friday how i love thee...

let me count the ways:

~ friday evenings are my favorite meal of the week. i always make bread and a variety of yummy things to put on bread. some of our favorites are here.

~ there's nearly always time to sneak in half an hour for a cup of special coffee and a bit of reading. (today it was hazelnut-cinnamon and murakami).

~ the luxury of the entire weekend stretching ahead.

~ and putting the week behind you, behind you.

~ a glass of wine while cooking dinner.

happy weekend one and all, it's time to go bake the bread.

finishing friday and the week's lessons

since it's friday and i have designated fridays to be finishing friday, i'm working on my nature walk plus quilt today. with the sewing machine breakdown and the market, these beautiful squares have been patiently waiting for me to begin for nearly two weeks! today is the day!

in the aftermath of the market, i've been slowly getting items into my etsy & big cartel shops all week (etsy seriously needs to improve the usability of listing items, lemme tell you). today, the fish went in. if you want small sets of fish, check etsy and if you'd like a whole school, i put those on big cartel. you may find these a little bit pricey in comparison to the clarity birds, but it's due to the fact that they're 100% organic and natural - organic fabrics, stuffed with real wool, so they're a notch above quality-wise, and also environmentally.  my order of heather moore's beautiful cut out & keep line for cloud 9 is finally on its way to me, so items featuring that gorgeousness will soon be available as well! and i'm VERY excited about that. i actually began selling the cloud 9 fabrics because heather's line was coming!

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i thought i'd also take a moment to recap all of the lessons learned over the week, because every week has its lessons...

~ it's really annoying that on twitter there is no way of knowing which tweet someone is responding to. i briefly came out of the closet yesterday (and i'm not even gay, tho' i would totally kiss nigella given the opportunity) because in a tweet response, i mixed up a tweet where i had posted a photo of husband playing angry birds on his iPhone at lunch and one expressing surprise that the american ambassador  to denmark (who is a woman) was from south dakota. and in my tweet, i ended up referring to husband as a she.

~ we had an appointment to go renew sabin's US passport yesterday. the consulate sends someone over to the wilds of jylland twice a year to provide services to those who don't live in copenhagen. sabin's passport expired last monday, so it needed to be renewed. the meeting was in a nice hotel in århus and was very personal and pleasant. FAR better service than you get when you go to the actual embassy in copenhagen, where they practically strip search you and make you feel as guilty as they can for using some of their precious time on your petty requirement of actual services from the country of your birth. in short, a very nice experience.

~ i learned that the current US ambassador to denmark (who we did not meet - it was a vice consul) is also from south dakota. and used to be married to tom daschle. apparently, since she's now an ambassador, she stayed connected to politics after tom ran off with miss nebraska.

~ i spent several blissful hours in the garden last evening. replanting strawberries and helping husband move the rhubarb. and i was reminded how gardening is good for the soul. and that it's the single activity that makes me feel the most grown up. in a good way.

~ husband just called me with a very amusing piece of news that restores my faith in the fact that people do eventually get what's coming to them. and when it happens, it is sweet indeed, tho' sometimes the waiting is rather annoying.

* * *

happy weekend, one and all.

loving friday

loving today.

loving soft braids.

loving this blog.

and this etsy shop.

(you can see they're related.)

still hanging out here an awful lot.

and still pretty jazzed about this.

but mostly, loving that it's friday.

happy weekend, one and all!

snippets

i accidentally bought this ring in manila back in november. the kind of accidental purchase akin to a sausage consumed in a train station. it was there next to the cash register, i was paying anyway, so i accidentally bought it. the purchase filled an awkward moment at the cash register, where one is otherwise just waiting. and i've been wearing it all day, just for fun.  and fun it was.

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it's friday evening. i love fridays. we don't eat dinner so much as graze on a series of snacks...salty almonds, pork rinds (with a bit of pinoy kurat), tasty bites of salty prima donna cheese, slices of spicy chorizo. maybe a loaf of freshly baked bread slathered in butter with a sprinkle of flaky salt. it's casual, comfortable. probably my favorite meal of the week.

* * *

i didn't do that well on finish friday. i did one garland, put finery on a couple of birds and promptly made the scarf i said i wasn't going to make - tho' the version i made was my own and i didn't really follow the directions (when do i ever?). on the bright side, it's lovely (see the background of the photo above) and soft and i've worn it all day. but how could it not be great when it's made of anna maria horner's beautiful flannel.

* * *

i feel at times starved for women friends...someone to hang out with and tell secrets. i haven't found that here. yet. i think just the laughter would do me good. but women are often hard on one another. so perhaps i'll stick with the blogosphere. tho' women can be hard on one another there too.

* * *

i'm also starved for a room of my own...a space to create, where i don't clutter up the dining table and where i can leave things out, so i don't spend so much time arranging and getting ready and more time making. more time finishing on friday...

* * *

it feels like things are beginning to happen. i don't know exactly where they're leading, but they are beginning. and beginnings are exciting and wonderful, but also scary. but i think i like that.

* * *

i'm ready for february to be over. it seems like the longest february in the history of februaries. and it's the shortest month, which is quite ironic. i won't be sad to see it go. i long for sunshine and buds and snowdrops and crocus. they'll be here soon, won't they?

* * *

happy weekend, one and all!

if i were...

kimberly from numinosity did a beautiful list on her blog and i just had to give it a whirl myself, since it's friday and i love lists...

if i were a month i’d be march

if i were a day i’d be thursday

if i were a time of day i’d be 11:30 p.m.

if i were a font i’d be bulky refuse

if i were a sea animal i’d be a stingray

if i were a direction i’d be southwest

if i were a piece of furniture i’d be full of drawers

if i were a liquid i’d be gin (high quality gin)

if i were a gemstone i’d be turquoise

if i were a tree i’d be an evergreen

if i were a tool i’d be a hammer

if i were a flower i’d be a lemon blossom

if i were an element of weather i’d be a hurricane

if i were a musical instument i’d be a saxophone

if i were a color i’d be red

if i were an emotion i’d be intense

if i were a fruit i’d be a blueberry

if i were a sound i’d be loud

if i were an element i’d be uranium

if i were a car i’d be a porsche 911

if i were a food i’d be sushi

if i were a place i’d be ephesus

if i were material i’d be linen

if i were a taste i’d be chili

if i were a scent i’d be clary sage

if i were a body part i’d be an eye

if i were a song i’d be diamonds on the soles of her shoes by paul simon

if i were a bird i’d be a nightengale

if i were a gift i’d be handmade

if i were a city i’d be moscow

if i were a door i’d be unlocked

if i were a pair of shoes i’d be converse all stars

if i were a poem i’d be ithaca by cavafy

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be sure to check out kimberly's list and if you were all these things, who would you be?
this was a really interesting exercise and i'm amazed how intuitively the answers sprang into my head.
come on, you know you want to try it. 

friday cocktails

wine during the week, but cocktails on the weekend.

it's friday. at last. and although it's dreary outside and raining and it's only about 8:30 a.m., i find my thoughts turning to cocktails. friday will do that to you. it's the end of a long week and on friday evening, you feel you've earned a little drinky pooh. or at least you do if you're me and even if you spent most of the week in your pajamas in front of the internet. that can be hard work too. tho' i didn't spend my week like that this week, what with the gainful employment and all. but now back to the cocktails.

i surprised a twitter friend the other day by knowing that the smoky whisky she was tasting was an islay. i think she was surprised because girls don't usually know that stuff, do they? whisky tends to be a man's drink. but i do know my islays and have a couple of different laphroigs, an ardbeg, a bowmore and a lagavulin or two in my liquor cabinet. i love that smoky, almost lapsang souchong element that the islays have.

at our house, i tend to like the usual boy's drinks and husband tends towards the girly ones. he recently polished of a bottle of thickly sweet peach schnapps that our neighbor brought back from turkey. whereas i'm much more likely to sip a hendrik's gin & tonic with a thin slice of cucumber in it. husband likes the hendrik's too (who wouldn't, it is the best gin ever and loved by a small handful of people, all over the world), but he mixes it with schweppes lemon (oh the horror!).

he's also likely to commit the blasphemy of mixing the 8-year-old bacardi, which should just be sipped on its own, like a fine whisky, with cocio, a chocolate milk product we have in denmark. again with the horror. and the girliness. and i won't even go into the abuse of alcohol that he committed one day with the beautiful patron that extranjera brought to blog camp. i guess i should be grateful that husband is so in touch with his masculinity that he's not afraid to indulge in feminine drinks, but sometimes i do wish that when we sat gazing into the fire on a friday evening, he would join me in a glenmorangie, rather than sipping bailey's. oh well, he's a keeper anyway, so i guess i'm off to stock up on drinks umbrellas for fruity cocktails.

what cocktail is on the agenda at your house tonight?