object of my affection: light

i have to thank someone new, urbaniche, for stopping by, commenting and thereby leading me to her blog of the same name. she did a really enchanting this girl post that you should read to start with. but her most recent post was on objects of her affection and i felt really inspired by that. because, as we know, i'm pretty affectionate towards certain objects - stones, eyeballs, converse, my nikons. but ultimately, i think it's good for my currently restless soul to spend a bit of time pondering these things. (aside: the little search this blog button at the top of blogger blogs is really sucking today big time, it's not returning proper results, so it's definitely not an object of my affection at the moment.)  

i've recently become quite addicted to snapfish, a photo service, which i signed up for through being gold on SAS (they're the ones running that contest where i entered the picture of sabin jumping on the wet trampoline (if you haven't voted, please do, only a few days left!)). they regularly send me good deals on developing my photos, which is something i don't do often enough now that i take mostly digital. the reason i like it, other than the fact that having photos physically in your hand is magical,  is that it has caused me to go through my photos attentively, selecting the ones i'd like to have printed. (and yes, this IS about to have something to do with the object of my affection.)

when i'm going to upload, i create an album in iPhoto and i drag all of the pictures i want to develop into it, for easy upload once i go to the snapfish site. so it's making me put my best photos together in one place. which means i noticed something interesting. the light.

light is the object of my affection. spring light, summer light, autumn light, sunset, morning light, candlelight. i love them all. i'm not a huggy person, but if i were, i would give light a great big hug.

i wonder if i would have so much affection for light if i didn't live in these northern climes? it's dark so much of the year, perhaps i'm more appreciative of the light while it's here.

bad genes are good for something

i was just scrolling through the 33,477 photos i have in iPhoto on my iMac (thank goodness for that terabyte of time capsule backup), looking for a particular event (if you don't have iPhoto, an event is the way iPhoto organizes your pictures, so it's kind of a folder in windows terms). and i kept getting lost along the way, stopping to click into other events that had nothing to do with what i was looking for. and i realized there are a lot of folders that i've called "macro" something or other.

because in case you hadn't noticed, i'm a bit of a fan of my 60mm nikkor macro lens. and with the ability to focus exactly where i want to on the D300, i spend a lot of time with that lens. and me being me, i couldn't resist thinking about why that is. because otherwise in life, i'm not known for my attention to detail (a solid meyers-briggs ENTP). i'm a big picture kind of person. so what is it about the view that the macro lens affords that i find so fascinating?

and then it hit me. the macro lens sees in a very similar manner to my own eye (hmm, i guess i wasn't done with that whole eye thing after all). i'm really near-sighted. like one diopter from a dog. my glasses are -7 in my left eye and -6.5 with the right. there are places where -8 is legally blind. but of course, i can correct my vision with contacts and glasses and i do so. but without correction, my own eyes work a lot like the macro lens. there is a point of objects that are very close that's in perfect, sharp focus along a line and it fades quickly along the edges and in the background. i have little depth to my vision and without glasses can only see something that's held very close to my eyes.

so i've come to the conclusion that my eye feels at home with the macro lens. and i have to admit that getting down into the details of things, noticing and really studying something up close, through that lens, has helped me to be more mindful in general. i notice my surroundings more, including the small details that used to escape me. i guess i can thank my bad eyes and my 60mm macro. maybe i'll have to stop trying to get my parents to pay for my glasses, arguing that it was the fault of the bad genes they gave me. it seems bad genes are good for something after all.

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on another note: you should go and check out SE'LAH's beautiful "gift of jewels" project. it's a beautiful idea and it involves getting a lovely card in the mail from a wonderful blogger somewhere out there in the world. kind of like postcrossing, but more personal. it's in celebration of the ethiopian new year, but also in celebration of the community found here in the blogosphere.  here's a list of who is participating already, but you can still play too! just scoot on over to this post on the necessary room and sign up by friday!

can't put down this book

gratuitous lily shot taken in my garden yesterday.

it doesn't really have anything to do with what i've written below.

i'm reading american wife by curtis sittenfeld. and i am absolutely loving it. so until it's done, i find myself wanting to read and not write. and it's a little bit weird because the book admits it's inspired by laura bush and i'd never have imagined i'd love reading something in which characters scream dubya, karl rove and the evil wench barbara bush. but it's really, really good. i can't put it down. so now, i'm going back to it. don't worry. i'm a fast reader, so i'll be back soon.

stacks of inspiration

this gorgeousness arrived right before i left for singapore. it's the latest stacks of anna maria horner's fabrics. i had ordered them and K brought them home from the US right before we left. it was pretty tough leaving them behind all by themselves, but there was no time for sewing on the road. but today, that will all change. an old friend had a baby girl recently and i'm going to make her a bright, cheery little quilt. i'm even more inspired to do so after reading this post on anna maria horner's blog.

are you going to do something creative today?

blowsy and a bit past prime

it's a sunny, but windy saturday and it struck me that i'm feeling a bit like my peonies. blowsy, somewhat unkempt, windblown and a bit past prime. but still pretty magnificent.

note: when i looked up blowsy on dictionary.com, i was pleased to learn it came from blowze which is an archaic term for wench. and i'm intentionally using what's probably the british spelling instead of blowzy, because it connoted the wind for me a bit more and i wanted that.

hoping you have a lovely weekend going, wherever you are...

p.s. nikon rocks the color--these are completely untouched, as they came out of the camera.

what the plants learned at school

today, as you can see, i haven't spent much time here...

that's because the weather has been beyond glorious outside, so i was called out into the garden by birds singing and sabin's cheerful voice and husband asking me exactly where i wanted that new purple rhododendron planted. so i came in the house only to make a big pitcher of fresh lemonade and then to make dinner late in the day. but we ate it outside. and now although it's nearly dark out, we've lit candles all over the garden and will stay out until we can't stay out there anymore. but first, i had to sneak in and share a bit of the gorgeousness with all of you...

in danish, a nursery--as in the kind for plants--is called a planteskole. i love that name, because it makes me think that the plants go there to learn how to behave when they come home to your garden.

and here's a bit of what the plants learned at school...

and then, after dinner, we ate our fill of these...the first of the local strawberries. with sugar and cream.

it would have been a fitting end to a wonderful weekend, but tomorrow's a holiday, so it's not over yet!

note: these photos are just as they came out of the camera. no retouching, no turning up the colors. they've never been near photoshop or lightroom and i didn't even do the little snazzy iPhoto enhance magic wand. nikons are just that good at color.