recharged

a few quiet minutes to myself while the guests and the child and the husband all make a little trip out to the tarzan cliff--a nearby beach that sabin adores. i'm home, watching over the beautiful garlic-studded organic leg of lamb. i couldn't really leave it behind on its own, now could i?  plus, there's bread to be made and lemons to be squeezed so they have fresh lemonade when they come back.

but, right now, i have a few minutes to relax and reflect on the past days of easter holiday. it's really been glorious.it helped that the weather was exemplary and it also helped that we went down to møn's klint. we spent time with friends, playing cards and we got the garden and the greenhouse ready for the season. we ate lunch outside. we stayed up late watching monty python movies. we went for a walk and an ice cream at a little castle nearby. in all, it's been completely relaxing and wonderful. i was thinking that it made me sad it was ending, but it really doesn't, because i feel renewed and recharged and ready to jump into being busy with a dozen articles for the first issue of the magazine i'm editing (and writing).

and i thought i'd update my "evidence of creativity" and share the things i had the chance to make on thursday and friday, two luxurious days where i never got dressed in proper clothes and just worked in my studio.

#41 - a new "coat" for my french press coffee maker

#42 - a new bag for spring

it's even got a dual pocket inside for my iPhone and my HTC Diamond

(yes, i'm a brand hound)

(and yes, i have two phones)

#43 - 45 a series of painted stones inspired by nordic petroglyphs 

these and a few others will go up in my etsy shop this week.

but now, the gang is back, so more later...

wherein she invents gin & tonic sorbet

i normally only post recipes only over on just know where you are, but i'm going to make an exception, since i mentioned the whole notion of a gin & tonic sorbet here on MPC. i did a little experiment and i am pleased to announce that it is a BIG SUCCESS!

gin & tonic sorbet

first, make a sugar syrup by bringing 3C water and 1C sugar to a boil.

allow the syrup to cool.

then stir together the following in small, flat dish that will fit in your freezer. i used a flat 1.5 inch tall by A4-sized tupperware container with a lid:

1 C of the sugar syrup

1 half liter bottle of schweppes indian tonic (do not be cheap about your tonic, only schweppes will do)

the juice of 2 limes

1/2 C of gin (i used g'vine, a posh french small batch gin)

i let mine freeze overnight, but it likely would have been ready sooner--the gin keeps it from freezing into ice cube-like consistency. then, you take a fork and rake it across until it's a lovely slushy consistency, put it in a glass with a slice of lime and serve in the sun.

it's heavenly. i promise.

and it's also #40

just another manic monday

wow, this day got away from me. i worked feverishly on finishing my outline of the articles for the upcoming issue of "my" magazine, after spending a week doing research and reading background materials. i can tell you that i've got a lot of work to do! but it's all exciting, so it's all good. i love digging into environmental issues and learning something new. will share more of all that later.

it's the beginning of easter week and although today-wednesday are work days here, many people are taking days off since the new vacation year begins may 1 and people have to use up the last few of last year's vacation days. so, while i was working away and staring out at the sunshine, husband was cleaning the greenhouse and getting it ready for the season. here's a before picture (i didn't get the after taken yet).

and yesterday, i managed to finish #39 in the year of creativity...a table runner for our dining room table. it's even reversible:

see, maps on the other side. we do love maps around here (another post for another day).

i did manage to sneak in a batch of nigella's brownies. the recipe i used today isn't among those on the link, but there are plenty to keep you busy/inspired. i baked them a titch too long, so they weren't quite as chewy as they should have been, but pretty good nonetheless. especially after a really good burger, the first of the grill season at buresø.

after the happiness of saturday's wedding, sadly, we have a funeral to attend tomorrow, so i'll likely catch you on wednesday. i hope that we will get to go down to møn's klint afterwards, because the funeral is down on møn. walking on the beach and communing with nature and the music of the stones would be a glorious way to pay homage to a wonderful woman, who was one of the first who made me a real, traditional danish meal when i first came to denmark. she will be missed and fondly remembered.

#38 & spring has arrived!

#38 - spring nest gift packaging

the atelierBB plates are all wrapped up in springlike garb and ready to take to the wedding party today. the sun is shining, they promise up to 18 degrees (C) and it's a completely glorious day to celebrate a wedding. i realized that brigitte's logo, which has two Bs, back to back, is perfect for the couple as well, since both their last names start with B. it just feels so great when you know you've found the perfect present. i love it.

* * *

one more quick thing to share. the wonderful little merfish that margie of resurrection fern created for me, using my own stones from møn's klint, arrived yesterday (and yes, they were ordered and paid for BEFORE austerity april began). i had to photograph them together with some of their now more "naked" brethren:

aren't they fantastic? i'm going to take them to møn's klint next week and pose them for pictures on their beach of origin. i know, i'm a little obsessed, but it's better than eyeballs, eh?

anyhoo, we're off to riding lessons. more tomorrow...

evidence of creativity update (25-37)

in all the excitement over my kitchen becoming famous, and the subsequent sitting by the phone, waiting for martha stewart (i would totally have done her time for her) to call (alas, she did not, tho' i still retain a small spark of hope), i kinda forgot about counting my creative output. i left you last with #24, that nest that turned into a bowl of apples embroidery.

so, i hereby give you #25 - an avocado shake of my own invention (inspired by ones i've had in the philippines and singapore). recipe here.

#26 - my eyeball "i" pillow. one of a kind, totally unique and still available here.

#27 - arranged objects. you may question this is as evidence of creativity, but, inspired (as ever) by margie from resurrection fern and her beautiful groupings of objects, i felt i needed to try it. there is an art to it and it takes time and creative thinking, so i'm allowing it to be #27, although i'll count the several i've done only as one. there's something about doing these that exercises your artistic eye.

28 & 29 - two small canvases featuring acrylics and a bit of felt with stitching and my first attempt at embroidery and moo cards--all in my favored palette.

30 - driftwood + eyeball artwork

31 - self-portraits (so much time spent and much learned about the camera, so this counts.)

32 - one fairy costume (made wings as well, but child refused to wear them on the grounds that none of the others had wings). she also refused to wear the top i made, so we decorated a white gap t-shirt at the last minute.

33 & 34 - my own version of margie's wonderful crocheted stones. and yes, there is a kind of an eyeball thing going on with them.

35 - set of six quilted coasters as a gift for my friend maj. very cool turquoise cotton with chocolate-colored coffee and teacups from here.

36 - hand-stamped ribbon for wrapping the above gift. sabin actually carved the little owl stamp from an eraser and i did the stamping.

37 - something for my mom, of which i won't show all, since she hasn't received it yet.

that's all for now. where are the things for the winners of my 50 follower prize, you ask? well i'd better get out there and get on those...i should have promised them sooner than christmas. :-)

when one thing becomes another

husband and i went for a walk in the woods on sunday. our real purpose on such a walk is what we like to call forestry. because we always spend some time liberating small beech trees to bring home for our hedges. we're thinning them out, helping the forest, you know, forestry. husband is making a labyrinth in front of our house (we hate being like the neighbors, you see) and it requires quite a lot of beech hedge. we don't mind waiting for it to grow up, so we bring home really small saplings from our forest walks. you can see the beech trees above, they're the ones with the brown leaves that don't fall off 'til the new ones push them off in spring. the ones you can see in the photo are larger than the ones we take, those are like only a foot high.

anyway, on our walk, i kept stopping to take photos of things like seriously tiny mushrooms:

i am amazed at how there are always mushrooms of some kind growing in this forest, no matter what the weather or when you go. year round, there are mushrooms or fungi of some sort. i only know of edible ones in the autumn, but there are probably some you can eat year-round. it's just that you don't want to mess around with that if you don't really know them well. 

we got to talking about inspiration, which, as you well know, is on my mind of late. i said i felt driven to take pictures of mushrooms for some reason that i didn't yet understand, but that i felt it would come to me eventually. and i wondered aloud if there was some way to fast track that process, because right now, it seems like it's taking an awfully long time from inspiration to product, so to speak.  

just as an example, two years ago, when peter, my father-in-law died, we got these ceramic "odin's eyeballs" that had belonged to him. odin is the head god in nordic mythology.  part of the story, which i need to do a bit more looking into, is that odin dropped his eyeball into a well, in order to gain the gift of knowledge. i don't remember the exact reason that peter had these eyeballs (there were several sets, we got one of them), but it also had to do with seeing clearly after the breakup of his long marriage in the late 90s. in any case, they have held a strange fascination for me since they came into our home. they reside on the window sill in our addition and i am drawn to them often. one snowy day, i took them out and took some pictures of them and we used them for our snowman's eyes.

combined with the memory of my friend michellea's fantastic i-eye collage and heavily influenced by this photo from flickr (and who wouldn't be inspired by sandra juto?), i have been feeling that i need to do something with eyes. and somehow, all of this input clicked into place on friday and i came up with this pillow, which will be the first item i list in my etsy shop later this week, together with two more i'm working on that are of the same theme.

but it took me a really long time to get to this point (especially if you take into account that the first inspiration came clear back in 1990). if i really want to have an etsy shop and be part of a local artist's group and contribute something to eyebuzz's first 'zine, i'm going to need to fast track this inspiration a bit. (i'm trying to find my way here and any advice is appreciated, by the way.) 

yesterday, in an attempt to get on this creative fast track, i gave myself a little exercise. i saw this beautiful embroidery by the ever inspiring margaret ooman of resurrection fern on flickr :

and i gave myself the assignment of making one like it from all of the scraps that were laying on the table after a weekend's worth of creativity. what i thought was that i would imitate it, that i would make a nest and a bird and eggs. that it would, of course, reflect my scraps, so it wouldn't be an exact copy, but that i would somehow end with something similar. well, something interesting happened along the way. i began by making the nest, but when it was finished, i saw something else. i saw a bowl. and among my scraps, i spotted a red felt circle, which demanded to be trimmed into apples. and in the end, this is what i created (#24):

i can hear the echo of margie's lovely nest, but i did end up making something my own. which i guess is what inspiration is about. and i did manage to fast-track the process--since i saw the nest on flickr on friday and made this already on sunday. so perhaps there's hope if you just push yourself a bit. if not, there's surely a ton of things i've been pondering in the back of my mind from the inspiration gleaned years ago, if i can just coax it out. 

i promise to stop harping on about creativity very soon. i'll start my new job and get out of the house and be with people and the navel gazing will surely taper off.  thanks for bearing with me in the meantime!

a weekend in denmark

i'm tumbling so many upcoming posts in my mind. when my inspiration/action correlation began to clear on friday, it provoked so many thoughts and ideas. so in the coming weeks you can expect posts on:

1. alice in wonderland
2. architecture
3. whether hyperlinks represent a topography of thought
4. nordic mythology
5. really tiny mushrooms
6. bullying in the workplace
7. whether it's possible to fast-track the process from inspiration to art
8. a perfume review (i've been thinking for awhile of doing these on a weekly basis)
9. hugin & munin
10. eyeballs

* NOTE: checking them off as i do them. 

but all of these things are still swirling in my head at the moment so for now, i'll just share some scenes from a winter-almost-spring weekend in denmark, some of which are hints to the above:

sabin's first riding lesson

it went smashingly and she's in love

mmm. latte.

and felt heat protectors in scrumptious colors (#22).

ATCs for sabin's swap

oops, we were supposed to mail these yesterday.

oh well, they're so good, tomorrow will be fine.

"where do i report my quest?"

lots and lots of world of warcraft

eyeballs (#23)

really tiny mushrooms

hope your weekend was full of laughter, candlelight , fresh bread, inspiration and a bit of fresh air.

now you see it

saturday was snowy and icy and it was steadily snowing in the evening as we drove home from sabin's best friend's birthday party. then, it warmed up overnight and the snow is nearly gone now 24 hours later. what a difference a day makes!

* * *

and the creativity continued this weekend:

18.  felted soap. yes, you read that correctly. i felted a bar of soap for the upstairs bathroom with beautiful rovings bought last year in this etsy shop:

19.  and i also felted some stones that we collected on our winter beach trips during my sister's recent visit (more about that tomorrow):

i love how they look and even more how they feel, tho' husband and our best friends teased me mercilessly, especially when i took 78 pictures of them in different locations with different cameras and different lenses. there's just something special about the heaviness of the stone under all that wooly brightness.

i also made some fabulous bread, but didn't get to photograph it because it was devoured immediately. bread recipe over at just know where you are.

* * *

and on saturday, a whole lot of TtV photos:

hope you spent your weekend on something worthwhile.