friday loves

big 2 kilo boxes of strawberries for 50DKK in the grocery store:

dipping said strawberries in white and milk chocolate:

tomato plant seedlings in the sunshine:

thank the higher being it's friday...

inspirational spirits need love too

i already expressed this week how i'm complete rubbish at passing along blog awards, as deserving as i think all of you most decidedly are and as appreciative as i myself am of receiving them. however, in a fit of self-improvement, i'm passing along this particular award, which i was given by polly of sotto voce, because it seems a particularly worthy award of passing along. to use her words, "It's one of the most meaningful awards in the blogworld because it honours someone who is incredibly inspirational in her intelligent and witty writing. And by doing so this award celebrates women's smart, strong and inspirational spirit. These women are like Renee: the acorn, a small package becoming a tall and sturdy oak giving more acorns, becoming tall and sturdy oaks, giving acorns…" please check in on polly's blog for more of the links to the originators of this award (these things have a way of becoming diluted in the blogosphere and i feel i would be slightly disingenuous to link to them here when i don't really know them (i am aware this slightly defeats the purpose)).  (dang, that was a lot of parentheses and this paragraph is really getting long.)

when i look through my reader (google's, of course), there are several blogs that jump out at me as the right voices to pass this award along to. if you don't already read them, i hope you will go check them out. they are, in no particular order:

tara at eyeblog 

she has a house full of girls

she cooks

she's on flickr 

she owns an art gallery

she uses those fabulous double colons as bullets

she makes me think and want to be better at well...everything

molly at ohfortheloveofblog 

she's another of those people who feels like a long-lost sister to me

like a really cool one

who lives in cape town

reads murakami

and has a dog

and a daughter

and steals avocados from the neighbor's tree

and swears on her blog when it's warranted

b at cuttings on a blog 

like me, she lives outside her home country

she inspired me to embark on austerity april 

(which is working, by the way)

she reads lots of great books

and she's a belly dancer

just for fun

delwyn at a hazy moon 

because she takes the loveliest walks

and shares them so generously

and discovers interesting new characters 

and has some japanese-oz connection that i haven't yet worked out

but which keeps me coming back

i hope that all of you will check out these bloggers and i hope that you strong, fabulous women will pass this along to some deserving bloggers. and if you didn't get an award this time, just wait, i've got quite a few to catch up on...

thanks again, polly, for this one, it was a good one.

on why i'm all about the lower case

my guest post is now up at turning*turning. i'd like to thank mal* very much for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on my creative space with her readers. and i urge you to all go check it out and do stay to read her blog as well, there's lots of good stuff there!

one interesting thing that happened to me while i was working with mal on polishing the post, was that for the first time, i put some thought into why i don't use traditional capital letters in my blog writing. these days, i find that i'm so accustomed to NOT capitalizing (except for dramatic effect), it's actually a bit difficult for me in my work-related writing to use proper capitals.

i found myself explaining to mal why i didn't use capital letters and what came out was interesting, even to myself, because until i typed it out, i honestly hadn't thought about it before. i had completely unconsciously decided not to use capitals and as it turns out, it was for a very good reason. it was actually the first step in my healing process after leaving my job.

you see, the company, which religiously uses personality profiling and a logic test in their recruitment process, uses those scores as part of their plot to build you into a little ego machine..flattering you that only the best of the best get in to work for them...and you become this very Me Me Me I Am So Great person. it's actually a diabolical part of how they convince you to work 60 hours a week and travel 200 days a year and more than a little ironic in light of the fact that one of the company values is supposedly "humbleness." i realized that i abandoned the capital letters when i began blogging because it felt like a way to step away from that over-inflated ego/sense of importance i had acquired working there.

so that's why although you may still see plenty of traces of ego here on moments of perfect clarity, you don't see that many capital letters.

modern piracy

three years ago in my old job, realizing that piracy was on the rise off west africa, i had a course commissioned for the crews in our large fleet. it was a course on what to do in the event of a piracy attack. we created a combination of classroom and eLearning. senior officers would attend the classroom portion of the course, which was taught by psychologists and security specialists and then everyone onboard the vessels could do the eLearning. we felt it was important for people placed in such an extreme situation to be equipped to handle it. the stress and adrenalin and fear of such a situation are enormous. originally, the course was aimed at crews on offshore support vessels that take supplies out to offshore oil rigs, but was later expanded to the liner vessels on the west african trades.

even as recently as three years ago, inside and outside the industry, you didn't hear much about the piracy incidents that occurred off nigeria and in and around lagos and port harcourt. mostly because the oil companies kept them quiet so as not to encourage even more pirates from flocking there and increasing the frequency of attacks.  you still don't hear much about piracy in west africa, but we are certainly hearing about east african piracy these days.

pirates these days aren't romantic swashbuckling figures like captain jack sparrow. they're poor, desperate and increasingly organized africans from countries without functional governments--e.g. somalia. they're armed to the teeth both with weapons and desperation, which makes for a frightening combination. when people have nothing to lose, they can become quite daring, as we've seen in recent months...with a saudi supertanker and a ukrainian bulker loaded with guns and ammunition being taken and the attempt in the past week to take the maersk alabama, which was loaded with UN aid bound for mombasa.

but now that an american flagged ship with an american crew onboard has been involved in a piracy attack, a situation that's been escalating for months is suddenly in the spotlight. the situation was worsening prior to this, with attacks getting more and more daring and pirates ranging farther and farther out to sea, but it took americans being involved for anyone to seriously discuss doing something about it. why is that?

here in denmark, noises have been made about doing something about the situation and the danish naval vessel absalon only just returned this week to danish waters after leading an 8-month international mission to combat piracy in the region off east africa. the problem was that when absalon caught pirates in the act, there wasn't any way to prosecute them, so they generally took them ashore and let them go. no doubt they turned around, hopped in another boat and headed out after their prey once again. when ransoms as high as $25 million US are being paid by shipping companies for supertankers laden with 2 million barrels of crude oil, it's worth it to the pirates.

some shipping companies have rerouted their vessels around the cape horn rather than through suez, to reduce risk of attacks. they have assessed that the longer route is worth it in terms of the safety of crews and cargoes. with suez passages costing in the range of $150,000-200,000/per ship, this means decreased revenues for egypt and the possibility of further increasing poverty and desperation in the region. piracy has more knock-on effects than one at first realizes.

but, what can be done? and will something be done now that america's attention is focused on the issue? or will the undoubtedly heroic and brave capt. phillips just make the rounds of the talk shows and then there the issue will die.  it would seem to be a real opportunity for the international community to step up and unite to do something that's in everyone's interest, including the pirates. so far, they haven't actually harmed any crews in their piracy efforts, but it's surely only a matter of time...and all of the course preparation in the world isn't going to have been enough.

randomness to clear my head

i'm reading the stern review and trying to digest it. i don't think i can read all 900 pages of it, but even just reading the abstract is taxing enough. in case you don't know what the stern review is, the quick version is that it's a tome on the economics of climate change commissioned by the UK gov't back in 2005 (delivered in 2006) and parts of it are already coming true today (like the bits about the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen). and speaking of taxing, a lot of environmental taxes are suggested in the report. did you know that the UK actually has an Office of Climate Change? i didn't know that, but i think that's pretty cool. in any case, i needed a break, so i thought i'd have a coffee and a blog to clear my head a bit.

* * *

first a random picture of sabin's red converse all stars in the sunset light last evening.

they. totally. make. me. smile.

* * *

and now, a few random things to help clear my head:

: : i have collected 404 word verification words in a pages document (pages is the apple answer to word, by the way). that doesn't take into account all those that are saved in the notes on my iPhone and scibbled on various scraps of paper other places in this house. i'd better get to work on those for balderdash, tho' i've been doing them one at a time of late, so there are a few new ones over there. what disturbs me a little bit is that more and more often they are REAL words these days. i hope they haven't tweaked the algorithm again.

: : i'm making my bullets using two colons, because tara does it that way and i think that's totally cool.

: : yesterday i discovered the coolest online 'zine i've seen yet. it's called discounderworld and you really can read it online and it doesn't even hurt (usually, i have the urge to print online mags), but stacey has really gotten it right. however, if it still hurts you, you can download it FOR FREE in pdf. i have thus far resisted, but that's mostly to save my paper for my monthly blog printings and also because it's so readable onscreen. that's good design, my friends!

: : i have a blog friend named joyce (who i know as ilovejim on flickr) who has a blog called pattern and perspective wherein she chronicles all her fab vintage design finds. i met her on flickr because we are both fans of heather moore's fabulous skinny laminx line. anyway, she meets justjules via my blog and learns that jules lives only 1.5 miles hours (i thought it was miles, but it was hours) away from her (still a good story anyway). how about that for six degrees of separation?

: : i recently stumbled across a blog called turning*turning. i think it's another one i've found through flickr, because mal* was making those cool little fabric hexagons during her commute. she's an art therapist and i will be doing a guest post regarding my beloved studio and what it has meant to me from an art therapeutic standpoint on her blog later today. so do go check it out. and stay awhile to read her stuff--it's good.

: : using my trusty site meter (which was always kinda mysterious to me before and i really only looked at those pretty dots on the map), i found out that the groovy folks at okaygreat picked up moo's thing about my studio and posted about it too. but then, i stayed and looked around and found out that it's a way cool blog/tumblr/design website kinda place, so now it's a regular visit. 

: : i was recently accused of not understanding the struggle that people are going through of late in these times of GEC, especially in the US. and it's true, i probably don't understand fully, especially in light of the results of a facebook quiz i just took which tells me that i have an 88% perfect life. (sigh. and you KNOW how accurate those facebook quizzes are.) but just because i'm not going through it myself, and i'm maybe a little too focused on taking my crocheted stones to the beach, doesn't mean that i can't have sympathy and even empathy for those who are. because i do care. and i hope that everybody will be ok and get through it intact. and not have to sell all their stuff and their soul and their firstborn children on eBay. because that wouldn't be good. i mean think about it, the whole market flooded with a bunch of over-achieving first-borns. not good.

and on that note, i'd better get back to the stern review...catch ya later, lovelies.

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?

it feels like monday

because monday was a holiday, it has tuesday feeling like a monday. and with lots of work to do, i didn't really find time to write one of my usual scintillating, inspired posts (kidding!). but then, along came the lovely thaya from beatnik bazaar (she stocks fabulous skinny la minx goodness and other lovely things in her shop in kalk bay, south africa) with one of those kreativ blogger awards. i'm rubbish with properly acknowledging and passing on blog awards, but am much more appreciative than i let on. however, this one involves making a list of seven things you love, so i'll at least do that little assignment. and i should note that i'm going to do things and abstractions and leave aside the obvious loves of husband and daughter (just so you don't think i'm being harsh in leaving them out):

1.  my studio. i know, i'm very nearly at the point of being insufferable about this room, but i literally walk in here every day and whisper, "i love you, room." and yes, the picture above may look like a cluttered nightmare to some, but it looks so inviting to me...cameras, lenses, a big mug of tea, my sewing machine, some pussy willows in a vase, my macbook pro, a stack of articles beside the computer, lighted candles, bits and pieces of inspiration on the wall, a whole mess of letterpress letters from my dad's old linotype, sabin's little stuffed beanie baby (remember those?) cat, some stones (a whole tray of them), a daffodil i plucked on the grounds of the little castle on easter, inks, brushes. for me, it's all there. when i'm working at home, like i have been today, this is where i spend my time.

2. sabin's riding lessons. having grown up with horses and been sent into the show ring with merrylegs, my dapple grey pony, when i was just old enough to walk, i've so been longing for sabin to have horses in her life. i think they ground you in a way that nothing else can. horses are good for the soul. and she's totally a natural--she sits so well and she's so fearless, it really makes me proud.  we're using lesson horses at the riding school for now but i could imagine a horse of our own on the horizon.

3.  the carpet of anemones carpeting the forest floor right now. and spring sunshine that falls on them just so.

4.  renewed ways of seeing the world around me that i've learned through my camera lens and from all of the wealth of sources of inspiration to be found on blogs and flickr. there was a time not so long ago when i wouldn't have laid on the ground for 15 minutes and noticed these little acorn top cups that seem like magical little drinking vessels for fairies when you line them up and really look at them. i love that i notice things like that these days.

5. that my laundry room looks like a bomb went off in there. why do i love this, you ask? because it means that i'm spending my time doing other things...walking in the woods, making stuff, cooking, playing cards with friends, laughing. clearly we don't ask aelita to clean in here either. maybe one day i'll get it tidied up and we can add it to her list. but until then, i can still get to the washer and dryer, so i'm cool with it.

6.  helleristninger - or nordic petroglyphs. rock carvings done largely in the iron age and which are scattered around scandinavia (most are in norway). we went to an exhibition at a little bitty local history museum in our town last year and it piqued my interest. i want to seek some of these out this summer and see them in person. when sabin was a tiny baby, we tried to see some on bornholm, but the weather was so bad that day, i ended up having to stay in the car with her because she was too little to be out in the elements, so i missed out on seeing some on that occasion. i'm finding myself very inspired by these motifs at the moment.

7. a new blog project. like the julie project, this one also involves another julie, this time, the julie of just jules. actually, it involves her daughter, who is just about the same age as sabin. addie and sabin are both in the second grade and they have exchanged a beloved toy and are each going to show the other's toy around in their respective worlds. it's a bit like the famed flat stanley projects, just with a much cuter subject than those boring flat stanley paper dolls. the girls will learn a bit about the world outside of their hometowns, some geography and about one another. and we've created a new blog to document it (because i didn't have enough going already). it's like modern day penpals. and i really love that.  we sent the above today to addie--he's a little lizard named "buller" that sabin made at school. and actually, addie and her mom were much more on the ball and we received her bird, "early" today, along with some other goodies (thank you jules & addie!!). we've already taken him out to lunch at café le zinc, our favorite cafe here in town.

do stop by and check out what addie and sabin are up to with early and buller. and any suggestions you might have for small learning assignments for the girls are most welcome over on "trans-atlantic learning adventures." (i know, it needs a catchier name than that...i just created it when it came to me yesterday afternoon and that's what came out at the spur of the moment--so any suggestions on that front are most welcome as well.)

thank you, thaya, for the kreativ blogger award and for this little assignment. :-)  and because i'm usually bad about this and i'm trying to be better, i'll pass this little award and assignment along to jules.