out of focus colors

as we close in on the summer holiday, i'm feeling a bit fuzzy to say the least. it's been a long haul, these past months. it's really hard when a job you dearly love turns sour, but it so often happens in a time of growth and disruption. i love both growth, disruption and also change, but it's been a bit ridiculous of late. when the wrong people are brought in and the good people leave and the company culture changes radically, it creates change that's not good or productive. i'm ready for a holiday. and happily, we are getting on a plane next week. it also helped that i went to an intimate and utterly blissful yin yoga class today. my mind quieted down and i saw a veritable rainbow of colors during some of the long poses. it centered me and put me, at least momentarily, in touch with my body. this color thing is really interesting. i've had flashes of synesthesia over the years, but it's really started to show itself in new ways during my recent bodywork sessions. i need to learn what the colors mean, even if it's only what they mean for me...i saw everything from rich, bright, vibrant red - it's never just one uniform color, there are nuances - to salmon to yellow and orange to green and teal to the most velvety indigo. my sense of it is that it's when i'm in touch with emotions, or more like touching them, as i wouldn't say i could articulate them. i've read some pieces about colors associated with the chakras and perhaps there's also something of that in it, when one or another is activated, but it feels more connected to some kind of emotional bedrock inside me. one which i've been probably out of touch with for far too long. if i ever was in touch with it. but i have hope, with the appearance of all these colors when i'm doing bodywork or yoga, that i can get in touch, maybe also at other times. maybe it's just a reminder that i need to live a more colorful life. but first...vacation.

100 happy days :: day 75

yellow shoes.

it doesn't get much happier than that.

100 happy days :: day 74

we'd been looking everywhere, but finally, in the adidas store in copenhagen, we got to see all. the. colors. the awesome adidas supercolor superstars make you think you probably need them all. but at 50 x 700 kroner, that would be quite an investment.  i got yellow and sabin got purple. she would have chosen light blue, but they were out of her size. we will probably have to go back. one pair just isn't enough.

cross-processed dreams of summer

i got a bunch of films developed when i was in new york. i had waited way too long. but somehow in these dark, dreary, pre-solstice days, where we are awaiting a storm, it seems good to look back on these bright, cross-processed memories of summers past. and dream of summers to come.

hmm, i do wonder where that pentax camera is...

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and speaking of weather. 

and winter.

there is this marvelous piece.

i'm so glad there are still people and places like this in the world.

fanciferocity

fanciferocity - i learned that word from the j. peterman catalog today. (it would be my dream job to write for them.) i figured it was appropriate, as i've gone a little nuts with the fanciferous little round baby acorns. it's just that every time i go out to feed the horses, i see more of the little caps on the ground and i can't stop picking them up. it's funny, as i already told you, i started thinking i'd just make red and white, since i want to use them on our christmas tree, but very soon, i picked up orange and green and blue (of course) and before long, i was making a whole rainbow. i just couldn't help myself. molly suggested making a garland and i just may have to do that, if their little sticks will hold up to it. otherwise, i'm going to incorporate them in my packaging for the upcoming christmas market we're having at our local kulturhus (community center). hopefully they'll make my bottles of cordials and jars of jam look totally irresistible.

i have so much going on and so many thoughts and ideas and possibilities swirling in my head at the moment, that it strangely doesn't want to come out into the blogger compose window. that doesn't happen to me very often, but apparently now is one of those times. i will undoubtedly be back soon with some self-therapy. but until then, i hope you're all having as glorious and warm an autumn as we are.

when i am old i shall have a yellow pantry door

the pantry portion of my new kitchen is soon ready to start putting all of those cordials i've been making on shelves. husband sourced some cool old doors for the kitchen and i'm painting the one for the pantry a bright, sunny yellow. it will be on a wall that's otherwise painted with black chalkboard paint, so i think it's going to look really cool. it's going to be a sliding door, a bit like this pin. the other doors in the kitchen will also be painted bright, wow colors. i took my kitchen-aid mixer down to the paint shop and had her mix up a red to match for the door into the laundry room. i've yet to decide the other two. 

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honestly, i love that the russians granted asylum to snowden.

the guy should be given a medal for the unlawful acts he's exposed. 

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a group of bloggy friends is going to take food & culture

 and a writing course from the free online catalog available from MIT. 

if you'd like to join us, click this:

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i loved this piece on the daily routines of 12 writers.

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let's do this to all the walmarts.

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read about the awesomeness of the farm where we got our molly cat last summer.
it makes me sad that no one in this country thinks like that.

the color sneaks back into my world

i suppose it's just these sunny, summer days we've been treated to, but it feels somehow like color is returning to my world. it's been a tough time recently with molly's mastitis, our chickens disappearing (it turns out it wasn't a fox, they were stolen!), my borrelia diagnosis and then losing frankie. a lot of things happening in quick succession that have sapped my energy and robbed me of my inspiration and, you probably noticed, my words.

despite losing frankie on monday, it was on the whole a good week. i took the last of my antibiotics and i feel myself returning to more or less feeling normal health-wise, tho' i do occasionally run a low-grade fever for most of a day (i hope that stops now), which zaps my energy again. but spending time with sabin in the sunshine, doing creative projects helped greatly.

it's hard to be down in the dumps when your old favorite converse have been turned into bright, cheery rainbows.

the garden, especially the fruit bushes and those strawberries, are in full swing and picking and processing all that fruit makes me feel industrious and satisfied. i know how much we'll enjoy the fruits of all my labors come autumn and winter. that has raised my spirits as well.

the perfect afternoon i spent painting in the garden with sabin on friday also went a long way towards reawakening what has been a dormant sense of creativity. i have a tendency to go through a low-level depression at times without even really realizing it myself, except in odd ways (i think the bits of blue in my hair were an attempt to pull myself out of it that i wasn't even really aware of on a conscious level). it's only when it begins to lift that i realize it was there.

but it is beginning to lift. like a fog clearing away. one that i had become so accustomed to, that i wasn't even really aware of it myself. it likely started with our prolonged winter and ever-protracted spring. then molly got sick and i spent a couple of weeks of sleepless nights, worrying over and feeding kittens in the night. i've also been reading some douglas kennedy novels, which are wonderful, but full of tragic stories that feel like they're happening to friends of mine, so well-drawn are the characters. and i realize now that it has all fed an underlying feeling of blue (and not the good blue room kind).

but today, as i pulled fabric for several baby quilts (suddenly, my friends are all having babies), it hit me that the blue of my world was turning more colorful once again. and it seems at least some of my words have returned. molly is well (and begging to go outside to rendezvous with the papa kitty again (don't worry, she's not allowed)) and the kittens are at at the very height of playful perfection and tho' i miss frankie very much, i now get to keep little frieda, my kitten who smiles in her sleep.

it also helps that dinner came from the garden - fresh kale, shallots and new potatoes. there is little that feels more satisfying than that, unless it's a kitten who smiles in her sleep.

here's hoping that summer is treating you all very well.

happy monday that's actually a tuesday!

it's tuesday, but it feels like monday since monday was like sunday this week due to another of those danish spring holidays. the benefit of having a tuesday that's a monday is that you don't have a monday kind of a monday, since monday was a lot like sunday and tuesday is well, tuesday. so it can only be a good day, right? it's overcast, but warm and balmy, so i'm not complaining. you can't really complain much when you're wearing bright pink pants. even if you are also wearing your old wellies that are full of holes because you can't really decide what color of new ones to get. plus, it's a good year for dandelions. and is there anything more cheerful than a dandelion?

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do we have to like the characters in the books we read?

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what do we think of flickr's changes?
methinks they took a page from the Google+ design book.

evidence of creativity so far in 2011

after getting that little saddle thing off my chest (which incidentally made me feel much better (and that's actually what this whole blogging thing is about)), i decided to turn to something more positive...so i went through my flickr and made some mosaics featuring all of the acts of creativity i've been involved in so far in 2011. some overall themes...quilts (7 of them! which surprised me a little bit) and food feature heavily. plus i counted eggs and honey and baby bunnies, because although i didn't lay the eggs or make the honey or have the bunnies myself, they are definitely acts of creativity to which i have been party. and i have been making a lot of yummy things with those eggs and that honey.

it all makes me want to finish 2011 even stronger than i started it. so standby, i've got something fun up my sleeve and you can be a part of it.

color palettes: what inspires right now

as christmas winds down (they think it's on the 24th here, you know, so tho' today is christmas, we have that post-christmas feeling) a girl's thoughts turn to decorating. we promised sabin we'd swap rooms with her and she wants loads of color in her new room. so i put together some inspiration from amongst my flickr faves.

1. Winter Project, 2. old collage, 3. Good Folks Strip, 4. sticx

1. ｄａｙｓ, 2. miss Evelyn..., 3. O ultimo / The last one, 4. new garlands

looking at my own photos, i am drawn again and again to the blue palette the snow has brought to us.

now to sit down with sabin and get her to choose.

color palettes: what inspires right now

original photo by elisabelle b

original photo by kristina

original photo by kristina

original photo by ethanollie

original photo of taal volcano by me
these blues are really not my usual ones, but i do love this photo.

original photo by kristina (apparently i'm enamored of her color palette at the moment).
greenish-grey seems very classy.

and my own chandelier - because i adore this photo

check in on your color palettes with the color palette generator. it can be quite enlightening. i'm thinking of incorporating some of these tones into a wintery quilt. and settling on something quite stunning for my new laundry room (because when the house is falling down around you, what's the first thing you build? a new laundry room, of course).

color october drab

 

my october photo-a-day project mosaic. it's kind of funny, everyone else's was full of the flaming oranges and golden yellows of autumn, but mine is probably the most drab of all that i've done.   maybe because i had a 4-day flu that left me feeling weak and listless. maybe because most days were cloudy. maybe because the wind was blowing and the leaves didn't stay on the trees. maybe because i dread the encroaching darkness. i really do. or maybe because i feel a bit grey and drab and subdued, held back and held down. well, that's got to change, hasn't it? because it just won't do. maybe the memory of a little color will help my mood...

we interrupt the interviews for the colors of the moment

it's been awhile since i played with big huge labs' color palette generator i love to do this to check in on the colors that are attracting me at the moment. these are all photos i've taken recently. hmm, i sense warm scarves and quilts on the horizon...and i still haven't painted over that awful pink in the kitchen. i wonder if these colors are among the ones i bought two months ago?

i love the names of some of these: bracken, allports, chelsa cucumber, stromboli, persimmon, sherpa blue, mash, chenin... tho' my ubiquitous teals and greens are here, there are some other ranges sneaking in. what colors are speaking to you in this late summer-early autumn transitional time?