friday confessions and some long-awaited ship pictures

in light of the new pope (is it just me or are you also humming don't cry for me argentina every time they show him on television?) i thought i'd revive my old friday confessions (tho' i remind you that i am not catholic - i was always a little envious of the catholics, just having to say a few hail marys for their sins and then going along their merry way):

~ one thing i love about living in europe is that you can wear the same clothes two (or even three) days in a row and no one thinks anything of it.

~ i am a crazy chicken lady. the antics of our chickens endlessly amuse me and i even tell stories about them. in public. the silly chicken that was sitting on 16 eggs out in the horse barn freaked out the day it snowed (it was her on the roof of the little rabbit condo) and didn't go back to the eggs, but ended up very high up in a birch tree. she even spent the night there and it was -10°C! i think she had one of those moments we all get as parents, where for one shining second, we get a very clear picture in our heads of how much work is ahead and she just freaked out at the prospect of all 16 of those eggs hatching. yesterday, i counted the eggs again and noticed there were 17 (someone's helping her out). and now, this morning, she's back on the nest. they'll never hatch, as she was off them for a good 36 hours and it was cold! but there she is. my confession is that i find this utterly charming.

~ frankie is a weirdo of a cat. he comes running when he hears running water or the vacuum cleaner. most cats run and hide, but not frankie. i confess that i find this charming as well.

~ i'm doing the oprah-chopra (that rhymes better than what they're calling it) 21-day meditation challenge. i've had a hard time shaking off a cough (surprise, surprise) and the notion of perfect health appealed to me, so i thought i'd give it a whirl. i have learned so far that i can't meditate to save my life. my mind refuses to be quiet and just let me concentrate on my breathing and the mantra. it flits off in all directions and i keep having to drag it, kicking and screaming, back to the meditation. i wonder if i'll get better with practice or if i'm just not cut out to meditate?

~ i miss how i used to be able to write things that were effortlessly funny. i'm not funny anymore and i miss it. and i don't know how to get it back. am i too content to be funny? or did i just lose my mojo?

~ i forgot all about sharing the rest of my photos from the port at esbjerg, so here they are:

a little ship being repaired in the dry dock

barges

an adorable old wooden boat. and those chains...swoon.

a little lighthouse ship that's now a museum.

rusty and gorgeous. i kind of want to hug it.

the island commander

such an interesting coincidence that the island commander was in esbjerg last week when i was there. i was onboard this very ship when it was brand new and in the harbor in oslo during nor-shipping in 2009. this. exact. ship. it's a PSV (platform supply vessel), carrying all kinds of things back and forth to the offshore oil rigs.

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happy weekend, one and all! i'm off to a weekend embroidery course with artist anne brodersen, together with my bloggy (and real life) friend elizabeth (of landanna).

arbness

iPhone shot from my train journey to copenhagen the other day.

i'm running on a minimal iPhoto library while my big iMac is in for a big servicing (before its warranty runs out) and i'll admit i feel handicapped by it. i usually start a blog post by knowing what photo will go in it. unless it's a rant. those usually just come right out, photo or no photo. but i have only minor complaints today, no rant, so i give you an equally random iPhone shot. i do love that instagram app.

planet jr. no. 3 seeder

~ it's gotten rather chilly over the past couple of days and i'm missing our warm, sunny days already. there was even frost the past few nights. so i'm back in sweaters and tall socks and not that happy about it. but i'm glad we hadn't gotten out the seeder (above) and planted a bunch of things yet, because the frost would surely have gotten them.

~ there was a dying horse in a pen at sabin's riding lesson last evening. the vet had been out and run all kinds of tests and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. but it was clearly in a lot of pain. the vet was going to be coming back at 8 and they would make a decision about whether to put it down. very traumatic experience for the little riding girls to witness. all of them were very upset.

~ one of the joys of living in the countryside is that it's difficult to mouse-proof an old ramshackle house like ours. but i'm happy to report that traps are succeeding where our indoor cat has failed.

~ yesterday, we got our rusty old planet jr. cultivator in the mail from my sister. we'd bought it on eBay, but the seller, being typically americentric (or possibly just unaware that other countries exist), wouldn't ship it to us, so my sis had to be involved. however, that worked out very well, because she filled in some of the crevasses of the package with some fabulous urban decay eyeliners! and now i'm totally sold - urban decay eyeliner rocks. i've got perversion, ransom, binge, electric, stash, mildew and rockstar. with names like those, how can you go wrong?

this is the planet jr. cultivator - one man's rusty bit of metal is another man's treasure.

~ my order of heather moore's fabulous cut out & keep for cloud 9 fabrics is stuck in customs and those jerkies are slow to respond, tho' i provided all of the requested documentation a WEEK AGO.

~ i find it disturbing to convert my life and activities into dollars. a price that seems ok in danish kroner seems really disturbingly high when converted to dollars. i knew gas was expensive, but does it really have to be nearly $11 per gallon?  apparently it does. it makes me want to ride my bike.

~ i think a lot of people are getting fed up with etsy. it seems so flooded these days with crap - either stuff that's not really handmade or stuff that's not really vintage or PDFs of copyrighted material at a deep discount or items using stolen photos. and they're so not choosy about what's on the front page. there was a whole treasury of shipping options on the front page a couple of weeks ago. what? and then another front page treasury which featured a half-used up tin of old children's watercolors (artfully photographed, of course) for $12. really? is that really vintage? and don't even get me started on the people who sells sticks. plain sticks. and the odd tree stump. and then there's the whole fact that they don't take complaints of copying seriously and do anything about them. i did recently put some smaller items in my etsy shop, but i think i may be using just big cartel going forward. if you want to laugh (or perhaps be outraged) about some of the crap that's on etsy, check out regretsy.

and that's all the randomness i've got in me at the moment. i blame it on my allergies. so i'll be wandering off to pinterest now (they claim the app will be here in 5 days, but i'll believe it when i see it).

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if you want to read more about our bees, go here.

and if you're hungry for blueberry muffins, go here.