M ~ Make it Yourself! #atozchallenge

All Aboard! "It's Very Swedish..." a train on a cultural journey through Sweden, exploring the differences big and small between American and Swedish culture.

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I feel like I'm letting you down on the whole childhood pictures thing, so I went on a quest for you today.  It was a quest through four photo-albums, with a completely different agenda than when I first wrote the title to this post back in January.

I was going to talk about scratch cooking, but we've really covered that topic quite thoroughly, so I thought I'd keep the title, but share some of the things that I've made, or helped make, or had made for me.

Some of these were made when we still lived in Sweden, but some are from after we moved to the US.  I guess my cultural comparison point is that it's the family that makes the difference, not the culture.  I have a lot of American friends whose moms made all their clothes and cooked from scratch, and some who did not.

Some of my Swedish friends had all store bought clothes, some did not.  One common thread (pats self on back for clever metaphor) is that knitting and crocheting have been a part of my life and the lives of my friends in both my countries.  That makes this a, "I guess we're a lot alike in a lot of ways, too!" post. Enjoy the pictures.  May my siblings not kill me...

This is Farmor, with about 1/8 of DataBoy, rolling out the dough for the buns from the B post, with Swissie in the background, working on something else.  We baked a lot with Farmor. She was infinitely patient.

This is me baking with Farmor, I'm guessing the summer I was either 14 or 16, because it's Farmor's kitchen, but I'm older than when we lived there. Notice we're still making buns...told you a lot of them were made.

What do you do when you're crazy about horses, but can't have one?  Make your own, out of the swing set. Notice we're riding horses NOT swinging.  Joachim is banished to the stable for some crime I no longer remember.  The Swede helped us build the stable. (Yes, I'm in the red shorts.)

I'm in the blonde braids (surprise) and that's my best friend Ann-Charlotte, 2 magical years older than me, and our neighbor across the backyard.  It's her little brother, my age, who was banished to the stable. She taught me a lot about sewing, and we're making doll clothes.  Note the hanging bibs we made.  Of course I copied hers...though you'll notice her embroidery is better.

Ann-Charlotte's mom made her those groovy overalls, and I had to have some, so The Nutritionist, who could also go by The Seamstress (she made me almost all my nightgowns and dresses and bathrobes of my childhood), made me a matching pair. (That's Swissie between us.)

Here's one of the bathrobes she made me.

Here's something *I* made.  I knit this teddy bear, with lots and lots of help from Farmor, and then she sewed it together for me, but I did the knitting.  I still have it.  Yes, I save too many things.

Not sure how old I am in this picture, but it's at least fifth grade, which is when Swissie got her cat, Pippi, as in Longstocking, by famous Swedish author Astrid Lindgren.

Did you learn crafts growing up? Who taught you?  Do you still craft?

~Tina, dying to procrastiknit, but has way too much to do...procrastination will have to wait...

©2014 All Rights Reserved

All photos taken by family members.  Probably Momarazzi...

T ~ To Take Down or To Move, That is the Big Decision

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on Adventures in America.

When we still lived in Sweden, we were really blessed to have a huge section of woods right at the end of our little three-house street. There was the big street, which had the name, Stråkvägen, then there were about 16 of these off-shoot streets which had the numbers. We were 8A. The C houses bordered the woods. The kids in the neighborhood played in the woods all the time.

One of our favorite activities was building forts. We did it right, and the contestants on Survivor could have taken shelter building lessons from us, let me tell you.

We built this really awesome hide-out one time, with the help of some older kids, who actually let us help build AND hang out. We ran into a big problem though. The older kids told us rumors about a rival group of older kids who wanted to find our special place and destroy it. We younger kids were all very scared of this happening.  Playing with the older kids (almost high school, as I remember) was a big boon.  Well, we did have to bring snacks...

Let me tell you, this place was the real deal. As I recall (and we've discussed my recall enough) about 8 or 9 of us fit in there all at one time, and it was nicely camouflaged from the outside. Long afternoons were spent debating whether to just tear it down ourselves before “the others” did it, or  to take it apart carefully and move it to a more secure location.

I sure wish I remembered what we decided, but regardless of what it was, we never had that special place again. In retrospect, I think the older kids just tore it down, built another one (easy for them) somewhere else so that they didn't have to put up with us pesky younger ones anymore.

It did spark some creativity in the younger set. Here are some of our attempts...

(This is me, Swissie, and  my best friend Ann-Charlotte, who was a magical two years older and taught me so much, including how to read (not exaggerating).  She lived in 6A, as in behind our backyard)

(This is her younger brother, Joakim, who was in my class throughout school, well the three years I spent there, and we were very good friends, too.)

If you haven't noticed by now, the woods, the multitude of kids, and the special friends were what I missed the most about moving.  I got used to the culture, but I only saw Ann-Charlotte one more time, when I was much, much older.