Late last fall, I took Maggie (and a reluctant Jonah) to Junibacken—a popular children’s play museum in downtown Stockholm—home of Pippi Longstocking. I’d been reading Maggie the story, “Do you know Pippi Longstocking?” so it would make sense, still…I’d been putting off going, imagining it would be a place like Chuckie Cheeses (Ugh!). Happily I was wrong. If anything, it was on par with Disneyland. Inside was a full-scale model of Pippi Longstocking’s house, Villa Villekulla, complete with dough on the floor and cookie cutters where she’d been baking in the kitchen. Children could climb around the dining room on furniture, just like in the storybook. Remember when Pippi had her birthday party and invited Tommy and Annika…what a scene! There was Pippi’s horse too, Alfonso. Children could sit for a picture on the enormous steed, or grab a small broomstick version and run around pretending to be Pippi. So much fun!

But it wasn’t all about Pippi, there were two floors to explore that included other children’s stories by Astrid Lindgren, Sweden’s most celebrate author. Our favorite part was the train ride at the end. The three of us sat in a train car, open on one side, a metal bar across our laps, watching as we were transported through a miniature storybook world of Astrid Lindgren’s novels. Her voice, in English (several languages are available) narrated the scenes. When we “flew” over the village, suspended in the air, (weren’t expecting that part) we felt all the wonder of her fictional world. Even Jonah loved it.

Maggie next to statue of Astrid Lindgren

After exploring, we were ready to visit the café. It was, as expected, large and colorful, decorated in a vintage style, like the rest of the museum. There was a display table filled with sweets, children’s favorites: cupcakes, brownies, apple cake and cinnamon rolls. We shared a piece of apple cake that looked much better than it tasted, (Swedes don’t use as much sugar in their baking).

We had a wonderful morning, but what’s more, I drew inspiration from the museum’s vivid color palette. You see I’d been searching for exactly the right colors to use in a granny square afghan blanket I wanted to make for Maggie’s room. I found them here, in the picture I took below:

I love the saturation of color, the red with the pink, the turquoise that cools off the warm yellow…I’ve been working on the squares for some time now, but I have a lot more to crochet before I can put them all together.

As promised, I’m going to give a short tutorial next post. They are easy easy and any colors you like can be matched together.