vikings and bunkers and dinos, oh my!

hmm, it seems they can help out if it's for their own end-of-the-school-year party. 

a dino spotting in the pathetically small corn across the way.

it's been so cold, the corn wasn't happy.

but a few days of sunshine and it's already double this size.

husband and my cousin try out a viking game.

i swear i don't remember that many bunkers at søndervig strand.

i wonder if some of them have risen up out of the sand.

and a raptor chomps a flower in the golden hour.

and we wished upon paper balloons instead of 4th of july fireworks.

gorgeous naturally-dyed yarn and fabrics at the viking market.
it was too hot for me to be tempted to buy any.

summer has come at last and around here it's been filled with an end-of-the-school year party, a visit from family that ended up rather viking-themed, a stroll on the west coast, lots of ice cream, playing cards, doing puzzles and drinking wine until the wee hours. oh, and a few dinosaurs, just for good measure.  and boy, have the strawberries started to come on! they were clearly happy to have some sunshine and warm temperatures as well. i've been juicing and freezing and quite literally spent hours today picking. luckily, i had a helper - molly the garden cat.

tho' things tend to slow down during the danish summer, the week ahead promises good things. and even more strawberries.

the old man and the sea

i took these photos several years ago and stumbled onto them when i was perusing an old iPhoto library the other day. i don't think i ever used them in a blog post, or at least i didn't have any recollection of doing so. i can't decide which of them i like best.  i hadn't had my camera for very long back then and i'm sure i was using automatic settings, so i can't really explain the difference between the photos, other than that i must have moved a little bit and the camera decided on a different shutter speed in between the two shots. i can't decide whether i like the slightly overexposed one best or the darker one.

i can tell you, tho', that my photography has improved dramatically since then. it seems that practice does make perfect and taking a photo every day for nigh on five years means that you inevitably get better. in fact, i was looking through those photos from the early days and cringing a little bit. but we all have to start somewhere and we have to learn and perfect our techniques and slowly improve. all those photos i've taken have been steps on a journey and represent one of the longest sustained efforts i've ever put into anything (other than gathering academic degrees). i've come a long way, baby. and it will be interesting to see what kind of photos i'm making in another five years.

which of these photos do you like best? and why?

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speaking of photos:

really interesting article and series of photos of male affection

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speaking of the sea, the operation to right the costa concordia began today (live stream here).
here's a great piece on how they're going to do it.
they say due to hull damage/weakness, they've only got one shot at it.

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 interesting review of 1000 years of european history via an animated map.
it would appear it hasn't been easy to be poland.

scenes from a gathering of vikings

it was a glorious, sunshiney day for a visit to the viking market at the viking harbor museum in bork havn. 250 people who spend their summers dressing and living as vikings (if you don't count the campers i saw out back) gathered and sold traditional viking wares - hand-dyed yarns, ironwork, jewelry, bows and arrows, hides and the like. we came away with a lovely bow and some safe-for-children arrows for sabin, a bit of hand-dyed embroidery thread, a couple of skeins of yarn and a lot of ideas. we tried to buy a viking "stove," - handmade by one of the viking blacksmiths, but none of them seemed to be for sale (we encountered the same with several of the arrows sellers had on hand) - they were for their own use and not for sale (making me wonder why they were there with a stall, ostensibly to sell, but i digress). but here are some highlights. i definitely wouldn't mind spending my summer this way...

viking yarn candy - all hand-dyed with natural plant dyes.

clothing fit for a viking. i did wonder if the main audience for many of the stalls was the other vikings

mmm, food fit for a viking - a pancake with tart forest berries,
served in a smart, environmentally-friendly wooden bowl with wooden fork.

more yarn candy, tho' the woman here admitted she was a cheating viking since she had used some dyes from south america and the vikings wouldn't have done that (the pinks and purples came from those).
i wanted to be good, but i did buy two shades of gorgeous purple from the far left.

we will definitely be getting one of these at some point.
tho' oddly and totally against the viking spirit of trade and commerce,
the ones we saw were not for sale.

the tools of the trade - if you're a viking jeweler

pretty shiny beads make lovely viking jewelry.

see, i can take pictures of random people in public.
but apparently only if they're not facing me.

another of those fabulous viking stoves - one of these WILL be mine even if i have to take a welding course myself to get it.

beautiful baskets. and yes, another people picture!

more yarn candy - and look at that embroidery!

a feast fit for a viking.

i definitely NEED one of those bread dough bowls.

look at that baby viking.

and another adorable baby viking. isn't she sweet?

viking inspiration

on our little jaunt to the west coast last weekend, we stumbled upon a little town called bork, where they have a viking harbor museum. we have a long history at our house with viking harbors, stemming from the time we found a huge piece of driftwood that husband said came from a viking harbor and which we "implanted" in our first redo of the kitchen at the house on poppelvej street. and which husband would regale guests with a long story involving the english bombardment of copenhagen in 18-something or other and a phenomenon called continenticus tippicus which was going to eventually cause the island of sealand to flip because of all the heavy english cannon balls deposited in copenhagen and which explained why there had once been a viking harbor there in our kitchen. he usually had people on this story until he got to the continenticus tippicus part and then they started to look nervously at one another. it didn't help that i was often dissolving in laughter already from the beginning of his tale.

but anyway, suffice it to say, we were pleased to find a sight honoring the viking harbor. the little museum was closed, but we could still wander the grounds and snap a few pictures of inspiring things..like three different models of viking fences. i would expect aspects of these fence ideas to be cropping up around our new property in the near future.

and a family flag modeled on these to adorn our backyard flag pole is definitely on the horizon.

and perhaps one of these for the lake? you can never have too many viking boats in your lake, right?

oh, and look, a gap-clad viking is coming our way through the arches as we speak...

secret 23 - husband is a domestic goddess

i actually had a different secret all ready to go for today, but then husband just expertly threaded a needle for the child. with a 6-strand embroidery thread. a task i momentarily thought him incapable of. because even after more than a decade, i sometimes forget how domesticated husband really is. he can thread a needle, load the dishwasher, cook a wonderful meal, paint the walls and ceilings (even especially the fiddly bits where the line has to be really straight), measure and hang pictures so they're perfectly straight, arrange the liquor cabinet artistically, hang wallpaper, comfort a sick child, doctor a wound, and carry a stuffed tiger all over dublin.  these and many other things that are normally done by the woman of the house.

now, lest you think he's rather effeminate for a viking, i can assure you that he does all the manly man stuff too...lifting heavy objects, building no less than six buildings/sheds in our garden, roofing, mowing the lawn, digging, transporting one part of the yard to another part of the yard, gutting and then entirely rebuilding our kitchen (this took a rather inordinately long time due to about 600 other projects going on simultaneously), lifting and removing an ungodly heavy old radiator, building and then tending the green house, ordering bugs online for the greenhouse (then releasing them there, because i certainly wasn't touching them, i hardly wanted to open the mailbox), killing spiders, salting slugs, opening difficult to open jars and bottles of wine, digging a hole under the stairs big enough to bury a body in (huh, what?)...

oh, and he really is a viking. or at least goes sailing in a viking ship on a regular basis. he's in the red shirt and the rockin' gap hat kinda in the middle.

he does tho', have worryingly girly taste in alcoholic beverages. every time we ordered the guiness and the bulmers cider at our local pub in dublin (we went there three nights in a row, that makes it our local, right?), they handed him the guiness and me the cider and it shoulda been the other way around.

but best of all is husband's sense of humor, best expressed here, in the selection of axes he left out for us when i arrived home with the blog campers.

in short, husband is a keeper. and is pretty much the reason that polly and seaside girl decided at blog camp that they wanted to start a new i need a danish man blog. girls, when are we going to get that up and running?