Hi there! Our gadget finally arrived from Apple, so I can now show you a few more of our Norway trip photos! First, though, I thought you might like to see just how much Bert has grown in the last few days! He can't quite escape from his washing basket yet, but we think it will happen any day soon, and we are preparing ourselves for chaos! Our friend Mary suggested that we tried feeding him on carrots instead of toy cars. His poor sore new teeth seem to find these chewy enough, and his tummy seems a lot happier now too! We are keeping Bert at Melinda's for now, as we had to keep pushing Bert's washing basket around the house to hide him from Billy's Mum, but we eventually got found out. (Billy's Mum was desperate to do some washing, and looked everywhere far faster than we could move him...) So, back to Norway! We were staying at this bunkhouse in a place called Rjukan, and below is the massive pile of wood that the humans had kindly collected up for our nice wood burning stove. (This meant that Buster, PD and I could stay nice and cosy each day, while the humans went out to play in the snow and ice!) Here is our room! (If you look carefully then you will spot Buster sitting on our bottom bunk at the far end of the room.) And this was our comfy living room, with our nice warm stove being positioned just off the left of the picture. It wasn't until our last night there that I noticed this picture on the wall. Hmmm....doesn't that look like a group of frozen or hiding TROLLS?! So, here's a photo below to show everyone just how beautiful Norway is in the snow... We popped in to see our new animal friend Tenzin on our way back to the airport... ...and PD Monkey kept teasing me that I would be flying home with Bert via Fisherprice not Ryan Air, as Bert had no ticket!! So, our Norway adventure sadly came to an end, but we have Bert with us now as a very lasting reminder of our holiday! (And I intend to scrutinise the other photos my unobservant humans took, as who knows what Troll activities they missed if they didn't actually fall over them...) Bye for now,Love Odd Sock xxx
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Hi everyone, Odd Sock here! I can't show you the rest of our Norway holiday photos yet, as we are still waiting for our new adaptor to arrive for the iPad. (It's been dispatched by Apple, so "paws crossed" it will be here in tomorrow's post!) I did manage to take a photo of our baby Troll, Bert, today though - by using the iPad camera. This is Bert's first photo (he doesn't seem to like cameras), so I wanted to share it with you all. Our bear friend, Toddy, thinks that Trolls normally eat goats, but I'm hoping to raise Bert as a vegetarian, as I don't want to kill any poor goats for him. Another of our good bear friends, Jeremy, cleverly suggested that poor Bert might be chewing my paws so much because he was teething. Jeremy's suggestion of toy cars has been working, but Bert seems to chew the whole cars up, and then he swallows all the bits up! Oscar and Buster are seen here offering Bert his THIRD toy car, to distract him from me trying to take the picture! Billy is getting less keen on us feeding his toy cars to Bert, so we may have to think of something else soon! Bert seems to be growing quickly, so we think it will not be long before he escapes from the washing basket! Melinda has been trying to contact Troll sanctuaries in Norway, as she says we cannot keep Bert once he gets bigger. (His poor Mum was about 3 feet tall, so a dwarf by Troll standards, but still MUCH bigger than all of our gang!)
Hi everyone! PD Monkey here! This was me last year in Norway, which is why I never strayed far from the bunkhouse and the log stove this year! I just wanted to let you know that Odd Sock has not forgotten about doing her final Norway report, but we are having a few technical problems at the moment. (We lost the connector for putting photos from our camera onto our iPad somewhere in our packing, so can't show you any more of our photos until Apple send us another one...) Odd Sock is also rather exhausted due to taking on the care of a baby orphaned troll. Melinda wishes it to be known that they were only in Norway to climb ice falls, NOT TO HUNT TROLLS, no matter what Odd and her friends had suspected. This poor little troll was sadly found in deep snow, where he had nearly frozen to death with his poor mother. If anyone has any information on raising orphaned trolls, please get in touch. He has quite sharp teeth already, so chews the ends off baby bottles, and has nibbled poor Odd's paws a bit too! He is fairly tiny at the moment, so we are keeping him in a nest of towels in the washing basket, as he can't yet climb out of that. His poor Mum was very big, so we think our little friend will also get much bigger soon. Billy's Mum doesn't know we are looking after him yet, so we think we may get in trouble when she spots him... We think we are going to call him Bert, as that sounds like a good name for a troll. We don't speak Norwegian, or Troll language, so as far as we can tell he just makes meaningless little grunting sounds at the moment.
Hi everyone! Odd Sock here, reporting from Norway again! Yesterday I decided to go with the Troll hunting humans, to see why they are being so unsuccessful! I wrapped myself in a big jacket inside a rucksack, and clung onto a flask of hot chocolate (to both keep myself warm, and to protect it!) I also asked them to explain a bit more about this activity they call ice climbing (as I think this is the way they look for trolls who live in the trees on top of steep icy waterfalls). It was -12.5degC when we set off, so both Ice climbing and troll hunting seem to require humans to wear LOTS of warm clothes! (They also where helmets on their heads, in case ice lands on them, or in case trolls throw rocks at their heads!) These are what the spikey crampons look like that the humans then strap to their big warm boots. ...And these are the sharp ice-axes that they hold in each gloved hand. By kicking the sharp front points of their foot crampons into the ice, and hitting their ice-axes in, they can gradually make their way up steep ice! If you look very carefully at the photo below, then you will see that one of my humans is using his left hand to screw something (called an ice screw) into the ice, and you will see that ropes are trailing beneath him. Another human standing at the bottom of the ice cliff holds the ropes with a special "belay" device, and the rope is clipped to the ice screws (which are screwed into the ice at intervals). This stops the human falling far if he slips! Having checked the top of the cliff for trolls, the unsuccessful humans then fasten their ropes to something strong, like a tree, and use their special "belay device" (shown above in the middle) to slowly slide themselves back down to the bottom of the cliff. Their ropes can then be pulled back down too, so they don't need a new rope for each climb! Well that's the end of my report on ice climbing. In my next blog I'd like to show you where we are all staying, and show you some more troll signs that I think my unobservant humans are completely missing!
Hi there everyone! This has been a very exciting week! PD Monkey, Buster and I have all come on holiday to Norway with Melinda and her husband! I've never been out of the UK before! I hope you like this great onesie Billy's Nan knitted for me, to keep me warm! So far the three of us are toasty warm, as we have just been sitting around a nice log fire drinking hot chocolate! We also met a new animal friend yesterday. Her name is Tenzin, she lives in a Norway most of the time, and she thankfully does not chew cuddly toys! When they saw the sharp axe things my human friends were taking to Norway, some of my cuddly Norwegian twitter friends assured me that this was typical troll-hunting kit! Our humans can't be very good at hunting Trolls, as they have been out 3 days in a row, and still not captured one to bring back! I did spot this odd looking snowdrift on the photos they took today though... My friend @JezzerBear thinks this is a hiding troll, and that the humans were lucky to escape! *By the way, Jezzer Bear writes an awesome blog himself, please check his latest post out at http://jezzerbear.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/two-chocolate-bars-from-estonia/ Well, the humans say they use the sharp axes for climbing frozen waterfalls, like this. (They also have spiked things on their feet called crampons, and they call this activity "ice climbing".) They climb to the top of the ice....(possibly looking for Trolls -maybe Trolls like living on top of frozen waterfalls?) Then they use a rope to slide back down again, like this. (They call this abseiling.) Apparently the snow is so deep getting to the waterfalls, that it is above our humans' waists! (Definitely not somewhere for short cuddly toys to venture out to!) Oh, and my other big news is that just before coming away, our poem book was reviewed, and both I and Melinda got interviews, by Destiny, for her blog! I've put the link to my own interview below, but you can easily find the other 2 articles from there too!
Hi everyone! Odd Sock here again. We've been really busy today, making a surprise for our new purple monkey friend Harry. (I met him on Twitter, and he is a really great monkey. He has books written about him by his manager, Angela.) Harry lives in Canada, and it is really cold there at the moment, due to something called the "polar vortex". We don't really understand what that is, but Harry doesn't like the cold, so we are sending him PD Monkey's very warm coat. Today we have been out buying dye, and we have dyed PD's coat PURPLE for Harry. We've also sewn on a special embroidered "H" badge. We really hope he is going to like it. Now we just need to post it to Canada... Hope you have all had lots of fun today too! Oh, and if you'd like to meet Harry, then you can find him at http://www.harrypurplemonkey.com Hi everyone! Sorry we've not been blogging much. We have been really busy drawing pictures for our next book, and have finally reached the last picture! I just wanted to show you all the bright orange fairy costume that Santa left in my stocking! I wrote and asked him for a brightly-coloured dressing up outfit, and I don't think he could have done better than this! Oh, and my New Year's Resolution is to rescue even more odd socks...❤️ |
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AuthorsThe Top of the Wardrobe Gang: Oscar Rabbit, PD Monkey, Odd Sock, Burton Bear, Terry Tiger (TT), Burton Bear; helped by Melinda Kinsman Archives
October 2018
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