a to å challenge: a is for awesome

it's a bit predictable, i realize, me, saying things are awesome. everything is awesome, as they sang in the lego movie. and things were awesome in those days (2014), then late in 2014, things got less awesome when they (read: an uncommunicative, short-sighted middle manager with no vision who had only worked in lego in all his life and never had any other job) decided to do away with my awesome job. and then my father died. and then i worked for the lego.com team (which was decidedly not an awesome place) as a freelancer (can you say incompent psychopath at the helm?). but then, in august 2015, i decided to listen to what my fatalist presbyterian soul was telling me and look for something else. and that something else led to me awesome job back in shipping. a job where i'm using all those skills i honed right here on mpc - writing and photography and generally being creative. things really couldn't be better. in the next week, i'll spend a couple of days in a creative workshop on a ship, then i'll fly to london and spend a couple more days sailing back and forth on the english channel on another ship (or two) taking photos and then head home. it's hard to imagine that life could be any better. so for now, everything really is awesome. and i'm definitely well on the road to healed (and wiser) from the wounds inflicted by my lego experience.

i have to thank my awesome friend amy from tilting at windmills for tipping me off to this little blog challenge. because goodness knows, i'm a girl in need of an assignment.

*this is really supposed to be the #atozchallenge, but here in denmark, the alphabet ends in å, so i'm gonna go native.

a bit random for today, but it's been grey and dreary for days

small stone :: four

chickens pecking in the herb beds. a little half-grown grey cat stalks, doing the pre-launch wiggle of her haunches and then running straight for one little black hen. she aborts at the last minute, not daring after all. and the chicken gives her a good scolding.

small stone :: five

looking at a friend's photos of armenia on facebook. hearing the echoes of memories not my own in the beautiful, evocative images. feeling provoked to tears.

~~~

vignettes of memories:

going to a bar in kazan with my russian (tatar?) girlfriends. it wasn't something they did often (or ever). all i really remember is their big, round eyes and the decor - which was faux cave, draped in plastic plants.

defying the last of winter in kazan (apparently my brain is in kazan) with long, cutoff jeans shorts on an april day. 

stuffing myself and my backpack onto a VERY busy tram (also in kazan) and at one point, being held up completely by the surrounding crowd, as my feet left the ground.

what is it about watching living daylights (the first bond with timothy dalton) that reminds me of kazan?

~~~

is america in decline? and how much does it have in common with europe?
read more here.  

~~~

i really like maria konnikova's thoughts on language.

while you're there, stay and read more of her blog posts, you won't regret it.

~~~

have you read j.k. rowling's casual vacancy?
what did you think?

small stone :: three

working intensely. ideas flying. catching some, letting others slip away. scribbling frantically in a notebook. thinking in two languages. energizing. draining. creating. laughing. fika. hitting the wall. renewed by some bad (for someone else) news. not really feeling very guilty about that (let's just say that for troglodytes what goes around comes around). definitely not just another day at the office.

kitty nurble comes home

last summer, we met the fabulous kit lane in person (it was at lisa's house - they both live in minnesota). you may know her as the inventor of bobbaloos. (she is wonderful, by the way.) and as a little joke, we presented her with a hairball extracted from the outside (not one of the thrown-up variety) of our norwegian forest cat, lila. we also gave her real gifts, so we're not totally mental. today, this little creature arrived - our very own kitty nurble - composed largely of lila-hair. a little piece of our beloved (and aging (she's 14) cat).  it was getting a bit dark when i took this, so more proper photos of it tomorrow in good light. and this is not at all a very blurry shot of frankie trying to mangle welcoming it:

~~~

small stone :: two

days shared.

laughter.

sumptuous plate of healthy salad.

laughter.

wine.

the unbearable lightness of being.

life.

small stone :: one

carpet of beech leaves. wet with rain. scattered bits of gold in a grey, soaked, winter world.

~~~

this small stone is part of the mindful writing challenge. 

a month-long exercise in noticing things properly. 

~~~

i can't tell you how hard it was NOT to take a photo of the glimmery gold beech leaves today.

pinspiration no. 4 - in progress

lest you think i forgot...this is my pinspiration no. 4 work in progress. i picked up this sweet little easter-themed cross-stitch in a second-hand store last week and i'm making something quite different (for me) from it. it took some daring to cut into the fine, even work, but at last i did it. i'm making something to decorate that stick that i hung on the wall in the living room the other day.

i didn't get it finished due to the excitement of the arrival of the new baby chick - i had to run around getting a heat lamp and special baby chick food, plus make a spot for her (him?) and her (his?) mama separate from the other chickens, so they don't hurt the little sweetie (after reading on the all-knowing interwebz that that might happen). but i will show you more tomorrow. it is rather fitting, in light of being distracted by a chicken that this little cross-stitch is of chickens, don't you think?

pinspiration no. 3

i've just finished up pinspiration no. 3 - this fresh and fabulous bag. inspired by this pin (which i am ashamed to say i pinned 45 weeks ago - yes, it took me that long to do something about it). there is a free pattern and directions here (thank you, very purple person!). i just got out a newspaper and drew my own pattern (will make the handles slightly longer in the next go), but i used the directions. they're good if you're an experienced seamstress.

this is some fabric i bought ages ago, with pillows in mind, but i absolutely LOVE it as a bag. it's a rather heavy canvas - i suppose it's an upholstery fabric. it has some synthetic content (you'll see in a minute how i found that out).

the directions are pretty good, but i'm not sure i would have thought that if i hadn't made all of those reversible dresses last autumn. the bag is theoretically reversible, tho' i put a pocket on the plain black lining inside and don't intend to reverse it. if you had two fabulous fabrics, you could definitely nake a reversible and versatile bag. here's where i'm using a brush to help me turn it - that moment is always a bit weird, as it feels like you must have done it wrong, but then it ends up all right.

finishing the handles was easier than i thought and easier than my dresses were last autumn. it was here that i felt the directions were a bit iffy - i wished there were better photos of the process, but i muddled through and it did go together quite smoothly.

the improvised pocket i put on the inside - i just NEED somewhere to put my phone so i'm not rummaging around for it in the midst of 50 old receipts and wads of used kleenex.

my version of the bag is a bit wider than the one i pinned - it will make it nice and roomy for all kinds of things - i'm thinking knitting projects and cameras.

i'm using a little room off my living room as a craft room these days - i moved the dining table there a few weeks ago. unfortunately, there's no working electricity out there, as when we moved the 1940s electrical box and got a new, modern one, they didn't reconnect that end of the house (it had been cobbled together originally and so the electrician didn't realize it wasn't reconnected). until i moved my crafty bits out there, it didn't really matter, as we didn't use that room except when we had couchsurfers. this morning, i lit some candles on the table and as you can see, kind of forgot about them when i was working on laying out the bag. soon, my fabric was flaming up rather merrily and stinking up the place - possibly indicating synthetic fibers. i managed to quickly put it out and only ruined a small corner of my fabulous fabric.

the first bag was so much fun, i'm going to make up another one with this fabulous fabric that i bought ages ago in oslo. you can never have too many bags.

UPDATE: now with the second bag complete - and a bit longer handles so it fits over the shoulder a bit better. i'm so happy i finally used some of my fabric stash! i'll enjoy it so much more now than i did while it languished on the shelf.

happy monday!

look at that glorious morning! i took this just minutes ago, when i went to let the chickens out. it's supposed to be rather cold this week and even down below freezing a couple of nights, but it feels like spring will win out in the end - it can't be beaten back forever by arctic winds.

it's easter week - sabin's off from school all week and tho' i'm working on a big project, there will be time for riding and making things (a vow to make at least one thing every day inspired by something i've pinned on pinterest will help that) and yummy food and some visitors later in the week and a bit of gardening and lots of taking photos.

happy monday, one and all!  i'll be back later with today's pinspiration creation.

* * *

in case you didn't see it yesterday - this is wickedly clever.

topography of a life

i'm fascinated by maps. on pinterest, i have a board called topographies, that's full of interesting and inspiring art people have made of maps. but maps are art in and of themselves. they are a representation of a place, not a duplication - a map can never truly capture all that is about a place (borges knew this). they remain but an incomplete illusion. i think it's what makes art featuring maps so fascinating.

just as it's impossible for a map to truly represent a place, it's completely impossible to fully blog a life. for one, no one would want to read it, for another, it's simply impossible to put words to it all. that, of course, doesn't stop people from trying. there are those who blog their breakfast or nightly dinners and then publish books of the photos, in case you missed one of those prosaic shots. there are people who take a photo at the same time every day (or was that just a plot device in a midsomer murder?). or people who simply take a photo every day (i read about a guy who did that for like 30 years).

me, my life and my blog, are all over the place - sometimes it's a craft blog, sometimes a travelogue, sometimes it's about perfume, or raising a child, or living in self-chosen exile, occasionally it's even about politics. but mostly, i blog to think things through, work them out and make sense of the world around me. and it feels pretty real to me. but you can never truly convey what it's all like (especially not the bits inside your head). you can only sketch the outlines. map the topographies of a life, if you will.

i don't share everything, but i do think that because of the immediate kind of person that i am, how i'm feeling is pretty obvious - good and bad. of course there are things i don't blog "out loud" - because they might hurt someone or burn a bridge or get someone (usually me) in trouble (the tales i could tell you of several big corporations would make your toes curl). i also don't blog every worry i have, because to an extent, i want this to be a mostly positive space. but i do blog about those things on my secret blog, because blogging is how i think. or rather, writing is how i think, and blogging is my medium of choice. there's something about that little blogger compose window that just gets the words flowing. and the impossible mapping of a life continues.

the truth about reality

the truth about all of this truth thing is that what i've been writing this week isn't really different from what i usually write. because with me, you tend to get the truth...if i'm in a bad mood, have a headache, am happy or sad, frustrated, ecstatic - i don't hide these things very well. but, just as a map can't truly depict a place, you can never write everything. and let's face it, no one would want to read it if you did. so we all pick the highlights and sometimes the lowlights. it's just how it is. and it's what i love about the genre of blog - it's really whatever you want it to be. i think i just got a little tired of all of the in-your-face, groomed, styled and curated perfection i was seeing out there.

the truth is that despite living in an old house which needs lots of work, we have a pretty good life. and although all of the changes we've been through in past year and a half have been stressful and even worrying at times, we're happy with where we're at and the decisions that have brought us here. on a still evening, when we step outside and breathe in the fresh air and hear the sounds of birds in the trees or the crunching of a horse, life seems pretty much to be exactly as it should be.

that's not to say that it can't be improved. yes, we should have less stuff. yes, we should have a place to put it all away. yes, i should waste less time in front of the computer and spend more time in the garden. i should procrastinate less and sew more. i should more consistently believe in the things i'm working on and in my abilities. i should watch fewer crappy television shows. but it's a process. and nothing happens overnight. but all of that messy process is where life is lived - in the contradictions, the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the happiness and the unhappiness and the moments of feeling like a heroic parent in comparison to those crazy people on toddlers & tiaras or that awful show about the insanely expensive themed child parties.

as one of my favorite russian writers, andrei bitov, wrote, "unreality is a condition of life." so i think i'll just chill about it. hang out with the cool bloggy people who seem real (you know who you are) and try to avoid all that curated perfection for awhile.

the truth: there's too much pressure on mothers

baby sabin (and smoochie)

a friend of mine woke up very early one morning late last winter to find herself in labor. it was 4:30 or so and her second child, so she decided a leisurely shower was in order. after the shower, she pampered herself with nice-smelling lotion and dried her long, blonde hair. after it was dry, she commenced to flatten it with her flat iron. as one does, when one is about to depart for the hospital to have a baby. after carefully doing her makeup, her baby brain decided that a bit of fake tan was in order and she proceeded to apply the bronzing lotion. about halfway through, she realized that the contractions were coming with what began to smack of alarming regularity, so she called out to her husband that they needed to get going NOW. they deposited their 2 and a half year old daughter with the neighbors, who they had roused from sleep, and tore off to the hospital, where just a few hours later, they took delivery of their lovely, healthy baby boy. her husband, commemorating it on his iPhone (of course), showed her the first photo and to her horror, her mascara had run and her carefully flattened, silky hair was all a tangle. the various drips and tubes running into her arm had left spots of white in the midst of her lovely tan. and she realized that she was reeking of that smell that even the best fake tanning lotion cannot hide. in all, quite the memorable moment. when she tells it, it's so hilarious that you are falling out of your chair laughing, even tho' you might be in the midst of a rather posh bar at the time.

and while i laughed until i cried, i think it's a symptom of the pressure on mothers today. pressure i don't think was on me ten years ago when sabin was a baby. at that time, the only pressure i recall was heavy encouragement from the danish midwives to give birth without drugs. in the end, i was so ill, that i had an emergency c-section and it's still a bit of a fog to me. but i have never felt for one second badly that i "missed out" on natural childbirth and that's the only thing i recall being given some grief over. i can tell you that after having a temperature of 40°C for a week before delivering sabin, i most definitely did not put on makeup or fix my hair.

it's also true that i made all of sabin's baby food...cooking up organic veggies, whizzing them up in the blender and freezing them in ice cube trays to be doled out in baby-sized portions. but ten years ago, that was looked on as a heroic act, above and beyond the call of duty. today, it's expected and you'll be looked askance upon by your mothers' group and your neighbors if you're not doing it. you'll actually have to apologize for using jars of baby food today. bad mother.

i'm not sure if we placed this pressure on ourselves or if it's the culture at large, but i do think that all of this perfection in the blogosphere i'm swimming against the stream of this week contributes heavily to it. why on earth did it even occur to my friend to flat iron her hair, do full makeup and put on fake tan to go to the hospital to deliver her baby? is it one too many shots of perfect princesses emerging as svelte as before from the hospital just minutes after delivering twins? is it glowing reports of natural, organic home births featuring pictures of glowing, dewy, happy mothers and their swaddled babies? is it the stoicism of the 70s parents of today's young mothers - who were all natural and free of drugs (the legal ones at least) and clad in home-crocheted dresses, baby tied to them in a sling after they popped it out effortlessly (to hear them tell it)?

and not to mention the pressure to enjoy and love every minute with your child that today's mothers endure...if you don't spend every moment lovingly teaching your child to play with precisely the right toys to develop their brain, it's practically child abuse. i think there was a time when mothers' groups could be a support group of sorts, where you could discuss your breastfeeding issues and your sleepless nights, but today, there's so much pressure to report that it's all wonderful, your baby is in the 98th percentile in everything, you don't miss sleep, your nipples are fine and your partner is the perfect father. there's no safe space anymore to be real.

i don't know what it is, but i'm glad my child is ten and that i don't have to compete in today's baby race. i'm pretty sure it would been frowned upon to drag a 2 and a half year old across the atlantic and drop her off during a stopover in chicago with an uncle she hardly knew, to stay for two weeks while i went on to business meetings in seattle (because her father was away on a 3-week exercise in norway). it's quite amazing how things change in only ten years. (ok, i admit people probably frowned at that even then, but not to my face.)

all of this makes me glad that there are bloggers who happen to be mothers who are real. go read c is for capetown. it's the only way we're gonna change this and divert all of this pressure and get back to our normal lives.

the truth: it's a mess around here

one of the most disheartening things about browsing blogs, pinterest and flickr is all of the perfection and perfect styling. i don't believe that people's lives are actually so perfectly styled all the time. i do my share of cropping photos and advantageously placing things so as not to include clutter, so i'm not completely condemning it - sometimes we have a need to appear perfect, both to ourselves and to the world. but mostly, i think it's exhausting. and at times it fills me with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, because my house is full of spider webs and bits of straw on the carpet and dust on all of the surfaces.

paper gets stacked and half-finished projects piled up. and when it gets bad enough, i go on a cleaning frenzy and tidy it all up and feel much better for a few minutes. tho' curiously, i often don't really feel that great during the cleaning frenzy, in fact, i often find that i'm fuming about all manner of little irritations while i manically clean.

probably worst of all is the "dining room." it's the main big room of the oldest part of the house (the part that's going to be torn down) and it is still (after a year) a repository of boxes of things that shouldn't be out where it's cold and damp - fabric, seasonal clothes, pretty paper, books, etc.) they actually can't be unpacked because without having the house finished, we don't have enough bookshelves or space. so it has to be the way it is. additionally, it's the only place where the dining table fits, so it also has to be there. during the summer, we eat out in our terrace and this room is only used for my sewing projects, but now that it's cold, we eat here too.

i think to an extent you become immune to it and you don't see the boxes anymore and just go about living your life, knowing that it's a sort of long-term temporary thing that you have to live with. but there are times when i look at the perfect scenes in the blogosphere and feel rather frustrated by it all. however, this is a process that we're in and it's going to take time.  deep breath.

as much as i love to cook, i'm not that big on cleaning it all up afterwards. maybe because the room itself isn't that inviting with those pink cupboards and the stained, cheap linoleum floor (why bother to try to keep it obsessively marginally clean if it doesn't show anyway). mostly, husband tidies up after dinner (he is such a keeper) and i'm grateful for both that and having a dishwasher. again, it's something that i know i have to live with - next summer the new "curry kitchen" will be in out in the end of the barn and we'll be able to stop using this uninspiring space.

but now you know what it's really like at my house.

anyway, this is the kind of truth-telling i was thinking of (not name-calling or other such nasty things - i get that out of my system on a private blog). i just don't believe that lives are styled and curated in reality the way they are in today's blogosophere.

so now, it's your turn for some truth, are you relieved or horrified?

truth in blogging

the fog is as thick as the proverbial pea soup out there. even tho' the sun tried to break through earlier, it never fully succeeded. just stepping outside sends a chill straight through to the bones. it's really starting to be winter. i'm swaddled in multiple sweaters, there are candles burning all over the house and a steaming cup of tea keeps the chill at bay. but the weather's the perfect excuse to sit down with the iPad and check in on the blogosphere.

i flipped through loads of inspiring words and photos and it seemed as if everything was rosy out there in blogland. but then i read bee's post, where she calls for some reality. and i realized that i too miss reality in the midst of all that perfection in the blogosphere. where are the mommy bloggers who admit it's hard and that they sometimes want to scream or run away? what about the fabulous craft projects that end up looking like a pile of crap instead of a glittering tower of crocheted fabulousness? where are the simplicity people who fall off the simplicity wagon and buy a whole collection of urban decay eyeliners? what about how much time is really spent on pinterest? or facebook? where are the people who have trouble with their apple devices? (ok, now i'm just getting silly, we know they don't exist.) what about sinks of dirty dishes and that pot you just don't want to scrub? or the dirty secrets at the back of the refrigerator.

i call for a moratorium on perfection in the blogosphere and urge you to just let it all hang out. reveal the truth...that we're not composing these posts in full makeup and false eyelashes with our hair perfectly coiffed as a perfect soufflé bakes in the oven (tho' soufflés are easier than you might think). we wake up late, we give the child three chocolate sandwiches in her lunchbox because we're in a rush and all of the sandwich meats are expired, we rush out the door to deliver her to school, one flannel pajama leg stuffed into our wellie and the other flapping on the outside. we fail to brush our hair.  (with we being me.)

i'm going to do it. let it all hang out. the whole truth. for one week.

won't you join me?

on collecting IV: metal bits

some of the collections we have are something that husband and i began to collect after we met. mechanical counters are one collection - the one on the far right being the first one we acquired at a little antique place on gilbert street in iowa city. it began as a fascination husband has with things mechanical.  others followed as we ran across them in various antique places, mostly in the US, but also a couple here in denmark. once you have spotted a certain object, others have a way of popping up. they also somehow begin to tell you their stories...i imagined that original counter on the gate of a fairgrounds or baseball field somewhere in iowa, counting attendees in its day.

children can be found winding them forward, synchronizing them. i can see that the one shows 7272, which means that my sister must have spent some time on it, combinations of 7s and 2s are her thing. i once, in a devilish fit, made them all show rows of 6s when my parents were going to be visiting - since i'm pretty sure they have moments of worrying about my soul.  i guess i wanted to silently confirm them in their worries. but i don't think anyone even noticed.

from mechanical counters, it wasn't a big leap to heavy, ornate padlocks from the mediterranean region. the one on the lower left was the first one we found in morocco and has a rather ingenious key that opens it lying in front of it. all of them work and can actually be used. i suppose that if he'd thought about it (they're currently packed away - these photos are from the old house), husband would have incorporated one into the chicken coop. perhaps he still will.

with these collections, i think the pleasure is in the looking for the next item. you never know where you'll spot one...in a quiet little shop in bergama, turkey or a dusty roadside market in afghanistan (we have locks from both places). such objects come laden somehow with the stories of the doors and perhaps chests they've held safe from intruders. it feels a bit, in handling them, like it might be possible to unlock their stories with a twist of the key.

i suppose what they have in common is brass and a similar heaviness - so tho' locks and counting mechanisms are different, they complement one another somehow. these adorned either end of a long shelf in our old dining room and they will again, even tho' they are tucked away in boxes at the moment.  and we'll undoubtedly run onto more of both and keep adding to our collection over the years - the pleasure being most definitely in the finding.

collecting III: the fabric stash

probably my most extensive collection is of fabrics. it's gotten a bit better since i began to focus on organic cottons with bee charmer, but still, it's pretty crazy. i have repurposed the wooden boxes our weekly organic food delivery comes in and they make great storage. plus, they bring a new one every week, so i can keep adding to the stash and always have enough storage.

some months back, my mom expressed disbelief that i had all that fabric without knowing what i was going to make of it. but i don't need to have something in particular in mind. i choose colors and prints that i love, and feel a nearly giddy happiness just looking at it and knowing that whenever inspiration strikes, it's there, waiting for me.

at the moment, i'm totally enamored of the cloud9 fabrics that i made the dresses out of. and i'm working on that big cut out & keep quilt again. i wasn't happy with some of it, so i uncharacteristically spent a lot of time taking out some seams and rearranging a bit and now it's getting there.

being surrounded by beautiful fabric makes me happy. i can sense a nearly audible hum in the air...the hum of potential. and at times, i swear the fabrics whisper to me and tell me what i should make of them. so it would be crazy not to have plenty of their little voices at hand. right? right?  ok, i do realize this makes me sound like some kind of crazy lady, but still, the stash makes me happy. and it begins to be evident that happiness is what's at the heart of all of this collecting.

on collecting II: bobbaloos

back in january, i discovered kit lane's adorable little creations - the jacabunnies. she writes clever descriptions of them and they all have individual names and characters that make them special. we very quickly realized that one would never be enough. so we've got 17 (the little pirate one refused to line up for the group shot today - but that's how pirates are and you can see him from a previous shoot below). 17 is less than pia and possibly also less than dahnstarr, tho' she's pleading the fifth as to how many she's got.

since i'm down on etsy, i'm on a self-imposed moritorium on buying any more at the moment. tho' it doesn't stop me from WANTING to buy more. luckily, they disappear so quickly from kit's shop that one doesn't have long to hover over the buy button before they're gone, along with the temptation.

always included in her descriptions is a line about how much the bobbaloos loathe the barn kitties. so today, i set out to dispel that myth. here's the whole gang, hanging out with woody, barn cat extraordinaire. check out how he's even hugging the one that looks like samba.

and speaking of samba...we commissioned likenesses of him and solskin, our real bunnies, at the height of our bobbaloo mania (and i keep saying we, because this collection belongs to both me and sabin). we'll have to see if kit can do sophus (formerly known as sophia) and mira as well. commissioning needle felted bunnies that are the colors of your real bunnies is, i admit, very nearly taking it a step too far.

when i think about what is so appealing about the 'bobs, i have to say that it's simply that they're joy-inducing.  their sweet faces, even sweeter little bums and the way they really do each have their own personality, dependent on the set of their ears and eyes is just too much to resist. the fact that they have clever little stories that go with them only adds to their appeal.

it's also about quality workmanship and possessing an object that's unique. and about supporting an artist that's doing some truly special and unique. i keep trying to convince kit to move her shop over to big cartel so we can once again begin adding to our collection.

on collecting I: perfume

transitioning to fall

as regular readers of this blog are aware, i have long been struggling with trying to pare down and live a simpler life. i'd like to be less of a consumer or at the very least a more conscious one. but i struggle, because i worship at the altar of apple and i am an avid collector of many things...perfume, fabric, stamps, pretty paper, locks...i could go on.

and the rest of the week, i will go on. because i want to explore my need for collecting, what it is i like about it and hope to get to the bottom of what it is that drives me (or any of us, really) to collect. of course, this isn't the first time i've pondered this, but i want to do it again in the hope that i will begin to be more conscious about it and maybe also to remind me to actively enjoy these things i've so obsessively carefully chosen.

*  *  *

so to start this off, i got out my rather shockingly large box of perfume (to which, i am proud to say, i have not added any new ones during 2011) and changed out the summery scents for a selection of late summer/early autumn scents. i think that scent definitely can help you transition the seasons, so i chose some with darker, heavier undertones to carry me into fall.

i also kept a couple of the summer scents out (sarah jessica parker's lovely and the michael kors island) because i'm expecting that since we've had such a rotten sunless summer, we will actually get some sunny days here in august (so far, that's but a pipe dream).  for example, chanel no. 5 eau premiere is a great transition fragrance - a lighter version of the heavy, serious no. 5, it's perfect for these windy, changeable days where fall and even a few leaves are definitely in the air.  and for the truly blustery, autumn days where there's no hint of summer left, i'm ready with paul smith woman and the tom ford white patchouli.

even if i don't put on other makeup or do my hair, perfume is a part of my everyday. i keep several bottles on the shelf in the bathroom and several in the bedroom. i use scent to lift my mood or to underline it if i want to keep it dark. scent can trigger memories or just give flashes of a feeling you had when you wore it. i wear perfume every day - it's as essential as my glasses. sometimes i wear the same one for a week straight, but more often, a different one - one that somehow matches how i'm feeling or how i want to feel on that particular day.

aside:  what's interesting is that husband also wears cologne every day - he calls it "smell-good," which i find charming despite being dubbed that by a long-ago girlfriend. the difference is that he uses up a bottle before starting a new one, so he's content to wear the same one for several months at a time. he doesn't have the same need i do to collect a wide variety, tho' he doesn't buy the same one over and over again, when one bottle is gone, he buys something new.

but i suppose the moment i enjoyed most of all with my seasonal switch today was that the sun had come out all gloriously golden in the early evening sky and the perfumes looked just gorgeous all lined up on my scale in the evening sunlight.  enjoying the collection, in all its aspects - whether using it or just looking at it - is a big part of what collecting is about.

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more collections coming soon...

what i wore today

and the final installment (for now) in the what i wore today series. i think i did it mostly as a way of getting properly dressed. when you work from home, you have a habit of remaining rather slothfully in comfy pajamas all day. and tho' i love those comfy pajamas, dressing up gives you something extra psychologically.

since it's friday and the storm outside seems to have mostly blown through, i thought a little dressing up was in order. i've pinned several messy braid photos to my pinterest and thought i'd give it a try today.

messy braids: intentional

dress: lysgaard

sweater: noa noa

necklace: pilgrim

ring: impulse purchase in babo, manila

leggings: found at the grocery store

brown boots: vintage (now), purchased new 15 years ago at bloomingdale's in chicago

eyeshadow: moss paint pot by mac

probably should have ironed the dress.

happy weekend, everyone!

the simple things

beautiful christina at soul aperture is doing simple things wednesday once again....so here, i give you the simple things that are making me happy right here and now...

beautiful viking ships at sunset...

our pooka on the beach...

our pooka jumping on a rain-soaked trampoline...

the fearlessness of our pooka...

how friggin' strong the pooka is...

these two people:

my favorites in the world...
(not that they're simple)

i hope you'll play along too...

what are the simple things making you happy?

right.

this.

very.

minute.