What would your ideal weekend involve?
Picking and eating delicious wild strawberries?
Discovering a beautiful landscape on foot?
And getting to spend some quality time with its inhabitants?
(The Roslagsfår sheep are so sweet . . . as are their characterful piggy neighbours!)
Visiting an exceptionally well cared-for wee museum and hearing all about island history?
Discovering the work of local craftspeople?
Finding out that your friend is an incredibly talented baker . . .
. . . admiring her productive garden . . .
. . .and enjoying generous hospitality, in a beautiful home that has been truly built with love?
. . . watching the sun sink beneath the horizon, closing another Swedish summer’s day.
Feeling extraordinarily grateful to have found such good friends and kindred spirits in this lovely country.
Thankyou so much, Kristin and Kalle, for a wonderful Blidö weekend!
If you are ever lucky enough to ever find yourself in Blidö I highly recommend a visit to the Hemslöjdsboden (where you can find beautiful hand knit socks and mittens and hand-made utensils carved from juniper wood) as well as to the Båtsmanstorpet where the local village association organise a full programme of events throughout the summer. Roslagsfår sheep are one of Sweden’s rare native breeds, about which there’s more information on the Swedish Fibre site. I’ve returned home with some fibre, and will let you know how I find it!
KDD & Co 
Hello Kate
My name is Lena Andrè and live in Blidö.
I’m happy that you bought my socks,that I designed myself.
I hope they bring you joy.
kind regards
LikeLike
Great photos, I can have ideas about learning to becoming a photographer. Thank you!
LikeLike
Let me know if you are going back, and I will come and carry your suitcase for you!! This is definitely somewhere to put on the “to visit” list!!
LikeLike
Have you read Seacrow Island by Astrid Lindgren? Your two posts about Blidö made me think of it quite a lot… I had to take it out and reread some favourite passages!
LikeLike
Oh Kate, so much in that post. Things I have to try, tomatoes in buckets, I could move them anywhere in the garden there is sun. Shower caps for the vegetables, I’m sure I can come up with a version that would suit here. Those mittens, that design would be great for embroidery. The animals, especially the clean sheep. To get out sheep, marshmallow, to look look like that we have to use wool wash and even then he doesn’t look as good as this.
Another one for the bucket list.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I don’t get to go many places and it is with great joy that I can travel with you and see and know about so many things I will never see. I love it! The photographs are wonderful.
LikeLike
Looks perfect in every way! I certainly want to know more about the mittens which I have always loved and the embroidery!
LikeLike
Hi!We are visiting Scotland, but i still haven’t found any of the knittingbooks. Does anyone know who sell them?
LikeLike
If you are in Edinburgh, try Kathy’s Knits on Broughton Street
LikeLike
Thank you! I’m in Edinburgh a couple of days now before I go back to Norway. I’ll se what i can find!
LikeLike
Your two friends in their wellies reminded me of my own all too brief visit to a Swedish island – used as a camp for “bad boys” (so we were told) and we met their sheep, so much cleaner than those in Downunder!
LikeLike
What a trip! I was very excited to see the Swedish sheep breeds. Thank you!
LikeLike
Those mittens! And how tiny are the strawberries, bet that they were sweet.
I am trying to decide between Canada or Scandinavia for a holiday next year, you have just made the decision even harder (or easier depending on which way you look at it).
Thanks you for the peek.
LikeLike
Kate, you’re sweet :o)!!!
Sincerely,
Anja
LikeLike
Beautiful photos. The sheep look gorgeous too. Will be interested to hear how the yarn knits up (or spins up)
LikeLike
Thank you so much for these beautiful photographs. Can we look forward to a book of Swedish inspired designs???
LikeLike
It looks like heaven.
LikeLike
All the pictures look very inviting.
Lucky you.
LikeLike
WOW!
LikeLike
Oh, memories of a lovely week spent with friends at their summer house years ago, not on an island, but on an old farmstead north of Stockholm. Swedish countryside and the longest days of the year . . . heavenly.
LikeLike
Oh, that brings back memories, Kate. We used to spend summer holidays on a small island between Blidö and Yxlan (that sort of crayfish-shaped one in the south), where my Swedish aunt and uncle and their friends from Stockholm all had little summer huts. Salt water pumped up the rock slope for cooking but all fresh water collected on foot (or by outboard) from the centrally sited pump, which is where the wild strawberries grew. Crank telephone party line of the old sort to communicate (one crank/ring for Bethges, two for Hasse och Kristina…). Footpaths covered with pine needles (and red ants) everywhere, and likewise bilberry bushes … Isn’t it just magical? Especially in summer when it barely gets dark. It comes to me now that the ‘Blid’ in ‘Blidö’ must be cognate with ‘blithe’, which in turn is related to ‘bliss’.
On a more prosaic note, I note the rubber boots being worn in every shot. And the waterproof trousers. Love it, and thanks for the whistle-stop tour. So glad you had a good time.
LikeLike
You had me at “wild strawberries”! I only ever saw Stockholm’s archipelago from those monstrous ferries between Stockholm and Finland, but oh, that photo of the house on the water gave me a wrench.
LikeLike
Another beautiful place to put on my visiting wish list!!
Thanks so much for the tour.
LikeLike
How lovely! And I cannot express how gorgeous those ombré mittens with the embroidery are. Yowza!
LikeLike
Idyllic countryside beauty. Thanks for sharing your experiences and lovely photographs.
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing the natural beauty of this place and its people. I feel calmed on a stormy day.
LikeLike
How fantastic – I used to spend my summers as a child on Blido
Thanks for sharing it has brought back lovely memories
Tina
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beautiful :)
LikeLike
Reminds me of my Norwegian holidays when I was a child…
LikeLike