2021 :: a second plague year, in pictures

january

it started off ok. a quiet new year's with friends, some baking - homemade sausage rolls, cardamon buns, quite a lot of working from home. we were able to hold a couple of croquis sundays before everything shut down in earnest. we bought a greenhouse on the blå avis and spent a saturday dismantling it and carting it home. and our child turned 20 halfway across the world! so we gave her valentino sneakers in neon pink. as one does.

february

working from home meant my coworkers were mostly lounging around on the bed or staring out the windows. i was jealous of them. we had actual snow and enough cold temperatures so that the lake actually froze and though we oddly didn't skate, we spent a whole weekend down there, enjoying being on the ice, grilling sausages and loving that there was some actual winter. a week later, temperatures were mild, so we dug the foundation for the new greenhouse. i started a 100 days of payne's grey project, but quickly fell behind and abandoned it in a kind of malaise brought on by the monotony of working from home with shitty internet.

march

i bought a bright pink sweater and some ceramics from a local artist to cheer myself up. there were signs of spring. working from home continued and it was nice to live in the countryside to alleviate feeling so confined. making good food and baking were definitely things i chose to do to cope. we finally put the windows in upstairs on the front of the house. i bought an unusual color palette in linen for making a quilt. and check out how badly husband needed a haircut - we fervently hoped for the hairdressers to open again soon!

april

a white papa kitty, who was surprisingly friendly, showed up, signaling the advent of spring in earnest. we found a second greenhouse for only 500kr and moved it home on a trailer via the back roads, rather than totally taking it apart. a lot of april went to working on the greenhouses. i'm not sure i ever got dressed in proper clothes - i may have spent the entire month in sweatpants and a hoodie.

may

things tentatively began to open up and we were able to go back to the office a couple of days a week. i realized that i preferred working at home because the coffee here is much better than the swill that passes for coffee at work. the greenhouses were completed and we planted a few things. weaving at the museum started up again as well, which was very welcome. i attended an embroidery course at the museum in kolding. we hung our spring exhibition, but didn't hold an opening, as larger gatherings still weren't allowed. billy, the prodigal cat, made his annual return (he definitely has another family somewhere) for the summer. the swans built a nest at our end of the lake, but alas, i don't think they ever hatched out any babies. 

june

summer days came - we had a department outing on a colleague's boat, which was on the most perfect sunny day. flowers bloomed, the garden took off and we had our annual sankt hans bonfire. husband ran a 4:18:4 mini triathlon and seems to have been bit by the triathlon bug. i prepared the warp for my crazy striped tea towels and husband worked on the siding on the west side of the house. 

july

i finished the rainbow quilt i had made in early 2020, just in time to give it as a gift to friend's daughter who was graduating. we enjoyed the garden bounty that was the reward of all that hard work on the greenhouses in the spring. i made a second quilt, using the funky linen color palette - planning it as a picnic quilt for my work in the exhibition. we spent all the time we could enjoying the garden. i only took a week off, saving my holiday for a hoped-for november trip to the us.

august

life was essentially back to normal. we were in the office again full time, though we all took days working from home here and there because we had grown accustomed to it. the garden continued to give generously, both veggies and flowers. husband decided to extend the house a couple more meters since he had a new plan for where the stairs should be. an old bloggy friend came to town and explored copenhagen in the rain. husband's eldest ran the copenhagen ironman, which was an absolutely amazing feat of which i am still in awe. i finished the quilt and at our exhibition opening (which was really the closing), i set up a picnic, complete with snacks and cocktails that everyone attending could sample. it was a good month and didn't at all seem like it was in the midst of a plague year.

september

i resolved to grab all the chances i could for creativity, starting with a lovely weekend down in højer with my creative group. it was absolute bliss and i even got a pair of green sandgren sandals in a little shop run by a lovely woman who i believe made up prices for each customer individually. i made an artwork of a focaccia with all kinds of goodness from the garden to take along for sharing and we made quite a lot of linoleum prints while we were there. then, a few days later, i went to fanø for a very enjoyable day with my weaving group. then, our team had a much-needed trip to copenhagen together and went a long ways towards repairing the damage wrought by too many months of working from home and a boss who had gone down with stress. the coffee continued to be much better at home and the garden generously provided flowers for all the vases in the house.

october

i attended a gourmet knitting day where i met some lovely and talented knitters and thoroughly enjoyed the company of women. we saw the latest james bond in a posh theatre with reclining seats - the first film we'd seen in the theatre in several years. a hard frost came and stopped my dahlias in their tracks. i brought the mango plant inside, along with all the avocados that i'd been growing as well. my first sweet potato crop was a bit tiny, but it was fun to try growing them. i'm not sure our climate is warm enough for them. i finished four tea of my crazy striped linen tea towels, in time to take them as gifts to the us. just before we left, i found two kittens i didn't know about in the greenhouse. they were absolutely adorable and we quickly found a new home for them.

november

finally, that longed-for vacation came and we headed for arizona and some sunshine and warmer temperatures. it was a great trip! we went to a sorority gala, the asu-usc football game, we climbed south mountain and we saw the grand canyon and visited sedona. it was so much fun seeing husband see the grand canyon for the first time. back at home, we went to husband's aunt's 90th birthday and i played with shibori in the dye pot twice! once with real indigo. i decided to take a new job in the new year and we put in the windows on the other end of the house. it was yuzu time and i got all that i could and made loads of delicious things with their fragrant goodness.

december

december started with the discovery of a charming little gin bar at halmtorvet and two visits to jah izakaya with colleagues. i find the food there so inspiring and delicious! we did a small belated thanksgiving gathering. husband made me a christmas calendar, giving me a new holey stone every day - he had collected them last summer as he spread stones from a big bag we had ordered in front of the house. when he was doing it, i asked him if he had found any with holes and he laughed at me. but he was secretly saving them to do the christmas calendar. he's a keeper. mid-month, the child came home and that was wonderful. we've been making her favorite foods and taking care of all the things she needed to do - like going to the doctor and getting a pfizer booster to go with her johnson & johnson vaccination. we had a wonderful white christmas with snow on the ground and the most sparkling, beautiful frosty walk. we should have celebrated husband's eldest's 30th birthday on new year's eve, but she got covid and we all had to isolate until we could test negative (we have all tested negative multiple times now). it wasn't the end to the year we expected, but maybe it was fitting anyway. 

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i wasn't going to do a full month-by-month mosaic post, but i found myself perusing the ones from previous years and decided that it's nice to have them to look back upon. so, as always, this one's for me. and what's nice is that as i looked back over the photos and wrote the words here, i realized it may have been a second plague year, but it wasn't really all that bad. 

stitches, objects and memories

ever since working on cleaning out our mother's house, i've been pondering things. the things we collect, stockpile, accumulate over a lifetime. the mundane things - bowls in which we serve dinner, glasses for milk, ceramic bulldogs, socks, tea towels...

i had some breakable glasses wrapped in the tea towel above for the trip home. the glasses are cheery ones from the 50s - with a pink check and a gold rim. i didn't notice that this tea towel had a careful hand-stitched repair of a hole until i went to iron it yesterday. and i welled up. mom must have sat down with it and carefully stitched a fine little oval-shaped patch into place. i find myself wondering when she did it. she couldn't have done it today. she's losing her words for things like needles and thread and while her fingers might remember how to make careful stitches, i'm not certain her mind could any longer make the connections necessary to do so. what made this particular towel worthy of repair? it is a nice, soft towel of the kind that are hard to find these days - the kind that actually absorbs water and which is soft enough to clean your glasses on and have them end up clean. that's part of why i used it to wrap up the glasses, i knew i would appreciate using it when i got home.

mom's house is full of objects and we donated, gave away, threw away and burned a great many of them. but there were things here and there that i wanted to save and take home - like these glasses and this tea towel. i'm not sure what to make of my choices. i don't particularly remember the glasses from my childhood. i think they are something she collected at a flea market in the years after i left home, so there aren't memories attached to them. but still, they spark joy (a factor my sister swears by after reading the marie kondo book). and it means something to have brought them home with me, across half a continent and an ocean. i feel comforted when i use them.

it is, in many ways, a situation without much comfort, this losing your mother to alzheimer's. i have been able to read about it a little bit now, but still haven't found anything that i feel like is the book i need. i think i deal mostly by avoidance. i don't call her much, because it brings it to the surface, hearing her repeat the same stories - the relocation of her cats to another zip code (as she puts it), the evil people who took her driver's license tho' she wasn't hurting anyone, the whereabouts of her (multiple!) guns - hearing her search for words and stumble around in her decreasing vocabulary. it's too raw and distressing. so i seek comfort in drinking my gin and tonic from cheery glasses she chose or fingering the mended stitches on a tea towel. and it hits me that the tea towel could have been my grandmother's and the stitches hers. and she also had alzheimer's and was eventually erased. leaving behind a mended tea towel, that i muse over at my own desk in my home in denmark, so far from where the stitches were stitched. and i wonder if objects can be repositories of memory. and if it will also happen to me...

* * *

speaking of memory and objects, matisse found joy in things as well.

* * *

an interesting piece on alzheimer's as a women's issue in the lenny letter.

musings from somewhere over the atlantic

iceland air FI657, somewhere over the atlantic

i don’t think there’s any way to emotionally prepare for this. clearing out our childhood home. the photos, the show clothes, the memories. the realizing that there’s not much there that i wish to have or keep. the clinging. the letting go. whether to reveal to mom what we’re doing. how she will react. whether she will understand. whether i have compassion and sympathy for her. so many questions, many more than answers. and a limbo space, where i don’t know what to feel. anticipation, dread, relief, nostalgia, resentment, disappointment, sadness? all of those at once?

she’s not going to get any better. she has checked out and she’s no longer the mother i knew. if i ever knew her. can we know our mothers? can we escape them? embrace them? become them? what if we become them? shit, what if we become them?

her utter lack of ever being wrong. her hiding of her actions. her lack of attention span. her distractions. what if i’m already her? how to escape?

i look at my hands and see hers. but also mine. we are always a combination of our parents and our experiences. but who does that mean that i am? i look at my handwriting and see dad’s.

dad was smart, sarcastic, a bit too mean at times, he drank a bit too much, loved his garden, was writer and cared deeply about his town. he was funny and competitive and political and i miss him.

mom is distracted, determined, funny, loves to sing, doesn’t listen very well, was never rattled if 8 extra people showed up to thanksgiving. but i suspect mom never reached her potential. was it laziness? or did she just not know what it might be? she loved horses and instilled that love in me. she got a motorcycle license at 60 and a permit to carry at 70+. i miss that brave woman.

they both loved reading. however, i don’t have a sense of what they got out of it. i love reading too, but i don’t recall them ever recommending i read a certain book. i just read what was around the house and anything else i was interested in….from stephen king to tolstoy.

i want a tattoo of dad’s signature on the inside of my wrist. and i want to get it on this trip. i have a sudden certainty of that. on my right hand. the hand with which i write.

taking my own temperature

i have a weird mixture of anticipation and dread. i head for the states later today. we're going to do a major tidy-up/clearing out of our childhood home (therein lies the dread) and i'm going to see the child and she's going to come home with me (therein lies the anticipation). we don't know how much to tell mom or whether to reveal to her that i'm there before we've made a good dent in the project. and i really don't know how i feel about that. it seems like i should spend time with her during the whole of the time i'm there, but on the other hand, it might agitate and upset her more to not be part of the clean-up. and if she's part of the clean-up, there won't be any clean-up. alzheimer's is a bitch.

speaking of which, i just read this piece, where researchers are beginning to think of it as type III diabetes. mom has type 2 diabetes, as did her mother before her and this makes sense to me. now, i must avoid getting diabetes myself...

2016 :: it was the best of the times, it was the worst of times

january - i was recovering nicely from my december back surgery and getting back to work. it wasn't quite full time, but i still managed to spend a week at a shipyard in gdansk. and while frosty, dark january at the shipyard where the solidarity movement was born may not sound like heaven, it was pretty close for a ship geek like me. and since i'd never been to poland before, i also added a new country to the list. and a couple of new dresses from cos to my wardrobe.

february - the physiotherapist okayed me to begin going to yoga and i found a great studio, where i began to practice yin yoga and chandra hot yoga. it was great to feel in touch with my body for the first time in years. the drink & draw girls and i had a creative weekend getaway together on fyn. i ordered a big batch of seeds for the garden. sabs and her friend emma came along with me to copenhagen, where they hung out a bit with me at work and came to the conclusion that all we do all day is talk, laugh and eat cake. some days, that's true.

march - i was officially back at work full time and off to a running start. a film shoot involved a shiny new truck in the scottish highlands and the very beginning of what would be the biggest (literally) project of the year. i tried out my new zoom lens on the full moon and crossed storebæltsbro multiple times. a friend helped us create a little willow circle in the garden - the beginnings of a magical little living place to sit and contemplate the garden. husband's endless building projects continued.

april - husband chopped down our ailing cherry tree, but he has saved the wood and will make beautiful things from it. we said a proper goodbye to the tree which had housed sabin's swing when we moved here and which had patiently given climbing lessons to countless kittens. a photoshoot at the white cliffs of dover (another first visit), tea at the sanderson, and witnessing the ringing of bells in a london church tower were all memorable moments. i took a ceramics class and even managed to make a few things. my inner ship geek was indulged and i even went to brussels for the first time (tho' i didn't manage to include a photo of that in this mosaic).

may - husband made his first of may political debut. the first batches of kittens were born, we attended several confirmation parties, had a successful spring exhibition, and generally enjoyed the brilliant green of the beech trees and lilacs in bloom. there was stitching and plenty of coffee.

june - started off with a whirlwind photoshoot on board pearl and then a dash to gothenburg (another first visit) to film for a couple of days at the terminal there. we celebrated midsommer with wish lanterns, enjoyed the kittens, made art and watched sabin "graduate" from her efterskole. so bittersweet - as she loved her year there and grew so much both inside and out. our dark blue bricks arrived and they matched the ship!

july - found me at a shipyard in bremerhaven, where we lengthened a ship. yup - they cut it in half floated in a new bit, put the front back and welded it all together. the garden began to produce in earnest, giving us the first sweet carrots and broad beans for our favorite broad bean hummus. kittens and berries and poppies made it seem like summer. a quick day's getaway to fanø, where we rented bikes and ate bakskjuld (dried, smoked fish) in the sunshine.

august - we sent the child off to my hometown in the states for a year of high school in the early days of august. her friends and sisters came along to the airport to say goodbye. i flew off the same day to check on the progress of our big project. then there was a dash down to dover for a drone shoot in perfect weather. mid-august saw the reveal of our very big lego ship - so big it's a world record! then i came home to enough plums to make a tart and cows in the pasture. we had a team getaway to hamburg that made for some very nice days.

september - added two new countries to the list with a trip to the baltics. i'd been in lithuania a few years ago, but never vilnius, which is a gorgeous city that i definitely want to go back to. then i added latvia and estonia as well - driving a good 1200km in total over a week, chasing the world's biggest lego ship on her tour. when i got home, we sent our pigs to the butcher and filled the freezer and the freezers of all of our friends for the winter. and as always, i enjoyed the company of cats on my blissful weekends at home in the countryside.

october - lego loomed large in october with visits to lego world in utrecht and brick live in birmingham. i went to more lego events this year than when i worked for lego! and it was very healing. moments when i wasn't traveling were spent in the garden - our late raspberries were producing and we ate kale by the colander full. molly is my garden cat and helps me whenever i'm there. i made a small batch of ruby red jelly from the entire harvest from the crab apple tree. i really feel my life these days affords me the best of both worlds...spending the week in copenhagen or traveling and my weekends at homes with husband, cats and the garden. it's bliss, i tell you.

november - the november days were dark. i stayed home the day after the election, sick of heart, curled in the fetal position in tears of disbelief. i vowed to wear black the rest of the month, but had to admit that most of my wardrobe is dark blue. and november wasn't all sad, as our ship visited trafalgar square and i went on a filming mission to paris (my first time there). i ended the month with the best night's sleep i'd had in months on board ark dania, as we made another film there. there was also great comfort in charlie's sweetest batch of kittens yet. oh, and in the states, the child got her driver's license!

december - the comfort of kittens. christmas and anniversary parties, the culmination of a whole year's efforts. the highest highs and the lowest lows. seeing the child and spending christmas with her was wonderful. a last christmas with mom knowing our names, while i wanted it to be wonderful, in the end it wasn't. it was heart-breaking and painful and so very hard. 2016, you definitely had a cruel side. but it must mean that 2017 can only be better!

it's all about the food

a note actually sent to my sister a few days ago...posting it here to give you insight into how my brain functions. and also to serve as grocery list/memory, since this blog is where i keep my memory.

and here is the mail in its entirety (with capital letters stripped for the blog and slight edits for the sake of humor):

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anyway, I was pondering our menu for the cabin.

we should try one of those local dive burger joints the night we get there.

december 24:

breakfast: if we're going skiing, something quick - i saw a yummy-looking overnight french toast bake thing that someone posted on FB, making it the night before means we pop it in the oven, eat and run. At the speed of panicked turtles.

dinner:
- oyster stew
- nice sandwiches with good bread (that asiago bread you mentioned sounds good, but we can also make bread - we will need posh cold cuts/nice (read: not iceberg) lettuce, tomato, aioli, fixins to go with them)
- risengrød (i have already bought rice, which i'll bring along) with cinnamon sugar and butter for the nisse and oyster-stew haters and to have something danish for the child and her far.
- snacks to graze upon: bacon-wrapped dates, veggies/dip, possibly some nice fruit sliced up.
- potato leek soup
- croutons/oyster crackers
- wine, port, cocktail fixins

- hot chocolate, hot toddies and christmas cookies/candy - we can set the kids to making candy/cookies, child labor is underrated today


december 25:

breakfast:
- you are the waffle queen, so I place you in charge of this, but we need bacon and syrup and possibly some kind of fruit compote and whipped cream to accompany our waffles.
- also, mimosas, because it's obvious that we need to start drinking early. i can be in charge of the compote.

dinner:
- beef wellington
- green bean casserole
- hasselbagt potatoes or flødekartofler
- a christmasy salad (think citrus fruit, red cabbage, pomegranate and black currant vinegar)
- kale? spinach? you can never have too much of either of those
- sauce (husband is in charge, because it will help him over/provoke his PTSD over the first thanksgiving he came to the states and was placed in charge of the gravy)
- dessert? cranberry tart with white chocolate (see pinterest)
- risalamande (husband wants this traditional danish christmas dessert and I'm sure S will too)
- nigella's log-looking roulade (see above)

- wine, port, cocktail fixins

snacks: chex mix, more bacon-wrapped dates (you can never have too many), olives, cheese, veggies, dip (there will be whining if we don't have snacks)

december 26:

breakfast: ? (i'm on strike.)

packed lunch: big loaf of bread that we hollow out and stuff all of the leftovers into, then slice into slices to be eaten at lunchtime.

that's what i've got...

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what will you eat at christmas?

2015 :: another year, another 365 project

taking a photo every day is just ingrained in me at this point, it's part of who i am. and i'm grateful i've continued to do it. looking back on this year, it felt darker and sadder than it appears in the photos. dad's death the previous november and the disappearance of my wonderful job after only one year were tough blows and it felt, for much of 2015, like i've been in mourning, and i suppose i have. top it off with the intense pain of a sudden back problem and subsequent surgery and it felt like the longest year of my life. but, my photos of the year, overall, are bright and cheerful. and that somehow makes it less heavy here at the end of the year. it's like the darkness is lifting. and that fills me with hope for sweet '16 - 2016.

january 2015

the year, as it always does in denmark, started with fireworks. and i can see that towards the end of the month we had actual snow! i didn't remember that. i was clearly in minifigure mode and they lend quite a lot of whimsy that i don't recall feeling at the time. but i must have been seeking it and taking comfort in it on some instinctive level.

february 2015

i found that royal typewriter on husband's favorite auction site and had to have it. we had one just like it growing up and it somehow, the clack of those green keys became connected to my dad in my head and i just needed it. as i recall, it went for a song, but i spent more than twice the price on the bridge getting there and back to pick it up. my old iMac gave up the ghost and i needed a new one. that was a definite bright spot, as there's nothing like a new apple product. other bright spots were time spent art journaling and in the company of cats.

march 2015

the light began to return in earnest. i went around with the sparkle unicorn fairy in my pocket, still obviously seeking some glimmer of magic. for my birthday, i got a chemex coffee maker and i'm convinced it makes the best, cleanest, smoothest coffee.

april 2015

april began with a trip to hamburg that got extended by a day and an unexpectedly lovely experience in a charming little hotel overlooking the otherwise seedy reeperbahn. we began working in the garden and we put the first of many coats of red paint on the kitchen floor. we had a batch of baby bunnies as well, because spring. a footbridge in sweden was named for my late father-in-law. that last photo? it's my precious frieda's pretty feet, perched on the edge of the sink, waiting for me to turn the water on for her. wow, i miss that.

may 2015

oh, the glorious color of green of a newly sprung beech forest. there's no better green. we hunted and found, at last, two pairs of the ferrell williams adidas - one for me and one for sabs. the first kittens were born and the glorious yellow rapeseed fields were in full bloom. an artist friend began to paint hens on our kitchen island because the red floor was finished at last. it was a rather glorious spring, i realize now, looking back on it. i was also super busy with my freelancing job, but oddly, that doesn't show at all in this mosaic. perhaps i was already distancing myself from the creeping feeling that lego had pockets of nastiness and i had managed to stumble into several of them.  i didn't realize it at the time. or perhaps i did and that's why i don't have any photos of the place.

june 2015

june was filled with kittens and lilacs and parties and visits and a couple of fun photoshoots. i seem to remember it as more rainy and dreary than it appears to have been. there was a danish election and the government changed from left to right (tho' the right is called left. don't ask.) and from slightly more forward-thinking to much, much more xenophobic and bigoted and even unfriendly to the environment. so disheartening.

july 2015

after our rather cold early summer, the strawberries finally appeared in july, a good couple of weeks later than usual. but on the bright side, they lasted longer. i made 20 liters of strawberry juice and filled the freezer with countless bags. we also ate strawberries and cream every night until we couldn't eat any more. i made strawberry ice cream and strawberry sorbet. and once the strawberries were done, the red currants began. our artist friend finished painting the kitchen island with whimsical chickens and a friendly fox. the first veggies appeared in the garden and the greenhouse.

august 2015

i was obviously a little obsessed with that little dinosaur in august. he was small and easy to keep in my pocket. the kittens were growing up and they went off to give an injection of new blood to a friend's barn. we made yet another shopping trek to hamburg (that was becoming a theme). sabin started at her efterskole (a kind of boarding school, emphasizing gymnastics).  it was a very good decision to send her there. she is thriving and growing so very much. oh, and there was that taco truck coming to town (well, to billund, which i will generously refer to as a town) - with real corn tortillas. heaven. a welcome visit from a fellow legographer rounded off a pretty good month. at the end of august, after coming in first runner-up for a new job in lego for the third time, i decided to look for jobs elsewhere, including copenhagen and on august 28, i applied for the job that i would get back in the shipping world.

september 2015

the visit from xxsjc prompted me to think i needed some vintage lego fabuland characters, so i went to ebay and found some. they are fun to photograph. the new minifig series came out and i bought a whole box. that was very popular when we went to our yearly family crayfish party in sweden. a neighbor called and said she had a whole bucket of extra porcinis she'd picked that afternoon. i oven-dried them to flavor winter's sauces. the plum tomatoes were going gangbusters in our greenhouse and i oven-dried a bunch of those well. most of my time was spent at our new library, painting a mural in the children's section and making coffee for everyone. i also painted a table for the teen/tween section with that magical annie sloan chalk paint. i definitely want to work with that again. a couple of job interviews and, one month after i applied, i landed that job in shipping.

october 2015

the magical amanitas came out, telling us it was really autumn. we celebrated my new job contract with champagne. and after being pulled back and forth through the ringer with lego and their horrendously slow and unprofessional hr practices, it was so nice to encounter a professional organization that could get the job done. our new library/"culture house" opened with a big party. more than 500 people came. i had arranged a quilt and handiwork exhibition as part of it and talked to so many wonderful people with wonderful stories that evening. my new job, even before i started, sent me and husband and sabin on a minicruise to oslo to "experience the product." it was pretty great! charlie had four kittens! her cutest batch yet. i started my new job, but only ten days in, i was knocked flat by a disc prolapse and experienced some of the worst pain of my life.

november 2015

most of my november was spent lying in bed (at least i had kittens). i couldn't stand upright for more than 5 minutes and walking, even just out to the kitchen to make a cup of a tea was a pretty overwhelming challenge. i spent a couple of hours in an mri machine and countless more consulting doctors and physical therapists. after getting somewhat the right cocktail of pain meds, i went back to my new job (which was thankfully very understanding) for as many hours as i could take. i even slipped up to the kusama exhibition at louisiana one evening, when i was in need of soul-soothing after an awful bullying letter that came out of the blue. some good friends came to my house and cooking a thanksgiving feast. i unexpectedly lost my precious frieda.

december 2015

december brought a new camera - a fuji x-t1 mirrorless camera. it's for work, but i took a load of pictures around home to get acquainted with it. i miss the multiple focus points of my beloved D300, but overall, it's a good one. i had back surgery december 4 and spent ten days recovering. i did go back to work and it went well, but it required a lot of energy. i even flew to amsterdam and back and sailed from there to newcastle and back and did pretty well. the worst i ended up with was a christmas cold. the kittens all found new homes and things have gone back to normal around here on the cat front, aside from the gaping hole left by frieda's absense. there's one ginger ninja sleeping at my feet as i write this and charlie, our little white mama kitty is resting at my side in relief that her mothering duties are over for now.

another year winding down. and while it felt like it was mostly lows, looking back through these photos, i can see that it wasn't. the tide of sorrow has turned, i'm quite literally on the mend (both my back and my wounded-by-lego sense of self) and looking forward to what 2016 has to offer.

how will you ring in the new year? with friends? with a party? with champagne? oysters? in a crowd? with fireworks? or just relaxed around the table with candlelight, cocktails, some good food and friends? we're definitely choosing that last option.

2014 was an eventful year

january 2014

i started a new knitting project (a blanket for my mom and no, it's not finished. i got knitting-induced carpal tunnel and stopped working on it.). my 6-month wait for the job at LEGO was finally over. i learned to crochet at a blissful beachside drink & draw. sabin turned 13. and i spent a lot of time with cats.

february 2014

february brought the actual start of my new job and whole lot more LEGO into our lives, but there was still time in the kitchen and for daily meditative photos. the crocheting continued, as that was less demanding on my wrists. the first of spring's stedbiderrogn (a fish roe that's a sure sign of spring in these parts) showed up at the fish guy towards the end of the month. we saw The LEGO Movie and built some of the sets from it.

march 2014

march brought with it the returning light and snowdrops in the garden. and with sabin's little p&s nikon, a first proper shot of the moon. it also meant a work trip to london. my first work-related trip in a number of years and that was most welcome. it's also when i met the amazing group of people surrounding the LEGO Space book. what a lot of creativity and good times began there in london!

april 2014

april was baby animal time around here - we got bacon & bacon, our first pigs and fell a little bit in love with them. there were baby bunnies and a gorgeous moon. sabin chose to be confirmed (after a little private baptism ceremony, since she hadn't been baptized as a baby).

may 2014

may always brings the fields of rapeseed flowers. they just so signal the beginning of danish summer to me. our strawberries were in bloom and we picked violets to make cordial. the pigs grew quickly and were ever-so-charming. at work, i got to assist behind the scenes at a video shoot!

june 2014

june brought mom to denmark to attend sabin's confirmation party. the weather was perfect and glorious and a truly wonderful day was had by all. the strawberries were in full swing and we lived an outdoor life in the glorious weather.

july 2014

july was the month of kittens! there was also a fun visit from cousin emily and we hated to see her go. and at the end of the month, the culmination of the project started in march - with the release of the LEGO Ideas Exo Suit in london. after the work, there was a little time for play in london as well.

august 2014

in august, bacon & bacon were growing and had reached their slaughter weight (and then some), so we reluctantly had them made into actual bacon. it was a bittersweet moment, but the one we had been working towards since we moved to the countryside. and once we tasted the bacon, we couldn't be sad anymore. we will definitely be getting pigs again come spring! the kittens were at their cutest and so we had a lot of kitten photoshoots! there was a trip (or two) to the west coast - for the tall ships regatta in esbjerg and to an art museum with friends (and their dog). there was a big sale of all of the things from the local kulturhus and we got lots of amazing stuff for a song!

september 2014

in september, things settled down in the golden light and the days were filled with raspberries and museum visits and games and yes, more kitten time. the iPhone 6 came out and mine arrived as one of the first! years of loyalty will do that for you.

october 2014

on october first, i headed off for a wonderful work trip to seattle. after seeing old friends and making loads of new ones, i continued to new york city! my first time! there i also saw many old friends and new and had an amazing time working with fans at new york comic con. i was exposed to the pleasures of upmarket perfumes, walked the the entire length of the highline and spent a blissful afternoon in brooklyn. when i got home, we outfitted a new dining room and at long last, hung a lot of pictures that hadn't been up since we were in the old house. in all, a very good month.

november 2014

november started well, with an amazing salon evening at the local library and another visit from emily. but then an emergency trip to say goodbye to my dad came into the picture. it was bittersweet, for sure, but we also laughed so much at the many stories of his wonderful, long life that was so well-lived. i rounded out the month with a world record for largest video game diorama (17.1m2) at brick2014 in london.

december 2014

and december was spent sending out surprise packages of LEGO goodness to the volunteers from the event in london. a task which truly and thoroughly brought me joy. to package up a box full of things that you know that someone will love as a gesture of gratitude must be one of the most satisfying things a person can do. there was also a lot of Bionicle fun, with the winding down of the battle for the gold mask and choosing the winners from over 1800 entries worldwide. and after that, christmas with family with all that entails - games, laughter, presents and way too much food! what a way to end the year. you've been a good one, 2014, but i can't wait to see what 2015 brings.