quiet inspiration

a foggy monday morning. the easter holiday has begun, so no hectic panic of getting the child up, fed and dressed. no dashing to make her a lunch to take to school. just a leisurely stroll through flickr and pinterest and blogs. so tho' i woke up from strange dreams, got the tea-honey-milk ratio all wrong and got yelled at for making the child's nutella toast all wrong, this monday is shaping up to be quite all right. quiet. contemplative. inspiring.

inhabit - a collaboration i found on flickr between kikiclark & moiraandobbie

kathryn clark had been a flickr contact since i stumbled across her foreclosure quilt series, but i hadn't discovered her blog until today. if you, like me, are in the mood for some quiet, contemplative inspiration on a monday, you should make haste to her blog immediately. or well, at least after you're done reading this. and definitely do read about the inhabit project. wonderful food for thought about the spaces in which we create.

kathryn led me to find another beautiful blog called found while walking. be sure to read jamie's post about kathryn. because it all connects. all of these loops and snippets of inspiration and contemplation.

and lastly, before i go to sew something, through kathryn's blog, i was led to this beautiful, quiet, contemplative video of anna allen sewing.

that definitely makes me want to get to the sewing machine.

happy monday.

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the view from sunday evening

the view is outstanding from the porch of the treehouse. the afternoon sun hits it absolutely perfectly. it's soon going to be everyone's favorite spot. the house part took shape this weekend and there's even the beginning of a roof on one side. husband decided to put a roof over the porch as well, because the reality of our weather dictates shelter from the rain. but today, tho' a bit breezy and slightly more cold than you'd like it to be, was actually pretty glorious. sunshine and bird song filling the air.

we made a wreath of evergreen bows and flowers from around the garden and held a ceremonial rejsegilde, which is a little party you have once the roof construction on a new building is complete. i was sent for sausages, since they're traditional at such a party. so we ate sausages and toasted with fizzy lemonade to what an agreeable project it was shaping up to be (that's apparently traditional as well). and we basically just took a few minutes to stand and admire the work that had been done and to look happily forward to it being finished.

i'm pretty sure it's going to be much better than the main house when it's finished and i'm pretty much set on just moving into it. sabin and i have plans for furnishing it with loads of big, comfy pillows. hmmm. i wonder if the wifi will reach out there?

but i digress (what a surprise there). what i meant to write about was how nice it was to participate in the tradition of the rejsegilde. somehow traditions are very comforting, apparently even when they're not your own. it gave me, just for a moment, a sense of being part of a continuous chain of people who built things throughout the centuries. all of the hopefulness and optimism that's actually in the act of building something. it's a belief in it being worth doing and a belief in making something that lasts. and a father making a treehouse for his daughter is such an act of love and caring. making something for her, purely for her enjoyment. using his time and strength and know-how and brawn and imagination and creativity to create a room to call her own. i think that's just beautiful. husband is such a keeper.

try to make me go to rehab, i say no, no, no

elwold and perdy arrived today

that makes 13.

i had to have a pirate one. isn't he precious?

i wonder at what point you have to admit you're addicted? and whether you really mind. because there are worse addictions. and 13 is surely not yet enough...

finishing friday and the week's lessons

since it's friday and i have designated fridays to be finishing friday, i'm working on my nature walk plus quilt today. with the sewing machine breakdown and the market, these beautiful squares have been patiently waiting for me to begin for nearly two weeks! today is the day!

in the aftermath of the market, i've been slowly getting items into my etsy & big cartel shops all week (etsy seriously needs to improve the usability of listing items, lemme tell you). today, the fish went in. if you want small sets of fish, check etsy and if you'd like a whole school, i put those on big cartel. you may find these a little bit pricey in comparison to the clarity birds, but it's due to the fact that they're 100% organic and natural - organic fabrics, stuffed with real wool, so they're a notch above quality-wise, and also environmentally.  my order of heather moore's beautiful cut out & keep line for cloud 9 is finally on its way to me, so items featuring that gorgeousness will soon be available as well! and i'm VERY excited about that. i actually began selling the cloud 9 fabrics because heather's line was coming!

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i thought i'd also take a moment to recap all of the lessons learned over the week, because every week has its lessons...

~ it's really annoying that on twitter there is no way of knowing which tweet someone is responding to. i briefly came out of the closet yesterday (and i'm not even gay, tho' i would totally kiss nigella given the opportunity) because in a tweet response, i mixed up a tweet where i had posted a photo of husband playing angry birds on his iPhone at lunch and one expressing surprise that the american ambassador  to denmark (who is a woman) was from south dakota. and in my tweet, i ended up referring to husband as a she.

~ we had an appointment to go renew sabin's US passport yesterday. the consulate sends someone over to the wilds of jylland twice a year to provide services to those who don't live in copenhagen. sabin's passport expired last monday, so it needed to be renewed. the meeting was in a nice hotel in århus and was very personal and pleasant. FAR better service than you get when you go to the actual embassy in copenhagen, where they practically strip search you and make you feel as guilty as they can for using some of their precious time on your petty requirement of actual services from the country of your birth. in short, a very nice experience.

~ i learned that the current US ambassador to denmark (who we did not meet - it was a vice consul) is also from south dakota. and used to be married to tom daschle. apparently, since she's now an ambassador, she stayed connected to politics after tom ran off with miss nebraska.

~ i spent several blissful hours in the garden last evening. replanting strawberries and helping husband move the rhubarb. and i was reminded how gardening is good for the soul. and that it's the single activity that makes me feel the most grown up. in a good way.

~ husband just called me with a very amusing piece of news that restores my faith in the fact that people do eventually get what's coming to them. and when it happens, it is sweet indeed, tho' sometimes the waiting is rather annoying.

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happy weekend, one and all.

cool places: berlin

i know i've used this photo before, but it just says berlin. hip. cool. relaxed.

i've done my share of traveling and it has, to an extent, made me a bit jaded. places have to work hard to impress me. and i can be pretty indifferent. hong kong - way too many fish heads on the menu; singapore - disneyland; wuhan - industrial hell; chennai - possibly the most uncharming place on the planet; goa - overrated and please don't even mention phuket. but there are some places that i love - you know, if you've spent much time here that manila is a favorite and cape town is positively wonderful. i like barcelona and london is always great. but there's one place that i just can't get out of my head and that's berlin.

i was only there for that one weekend when we had the blog camp there last september, but i find myself positively longing to go back. walking those tree-lined cobblestone streets, the hilarious singles night at the grocery store (not that i'm looking for a date, but still, the whole idea of formalizing the grocery store flirt is fantastic), galleries, special little shops, cafés, graffiti, wonderful decaying ballrooms, great restaurants that are so inexpensive, stores full of JUST MAGAZINES...i could go on, but i think it's actually making me sick with longing.

berlin must be the coolest city on the planet right now. i've just got to go back. soon.

reading and writing and reading and linking

i'm reading jussi adler-olsen's latest crime novel, journal 64, featuring detective carl mørck of department Q, which reinvestigates old unsolved cases. the series has already won a number of nordic literature prizes. and it is well-written for crime lit. i'd actually listened to the first three novels as audio, so this is the first one i've actually read. it's interesting how the voices as i heard them on the iPod, resonate through my head as i'm reading. apparently zentropa has bought the film rights to the novels, so they'll be making their way to the big screen at some point.

journal 64 is a good book, as it weaves historical fact with contemporary events into a very convincing, if chilling, fiction. nazi-like parties which want to keep denmark danish strike a bit close to home these days with the political rhetoric that's in the air.

but i didn't set out to write a book review here and it's too early for that anyway, as i'm only about halfway through. actually, one of the most interesting things about the book is the lexicon of swear words that adler-olsen has either revived or simply made up (fandenbukme, edderrolme, saftsuseme, edderbroderme - a few examples for those who read danish). i keep texting them to husband and he tells me whether they're something he'd heard before or whether they're made up. adler-olsen takes danish swearing to an entirely new level, for which there really aren't equivalents in english. it will be interesting to see how these words are translated when the novels come out in english in may (no less than penguin will release them). it's funny that it wasn't something i noticed in listening to the novels, but i've definitely noticed it in reading this one.

maybe because the book is called journal 64, which is actually a reference to a medical journal, i got to thinking about handwriting (you know, journaling). and suddenly, i've been noticing handwriting. and thinking about how it's often quite cultural. for example, you can instantly tell the handwriting of someone from the philippines. i remember twenty-odd years ago, i so admired the neat, pretty handwriting of my friend natz, and i can recognize the lines and strokes in the writing of my filipino friends today - it must have something to do with the way writing is taught in schools. there is simply a distinctive style that is filipino handwriting. the same with russian handwriting, even if russians are writing in english, you can tell they're russian. there's just a special russianness to their handwriting. i'm certain it's true of others as well, but we don't see that much handwriting these days, do we?

i noticed it again today when my latest jacabunny arrived...kit's handwriting on the package is so recognizable as upper midwest handwriting. it could have been written by any number of people from my hometown. in my own handwriting, i can see echoes of both my dad and my maternal aunt. so perhaps it's also in the actual construction of one's hands how your handwriting manifests. that might also explain the distinctive filipino and russian handwriting styles.

ok, and now back to the scandinavian crime novels...i also recently read karin wahlberg's pigen med majblomsterne. wahlberg is a doctor in lund, sweden, and apparently started writing to work out the stress of her real job. the novel was heinous. badly plotted, badly translated (from swedish to danish) and ultimately rather uninteresting. tho' i am a firm believer in writing to ease one's psychological issues, sometimes people should simply be stopped from publishing. i was happy that the book was only 69 kroner. it's one of those books where i wondered why i was doggedly determined to finish it. when will i ever learn to put down a book that's not good. somehow tho', once i've started, i feel compelled to plod through to the end, no matter how bad it is.  i also wondered how she got it published and strangely, it's not her first. i guess in the aftermath of the success of the stieg larsson books, scandinavian publishers are looking for the next Big Thing.

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if you're interested in reading more about scandinavian crime novels, this blog is great.

if you want bobbaloos, stalk check here.

as for handwriting theories, i've got no links, tho' i'm sure they exist.

a new flock of clarity birds has come to roost

spring in the danish countryside has meant that a whole new flock of clarity birds has descended upon our little farmhouse in the country. i went out one morning and there they were, nesting happily in the troldehassel (a curly hazel) tree. some of them were dressed in vintage finery and many have sparkling crystal eyes. and all of them sang their pretty danish names to me - josephine, amalie, frederikke, frida, ida and maja. it seems the entire flock were girls! some of them can fly home to you in time for easter. just go here.