daily delight - february 20

it's the first time in a long time that i collected a whole series of lego minifigures. but here you have it - series 21. i really like this one all but the policeman with a shield, which seems a little tone deaf of lego in these times. but they likely started development of this series 2-3 years ago, so it wasn't quite as bad back then. he may be a space policeman, but he's armed to the teeth, wearing body armor and has a shield. he's not my favorite. but actually, the rest are so good, it's hard to choose a favorite - the little amelia earhart with her plane, the beekeeper, the ru paul, the pug, the ladybug, the boy playing a violin, the centaur, the aztec jaguar warrior, the paddle board girl with her porpoise, the shipwreck guy with his teeny tiny little hermit crab. even the alien has cute little bumps on the back of his head. i think i like ladybug girl best, but she's closely followed by the pug and amelia earhart. and that beekeeper is pretty cool too. it was fun to stand and feel the bags, trying to make sure i got them all. that had lost its charm, but it seems like it's back. and that's just delightful.

daily delights - february 17

 quite probably my favorite LEGO animal ever. the hermit crab from series 21 of the collectible minifigures. utterly delightful. 

getting my flamingos in a row

i've been slow to get over my jetlag this time. i've been prolonging it by staying up late and sleeping in. days and days of dreary, ceaseless rain haven't helped. i've been curling up with elizabeth gilbert's city of girls, which i've now finished, so my excuses for inertia are running thin. the truth is, i don't really know what's next, so it's kind of hard to get started on it. but i really should be doing more to figure out what it is. but how to go about that? make lists? go for a walk? try to tune in to what my heart says? maybe just get on with actually doing something (perhaps tidying up that box room?) and letting it come to me. as always, i'm impatient, but i have to remember that you always just have to do the work. and sometimes doing the work means giving yourself a few days to do nothing at all. this summer has been a lot. and it's no wonder my flamingos aren't really in a line. well, they are in this picture, but less so in reality. and maybe that's ok for now.

the view from sunday night, which stretched well into tuesday

it's a sure sign that spring is on its way when you spot the first sharks in the garden.

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my pocket notebook is filled with jotted down must-blog ideas, but here i sit, keyboard before me, and nothing really comes out. i'm not sure why that is. maybe it's a lazy sunday afternoon (usually conducive to writing). the grey, cold, rainy, blustery day out there. a sense of contentment that makes me feel too at peace with the world to write. or maybe there are too many things happening in the world that bear commenting upon, so it's difficult to settle on just one.

it's rather interesting how the joy of the hunt for the new minifigs has returned now that i don't have ready access to whole boxes of them. i'm pretty happy about that, even if i do have to pay 7 kroner more per minifig (that's $1). it's a small price to pay for joy. and the excitement of feeling up the bags and trying to determine what's in them is worth every øre. funnily enough, i actually do better when i just grab some than when i try to go for a particular one.

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norway's slow tv movement.

the one that started it all, 7 hours on a train.

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the S.S. United States - still the titleholder of the Blue Riband -
the fastest to ever cross the atlantic ocean in a westward direction. 

look at me, using capital letters.

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smart, feisty pieces about beyoncé's culture-shifting formation.

bitter gertrude. awesomely luvvie. new south negress.

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some hungarian ruin porn.

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WFT!?! is going on the state of my birth?

can you say regression back to the stone age?

wordless wednesday

a bit of tuesday random

i woke up feeling rested. i know that i had long, involved dreams (something about trying to drive a vehicle  up steep cliffs of very loose sand), but it feels like they worked out whatever it was that was going on in my head and i'm feeling calm, relaxed and, dare i say, hopeful. something shifted. a good night's sleep will do that for you.

i had some fun playing with my new little friends motorcycle with sidecar last evening. the sun peeked out for a few minutes at the very end of the day, but the air is disturbingly autumnal for july. we haven't had much of a summer at all and i fear that i will really miss it once autumn starts in earnest. it seems the climate really is changing. it grows harder and harder for meteorologists to predict, at least our danish ones, who have reached new levels (depths?) of sucking at their jobs. i swear they can't predict the weather more than about 5 minutes ahead and even then i have my doubts that they ever take a look out the window. seriously, if we all were that bad at our work, the whole world would grind to a halt.

in my zen, peaceful state of mind, i allowed myself a wander around on freunde von freunden, the marvelous berlin-based lifestyle website. and i find myself wanting to live a more artful, creative life. like these so-called urban nomads in hamburg. i wonder, can you be a rural nomad? don't forget to set one of their mixtapes playing in the background while you browse. it'll help keep that zen feeling...

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modigliani's 1911 sketch of anna akhmatova

"And a lady who calls a great painter a suckling pig can hardly enlighten anyone." - from a marvelous 1975 piece (written originally in 1958 & 1964) on modigliani by the great russian poet anna akhmatova. oh, to have lived then, in those heady, artistic, experimental, avant-garde times of the 1910s.

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some good came of all that wind last week - danish wind farms produced 140% of our electricity needs.

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interesting thoughts on the adult coloring book phenomenon.

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must go back to hamburg before the photography triennial ends.
i especially want to see this satellite exhibition.

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reading this makes me want to go back to seattle. soon.

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scanagram* aka my new obsession

i can't find the link now, but a few weeks ago, i saw some photos of cats perched on a scanner and i decided i wanted to try it. today, during my bunny photoshoot, i remembered and popped the baby bunnies onto the scanner to give it a try. i also tried scanning tobias, but a full grown cat just doesn't look as cute scanned as a baby bunny at peak cuteness does. and then afterwards, i just started scanning whatever was at hand...nail polish and minifigs. there will undoubtedly be more tomorrow.

* with thanks and full credit to molly for the name scanagram.

100 happy days :: day 29

playing some more with reflections for the upcoming spring exhibition in our local creative group. the sun peeked out for a very few minutes today, so i ran out with robots on bicycles in my pocket and took advantage of the puddles. i think the middle one is my favorite.

the latest chapter of LEGO Friendsgate

it seems that lego friends is under fire again. the latest lego club magazine has advice for girls about haircuts suited to a particular face shape and that made a righteous nytimes mommy blogger just a tad unhappy. the website boingboing responded with similar tongue-in-cheek beauty advice for male lego executives. and cool mom picks had a more thoughtful response about the implications that our judgements about "girl's toys" have on how girls think of their toys and themselves. in my view, the face shape/hairstyle advice is a bit out of place in the lego club magazine and someone should have known better, but whether it warrants a whole online kerfluffle is another story. in any case, lego friends continues to have the capacity to inspire passionate feelings on both sides of the issue of toys aimed at a particular gender. but seriously, give me wonder woman any day.

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the paleo diet is also under fire, so what's the next diet trend?

100 happy days :: day 17

i dare you to say that these robots on bicycles do not make you smile.

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hillary's visit from tech support is pretty funny too.

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we know about co-creation, but how about co-housing?

legography lately

i don't know what's happened to my words. they dry up in my head before i can coax them out my fingers, but with the light returning, at least i'm inspired to take some whimsical photos. it's probably also helped that we've actually had some snow. we hoped our lake would freeze enough that we might even be able to skate, but it thawed all weekend, so alas that isn't going to happen. but at least the ice was still solid enough for the minifig skater. the unicorn sparkle fairy continues to be my go-to fig, but i'm also having a bit of fun these days with batman. and getting quite a kick out of those aliens from series 13.

what's helping you through the shortest month?

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i hope these guys are finland's entrant in eurovision.

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it's never too late to discover LEGO, as this blog proves.

thank you, amy for introducing him to LEGO and for sharing with me!

batman and his teddy bear

we've had weird weather of late...one minute beautiful and practically springlike and the next sleeting down small balls of ice (too small to really be hail) between cracks of thunder. but nothing stops the 365 photographer and especially nothing stops batman. especially when he's with his teddy bear.

legography lately

i've been making an effort to get outdoors with a few minifigs in my pocket and camera in hand. i carry around an old pillow that we use on the garden furniture and use it to kneel in the wet grass. the cats often tag along and since they can't really see any sense in what i'm doing, they think i'm there to play with them. they often blunder through my shots, messing with the focus and knocking over the minifigs that i just got all set up.

i was trying to get a shot of the rather oddly stunted snowdrops through her magnifying glass, but instead caught a bit of her reflection. i love how sometimes you don't see such things at the moment of the photo, but only when you get it downloaded and on the big screen.

this forest maiden looks so tough that i'm pretty sure she'd be willing to take out that sweet little deer. i love the deer's reflection, tho'. with the coming theme of reflections for our local art group's spring exhibition, i'm going for reflections quite a lot lately. but there's also an excess of water in which one can find them. *sigh* i will be glad when this grey january is over.

the unicorns are my favorite members of the latest series of minifigs. i borrowed one of unikitty's blue horns just so there would be a difference between them. i like it. and i love the cute expression on their faces.

they had to go for a little paddle as well. everyone is getting in that boat these days. i fear i dropped one of the paddles somewhere on my walk, so i only have one now. oh well, we'll have to make do.

this morning, there were the most amazing beard frost formations around the garden. it seems these bits of sticks were giving off moisture and it froze in hair-like formations as the temps cooled. they were very cool, but very delicate and gone when i got home, so they didn't last long.

the alien rowing team

the alien trooper from series 13 seems to have replicated himself around here. i was rather disappointed at first (i'd much rather have multiple unicorns), but then i decided that a whole group of them could easily take the canoe out for a spin, like they're a rowing team. our weather has been absolutely horrible this weekend - rain, sleet and hurricane force gales, even as far inland as we are. but for a few glorious minutes late in the afternoon, the sun came out and the aliens went for a little row.

husband pointed out that they were going to row in circles. he should know, he's an old rower from way back. but i liked how their little ray guns looked all lined up on the one side of the boat too much to switch one paddle to the other side. pretty cool that they're all lefties, eh?

the theme for this year's creagive (the local art group i'm part of) spring exhibition is "reflections," so i find myself drawn to water. with all of the rain we've had of late, there's a lot of puddles around, so i have no shortage of reflections to explore. i have to find shallow puddles, tho', because that little canoe doesn't float all that well.

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can LEGO be art?

and if so, when?

the thrill is gone

i'll admit it, having access to a whole box of fresh series 13 minifigs and just cutting them all open with a scissors and collecting the whole set immediately, while a great privilege, does not fill me with the excitement i felt when i first discovered collectible minifigures at the grocery store back in the summer of 2013. of course, i am pleased to have the whole collection and i do delight in the details in the same way as i did then - the little paleontologist has a cute bone and a little round fossil and the roller skate-wearing groovy singer is so cute, but the thrill of the hunt is gone. that feeling of excitement of not really being sure which ones you got - of opening each package and squealing in delight or groaning because it's another lady cyclops. the pull of going back for more because there's still one more that you just have to have. i miss that.

it leads me to think that a great deal of the pleasure of collecting must actually be in the search - whether it's minifigs or catherine holm enamelware or antique locks or whatever it may be. the pleasure lies less in the having than in the search. i suspect there's a life lesson for me in this.

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thinking so much about spilling ink's gratitude post. 

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withknown looks pretty interesting.

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it's quite obvious that i need a sous vide kitchen machine.
and it's all amy's fault.

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yes, i am continuing to take a photo every day.

for the 5th (or is 6th?) year running.

you can see them here.

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now this wind turbine tree is quite possibly the coolest thing ever!

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fascinating historical photos of titanic survivors taken with a brownie camera.
and more of world war I, also taken with a brownie.
is the brownie the most important camera ever made?

the view from sunday night or what a week it's been

it's been a full week. there have been tiara-wearing kittens (that got a whopping 252 likes on flickr, which is the most any of my flickr photos have ever gotten).

there were days of rain, and blustery winds, but also glorious, golden light spilled through in between showers, making it ok that it went from summer to fall overnight.

there were more photo sessions with kittens, where i came to understand why they say you shouldn't try to herd cats. they are at their most lovely and irresistible right now. i'm enjoying every yummy minute of them.

there was a bit of early access to the series 12 minifigures, which won't be in stores until october (hence the blurry photo). i've got 13 of the 16 and can't wait for them to be released so i can get the other 3.

there was teenage mutant ninja turtle homework to do. i do love the kind of homework i'm asked to do at my workplace, even tho' tmnt aren't my favorites. this little spaceship was mostly an upside down build, which was new for me. it's also quite a lot sturdier than it appears, which is cool.

we harvested the last batch of honey - boosting our total harvest for the year up to 90 kilos, a much better harvest than last year. now we just need a big box of new honey jars so we can fill them up and maybe even sell some.

and when we weren't eating shark burgers, the weekend was spent discussing the school options. we visited two schools on friday and both have their own advantages. so much so that we've not had a gut feeling that one is a better choice than the other. that's been a bit difficult for me, as i normally rely on my gut to tell me things and in this case, it's told me that we should definitely find a new school, but it isn't obvious which one is the best choice. the child, on the other hand, is sure which one she wants, so pending a couple of questions tomorrow morning, we are going to go with that one - she is, after all, the one who has to make the switch. it's up to us to make the logistics of it work and to ensure that she keeps her social circle intact, as well as building a new one. that one, we're not really worried about so much. probably, we'll ultimately choose the public school, because we pay an awful lot of taxes and education is something they should just get right. and the new school gives a good impression of getting it right (of course, we're currently easy to impress in light of how bad things are at her current school).

and the weekend ended with a long walk with husband in the forest. the rainy weather has been good for mushrooms, both the edible and the photogenic kinds (these are the latter). a long walk has a way of clearing out any last vestiges of restlessness and discontent. and now i'm ready for the week ahead.

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molly has been on a roll (of awesome posts) lately.

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me, probably not making all that much sense, 

in danish, on the radio last wednesday evening.

talking about what danishness is.

(hint: full calendars, booking people two months ahead,

being able to talk to the boss no matter your level in the org. 

and being afraid of conflict)

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i'm liking stuckinplastic

what's not to like? minifigs. life philosophies. lemonade. gratefulness.

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a heartwarming story of love that finally happened after 60 years.

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has amazon gone to the dark side?