green-eyed monster at the white palace

if these walls could talk. can you imagine what they would say? i can. or at least i would like to try. there were too many people around for me to hear their whispers. but how i longed to. 

look at that crown. it's the white palace's crown. or rather, an old fancy oven that used to heat the room. i fairly swooned just seeing it. 

and there was a not-quite dead piano. i love me a dead piano ever since photographing one in an old mansion along the volga river ever so long ago. 

i almost forgot to look at the art, and in all honestly, it wasn't really that interesting. what was interesting were the bones of this house. i'm not generally an envious person, but damn, did i feel regret that we didn't try to buy this place when it was for sale. it would have been a house worthy of a never-ending house project. 

just look at those bannisters! they had removed any way up to them, but i found myself wanting to find a way to climb up and look around. three stories, four including the basement below. and yes, it's just the bare walls, but oh, what walls they are.

this brick floor. and the possibilities. and again, the stories it could tell. i am so jealous of the young couple who owns it. they live in another little house on the property, as obviously, this isn't liveable and will take a monumental amount of work and money to fix, but still. 

that piano again. sigh. at the very least, our weaving group must do an exhibition here. i can see long, gauzy, colorful swaths of woven fabric draping those walls. now that is art that would be worthy of the space. but oh, how i would love to be the one to fix it up and live there. if only to commune with the ghosts that must be there. maybe they're even tickling the keys of that piano now, as night falls, after all the excitement of all those people walking through today. 

what would great grandma think?

i have a stack of quilt tops that my great grandmother made. mom said she could remember, as a little girl, seeing her bed-bound grandmother, who didn't see all that well, sitting in bed, sewing squares together by hand. it's absolutely amazing to me that she could do it and keep the pattern of the squares perfectly if she wasn't able to lay it all out on a table or a wall or the floor. when i lay out a quilt, i have to see it, photograph it, walk away, move things around, do it all over again. but she could sit in bed, sewing away and make the most beautiful quilts. i'm so pleased to display them at my favorite little museum in connection the what we call "handicrafts days" at the end of the month. i wonder what my great grandmother from salem, south dakota would think of her quilts being in denmark, displayed in a rather alternative way - one that invites people to touch them and look closely. though i never knew her, i think she'd love it. and oh the stories her stitches would tell us if only we could hear them.

a box of stories waiting to be told

i came across an amazing item that sold on a sotheby's auction back in may. it's a 19th century box containing a collection of objects pertaining to the occult and witchcraft. i say "came across," but it's because i subscribe to an esoteric little substack called dearest. and monica, who writes the substack finds the most fascinating stories, mostly about jewelry, but also about interesting items like this. 

whenever i see something like this, i think of all the stories it could tell if you could only listen to it just right. it sold for just over £20,000. a bit steep for a box of whispered stories. i would really love to open it up and examine all the items. it was probably worth the price.

make do and mend

i've been looking since the beginning of the year for one of these, scouring antique stores and flea markets on two continents. it's a clever little darning tool and i saw them first on instagram, under the #visiblemending hashtag. it's like an itty bitty loom and enables you to weave a strong patch on your item of clothing that needs mending. i asked my friend who works at the local red cross charity shop to look out for one for me, but i finally managed to find this one myself. funnily enough, after searching high and low across denmark, and in arizona and south dakota, i found it in an esoteric little antique/junk shop about 12km from home. as i went up to pay, i showed the owner a picture of what i was looking for and he said, we have one and called his wife to help find it! and even better, they were having a sale, where if you spent more than 100kr, then your whole bill would be 50% off, so i got this little speedweve/stoppekonen for a mere 50kr (approx $7)! i've seen them on ebay for as high as 2000kr., so it was quite the steal! i was so delighted and excited, i hugged the woman who owned the shop.

they also had three beautiful darning mushrooms, which i snapped up as well for my collection. they were 5kr apiece, so i paid a mere 2.50kr after the discount. that's about 35 cents apiece!!  i'm building up a collection of all kinds of different darning eggs and mushrooms, in the hopes that i can start up a local group where we can do visible mending together on a saturday morning once a month. it's a small step, repairing the clothes you already own, but a step nonetheless.

my favorite one is on the left and i adore the one on the right as well. but the one in the middle - look how much it's been used! just imagine all of the things that have been darned and mended using it. i'm always wishing that i could tune in to hear the stories that vintage objects could tell. this well-loved, much-used darning mushroom, must be so full of stories. even though i can't access them, i feel happy that i can hold them here with my collection. maybe late one night, if i listen carefully, i'll hear all of the darning mushrooms whispering to one another in the tin and be able to hear their stories.