updating "about me"

with new people joining this year's flickr group - postcards to blog camp, i found myself typing an introduction of myself over there. since the group isn't a 365, but more of a community founded on last year's 365 and others who love their cameras and/or blog camp, it's not too late to join us (so get on over to flickr and request an invite)!! but anyway, what came out when i introduced myself there seemed like a good update of my bloggy "about me" page, so i thought i'd share it with you here, since there are also lots of new faces around here. you can also find it on the "about me" tab above.

i'm american, but have lived in denmark for a dozen years (and counting) after following a very cute danish boy home from the balkans in the late 90s. i still have my US passport (unless sarah palin becomes president - then i'll be giving it up and applying not only for a danish one but asylum on the grounds of cruel jokes played by the universe (but i digress)).  in the past year, we (my danish husband, who is actually called husband, and our daughter, sabin) moved to a falling-down farm property in the uncool part of denmark (jutland), which i promptly tried to convince everyone was "the new black," (no one believed it). the property itself isn't falling down, just the house, which was built in 1895. but we have a lake and room for a pony and the land itself is beautiful, so we're happy to have to spend the next ten years tearing it down and rebuilding it getting it the way we want it.

i struggle all the time with trying to live a simpler, less consumer-oriented life, but then apple comes out with some fabulous new product and i fall once again..sigh. but our move to the farm is part of that seeking simplicity...we'll soon have a big garden and intend to get a few pigs and chickens so we know where our eggs and bacon are coming from. hoping to live a bit of that old BBC series - the good life - but with ultra-modern, attractive and well-designed electronics.

i recently left a job that was crushing my spirit and am excited about a new venture i'm starting with a friend i met first here in the blogosphere and then in real life. so you never know where your bloggy friendships might take you.

i love nikons, iPhones, horses, cats, bunnies, my macbook air, the iPad (you're getting the picture on the appleism, right?), sewing, quilting, stitching, pretty paper, cooking, antiques and traveling. i'm not very religious (unless you count the appleism) and i don't much like capital letters.

a sense of accomplishment

i have to admit that i'm really proud of the 365 project i did in 2010 - i took at least one picture (and most days dozens) every single day in 2010. this is my final shot...and while i'm being honest, i'll admit that i didn't even see those plane trails in the sky when i took the shot. and yet they're somehow so symbolic of the year and the blog camp 365 flickr group. we came together from all directions and now, at the end of it, we leave in all directions. but i hope we'll come together again, on a little more relaxed basis, in the postcards to blog camp group - where you can check in when you'd like to send a postcard of your favorite shot and still experience a bit of the sense of community we had in our group.

a big thank you to all who persevered in 2010 and even to those who didn't (you were missed) - i loved every minute of it and every interaction. i learned to be more present in my life and to see the beauty around me every day. and i was so inspired by everyone else's photos. so if you're considering a 365 project - i can highly recommend it. in fact, i might not really be able to stop in 2011, tho' i am going to do a whole lot more film and a whole lot more fighting my urge to duplicate all those film shots with my digital camera.

happy new year, one and all. looking forward to seeing what 2011 brings...photographically and otherwise.

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inspiring right now:

prolific living

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something i want to do in 2011:

be part of one of those quilt block swap groups (any takers?)

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thinking about:

what my personal bhavacakra might look like

(thanks bill)

year in review: 2010

it wasn't for nothing that i did a 365 photo project in 2010. i realized rather early on in the project that it was more about memory than about taking dazzling daily photos. tho' i also wanted to improve my photos and the constructive criticism in the blog camp 365 group helped a great deal with that. what i truly love is looking back on the photos and seeing all that happened over the past year. and it seems that it was indeed an eventful one - full of changes - of house, job, scenery, lifestyle - all of it chosen, tho' not all of it easy. so i used my mosaics to take a stroll down memory lane.

january 2010

january was cold and unusually snowy.  sabin turned 9. the last blog camp was held in the blue room, since the house was for sale and new jobs were already on the horizon for both husband and me. riding lessons were cold, but we persevered. i began weaving lessons, which made me feel like i'd found a place to rest my soul. i enthusiastically began a daily art journal. i noticed already in january that the 365 project made me so much more aware of my immediate surroundings - as i wandered the house, camera in hand, looking for interesting objects and light, i found myself really noticing where i was and enjoying it so much more. and i hit 1000 posts right here on MPC. (35 blog posts)

february 2010

february saw an awful lot of creativity happening in the blue room. we shopped for old farm houses on the other side of the country. i continued my daily art journal. i bought a loom. we celebrated husband's birthday and our 11th anniversary. i kept rather faithfully to my avowed desire not to buy anything unnecessary in 2010. and i started making clarity birds. (31 blog posts)

march 2010

in march the house-hunting began in earnest. my weaving class ended. i got new multi-strength contacts since i'm getting old.  i knitted my first scarf and started a second one and spring began to appear in earnest, which was much appreciated after the snowy winter we had.  but mostly, march felt a bit like being in the liminal space...waiting in between for one thing to end and another to begin. (36 blog posts)

april 2010

in april i started my new job. it was a pretty good start, since it began with three holidays. and i can tell you from the safe vantage point of retrospect, it went downhill from there. i actually wrote a fairly funny post about the whole stress of moving (sadly, it may have been the last time i was funny). we said goodbye to living in the house we'd lived in for nearly a decade. my daily art journal practice fell completely by the wayside and despite my best intentions, i never did get back to it.  but it wasn't all negative in april - we did shop for a horse. (22 blog posts)

may 2010

may saw our official moving date. we went nearly two weeks without internet at home (oh the horror). sabin started at her new school and husband started his new job. i got acquainted with the new house and i shared both inside and outside of it. we discovered rhubarb in our garden and i invented my cocktail of the year - the rhubarb gin fizz. we also discovered a wonderful little viking harbor museum about an hour away from us. and i even indulged in a bit of creativity (funny, looking back, i thought that had pretty much stopped when we left our old house). our horse arrived! (25 blog posts)

june 2010

at the beginning of june, i had no voice whatsoever after coughing for a week straight. some people thought that was just fine. with my camera, i chased light and lilypads and rain.  i celebrated the summer solstice with a list. i was already pretty miserable in my job, but didn't really know what to do about it. i attempted to crochet granny squares, but can't say i was very successful, maybe because i didn't really keep it up. we headed to the US for our holiday - our first trip there in three and a half years! and an impromptu blog camp in minnesota. (26 blog posts)

july 2010

in july, my own blogging mojo at a low, i did interviews of you, my readers. i sent out individual questions and posted the interviews. but i also antiqued in the US - which makes me very, very happy, tho' it does make it hard to get the suitcases closed. there was the blog camp of the zombie flies (thank you farmer guy for spraying the field across the road with pig poo at the height of fly season and exactly when i was having guests). my favorite professor from the university of iowa died after a long and full life. and we finally sold our house. (21 blog posts)

august 2010

august was mostly about the interviews that i started in july (there was a rather overwhelming response to that idea). it rained so much our broadband cable drowned.  i began obsessively painting feathers on stones in a desperate grasp at finding balance in my life, which felt pretty unbalanced and unhappy during that rainy month. i wrote a pretty controversial post about the changes i saw in the US after three years away. and i met someone who was very enthusiastic about the wind and that helped. (41 blog posts)

september 2010

september largely lacked flow, but there were moments of it and i was grateful for those. i had a wonderful weekend in berlin with five amazing ladies and it restored me. i visited a magical place that was achingly beautiful in its decay. i updated my "my girl" post because i was feeling out of touch with myself. looking back at this month, a million signs were there and i didn't read them. i guess for whatever reason, i wasn't ready to read them, tho' frankly, if they'd been flashing in neon, they couldn't have been clearer. i met a fantastic artist and was enchanted by her work. and i saw those fairytale mushrooms - amanitas - for the first time in person. (25 blog posts)

october 2010

october found me pondering life lessons and the blogosphere. i confessed that it wasn't really going that well on the whole "not buying stuff in 2010." we visited frilandsmuseet in copenhagen. and hosted a halloween party for 28 4th graders - all of which showed up 30 minutes EARLY, much to my dismay! i had a four-day bout of the flu, but the fever seemed to give me some clear thinking. and i sewed some clothes for sabin. (29 blog posts)

november 2010

in november, i despaired about our old, crappy house. i acquired a beautiful new macbook air (further underlining how badly that whole "not buying stuff" thing was going). i was fortunate enough to get to travel to manila twice in november. both trips were really a high point of my year, especially the second one, as sabin came along. and november ended on a very good note, with a great conversation that i badly needed at that moment with a very wise person who i love and respect. (23 blog posts)

december 2010

december was covered with the most beautiful snow and there were sunny days that gave us magical light. i started making things again. i participated in reverb10 - an exercise in reflecting and manifesting what's next. i finished my 365 project - taking a picture every day of 2010. most of important of all, i found my way back to myself - as is reflected in the increased number of posts, both here and on domestic sensualist. december felt like waking from a long slumber, a new beginning and i can't wait to see what 2011 brings. (44 blog posts)

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and after taking a picture every day in 2010, we had to have a new group for 2011 - postcards to blog camp - because we didn't want to lose the sense of community we found on flickr. if you'd like to contribute an occasional photo that you're proud of, but don't want to take a photo every day, come and join us!

an interview with amy of tilting windmills

i was so pleased that amy wanted to be interviewed, because she's been at the country lifestyle for a bit longer than i have. we have in common a house for sale (ours is thankfully now sold and hers rented) and a desire for a simpler life more filled with animals and gardening. so i jumped at the chance to ask her a few questions about how she's getting along with all of that. so read what she had to say and do check her blog and flickr photostream - she's also part of the blog camp 365 flickr group.

1. tell us what's going into your garden boxes at the moment? and how many people receive them per week?

This week we had loads of cucumbers (both English and mini ones), swiss chard, Italian squash, zucchini, baby bell peppers and tomatillos! We are doing the boxes for four families. There is another family that's been helping us with the garden and the two of us eat our fill and put up plenty for the off season too. This is the first year we have tried our mini CSA. It's been a great learning experience and a lot of fun. We actually have a waiting list of interested people for next year!

2. are the chickens really worth it, despite being utterly brainless?

Hmmm utterly brainless to take care of or they're utterly brainless (editorial note: chickens not that smart) ? Either way the answer is Yes! We've loved having them and Sidney is very attached. It is fascinating to watch them in their interactions with each other and us. We have two that are two years old and they'll come right up and hop on your lap. Then this year we got 15 babies. One of the hens grew up to be a rooster so we get to listen to him crow, which does seem to add further to the ambiance here :) One of the young ones laid her first egg yesterday! Come fall we'll be adding eggs to our weekly farm boxes for everyone!

3. what's the most essential utensil in your kitchen?

I love my Kitchenaid mixer. I use it all of the time!

4. which garden goodness that you've put up do you most enjoy in the dead of winter?

That's a tough one. I'd have to say the butternut squash, it's so sweet, warm and comforting and takes the whole season to grow. A close second would be the loads of fresh pesto I've made and frozen.

5. if you were going to run away and escape from it all, where would you go?

I grew up in Southern California, right near the ocean. I love the water. I think my best escape would be to a lake where I can just relax and listen to the water gently lapping on the shore.

6. can you give me some canning advice? or a good pickle recipe?

Something I've just learned, you don't need the bread and butter pickle spice mix. Do the whole shebang from scratch. It makes amazing pickles, I think I just might enter a jar of these in the fair next year :)

12 large cucumbers
12 large onions
1 Pt. white vinegar
1 C. brown sugar
1 tsp. mustard seed
1 tsp, celery seed
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper


Peel the onions. Wash and thinly slice onions and cucumbers. Place in a solution of 1 qt. water mixed with 1/4 C. canning salt. Cover with ice and allow to stand in brine for 3 hours.


Combine vinegar, brown sugar, mustard and celery seed and bring to boil. Add ginger, turmeric, salt and pepper.


Drain cucumber & onion mixture (do not rinse). Pack into clean hot jars and cover with hot liquid mixture. Place on 2 part lids to seal and process in a boiling water bath. 15 minutes for quarts or 10 minutes for pints.

7. how's your fabric stash coming along?

Ohhh it's growing quite nicely, thank you (Sid's is too)! Now I just need my own 'blue room.' I can see I'm quickly going to outgrow my dining room. In fact, I'm hosting a dinner party outside (in some crazy humidity) this weekend, just to keep my craft room intact ;)

8. what prompted your decision to move to the countryside to try to live a simpler life?

I've always been drawn to the country. B grew up on a farm in Kansas, and though he didn't want to farm per se, we wanted our own type of farming experience. It began to come together just before we had our daughter, Sidney. We had a business opportunity that would move us closer to the small town experience that we wanted for our kids. When we first moved to Wisconsin, there wasn't that perfect property available and we soon got sucked into the day to day of owning and running a business, and our son came along too. Just when we weren't looking, we came across the perfect property just over 3 years ago. Now our kids are growing up with plenty of space to run and an intimate understanding of our environment and how to take care of it. For us, we're beginning to realize our dreams of sustainability.

9. has it been as you expected it to be?

Everything and more. It's a lot of hard work, but at the end of the day, it's ours. We take ownership of it, nurture it and will pass it down.

10. how have your ideas of living a simpler life evolved since you began?

I think that once you immerse yourself in this lifestyle, you begin to find that the simpler life isn't always simple to attain. It's a series of trials and errors, dreams and visions, and time (sometimes frustrating when you're the type of person who sees the vision and wants to enact the whole thing right now)! It is an amazing experience and like B always says: It's a marathon, not a sprint. A good mantra for me, to calm my impatience as we continue on the journey.

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thank you, amy, for sharing some your thoughts on the journey towards simplicity. every little bit helps! and for someone who wanted to simplify and spend this year not buying anything, i've not done so well: so far in 2010, we've bought a house, a car and a horse. and an iPad. and iPhones for everyone in the family. so you can see, i need all the help i can get!

an interview with inna karenina (not to be confused with anna)

inna joined our BC365 flickr group at the beginning of the year. i hadn't met her before that and it wasn't long before i learned that much to my surprise she was only 18! her photos were completely luminous and inventive and creative and i was blown away to find out she was so young. i had to realign completely my way of thinking and for that, i thank her very much. eventually, she revealed to us her beautiful blog and you must visit it along with her 365 project blog and her flickr photostream, right after you read this.  all of the pretty pictures are hers...



1. you have been extraordinarily dedicated to the 365 photo project, have there been moments when you wanted to give up and what did you do to get through them?

Yes, there has been. It's quite a regular feeling for me that my photos are not good at all, and those feelings may lead to the moments when all I want is to give up. But that's part of learning and improving, I have learned. The last, and the only really bad moment like that, was just a few weeks ago. Then I just whine, cry, feel bad for myself for taking such terrible photos, whine a bit more, and get over it. Maybe take a day off in between. Not very adultlike I suppose, but that's honestly what I do, and it helps. I'd love to say it's only the love for photography, and the love for learning that keeps me shooting, but even though that's all true - I am rather passionate about photography, and I love how the project makes me grow not only as a photographer but also as a person - I must admit the biggest reason why I keep on taking the photos day after day is that I am too proud to give up. I am too proud to admit that I couldn't do something that I have started and so publicly done.



2. when you reach what feels like a plateau with your photography, what do you do to take it to the next level (because i think you always do take it to the next level)?

I'm not sure if I understand the question right, but in case feeling like a plateau means the same as feeling like your photos are always the same, I just try to do something different. New location, new time of day, anything that's new for you. Once when I was feeling like in a rut, like my photos weren't getting any better at all, and looked the same always, I just woke up early in the morning, and went to photograph the sunrise around 5 a.m. Waking up early is so hard for me, so I had hardly ever photographed a sunrise before, and that day I was rather lucky and there was this fog which looked dashing in the dawn. After that I had a lot more courage to do something different again, and I think, I was able to start taking my photography to a new level again.



3. you do absolute magic with your nikon D40, but what would be your dream camera?

my dream camera? a camera with more focus points (is that how you call them in english?) than three ones. or maybe a film camera, as that's something I would really like to try and experiment with.

4. a little known quirky fact about finland...

They say Finland is the only country in the world where news are broadcasted in Latin..

5. what do you want to be when you grow up? (i still don't know, so don't feel bad about this one, i mean it more light-hearted than it may seem. :-) )

I might say a photographer, because that's what I want to do, but I guess it'd never happen as I am rather spontaneous when it comes to photographing. I'm not that into planning, so photographing weddings etc. wouldn't be the best option. After all, in the middle of wedding you must take photos of the wedding, instead of going out to capture the perfect light or the beautiful clouds. Anyway, my sister and I have been joking that we will probably be studying all our lives, and that's the only thing I could actually imagine happening. There are too many interesting things to learn and do, and I guess I won't be able to decide what I really want, not anytime soon at least.



6. you've been experimenting with self-portraits lately - what has it taught you?

Self-portraits are still rather new thing for me, and I am still in progress processing the feelings and thoughts that I have about it. For sure it has taught me a lot though. As I earlier mentioned, I am not much of a planner when taking photos, and self portraits are teaching me to plan: to think about the composition, the light, the location etc. before taking the photo. When taking selfies, you can't change them so easily, and I am lazy, so it forces me to focus and think. That's the part which I find the most challenging, but also which I think I need to learn in case I would like to be real, professional, photographer some day. Also, I often feel like the selfies I take have already been taken by so many other people, so it's teaching me to be more creative, and to learn what is the thing in a photo that makes it me, if that makes any sense.

7. how do you feel about photo processing? is it an essential part of the process or is it cheating?

Nowadays I do think it's an essential part of the process. There was time when I felt guilty for editing, but after writing about it in my blog and reading thoughts about it, I have realised it is essential for me. For me editing means finalizing the photo, making it look like I feel or like I see the world. And as I have noticed that photography is a way of expressing myself, it is essential to make the photo look like me, or like my feelings. I still do not edit a lot, I do not remove anything from the photo, or add there anything, so I haven't yet any opinion about that.. art it is for sure anyhow.

8. is using someone else's lightroom presets cheating?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and there is this voice in my head saying that it is. However, I really would like to think it's not, because it makes editing a lot more fun and easy. I have not much experience with presets in Lightroom, but when I used to use actions in PS Elements, I always made sure I read also a tutorial of how you do the stuff which the action makes for you. That way I was able to feel less quilty.



9. they say the northern lights have been visible in these parts in recent nights, have you seen them?

nope, unfortunately I haven't.

10. do you have or would you get a tattoo?

Tattoos are a little too permanent for me. I get tired easily, that's why. So no, no tattoos for me.

* * *

thank you, inna, with your name like a russian epic novel, for sharing your beautiful photography with us every day in the group and thank you for letting me interview you right here.  i know you'll be a photographer if you want to be and you won't be the kind who has to do weddings...of that i'm sure.

on memory and forgetting and taking a picture every day

because you can never have too much yarn porn.

january 1, i started a 365 photo-a-day project. and, in consultation with many of your good selves, i created a flickr group to support it and for us to have a place to share our photos and give feedback to one another, with the idea of improving our photography. in the initial, heady days of january, it was so much fun! it seemed like the year would fly by and the inspiration would continue to flow like a fountain. all these people who knew one another from the blogosphere and a few new ones joined in and we became friends. and everyone learned and made explore and was happy.

then february struck. most of those in the group live in the northern hemisphere, so it was the darkest, coldest, most dreary part of the winter and it was hard. now it's march and spring is taking its sweet time in coming, at least where i live. there are days when i look outside at the aging snowbanks and the bare trees and i think, "i can't possibly take a  picture of anything worthwhile today." but then i take a wander around the house or i look at the photos the others in the group have taken and i feel inspired by something someone else photographed, and i get through it. because i promised myself i would. and my promises to myself have to mean something. and you reach a point where you keep doing it BECAUSE it's hard and because doing things that are hard can be good for you, and because it makes you buy fresh flowers on a regular basis.

my reasons for doing this have already changed in the 75 days it's been running. at the beginning, if i'm  honest, i wanted to show off my ability to take breathtaking pictures and develop more consistency in that. now, i realize that such a project is more about documenting what's going on in my life. and i admit that it's most decidedly not breathtaking on a daily basis. some days, i use my iPhone (thank goodness i've got hipstamatic and camerabag and other apps to make that more interesting). when the weather gets good, i'm going to use some of my film cameras (they're best at outdoor photos). i realized that a profound macro of the inside of my cat's ear doesn't actually help me document my life on a daily basis, so i've worked at pushing myself away from those and towards things that will help me remember what was going on and what was important to me at a particular moment in time. i think ultimately i'll find that this project is about memory for me.

the other reason i did this was to be more mindful of the world around me. to notice things. to see differently. last year at about this time, i got on a total eyeball kick, which i later realized was about my wanting to SEE differently. having to take a photo every day makes me look differently at the world.

i'll admit it's hard for me not to see the current exodus from the group as a personal rejection of sorts, despite endless explanations to the contrary, but i'm trying. and until i can forget about it, that's all i can do.in the meantime, it makes me quite sad to see people give up and leave us, whatever their reasons. but although i'll admit it shakes my conviction, especially because it's people i love and respect, i remain committed. after all, i read recently about a guy who took a picture every single day from 1979 'til his death in 1997. now THAT's commitment.

if you're not now totally put off the idea of taking a photo every day and you'd like to join us, please check out the blog camp 365 group on flickr. it's never too late to start!

* * *

and the picture at the top? what does it have to do with all of this? well, it was one of THOSE days, where i took what felt like 600 pictures of the new yarn that i'm going to use to make granny squares after kristina and ulrika teach me this coming weekend, and i wasn't pleased with how any of them turned out. but then, i played with them in lightroom and i think this one came out ok. a process that was good for me and which framboesa talks about very thoughtfully here.

january photo-a-day

hmm, january has 31 days, but still, i managed to have 36 pictures in my photo-a-day folder. here they are as a mosaic. i am loving this project so far! tho' thanks to a stomach virus my photo from the 31st was actually taken by husband. he's pretty good when he's turned loose with the camera.

photo a day

on january 1, i decided to formalize my photo-a-day pledge that i pretty much embarked upon since buying my D60 in may 2008, and started the blog camp 365 project on flickr. here we are, not even a month in and i really love what the project is doing for me. in addition to learning a whole lot from the other group members and delighting in their pictures and their feedback, it's given me back a good measure of my photo mojo.

it's gotten me to take a harder look at processing my photos and helped me solidify what i like to do and what i don't. cropping and minor adjustments (like the antique feel i gave these photos) are ok with me, but i still much prefer straight out of the camera (SOOC). i'd rather try to compose the shot as i'm taking it, tho' sometimes, there are things you don't notice until you download the picture onto your computer, so sometimes you just have to crop. i'm finding myself thinking a whole lot more about photography in general. i'm rereading susan sontag's wonderful on photography with new eyes (and perhaps a new brain) that i didn't have when i read it in grad school. in fact, i'm going to build my photo-a-day in february around notions from the book. imagine that, me, planning ahead!

i think it's also significantly eased the pain of this dark time of year. because in looking for that daily photo opportunity, i've found out that the light isn't really as bad as i thought. i've been much more mindful of the qualities the light has and i'm much more aware of how rapidly it's changing at the moment. i've come to appreciate that the winter light can really be great for those SOOC shots i love if i use it at the right time of day. and if i want that yellow tone to my photos, i just use the artificial light in my yellow-walled kitchen after the daylight is gone. it's forced me to do a whole lot more experimenting with the settings on my camera and i've learned a great deal about how to get the shots i want, using the light at hand (since i continue to loathe flash).

but probably the best side effect is the one i'd hoped for the most. and that's noticing the world around me. on a snowy day, i wander through the house, camera in hand, thinking about what i can take a picture of today. yesterday, it was these brass ottoman "pencil cases." they're on a shelf in the dining room and i'd pretty much stopped seeing them. but yesterday, i looked at them. really looked at them. and thought about them and the experience of buying them. how husband and i played good cop-bad cop with the antiques dealer and husband played his bad cop part so well i began to believe myself that he was against my buying them (he wasn't, it was just an oscar-worthy performance). just snapping a few photos, i was transported back to that hot day in bergama, and the ruins we wandered before wandering the street of antique shops, our dinner at a sidewalk restaurant where a man actually tied his goat to a tree before going in to eat. i also appreciated for a moment the little tableau i'd set up with them, arranging them near some beautiful old books with art deco jackets from the teens of the last century and an old tin for turkish-macedonian tobacco that i found in a flea market. there must be value in taking a moment to notice and appreciate your own surroundings.

it's not too late to join the group, you can start your photo-a-day project anytime you want, so do come and join us. when you request the invite, please let us know you arrived there via one of the group member's blogs, as we are trying to keep it to the circle of those we know via our blogs, so it remains a manageable number of photos to keep up with and comment on.

checking out the neighborhood

this enormous sculpture stands at the end of the road which leads away from one of the farms we're looking at. i made husband stop so i could snap a few pictures with the zoom lens from a distance. it stands in all its strangeness on a little hill, with a small shack beside it. i didn't realize it 'til i got the photos home on the computer, but if you look closely down in front just outside that rope that's fencing off the sculpture, there are many little plastic dolls arranged in strange ceremonial homage in the grass.

and just as i was wondering what on earth it was all about, i opened my local newspaper and there was a story about the place. it was done twenty some years ago by an artist named edwin westergren. a swede by birth, he was adopted or at least raised by a family in denmark and ended up on a farm near the large sculpture, making his art. his sons live on the place now, among the now rather overgrown remnants of his sculpture. one son, who looks to be an older man himself from the pictures in the paper, goes around to kindergartens with his soulmate (his words), spreading the joy of native american music to children. as one does if one is an older danish man from the quiet side of the fjord.

it appears we could be moving to an interesting and rather colorful neighborhood. we're taking our favorite polish carpenter (who we would still like to adopt) with us to look at it this weekend, so we're getting closer. we'll just have to hope those people looking at our house this weekend appreciate the new, clean, white, no longer red or artistically balkan, pristine hallway (don't worry, it'll be done by the time they come on sunday). we did leave the maps on the ceiling. we have to have something that's us in this place, we do, after all, live here.

back later with my first week of calendar art journaling and how it's going on that simplicity project. and do be sure to check out the blog camp 365 pool on flickr. it's going very well! and it's not too late for you to join in!