at the best of times, but getting inside the small, claustrophobic, shaking, noisy propeller plane was not easy. It takes around 50 mins to fly from Jämtland to Stockholm but close to 6 hours by train. However, the latter option was a lot less scary and a lot more wooly as I knitted the whole way up!
Today marks the first day of a two-week intensive weaving course – I signed up after my very lovely Swede bought me a book on the subject for my birthday (in Swedish of course.) He suggested that I should try to learn this craft as it was something I had talked about wanting to try… Well, today was the first step in learning this craft and so far there has been a surprising amount of theory. Again all my learning is in Swedish so I have the benefit of improving my language skills while feeling slightly less guilty about not spending so much time tied to my study books…
So I am on holiday, but not on holiday 100%. My assignments and final exams will be over by 1st August and hopefully I will get that all important vital bit of paper with a pass. In the meanwhile, I am looking forward to learning to weave and to getting in some quality yarn time over the summer.
Happy holidays and happy crafting!
