Sweden - Day 2

Yay, today blogger is showing me things in English. I know I want to improve my Swedish but that wasn't what I had in mind.

We awoke to find the weather forecasters had it right. Rain, and lots of it. Given how expensive entry to the track is we decided not to bother on a day when we weren't likely to get a lot of racing. This meant we could have a lie in and then a leisurely breakfast. I like that what we call organic in the UK is called ecological over here. To me it makes a lot more sense, I find the idea of inorganic food bizzare. This hotel has many ecological products available for breakfast.

Instead of going to the racing, we went back into the town. We had a little look around yesterday so we knew where some things were. We were able to lay in a stock of munchies and drinks. One of the things I love about Sweden is their fruit cider. I've tried the ones that get imported to the UK and they really aren't as good. The nearest shop had a range of about half a dozen flavours. perfect. We also picked up some Pepparkakor, these are very thin spicy biscuits. Great car snacks.

We then needed a plan for the rest of the day. Yesterday Mia had given us details of another quilt shop, which I hadn't looked at, and feeling a bit guilty about dragging us off to another shop I let the guys come up with ideas. I am traveling with some great guys, they suggested heading off to the shop. What I hadn't realised is it was over 200km away. We were going to go most of the way across the country. I took some hand sewing with me and off we went. (yes we did think to call ahead to check they were open). The shop we were off to is called Tyger and Ting.

On the way we got to drive through some great countryside. I did take some pictures on the way back so when I get home I will upload them and show you all. Sweden has great bones, there are lumps of rock all over the place. Also it is amazingly green, and full of lakes. Today were were driving along one of the big lakes, Vattern. It really is large, in places you can't tell it is a lake, it goes beyond the horizon. The road is sometimes down at the level of the water and at other high above it, so during the journey you get to see the lake from many angles. It is very inspiring.

We found the shop easily, thanks to good signs from the nearest large road. It is housed in a lovely wooden building, and we managed to get from the car to th shop in a break in the rain, perfect. Wow what a shop, I wish it was closer. The range of interesting shaded fabrics and blacks was simply amazing. Obviously I bought as much as I could afford, but I am hoping she might soon offer a mail order service. I was particularly impressed by the fabrics with silver on them, it is rare to see that although gold is quite common. The prices even compared reasonably with UK prices, impressive. The couple who run the shop are both quilters, but he also makes wooden furniture. Now how exactly am I going to ship furniture back when I buy it? I am sure he could make me my perfect quilt display/storage units, and relative to shipping them from the US it would be cheap right? They also produce their own patterns, which were very interesting. A lot are simple but all clever with neat ideas and tricks. OK they are written in Swedish, but I can see me having to buy a few at some point. Annoyingly I forgot to buy the new magazine they had. It is the first Swedish quilt magazine and it looked good. I meant to buy a copy (it had advertising for shops :) but I can't even remember the name. Oh well I guess I will have to email and ask.

On the way back we stopped off at a ruin we had seen on the way out. We got very lucky, the rain stopped and the sky cleared, so I was able to take lots of pictures of the building with the sun pouring in through the windows, they are a bit arty and technically poor pictures but I like then, and that is what counts. We also stopped at the Swedish version of a 'greasy spoon' cafe. It is a bit different to a UK one. They have apple juice on tap and offer much better food. I finally got my fix of pytt i panne, a fried potato dish, which I've tried to copy but mine just isn't right. It was wonderful, I bet the natives don't see it as a great delicacy.

So that pretty much brings us up to date. I've managed to finish the hand sewing on a pretty big quilt today, and we spent the last couple of hours in our hotel room enjoying the cider and watching the TV (OK I was sewing too). All in all a very restful day.