Giljagaur........... Gully-gawk arrives today. He is a handsome and most happy fellow. His passion is the froth, that forms on the warm milk as it comes from the cow. He sneaks into the barn and while the milk maid is not looking, Giljagaur dips his finger into the milk pail and licks the froth off his finger. Giljagaur, was lucky today.


I have loved the story of the thirteen Jolasveinar, as long as I can remember. When I was a little girl I was given Christmas cards with drawings of them, by Eggert, that I had carefully colored in, with color pencil. I still have nine of the cards and suspect that there were actually only nine in the beginning, as in some of the stories there were only nine are mentioned. One of my favorite Christmas songs is about, Jolasveinar one and eight, who came down from the mountains, and the adventure they had along the way..
I have wanted to create the Jolasveinar for many years, but could not find a medium to work in, that would fit my image of them. This spring, I took a class on needle felting on the internet, with Amy Rawson, through joggles.com. I took to the medium right away and practiced designing and making various figures, until I felt ready to work on the Jolasveinar. I started working on them, in the middle of October and have eleven done, with two more to go. I did them in sequence, so that I could show them all here day by day, as they arrive.
This project has been the most satisfying one I have ever done. I look forward to going to my studio every day. I started this blog to have a place to show them and to tell their story. I tell the stories in my own way, with the poems from a book called Jolin Koma (Christmas is coming) by Johannes ur Kotlum, which was first printed in 1932 and had it’s sixteenth printing in 1994, as one of my guides.