Back to Writing

Okay, I'm going to try this again. As most of you know, I'm a lousy writer, but am trying to improve.

Christmas has been wonderful. Heather is home with us, though she's threatening to be traveling in Europe over Christmas 2010. Nice of her to prepare me for that. I got my Kindle this year. Another way to store and read books! Much more portable way to travel with my books.

I'm on facebook, at ABookNerd. I also use ABookNerd for my Dragon Cave. I'm going to try to keep my eggs and hatchlings posted on this. They don't seem to want to hatch yet.

Day 3, Alafoss Lopi Yarn Factory

It was the answer to a knitter's dream today. A tour of a yarn factory. There were a couple of American knitwear designers at the Alafoss Factory Outlet at the same time I was who were going to get a tour. They let Tom and me join them. Alafoss is an Icelandic company that makes the traditional Lopi yarn in addition to other kinds. They have a great website at http://alafoss.is . The website is mostly in English so it's easy to navigate.

We got a ride from the factory outlet store to the factory in the company vehicle pictured here. We started the tour where the yarn comes in. Bales and bales of yarn, both separated into white or other colors and natural mixes. I'll be posting more pictures on my flickr page, which I've also just started. From the bale room we saw where they ran in up a converyer that almost looked like putting it on a comb, but this conveyer just led it to a dryer where it was fluffed. Then it was put on a comb of the machine and as it ran through it looked like a very thin blanket. As it continued through the machine it started becoming threads.

We saw one woman with a very interesting job. She was running a machine that made skeins of yarn from cones, as the yarn from one cone got low, she'd use a little hand held knot tier to connect it to the next cone. YES, I saw the woman who puts knots in the yarn that you run into at the worst possible time!

We saw where they dye yarn. Some they dye before spinning, and some they dye after. It seemed like most was done before to give it a fairly constant color. The yarn dyed after spinning was being done in different shades of the same color. Not too much of that could be done in one batch, so I could see why it never seems like there's enough of a dye lot.

We saw they machine that makes pull skeins, then the skeins were sent down the line to be labeled and from there into bags holding about 12 skeins.

Of course there were racks and racks of a veritible rainbow of yarn. I was positively drooling.

Day 2 Iceland National Museum, cont.

A note here, I'm writing this now that I'm home because it was taking forever to upload pictures and I wanted to include them in the posts.

The Iceland National Museum was very interesting with a great variety of natural exhibits and man made historical exhibits. I'm a sucker for exhibits that have anything to do with geology. This picture is of a cross section of Iceland's land from before settlers to now. You can see volcanic eruptions and other interesting bits of history with it.

Another intersting fact is that when Iceland was discovered it was during a warm time in world climate so more of Iceland was underwater than now. I know what we add to the air is causing global warming, but I found it interesting that people did live at times when it was warmer than now.

Day 2 in Reykjavik, luggage arrived!

The luggage finally arrived, delivered around 9AM. It came in from Boston, so it looks like it went from DC to NYC to Boston before finally making it to Reykjavik. At least it didn't go by way of Kiev.

The picture was taken at 10:15 AM, dawn over Reykjavik. Hard to wake up in the dark, even though the watch assured me it was time to wake. We toured the Icelandic National Museum today. Very interesting. One thing I found extremely interesting is that about 80% of men here descended from Scandinavians, but 60% of women descend from Irish/British roots. Guess those Vikings stopped over in the UK to pick up a few wives. We also tried to go to the Natural History Museum but that was indefinitely closed, I imagine a victim of the fiscal crisis here.

We've arrived in Iceland!

After a shorter flight than I figured, we have arrived in Iceland. It's only a 5 hour flight and 5 hour time difference. So you leave at 8PM and arrive the next morning in Iceland at 6AM. Not a very long nights sleep, but a nap afterwards will do wonders. Unfortunately our luggage wasn't so lucky. The United Airlines folks in Wash DC wouldn't check our luggage through to Iceland. When our luggage didn't arrive at JFK in NYC, they asked "why didn't you have your luggage checked through?" grr, maybe the right hand should start talking to the left. If it had at least been on the flight after us, it still would have made it in time for the Iceland flight, but it didn't make that flight either. Now the punch line to this story is this morning when I called the United luggage desk at JFK, I was told the luggage had arrived there and had been routed to Kiev. Ummmm, that would be an interesting town to see, but I'd rather be with my luggage when it toured there. After I questioned the routing, they said oh yea, it was routed to Reykjavik. There's only one flight a day from JFK to Iceland so we'll see tomorrow morning if it was correctly routed.

We walked around Reykjavik today. It's a really nice sized city. You can see a lot of it on foot. Starting tomorrow we have a three day bus pass. The weather here is the same as DC, 30s-40s and rainy. I'm looking forward to getting my luggage so I can add some pictures to these blogs. I took some interesting ones at sunset (~5PM) of some houses reflected in the lake downtown.

Keep your fingers crossed that there will be some solar activity so I can see the northern lights.

A New Years Resolution

I don't make very many resolutions, they tend to fall by the wayside - depressing. Every year, get into shape and lose weight. Those are on this years list, again! New this year is writing more. I practically have a panic attack if I have to write. In school I would rather have difficult math problems to work on than have to write a paper, no matter how short. Coupled with this is trying to stay in touch with or reconnect with friends and relatives. Solution - blog about what the family is doing in "Nichols Notes".

I'll begin with myself. I'm a full-time homeschooling mother of three, though one has flown the nest to college. I'm also a part-time library associate. In Maryland the state has a program where if you have a Bachelor's Degree (in anything) they'll train you to be a librarian. It's a wonderful program. I only work 20 hrs/week, Tuesday evenings, Thursday days, and every other Saturday. This allows me to keep homeschooling the two left at home. I have a lot of interests. The primary ones, after family, are reading, knitting, photography, and travel.

My dear husband Tom works for the Dept. of Def. as an IT specialist. He finished his Master's Degree in IT just this past summer. Now he's looking for more classes to take. Like me, he loves to travel. Later this month we're heading to Iceland to (hopefully) see the Northern Lights.

Our eldest, Heather, is away at college. She has a lot of credits from the local community college and now she's in NC at WCU (Western Carolina Univ) working on her Bachelors Degree in Forensic Anthropology. She in Honors college and on the Dean's List. I don't sound like a proud mom, do I?

The next child, the boy.... Ben is in 9th grade. He's doing high school at home through Keystone National High School. It's an accredited online high school. He's not sure yet what he wants to be but is leaning towards a military pilot. He's the only one of us that doesn't need glasses. He's active in Boy Scouts and will be working at Goshen Boy Scout Camp in Goshen VA this summer.

Last but not least - of the two legged anyway is Emily. She's in 8th grade this year, and will be starting with Keystone next year. She's active in Girl Scouts, is a cadette and is starting to work on her Silver Award. Emily isn't sure yet either what to be when she grows up, but would like something related to Geography that isn't engineering (though her dad still hopes to make an engineer out of her).

Now for the 4 legged furred beasts and 2 legged feathered beast. Yes, we have a menagerie. Three Golden Retrievers, one we bought as a puppy, the other two were rescue dogs that we fostered. The dogs get along great, are very close, and like to sleep (sometimes) as one big dog pile. About 15 months ago we got at 3 week old kitten whose mother had been run over. She now is the 4 legged boss - funny to watch something that small go after the large dogs, but she has them thoroughly cowed. Finally we have the nosiest love bird. She likes to have someone in the room with her and she squacks until we pay attention to her.

Guess that's enough for the first introductory post. Now to see how well I can keep this up...