the waiting is almost over

i wanted to report that i have what i call my sunday evening feeling. it's that feeling brought on by knowing that the laundry is done and put away, the dishwasher is going, the stalls are mucked out and all the animals are fed, you're bathed and ready to read a nice relaxing book before bed and you're completely ready to face the week ahead. and while all of those things are true, i don't have the serenity of the sunday evening feeling at all. because i'm just way too excited to start my new job tomorrow! i feel a bit like a child trying to get to sleep on christmas eve, lying wide-eyed in the dark, imagining christmas morning. hurry up already tomorrow!

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reading this will make you want to hop the next plane to istanbul.

a new month, a new project

one of my worries, starting back to a regular office job, is that i will forget to be creative at home (odin knows i'm going to be awesomely creative at work on a daily basis), so i decided to remedy that by giving myself a little project. i got this little wanna-be moleskine at søstrene grene some time ago and have prepared it with a bunch of list prompts inspired by this pin.

the prompts are from an old one of those 30 days of lists projects, tho' i have adjusted them to fit me and cut them down to 28 so it fits a february project (technically, i think there are 29, because i accidentally did two february 11 and didn't want to try to rip it off the page). it is also because i'd like to get back to the daily art journaling that i started clear back in 2010 and abandoned when we moved because things got too crazy.

because it's good to have goals and intentions, i started off with those. so my goals for the month are: i want to do these daily pages, eat vegetarian (tho' we're not giving up bacon, so it's not totally vegetarian, but more bacotarian), i also want to be healthier and that means abandoning my daily glass of wine while i cook (it will be good for me, right?), i want to get a bit more organized, which is why i chose to stick in the little photo of my pretty new boxes - it would be nice if there weren't art supplies on every surface in the dining room. and, last but not least, i want to have a great start at my new job. i have the rest of the prompts pasted into the book, so it should be easy to spend a few minutes every day, making a little list and playing with stamps and paint and pens and washi tape. so stay tuned.

what do you have planned for the shortest month?

crocheted bits and bobs

as you know, at long last, i have learned to crochet. i actually made this little crocheted stone the very night i learned and it's only now that i managed to tuck in the ends and get it photographed.

the other side of the stone is a bit more freestyle and i think i like it even better. what did it take me, five years to get my act together and learn this? i do wonder what i was waiting for.

there's a freedom in crocheting that i don't feel in knitting. i like that freedom and yet the strange combination of order and randomness. i just free-styled these little pieces the other night and had intended to put them on stones as well, when another idea floated into my head. i'm going to felt some little bowls to go inside and they will be a cover of sorts for the bowl, to add texture to it.

and in a more orderly fashion, i'm also making granny squares with the goal of putting them together into a blanket. it will take a whole lot of squares, but i try to do a couple in the evenings while watching t.v., so eventually, i'll get there. it's so nice to finally begin to use the yarn i've had stashed for this purpose for several years. mostly because using up the yarn you have means you get to buy new yarn!

i'm trying to enjoy my last weekend before starting my new job, tho' today marks the beginning of my contract, so i'm officially employed as of today. what better way than to putter around, being creative while the laundry gets done. here's hoping you're having a relaxing, creative weekend as well.

food and culture and authenticity or don't come near my guacamole with that creme fraiche

quite random food photo that doesn't really have anything to do with the post. other than being food.

just when you thought we'd abandoned our MIT food & culture course, we're back with another installment. this is the beauty of the availability of these online materials - you can do it in whatever time frame suits your mood/schedule. we've made it to section 7, "good food is culturally authentic" and i thought i'd share a few thoughts on that before i actually delve into the readings.

but first, i have to back up for a second. recently someone shared some links to some interesting articles in a comment on a rather old post here on mpc on how racism was becoming more and more overt in denmark. one of them was a rather scholarly piece on racism in denmark, which makes the distinction between old-fashioned skin color racism and cultural racism - which is more solidly based in religion and the nation-state than in skin color. and i can't help but think of this cultural racism in connection with food (tho' the article does not). it strikes me that we have a much easier time taking on another culture in food terms than we do in religious terms or other everyday lifestyle terms. we are open to eating all kinds of foods - chinese, italian, lebanese, turkish - in ways that we aren't all that open to accepting chinese, italian, lebanese or turkish culture. send us your food, but stay away from us, will you?

i actually often think about authenticity when i'm cooking. if i'm making an "ethnic" danish meal - like frikadeller (meatballs) or flæskesteg (a pork roast with the cracklins on top), can it ever be authentic? or if i make an "ethnic" american dish like turkey with stuffing in denmark, with the ingredients i have at hand, is it authentic? and why can't danish mexican restaurants make guacamole that doesn't include creme fraiche? it's just wrong! we have many notions of what constitutes authentic, but where do they come from?

i recently defended my position on no-creme-fraiche-in-the-guacamole by saying that real guacamole, which i learned to make when i lived in arizona, where there is a high percentage of people of mexican descent, does not contain dairy products. i had been properly tutored in the making of the real thing in a place with credibility and was thereby an authority and it was therefore perfectly ok for me to be disdainful of some kind of green milky chip dip masquerading as guacamole. denmark is simply too far from mexico to produce proper guacamole. but what if guacamole in denmark contains creme fraiche? my cultural snobbery does not allow for variations on what is authentic, at least where guacamole is concerned. i would actually argue that they shouldn't be allowed to call it guacamole, but that they would have to call it something else, as their version adulterates the very notion of guacamole.

you can see these are strongly held feelings. triggered by food. we are firmly entrenched in our notions of food culture. food is near and dear to us and it has a right and wrong. and while we are willing to try new things, we still have firm categories of authentic and inauthentic in place and they can be quite immovable and ingrained.

photo from facebook
i wouldn't normally use someone else's photo, but this was too awesome to pass up.

there is a similar strong culture around the danish open-faced sandwich (smørrebrød). danes will put a veritable feast of delicious things to put on bread before foreigners and invite them to partake, telling you that there are no rules. but should you decide to eat sausage or pate before fish or put the shrimp on rye bread instead of light bread, you will quickly be made aware you have made a cultural faux pas. and heaven forbid that you should put a slice of cheese with your ham. that simply isn't done. so despite their statement at the beginning that you can do what you like, in actuality, if you want to be authentic and true to the norms of the culture, you cannot. you must eat the delicious shrimp and egg and herring and sausages and cheese in the right order or risk committing crimes against danishness itself.

i'm not sure i'm any closer to knowing what's authentic. i have learned how to make both frikadeller and flæskesteg and i can even get the cracklins crispy every time (husband recently remarked that i was thoroughly integrated now because of that) and i know in which order you should eat the smørrebrød. but whether they are truly authentic or whether they have quite a lot of me and my baggage (if you will) in them, i'm not sure. maybe i'll go read those articles now and come back with an answer.

buttercup and me (throwback thursday)

throwback thursday #tbt is all the rage on instagram and facebook, so i had to get into the act. this photo is from a horse show somewhere in south dakota (i don't really recognize the place - it could be wagner or it might be platte) in june 1974. i didn't remember this pony's name, but my sister reminded me she was called buttercup. another facebook friend reminded me that she had an unexpected foal named peanut who became that friend's pony. weird how i have no recollection of that, tho' i do remember this halter class (and being very confused about where to stand).

there are a number of things i love about this photo - my little black and red pants. my boots that appear to be way too big. our light green station wagon and flying L horse trailer in the far background. that dark green horse trailer was the very height of horse trailer luxury in 1974. and i love the way the photo was printed with a bonus little version of the photo for your wallet.

in next week's #tbt, i will show you the result of the halter class i was waiting to go into.

getting creative with springbok

a couple of weeks ago at the fabulous leather store, i bought a dyed purple springbok hide with the intention of making a purse similar to one i bought in cape town ages ago. it took awhile to screw up the courage to cut into it, but yesterday, i took the plunge.

i let the natural shape of the leather determine the size of my purse, so it's rather long and skinny and i suppose i'll easily lose things down in the bottom of it, but i'm so happy with how it came out, that i don't really care. i lined it with super soft kid leather, also in deep purple and it has a pocket for my phone (i haven't found a good way to photograph that, so i can't show you). i used the same soft leather for the strap and because it came out a little long and i didn't have a buckle to make it adjustable, i just tied a knot in it.

so as not to let the scraps go to waste, i sewed up a very simple little wallet as well. again, using the natural nap of the fur on the hide. i love how it turned out too.

i have boots that match this, but i need to get the zipper repaired and haven't gotten around to that. i'll have to do so now.

the leathers i'm working with are so soft that i can use my ordinary sewing machine and a sturdy, thick needle made for top-stitching. a denim needle works too. it does make me think that i eventually need a real leather sewing machine, tho', as then i could get even more adventurous.

i had a few other scraps from a previous project and i made another little wallet in another version, for business cards. i wish i'd had enough left for a case for my iPad mini, but alas, the scraps are too narrow for that. maybe next, i'll make a little keychain of some of the other scraps. amazing how your mind starts coming up with more and more ideas once you just get started (i should really try to remember that).

the madness continues - new minifigures from the lego movie

one of our local grocery stores has the latest series of minifigures from the lego movie. and tho' it's less than a week until i start at lego, i couldn't resist. but take a look - could you have resisted?

wild west wyldestyle

scribble-faced bad cop (i love his scribble face)

he's got a bad cop face with sunglasses on the other side.

abraham lincoln

taco tuesday guy

emmet - he's the hero of the movie (as i understand it)

wiley fusebot. he's got an awesome daniel boone hat with a racoon tail.

mrs. scratchen-post - check out the cat hair on her clothes!

panda guy (i really wanted him).

where's my pants guy (i understand he has a reality program in the movie).

marsha queen of the mermaids.

love her blue hair and silver lipstick.

and i couldn't resist a shot of marsha from the back.