Sleeveless in ... Pafos?

It´s been a while.

There, that´s that taken care of!

Grötö Knitting Festival is worth mentioning - imagine 90 knitting women on a small and picturesque island off the coast of Göteborg, Sweden. And only a 4 hour drive from Copenhagen across the bridge. This including an al fresco lunch at Hallandsåsen.
Charlotte and I picked up Eva in Lund, for the most inspiring weekend of the year, knit-wise!

Though we were the only two danes of the lot, we felt extremely welcome, and only a little embarressed taking home with us, the title of Fastest Knitter in Scandinavia (264 sts in 5min, with a cold start, 20 sts cast-on). The prize, not only included the Honor, but also a small Addi Knitting Machine, that immediately was named Rulle-Marie after the Danish Defence Bomb Dismantler Robot-Thingie. She has so far been extremely useful, and truly merits a blog-entry of her own.

Taking a course in Bohus Knitting was for us like having soaked dried chick peas in water - spry and suddenly a lot more interesting! Charlotte mumbled: Kaffe Fassett meets Bohus Knitting.....and we were off, again. I suspect we will give birth to a few new ideas over the next year, which will NOT be Bohus Knitting, but our own interpretation thereof.

We did not want to leave.

Easter was kinda eventful - my SO Carsten was closing in on the big 39.95 and had decided to run for it - and we ended up (literally!) in Cypress, in our own villa for 10 days, just north of the Coral Bay Pafos area. Litterally Sleeveless time! Balmic and fragrant, in short. Orange trees and rose pepper trees blossoming and gills actually emerging along our ribs, so much wonderful fish they served! Picking your own oranges and following the goats (they are on the right side of this next picture) up the mountain trails, (great legs, Heidi!) being treated with freshly made creamy goats cheese with sugar on top for pudding the same night at the local taverna. Always ending the meals with a small glass of the VERY local Filfar, an orange peel-local herbs liquor, completing any meal to perfection. On our last day, we decided to pack and drive half way across Cypress to Nicosia and spend the night right up against the wall to Turkey - we walked along the wall next morning for a few hours, experiencing a mix of sadness and horror how the city has just been cut in two. One end of a street could be full of shops and cafés, the other end of bulletholes and barbed wire. Apart from this very evident separation, Nicosia was beautiful and very interesting, and we will be back one day for sure. (And in connection with The Holiday Inn right up against the wall, we recommend the Italian restaurant there, especially their shell fish/peperoni gnocchi and their interior decorations!)

Knitwise this is just one pic of one of the thousands of mosaics from their roman infestation around year 5-600 AD. NOOOOOOO INSPIRATION FOR KNITTING. AT ALL. NOPE. NONE.
This next picture is a curiosity - walking the streets of Nicosia, we saw this:

If you zoom in, you can see the greek grafitti just over the door handle. That fight will NEVER die.

Well, Cypress was just wonderful, the people there welcoming and helpful, the weather just right and the fact that all rental cars had red licence plates greatly comforting, as it took a while to get used to driving on the ´wrong´ side of the road. Rental cars are called Tommies down there, and we cashed in many overbearing smirks on the mountain roads, especially when they saw that it was `THE WOMAN´ driving and Carsten reading the maps. But we prefer it that way when we travel.

So, I have not stopped knitting. Not one bit. My health is improving, finally, and some of the nasty chemo is off the list now. I get iron treatments (IV) once in a while, and followed up by weekly, self administered EPO injections (Jeg har taget doping) my red blood cell count is up and under control. Phew.