rocking out

last week, i got a wonderful little surprise in the mail. an open heart from the lovely blog, recovery from a life not lived, sent me two stones from her parents' ranch and two packets of seeds so that i can grow some of those yummy lemon cucumbers. i've already planted them in the greenhouse and hope we might get to taste them already this year, even tho' it's a bit late in the season. i'm hoping that the greenhouse helps. thank you so much, open heart!!

and photographing these little stones made me realize that i hadn't shared the lovely little flat stones that seaside girl brought to me when she came to blog camp:

i really love them--they're so flat and smooth. and now the little stone treasure bowl on my desk looks like this:

so, as i type and work away at my desk, i'm accompanied by little reminders of my connections from all over the world. i think that's pretty cool.

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i'm off to dublin for a few days, but have scheduled plenty of secrets to keep you satisfied.

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and be sure to check out the new project, across ø/öresund launching this week. it's a new photo collaboration with the lovely kristina. we're nikon girls, you know. skåne was lost to denmark in 1658, but we're working on reuniting them, at least in pictures.

ok, seriously....

....could THIS blog be any more perfect for where i seem to be at at the moment? it's called "everyone needs a rock," and although there are more layers to that phrase (which is awesome), this is a blog featuring...yes, you guessed it....PICTURES OF ROCKS!! people with their favorite rocks. i'm in heaven. i feel validated. i feel it's proof i've not gone mad. i feel i must share more of my own pictures of rocks...

i wonder if there are meds for this?

the eyes have it

once you start looking, you find that eyeballs are everywhere...

by the side of the road

on the beach

on the birch trees

and sometimes they even follow you home.

spring colors

i love the flickr toys at big huge labs. i like to occasionally make a mosaic of my favorites, just to see the trends, because as you go along, you don't necessarily realize that there is a kind of harmony to the photos you're favoriting (is that a verb now too?). usually, my mosaics are heavy on the turquoise/teals and there is a little of that in this one, but i was surprised to see more brightness and more variety to the palette at the moment. it must be spring--i'm clearly attracted to orange, yellow, light blue and green. they must be the colors of right now. they're just so cheerful and lively. for the photo credits on all of these, go here. it's also interesting to make these mosaics of your own sets, because you can definitely see trends there as well--here's that teal/turquoise thing i was talking about:

i spotted another trend in my faves and among my own pictures. it seems i have a thing with sticks and stones at the moment. who am i kidding, i've always had this:

you can see that many of these belong to the lovely margie of resurrection fern and speaking of stones, you should go check out her latest stone diary post, because it features the stones i sent her! she's doing such inspiring work combining nature and craft. and i just read her profile and realized she's a family physician as well! i wonder how she finds the time for everything!?! people amaze me sometimes.

and on that note, i'll get to work so that i can earn my time to play.

now you see it

saturday was snowy and icy and it was steadily snowing in the evening as we drove home from sabin's best friend's birthday party. then, it warmed up overnight and the snow is nearly gone now 24 hours later. what a difference a day makes!

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and the creativity continued this weekend:

18.  felted soap. yes, you read that correctly. i felted a bar of soap for the upstairs bathroom with beautiful rovings bought last year in this etsy shop:

19.  and i also felted some stones that we collected on our winter beach trips during my sister's recent visit (more about that tomorrow):

i love how they look and even more how they feel, tho' husband and our best friends teased me mercilessly, especially when i took 78 pictures of them in different locations with different cameras and different lenses. there's just something special about the heaviness of the stone under all that wooly brightness.

i also made some fabulous bread, but didn't get to photograph it because it was devoured immediately. bread recipe over at just know where you are.

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and on saturday, a whole lot of TtV photos:

hope you spent your weekend on something worthwhile.

5 places i love - #4 møns klint

down on the little island of møn, just south of sjælland, the island we live on, there is a fantastic phenomenon of nature called møns klint. it's huge, chalk cliffs and no matter what time of year, it's a wonderful place to go (if you're dressed properly for it). every once in awhile, a big bunch of it falls into the sea and that's a bit dangerous, but they're pretty good at knowing when the danger is high and they close the stairways then. because yes, there are stairways--two of them to get down to the beach. we counted 574 steps on one of them, but lost count on the other one.

 

these shots are from last february when we went. i haven't been there yet this summer, but looking at these shots gave me a hankering for it that i will no doubt have to satisfy in the near future.

there was a big landslide nearly 2 years ago, you can still see how milky chalky the water is in this shot.

when we reached the bottom of these stairs, our legs were like jello and we had to sit down for awhile before we could begin our walk on the beach.

here's sabin, poignantly resting on a beautiful piece of driftwood.

she's wearing her snowsuit.

you can go any time, as long as you're dressed properly for it.

when we're there, we search for these lovelies on the rocky shore.

they're fossils of small squid.

they're a beautiful amber color.

they say you can find amber too, but sadly i never have.

the other thing we search for is rocks with holes in them.

or with indentations that you can put a candle in.

and then we schlep them up the gazillion stairs.

but the last time, we seemed to find a lot of stone penises.

aren't they funny?