{"id":42047,"date":"2025-01-01T11:47:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-01T11:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/?p=42047"},"modified":"2025-07-24T12:58:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T12:58:41","slug":"new-years-swim-sopaipillas-wool-stores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/new-years-swim-sopaipillas-wool-stores\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year’s Swim \/ Sopaipillas \/ Wool Stores"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[Photos taken 01 – 02 January 2025, posted online 24 July 2025. This past month has been ridiculously busy, so absolutely zero progress in blog-land. So weird to be revisiting January in July!<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most everything was closed on 1 January, as it was New Year’s Day. However, one of our town’s swimming pools was open so that’s where we headed. It was -7 to -10C \/ 20 to 14F outside, and I was thoroughly misunderstood when I told our US visitors that yes, “there is an indoor pool”. Of course, nobody really actually stays indoors, it’s all about the outdoors hot-tubbing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evening was the big sopaipillas-dinner (our visitors had brought special ingredients!), but the following day was a slow one. Mostly everybody just lounged, although the moms did manage to head out and visit a couple of wool-stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 01 January 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n
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The solar storm was still going pretty strong, and this was the view outside our house that evening.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The day “began” around 2 pm, with a backyard survey of all the debris from the explosions the night before.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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By 15:30 in the afternoon we’d made it to the swimming pool. There were a bunch of people in the park below it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The parking lot was packed. We had to park in a side-street.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Emergency blood-sugar added before driving home. Apparently our guests were slightly surprised at the outside-ness of the pool. To be fair. there was so much steam coming off of the 50 m pool, that you couldn’t see much of anything over there.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A valiant effort to protect wet hair from the cold outside the pool<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Shortly before 18 (6 pm) somebody ventured outside and reported northern lights above.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Anna modeling in front of the skylights.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The game collection our guests brought.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A big dinner event about to commence: Sopaipillas<\/a>!
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The dough.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The condiments, some specially imported.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Some family members were a little miffed by the addition of beans to the ground meat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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In the fryer!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Looking delicious!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The decadent dessert!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Time for No mercy!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Thursday 02 January 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
This was designated a slow day. The shark enjoyed itself at home base.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Beating everybody at pinochle…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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In command!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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So cozy!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
The biggest excursion was to a yarn-store.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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They have books and books of recipes, but when you find the one you want to use, you need to buy it from a website.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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I decided I wanted to check out another store… It was more bare bones.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A possible combination.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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This was the original \u00c1lafoss<\/a> store\/location<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Old gear.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
More old gear.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
I thought there was a cafe further up the hill, but it had closed down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The view from the top of the hill was cozy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Arty wood-carving on the way down again.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
I kept playing Carto<\/a>, while the others played more exciting games.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"\"<\/a>
Finnur made authentic lamb-meat-soup.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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More pinochle<\/a>, with plenty of questionable hands.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Photos taken 01 – 02 January 2025, posted online 24 July 2025. This past month has been ridiculously busy, so absolutely zero progress in blog-land. So weird to be revisiting January in July!<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Most everything was closed on 1 January, as it was New Year’s Day. However, one of our town’s swimming pools was open so that’s where we headed. It was -7 to -10C \/ 20 to 14F outside, and I was thoroughly misunderstood when I told our US visitors that yes, “there is an indoor pool”. Of course, nobody really actually stays indoors, it’s all about the outdoors hot-tubbing!<\/p>\n

The evening was the big sopaipillas-dinner (our visitors had brought special ingredients!), but the following day was a slow one. Mostly everybody just lounged, although the moms did manage to head out and visit a couple of wool-stores.<\/p>\n

Wednesday 01 January 2025<\/h2>\n
\n
\"\"
The solar storm was still going pretty strong, and this was the view outside our house that evening.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,18,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-us","category-visitors","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42082,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42047\/revisions\/42082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}