payne's grey is my spirit animal (or something)

i love payne's grey tusch and the main thing i like to sketch is naturey stuff. i watered down the ink and painted with a feather i found on the beach. bliss.

a beautiful mess of a weekend

what a weekend. it was full of laughter and gin and playing cards and making good food and father-daughter time and travel plans. and while we laughed about trump's remarks on a fictional swedish terror attack, we mostly stayed away from the cheeto's latest antics, for the sake of our sanity. and it was good. it was a beautiful mess of a weekend. and we all needed that.

* * *

how much do we now love the (former) swedish prime minister?
#tweetoftheweek
and more humo(u)r from/about sweden.

* * *

i normally don't think much of these "reduce your stress" lists,
but this one made sense.
and in these times, odin knows we need to reduce our stress.
it might have helped that it was in harvard business review.

* * *

i'm not sure what i make of this.

it seems a bit like left-leaning conspiracy theory.

but on the other hand, it also seems plausible.

* * *

i must say that i think buzz feed was right to publish the russian dossier.

* * *

dangerous and nasty. that's what we get with the cheeto president.

* * *

andrew sullivan on the madness of the cheeto.

another successful drink & draw weekend

i had a little weekend getaway with a few friends. one of them has moved over to fyn (the island between us here on the "mainland" and the big island where they keep copenhagen) to an idyllic little village and opened a gallery and B&B. so charming! and she's got a beautiful studio, where she showed us how to do the monoprint technique she's been working with of late. we used "china paper" - a thin, but surprisingly strong paper that can take a lot of layers of paint and texture.

so much fun. we each chose a color palette and after a walk, to gather bits and bobs from nature, we settled in to work. we used a variety of techniques - painting with acrylics, using gel pens, printing with feathers and plants, slowly building up texture on our pieces.

i found myself working with mustard yellow, teal, payne's grey (it looks quite black in these photos) and a peachy color that i mixed, plus the odd metallic gold accent. it was interesting how we were each drawn to a specific palette that i'm not sure any of us consciously knew we had in our heads.

some of my pieces worked and some didn't. some worked for awhile and then stopped working. it was an interesting process and one which i thoroughly enjoyed, but never really felt i had control over.

through it all, we laughed and drank some wine and enjoyed some good vegetarian chili, told stories, shared and laughed some more. we had moments of silence, deeply concentrating on our work, and then more laughter and sharing. it was that kind of powerful feminine medicine that you just need once in awhile.

i was surprised by the direction some of my pieces took - these two got rather dark after i became inspired to use a bit of dusty grey pastels on them, giving them a very different look than my other, bright pieces (underneath, the palette is the same). and some of my old favorite helleristning motifs came out from somewhere in my subconscious. it felt right, like moments of flow always do.

here's the end result of one of the others - i think you can tell that she's actually educated as an artist.

this friend did two rounds of the small sheets of chinese paper, with very different color palettes. she felt the second round went much better than the first. but sometimes it does take warming up when you're learning a new technique.

and our hostess, who had been working with the technique for some time, made some beautifully textured, multi-layered pieces. beautiful to see the individual ways our creativity manifested itself, expressing something utterly unique, using similar materials. magical. we definitely need to do this more often.

mystery show t-shirt triggers awesomeness

i joined gimlet (hint: they make several of my favorite podcasts) a few months ago and i selected the mystery show t-shirt. it arrived the other day with this letter, which is a seriously awesome piece of content marketing. i wore the t-shirt for the first time when i was hosting a drink & draw and i knew that it was going to be an awesome day. i have yet to tweet it, but i'm saving the photo of me in for a day when i have made a really momentous decision. because some days are like that. and superstitions might be real.

and if you want to understand the logo on the t-shirt, listen to episode 3. and if you want to get the jake gyllenhaal reference, listen to episode 5. you won't regret it, i promise.

here's hoping your weekend is awesome.

a day in the life of the world's happiest people starts at home

a few of us from the drink & draw group got to talking about this whole notion of denmark as home of the world's happiest people. i still maintain that if the danes are so happy, you definitely can't see it on them. even my fellow drink & draw-ers are a bit provoked by the whole notion and they are danish! so, we are putting together a project where we are going to ask a wide variety of people of all ages, backgrounds and from all over the country, to keep a diary for a day (all of them on the same day). we will collect the diary entries and see if they shed some light on what it is that makes the danes so darn happy. we don't want it to be a scientific, clinical look, we want it to be personal and intimate. our intention is that then we will invite a variety of artists - painters, actors, storytellers, filmmakers, playwrights, sculptors, whatever - to gather and give creative expression to the diaries. in my head, there's definitely a podcast in it, undoubtedly with multiple episodes. i think that also in my head is something along the lines of the wonderful and profound humans of new york - with short, poignant stories that tell so much about the culture at large. but i'm also trying to reserve judgement and remain open, because once we have the diaries in hand, they may point us in another direction entirely and i want to be able to move in that direction.

yesterday, we all tried the task on for size ourselves. we figured we should feel it under our own skin if we were going to ask people to do it. we agreed that we would write it all out - good and bad and try not to hide anything. we have shared our diaries with one another and will get together next friday and talk about the next steps in our project.

i wrote my day on my marquee blog (see sidebar if you're interested), but i also did some much-needed art journaling to go along with it.  i think i needed both the linear timeline side of things and something more abstract and creative. and i can definitely tell that i needed those moments of creativity and the different sort of concentration that accompanies them. in fact, i've continued them today and they helped me settle down and get back to work again. they quieted some of yesterday's restlessness. i also thought it was quite wonderful that i came across the quote in the one on the bottom while paging through an old magazine, looking for collage materials. it's a bit uncanny how you often come across the thing you most need to hear at precisely the moment you need it.

i realize once again, working on this, that i'm happiest when i'm setting an idea out in the world and seeing what becomes of it. i can't wait to see where this will take us, but i'm also definitely enjoying the place it's helped me occupy right here and now. and to be bringing this to life with a group of awesome and creative women is pretty magical as well.

summer light: the view from sunday night

saturday evening drink & draw. a blissful sunny sunday in the garden. the zen activity that is mowing the lawn. lots of discussions of our upcoming party. it doesn't get much better than this. plus the light was spectacular. feeling all recharged and ready to see what the week ahead brings.

spring comes in time for my birthday

take two rows of shiny glasses, glistening in the sunshine. fill them with a refreshing st. germain cocktail (sauvignon blanc + sparkling water + st. germain), add five amazing, different, interesting, funny, creative women. and you get a wonderful evening of drink & draw. there was more than that - some good food, some building lego (naturally), a lot of laughter, some playing with stamps and drawing and sketching. and it was pretty much the perfect way to lead into my birthday.

unfortunately, my birthday decided to greet me with a fever and stomach virus and so i slept through most of it and didn't even have cake or a special dinner with my family because i was too sick. i was feeling somewhat better today and managed to bake a couple of cakes (one for work tomorrow and one to use up our old bananas) and even planted 102 strawberries in the garden (it was good to get some fresh air). but it will be an early night because i'm definitely not back up to full speed. i did have a bit of a wander around the garden, photographing signs of spring, so i will leave you with those...

in the company of women

i have, over the past year, found a really awesome group of women friends to hang out with. one of them was able to borrow her sister's summer house near the west coast this past weekend and we spent a truly blissful 24 hours there together.

earlier in the week, we had been to a salon evening, where we got these red yarn bracelets, which we were to wear for three days with the purpose of looking at it and meditating on all of the happiness and good luck we would have in the new year. we decided already then to take them with us to the beach and release them into the north sea, in a kind of ceremony.

so we each took off our bracelet and released it into the sea in our own fashion. but it felt powerful as we stood there together, giving the little bit of yarn a last moment of silent, individual good intentions for 2014, before sending it out into the waves to be free.

then we wandered down the rock-strewn beach. so funny that just a few weeks ago, there were a few shells on the beach, but no stones at all and now it's covered with stones. (tho' i will grant that this is a different beach, a bit farther north).

we found a small beach ball in the waves and kicked it around a bit. this despite being five grown women. our little groups formed and reformed as we all walked and talked and enjoyed being together in a setting apart from our everyday.

after our trip to the beach, we retired back to the warm summer house, where a fire was soon burning merrily in the wood-burning stove. we got out our art supplies and began both the drink and the draw phase of the weekend. i made a gin cocktail (of course), using homemade pear-ginger cordial as a base. we each brought something to share (both wine and food).

we ate a tuna mousse with some very good bread, followed by a gorgeous fish soup and then my chocolate pots with salted caramel in the bottom for dessert. all along, there was wine. late in the evening, after the crochet lessons (i really learned how to make a granny square this time!), we turned to pomegranate gajol and a smoky laphroaig whiskey that i brought along. happily, lots of laughter and water in between kept it from going totally wrong the next day.

we don't really have any rules for drink and draw, but we did decide that we all had to draw the little silvery fish we saw on the beach in some form or another. other than that, we all indulged in whatever we wanted to. several of us are using an old book as the base, humument style. we had quite some fun reading from one of the books, which had a lot of illustrations as well. old books provide a surprising base for creativity. my own is called talismanen (the talismen) and tho' it's about knights and such, there are meaningful words on every page if you select carefully.

there was much laughter and sharing and deep, serious conversations as well. it all felt very, very good for the soul. i don't know what it is, but as i grow older, i find that more and more i crave hanging out with women friends. our spouses and families weren't far from our thoughts or our conversation, but it was good to just be together, eating, drinking and drawing and even singing. and crocheting. just the girls.

scenes from a weekend on the west coast of denmark

i went away for a weekend drink & draw with my posse of amazing women who make me laugh. we borrowed a wonderful summer house and stayed up very late learning to crochet, talking, laughing and drinking a bit too much wine, gajol (a licorice-flavored tipple), laphroaig and gin cocktails. we also ate some amazing food. but i'm pretty exhausted, so i'll have to tell you all about it soon. these photos of our walk down to the beach, where the north sea was crashing to shore with strangely yellowish-brown rather angry-looking waves, will have to suffice for now. and i totally want that little steep-roofed magical fairytale house in the last photo, don't you? it was quite amazing, coming up over the dunes to see it. kind of like stumbling onto how i imagined denmark would look in reality, after all these years.

here's hoping your weekend was amazing too.

a burst of color in the midst of a grey, dreary january

soft and supple, fabric-like goat leathers + a springbok hide in purple (i know it looks blue here, but it's really purple). i'm planning on making myself a new purse in these couple of weeks i have before i start my new job.

the leather store is a decidedly dangerous place. i couldn't resist these four hides. the dark purple is for lining the springbok purse. i'm not sure yet what i'll do with the others, but i intend to think of something. sometimes it just helps, having new supplies.

i got these rolls of bright felt to use as table runners on the dining table. amazing how a little color can brighten up these dull, january days.

we saw the sunshine today for the first time in several weeks. it was most welcome. and my stack of the new anna maria horner line (which i got from my sis for christmas) looked fetching in the late afternoon sunshine.

next weekend, we're having a weekend drink & draw at a friend's summer house, so i thought some new inks were in order. i also got some fabulous teeny tiny brushes in a higher quality than i'm accustomed to, so i'm going to be painting some stones while we're there.

and lastly, a bit of soft, snuggly alpaca to make a scarf. i'm going to venture away from my knit-stitch only knitting and actually try some other stitches! wish me luck!

i'm not sure there's anything that makes me as happy as having new supplies to make into something wonderful.