Moose and Nålbinding

It's been a good weekend!  After coffee hour on Friday, some friends and I went to Mela again, where there was more cool music.  I realized that I forgot to say some stuff about Mela after all that museum-ness: they had bubbles and rainbows there too:

It's a bubble within a bubble-I tried my hand at this, though I was not as skilled.
Saturday was Verdens Kuleste Dag (literally-World's Coolest Day)-a festival within Akershus Fortress.  This included such wonders as a cabbage sculpture, with strange spiral-y cauliflower...

 ...and an incredibly cute puffball...

...to free food!!  The veggie tent had apple juice, cauliflower soup, lamb hash in cabbage, and rose-flavored ice cream.  I also had salmon soup, popcorn cooked in a bathtub, and hot chocolate.  And I also had...

Moose!-which was very tasty.  Around this area, they also had woodcarving; arming small children with sharp knives and wood.  There was blood, but no one panicked like it would have happened in the US.  There's a lot more of the "let the children hurt themselves and learn" attitude here than at home, where we aren't even allowed proper (read: non-safety) scissors in school.  Anyway, there were also a bunch of reenactors from the Oseberg ship museum showing wood chopping, braiding, tablet weaving, and nålbinding.  Tablet/card weaving was something I had seen at the ship museum, but was unsure about how it actually worked.

The warp threads are threaded through holes in these wooden cards, and the way different colors are arranged in the tablets forms the basis for the pattern.  After the weft is passed through, all of the cards are turned 1/4, and it's repeated.  This was used most often to make trim. 
Also, I learned how to do (really basic) nålbinding.  Nålbinding (meaning needle knotting) is older than knitting or crochet, and produces a thick fabric that won't unravel even when it gets a hole, since the yarn is knotted together.  It's also different from knitting, etc. because you have to make it with short pieces of yarn and a single needle.  I think I was taught the Oslo stitch (go figure), one of the simplest techniques.  Nålbinding was used to make hats, mittens, socks, etc.  I just made a long chain:

I was taught how to do it by using my thumb to hold the loops, which helps in maintaining even tension.  A warmer fabric is made by drawing the loops tighter, which is (surprise, surprise) more difficult.  Anyway, if you're curious, here's a good explanation showing the way that I was taught: http://www.dilettante.info/nalbindingpages/osloprimer/osloprimer1.htm
Today I went hiking around the lake; there are lots of side-trails.  Saw some mushrooms, thistles, and cliffs.