Peter and I spent all day Friday at Den Gamle By museum in Aarhus, which is a superb outdoor museum that was started in 1914.  Houses from all over Denmark were collected and moved to Aarhus, and set up to represent a small market town in various periods from 1500s onwards.  We wanted to get some ideas for our house (built in 1750) to bring it back to the correct period look.  We especially looked at the ceilings as we have just stripped back all the many years of horrendous additions to our house.  Now we’re back to the old ceiling beams and boards, so we have to decide where to go from here!

Eilschou Almshouses, Hans Christian Andersen visited here as a child.  I love the wooden sink – I would not break so many dishes in that one.

We went to the bakers and bought some giant meringues, then some lavender soap and enamelware at the ironmongers in Sondergade.  It was all so beautifully wrapped, what a pity all this customer care has gone out of the window – you can’t even get a plastic bag in the store to put all your shopping in these days!

Back to the real reason for visiting, ceilings.  My favourite is the blue and white but all are suitable for different parts of the house.

I love the log burners, unfortunately they are not practical for modern use.  Look at the fabulous paint work on the living room walls, all hand painted on plaster (a bit over the top for our house, I’m afraid).  For the outside colour scheme, we liked the pale yellow, natural beams and white windows for the outside of the house.  Our house is a much darker yellow, and has dark brown windows, so when it comes to repainting the outside, we have a good idea what we want.

A few photos from around the museum:  This museum its one of my favourite places to visit as I see something different every time I come.

This lighthouse is at the end of “Denmark’s nose”.

Two quilt tops finished – a baby blue sail boat (a free pattern from AllPeoplequilt.com) and a paper pieced number from a pattern I got a couple of years ago and never got round to making.  I really enjoyed sewing the PP blocks as I like working with lots of colour: I used up a lot of my batik scrap pile to make this one!

Also, I made six more 4.5″ paper pieced block from Quilting on the Square. I’m half way there and very soon I’ll have to decide how I am going to put the blocks together to make a quilt.

Sid, our white cat, went missing for 4 days recently.  It was most unlike him as he always comes home for supper regular as clockwork.  We were very worried about him but he came back early one morning, as dry as a bone, very clean and fit, just very hungry. We have no idea where he went but he was clearly not living rough!  Maybe he found someone else to give him supper (he’s called Sid after “six dinner Sid” because he was a stray in Saudi Arabia, visiting many houses to get fed, before he decided to stay with us) and he forgot to come home.  Now he stays out late most nights, coming home around midnight, so he’s confined to barracks for the rest of this week until he gets back to normal. Perhaps it’s that time of year, but I thought that was in the Spring?