Imagine a woman wildly ripping off her pants and running around in underwear on a hiking trail while her husband is swinging said pants around in circles and against a tree. Got the picture? That would be me and Stephen right after I stepped on a wasps’ nest.
Why did I venture off the path? I had the crazy idea of knitting little korknisse. What is a korknisse you ask? Check them out here. Cute, right? So I had to make a bunch from little scraps of yarn. At the end of the day, exhausted just watching one more episode, this is about all my brain will wrap around.
What to do with them does pose a problem if you’re fresh out of little kids to entertain. So I planned a modest yarnbombing action on our hiking trail. First with some trepidation about defiling nature, but then the thought that I can take the korknisse down any time and them bringing a smile to some hiker got me convinced I should do it.
The first spot for the green korknisse was soon obvious.
The next spot suggested itself too. But it turned into the revenge of nature. I got off the path a little and stepped on a log. See here!
What a surprise! I know the feel of stinging nettle but never felt poison oak before so I thought this is what happened, I stepped on poison oak and it feels like stinging nettle. Yellow and black poison oak wriggling along my leg. Nope, those are bees or wasps or whatever and I started swatting them away with my hand and running. Stephen running after me, the dog in front or behind us.
Then the infamous scene of me ripping my pants off and the rest is history. 12 stings! 12! It hurt but not as bad as you would imagine. I’m not allergic to bees or wasps, but 12 stings might change that and we decided to head back to the car and home.
Took a shower, applied some sort of something from our first aid kit, and iced it together with our dog whose mouth by then had swollen. Yarnbombing is not for the weak or meek, nature had spoken.
You would think I had learned a lesson I could carry forward in life. Not so, that very evening we returned and I put up 2 more korknisse. Take that Nature!
On our way back to the car we ran into two friends who also hike this trail, they were shouting toward us: We love it!
This is how they discovered them. He: Yarnbombing. She: Marianna. He after looking at the cork and what bottle of wine it had come from: Stephen. The green embellishment is theirs.
I made three more korknisse that evening. If I spoke Norwegian, and I should speak it a little since we had a Norwegian exchange student for a year, Maiken, where are you when we could use your help, I would know the plural of korknisse or is korknisse the plural already? I love that word and wished I could incorporate it into my everyday speech more often.
This morning our whole village had the idea to be out hiking. The one opportunity that finally knocked also knocked down a woman along the path and with it wiped out our last chance of yarnbombing. Sundays, yarnbombing, not so much.
Why would anyone send me a message about yarnbombing, not for Marianna! Or am I imagining? Is it a center of the universe situation? Could you speak louder Nature? On second thought, pssst, don’t tell. One photo from the trail:
This is the old irrigation ditch from the mining past in our area. And one last picture of the view from the ditch toward our town, or should I call it village? What are the definitions? Since we have a lys we might just qualify as town.
