flea market finds

i was thinking about how dependent on the location the items in a second hand store are. this bowl, which i saw at one of those flea market places, where individuals rent a shelf and put whatever they want there. it was in herning, which is arguably the middle of denmark. the tag on the bowl claimed it was french and it's true that it didn't look danish. if it hadn't had a big crack in it (not visible in this photo), i would have bought it, as i definitely felt it sparked joy.

i spotted this clarinet in the wonderful antique trove in scottsdale, az. i feel like i see a lot more instruments at antique places in the us. other than old pianos and organs, i just don't see that many musical instruments in the shops in denmark. i don't know if this is because less people play an instrument or because they keep them.

this red tray could easily have been denmark, but it was actually also at the antique trove in scottsdale. i'm kicking myself for not having bought it. it would have been awesome in my red kitchen.

this was definitely in the us. not that people didn't quilt in denmark, but patchwork quilts are also quite rare at the antique places here. you often see knitted and crocheted afghans, but very seldom do you run across any patchwork quilts. and especially not a yoyo quilt like this. that seems like it was very much an american style. i didn't buy this one, but i have one very similar that my great grandmother made. i hope it stays in the family and never finds its way into an antique place.

obviously, that lunchbox was spotted in the us. i ended up taking that tin toy bug home with me, so someday someone will probably find it in an antique place here in denmark and wonder how the heck that happened.

that yellow bowl is at an antique place in my hometown in south dakota. i love it so much, i've actually photographed it a couple of times. but it's $49, which isn't really so bad, but i always think it will take up too much space in my luggage or get broken along the journey, so i leave it behind, even if it definitely sparks joy in me.

this one is obviously very mid-mod danish. it was in the flea market in kolding. i am drawn to these designs, but i didn't buy this one. but it got me thinking about the whole question of the selection of goods available in a particular location. i'm definitely going to see what's in the second hand and antique shops of barcelona next week. i'll bet it's something completely different!

teeny tiny birds

i spotted these charming little vintage hand-painted birds at a flea market the other day. the woman who sold them to me thought they were from india. each of them has its own little quirky personality. i was only going to buy a handful, but then the nice lady said i could take them all for 100kr. there are no two alike. so much fun to get a whole collection in one go. i'd love to know the story behind them. i tried googling, but didn't really find any info. i just found a few of them on etsy from someone who thinks they're german. i'm pretty sure they're not. what do you guys think?

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love the writing - it's warm, it's inviting, it's inspiring.

you want to have these people over to dinner.

gathered

skimming some or other feed, a headline about small household shrines caught my eye. i didn't click on the article and naturally, i have no idea where it may have been posted and i can't find it again. but that didn't stop me from pondering the growing pile of small, mostly natural, found treasures that has gathered on the window ledge in terms of whether they constitute a shrine. it does feel somehow like a shrine of sorts, gathered there over time. but a shrine to what? nature? walks? found objects? the passing of time? that little pear was perfect and green when i found it and now it's dry and wrinkled, but somehow more charming, even if it is now a mummy of a pear. i'm glad it dried up and that it didn't rot.

it's not all found objects, unless you count seeing something in your facebook feed and ordering it from etsy as finding, which i did with the heart by kim from numinosity beads. but even the little bottle is a found object, which i found one day out in the yard when i was emptying the litterbox. it does make me wonder what other treasures are lurking out there.

that little egg, which i found late last summer has also dried instead of rotted (thankfully) and is light and hollow now, as the inside has dried up. i'm pleased the cats have left it alone so it could do that. what is our human desire to gather things and keep them? why are we somehow driven (some of us more than others) on an almost unconscious level to gather and keep. stones, bits of moss, driftwood, shells, feathers. they constantly find their way into my pockets.

for me, there is pleasure in the arranging and rearranging and the photographing. it gives me a small moment of beauty and creativity in the midst of a busy everyday. and i guess that's shrine enough for me.

happy weekend, one and all.

the madness continues - new minifigures from the lego movie

one of our local grocery stores has the latest series of minifigures from the lego movie. and tho' it's less than a week until i start at lego, i couldn't resist. but take a look - could you have resisted?

wild west wyldestyle

scribble-faced bad cop (i love his scribble face)

he's got a bad cop face with sunglasses on the other side.

abraham lincoln

taco tuesday guy

emmet - he's the hero of the movie (as i understand it)

wiley fusebot. he's got an awesome daniel boone hat with a racoon tail.

mrs. scratchen-post - check out the cat hair on her clothes!

panda guy (i really wanted him).

where's my pants guy (i understand he has a reality program in the movie).

marsha queen of the mermaids.

love her blue hair and silver lipstick.

and i couldn't resist a shot of marsha from the back.

pondering collections on a monday morning

Our American Revolution from Dark Rye on Vimeo.

veronica shared this wonderful video and, naturally, it has me thinking about the things we save and the things we display and the things we tuck away. i have, i believe, all, of sabin's baby teeth in these little plastic treasure chests that we at some point got from the dentist. they are tucked away in a box with most of my jewelry and are not on display. but, as you know if you've been around here for any time at all, we have an awful lot of other things on display and you know that collecting is an important part of who i am.

the collections have been ever-shifting, probably starting clear back with the 98 identical first place plaques i won with skip's galley lad, my black and white paint/pinto gelding during the summer of '82. i pounded 98 nails into the wall of my bedroom and hung them all up. after that, there were the marilyn monroe collectible plates, which were dutifully hung on the walls in various apartments from iowa city to scottsdale to chicago. now, i just use those plates for dessert and they always make people smile. i've not reached a point where i can part with them, so we box them up (in their original boxes from the franklin mint) and move them from place to place. there was a period in the late 80s, early 90s, where christmas barbies were the thing. happily, i've finally gotten past that one, as well as the beanie baby obsession (tho' there is a big bag of those somewhere here in this house as i write this).

today, the primary collection on display has to be books. books make a room and this house utterly lacks charm, so i might as well do something to make it cozy and that something is books. they really do help. until recently, i had our bobbaloo collection out on one of the bookshelves, but have tucked them away for now because the cats are very hard on them. what is it with cats and wool? and then, of course, there are my minifigures standing in two long rows in the windowsill above my desk. the things we collect make us smile or comfort us somehow or just bring forth memories, as they make clear in this video. a jar of stones, another of shells, another of fossils remind us of walks on beaches all over the world.

at the moment, the living room shelves and the windowsills contain quite a few bits of natural ephemera - feathers, a single perfect small egg found in the forest, acorns, a delicate ball of light green oak moss, a fetching bit of stick. these are the things that slowly shift out, as other finds replace them or the cats, thinking that a single feather is just as good as an entire bird, play with them and abandon them under a chair.

i have much of my fabric stash in boxes against one wall of the dining room. this house has a tendency to be a bit musty and damp and that room is the least musty and damp, so it's both to protect the fabric and to have it there, where just seeing it makes me happy. in recent days, i've covered the dining table with fabric projects and so it's also served a purpose as workspace and it's nice to have the fabrics at hand. a room full of books and fabric lends warmth and hominess to a space otherwise completely lacking in charm (they seriously used old, rough boards, quite possibly repurposed from palettes, as the (very low) ceiling in this room, they're painted white, but you could still get a handful of splinters from them).

i think my many and ever-changing collections help me rebel at what can be a clinical, spare danish style. i love the clean lines of danish furniture and light fixtures, but not the minimalism and invisibility of personal touches in many danish homes. what items are on display tend to be the same candle holders and the same vases, so i drift towards a style more comforting and more my own through my collections. and anyway, this little video makes me feel more normal for doing that. it's what makes a house a home. watch it and enjoy.

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this is an articulate piece on the decline of the american empire.

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these photos bring new meaning to the words makeup artist.

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americans try to label european countries on a map of europe.
it doesn't go well.

to be fair, when brits were asked to label the states
it didn't go any better.

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what if the planets were as close to us as the moon is?

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coffee.

lego minifigure obsession: the latest additions

i accidentally typed the latest addictions above in the title, instead of additions. i don't think it's a coincidence. i am thoroughly addicted to the clever little collectible lego minifigures. i'm a sucker for cute. for cleverness. for good design. for a sense of humor. for affordability. for the mystery of the little package - like with baseball cards, you don't know what you're getting. and a kind of mania comes over me and i have to have more. it happened years ago with beanie babies as well.

and they honestly give me a childlike sense of delight. when i send sabin and her friend into legoland (the only place we've been able to find series 11) to get them, i'm so excited when they come out with the bag. they sit in the back seat, opening while i'm driving and i almost can't stand it, since it's not me who gets to peek into each package first.

with the simplest of details, so much is expressed. the shape of a hat, a little baton, a badge, a moustache.

a gap-toothed smile, little elf ears that are attached to the hat to accomodate the design of the head. a teddy bear for a friend.

a boy robot (my only series 6 purchase) and a girl robot to hold hands. they have an adorable wind-up key in their backs, once again proving that lego really gets the details right.

and this little tiki man. he has a bone in his funny bowl-cut hair. and while it's probably a bit of stereotyping, it seems to be done in good humor and admiration, not mockery. i've let him stand next to the hula girl from series 3 on the shelf. maybe they'll make some cute little south pacific babies.

and how blues brothers is this little saxophone man, with his ill-fitting wrinkled jacket and shades? seriously, how could i resist? and why should i when they make me smile the way they do.

girl power in lego minifigure form

medusa (series 10)

librarian (look here to see how someone played around with this one) (series 10)

grandma and her cat (series 11)

girl scientist (series 11)

diner waitress (series 11) (love, love, love her skates)

girl skier (series 8)

bride (series 7)

warrior girl (series 10)

red cheerleader (series 8)

hollywood starlet (marilyn?) (series 9)

fairy (series 8) - awesome detail on this one!

olympic swimmer (series 7)

girl viking (series 7)

girl viking's braids are so cool, i had to show you another shot of her

i shared my little lego minifigure obsession with you awhile ago, but since then, a couple few more have come to the join the fold. these are just some of the girls. it's a rather fun obsession - you buy a packet and don't know which one you're getting. there are communities which report on the minifigures before they come out and which have all kinds of tips for feeling up the packages to try to get the one you want. it's so much fun. i think we're going to need to find another typecase drawer to display them all. tho' half the fun for me is photographing them and finding a certain one that i know someone else wants or will love. like the librarian, i'm taking her to my friends at the library today. i don't have to keep them all in my own collection (well, except for the viking girl and the forest maiden and a couple of others i haven't shown you yet). it's enough to have photographed them, actually.

what do you collect? and how do you keep it under control?

lego minifigures, like modern baseball cards, without all that stupid baseball

i was in the grocery store and spotted a display of lego minifigures. i've long been familiar with little lego people, as we have many of them around the house, mostly of the kind that came with sets of lego. and one of the ways you can properly judge a lego set is by how many mini figures come with it. but until friday, i wasn't really aware of the minifigure collecting phenomenon.

they come in a sealed package, like baseball cards, in a numbered series and you'll get a surprise one of 16 minifigures in your package for 20 kroner (or 17 if you buy them in fakta, where i did). i spotted a little chicken on the package and decided to grab a couple, thinking in light of my missing chickens, it would be fun to get a lego chicken.

the first one i opened was not a chicken, but this club-wielding troglodyte (which i later found out is actually a cyclops). and i felt a little bit like i can never escape those cavemen, tho' he's also kind cute. naturally, i still had to try for a chicken, but i had bought two, so i had one more to open.

inside the second package was this awesome little forest maiden, who i took to be a warrior goddess who was sworn to defend the forest. plus, how awesome is her hair? i was happy, but it still wasn't a little lego man in a chicken suit, so i picked up another handful when i had to go back to the store anyway for some things i forgot for the party.

next up was a judge. he's very cleverly made - his little red robe held in place by his white wig. no minifigures this cool come with the actual sets. and look at his wrinkles and that expression on his face. this is an awesome level of detailed cleverness.

before my chicken came, i got caesar, complete with little gold laurel wreath on his perfect little caesar haircut. that was cool, but still not a chicken. the chicken only came on my 6th try. but it's so cute it was worth it. i don't need all of series 9, but i would still like to have the hollywood starlet, who looks a bit like marilyn monroe and the mermaid, so i imagine a few more will find their way into my basket the next time i'm in the grocery store.

then we discovered that the local campground (i went there, trying to source ice in a fit of pre-party panic yesterday) had a display with some of the older series - 3-4-5 to be exact. those must be getting pretty rare, so we had to pick up a few five of them. we got this little zookeeper, complete with monkey and banana.

and my fave, a mad scientist, also with super cool hair. the hair on these is WAY better than on the normal ones that come with sets.

we also got kimono girl from series 4. we were trying for the viking that was part of that series, but no such luck.

and who can resist hazmat guy from series 5? look at the expression on his face? he looks really worried!

honestly, i do not need more bits of plastic in my life, but i am definitely a sucker for something that's cleverly done. i even arranged a trade with lost star (she's got warrior girl from series 10 and i had an extra cyclops that she needed). but i'll be able to stop as soon as i get viking girl, viking guy, the little soldier in a furry hat (after all, husband was once one of those himself) and the one in a bunny costume (ala the chicken man who started it all). and then i can quit. really. for sure. i promise.