"i" is for inspiration

 eyeball "i"

michelle boettcher 

1990

a couple of weeks ago, i asked willow to give me a letter so i could be part of her letter-related meme. she assigned me the letter "i" and i immediately thought of the artwork above, which was done by my friend michelle, who we affectionately call michellea, who i worked with twenty years ago during college at a daily newspaper. well, michellea managed to locate her brilliant eyeball "i" collage and photograph it for me, so now i can write this post.

the letter "i" built entirely out of eyeballs cut from magazines is, to me, totally inspired. the alliterative marriage of "i" and "eye" in the form of a lower-case "i" speaks far beyond the simple letter and all those  disembodied eyeballs. the very notion of self, of "I" is there as well. the hundreds of eyeballs speak to a self constructed by how we see and are seen. i always thought it was such a powerful work of art. i felt michellea had captured some essence that was at once comforting and disturbing and in which i could almost literally feel it looking directly into my soul. i always wished that she had made it for me.

that christmas, michellea gave me a different collage artwork, the "i" was her own. it was a collage made of magazine clippings as well--and it captures perfectly who i was at the beginning of the 90s. it's made up of repeated versions of my name, one colored in purple, because i was crazy for purple then. and the rest made up of all of the pop culture references and news items of the time--madonna, the first president bush, things russian, things pageanty, television shows. i put it away when we packed up the house for our remodeling project and i can't find it at the moment, but i'll stumble onto it one day and scan it and share it, because i still have it, a sort of snapshot of who i was during a given era.

but, back to the letter "i." as i say in my title, "i" is for inspiration. it's also for innovation--a word that's been overused in a business context and lost some of its meaning. but innovation, as in "introducing novelties, making changes in anything established, introducing something new," that innovation is powerful. and as i scour the wonderland of inspiration that is the internet for things which provoke my artistic imagination and my muse, i find that i most often try to innovate rather than imitate to make those sources of inspiration my own when they end up in my art.

this week, i've been inspired by resurrection fern. i first visited when margie did an interview of melissa  from tiny happy, one of my other sources of inspiration and where i go when i want/need a feeling of peaceful calm. but, i started going back again and again and basically just lurking, never leaving a comment (i felt a little unworthy for some reason). margie often interviews other artists as well as sharing her own work and sources of inspiration. well, this week, i decided that i had to check out her etsy shop  and i was lucky enough to be there at the right time to score one of her lovely covered stones, as well as one of her sweet merfish. i couldn't believe how quickly they came to denmark from canada--i think i ordered on tuesday and wednesday and they arrived already saturday--so this is my very stone and my very merfish, photographed by me on the cobblestones in front of my house.

i've long had a thing about stones and we have many of them around the house, gathered on beaches all over the world. i even have a couple from a beach in oregon that my grandmother gathered thirty some years ago. so you can imagine i've had my share of overweight luggage fees because of schlepping stones back home from my travels.  i really love what margie has done with these stones. it's like she sees something in them and it's called forth by her crocheting. i get the feeling that the little flat stone WAS a merfish and margie saw that and just gave him his tail. these are THAT wonderful. and i don't know how to crochet, but i feel that having them near me on the shelf in my studio will spur some creativity in me in some way that i don't yet see. i think it will be something to do with combining natural and manmade materials, but i guess time will tell. but already, i made it a couple of friends--i felted some of the many stones that are lying around the house:

i saw felted stones last year on etsy and i can't locate the shop again, it was too long ago, i guess, tho' i vaguely recall it was based in the netherlands. i had ordered some beautiful rovings to use for felting, also nearly a year ago, but it took having this little resurrection fern merfish to push me to do it. for the inspiration to come forth. sometimes you just have to wait for these things to happen. i'm learning that.

other bits of inspiration i spotted this week (on etsy or flickr, or design for mankind, among others) are as follows. i'll be very interested to see where they take me:

tiny little houses seen at little red door on etsy

and these cards:

seen at morris & essex on etsy

these fabulous hand-carved stamps by geninne spotted on flickr:

check her blog for even more beauty and inspiration!

and she sells gorgeous things on etsy.

and this, which amanda pointed me to at sundance :

string theory quilt 

i'm so gonna be making something like this

and andrew moore's fantastic photos of russia which the lovely and talented and very inspiring tangobaby pointed me to not long ago:

and i'm finding inspiration in words as well, words like these:

• this hilarious list of 25 random things at the grass is sort of greener.

and that pretty much does it for the letter "i," because it's taken forever to put all those i's in bold.

this girl...

gillian at indigo blue wrote a wonderful "this girl" post about herself and asked readers to play along should they so desire. i'm a rather new reader of indigo blue, but as my sister always says to me, "it always comes back to you," so it feels like this game is a natural one for me to play along...

this girl is out of her element yet entirely at home. she is unsure but comfortable. at ease in her skin, but doesn't really know her own contours. she's navigating her topography, filling in the pieces as she goes along. she doesn't know the way, but is sure there is one.

she is searching, striving. wanting, always wanting. more knowledge, more input, more inspiration. more crocheted stones. more gadgets. more laughter. she's curious and open yet strangely closed and definitely opinionated. she's judgmental. she's live and let live. she loves to be with people, but just wants to be left alone. she's a mass of contradictions wrapped into one skin.

when she gets hold of an idea, she embraces it fully. she's obsessed with eyeballs. but it's because she's working on seeing. seeing the world around her in new ways (the camera lens helps this). she loves to wrap herself in mythology, which is why it's odin's eyeballs in particular that appeal... mythological sacrifice at the alter of knowledge. a prayer to sofia, the divine wisdom. (and now she's mixing mythologies too.)

she wants to be good, but she doesn't always achieve that. she's snarky and crabby and short with those she most loves. she's mean but generous. she procrastinates with blinding efficiency. she's not always a great mom. but she is constantly in awe of the little person she helped create. she worries about the world that little person will inherit and how to equip her for that task.

she jumps in with both feet and asks questions and figures out the logistics later. there rests within her a feeling that things will work out how they're supposed to. she strives to see. and learn. and seek. and love.

at times, she has a sense of being totally in the zone. she has no control of that feeling and has no idea how to make it happen (but knows that a great outfit helps). in those moments, she breezes in and brings with her a force of energy that's fairly beaming off of her and she can actually see its effect on people. during one of those times, someone once said to her, "you are like cocaine." she liked that very much.

she's always been one of the guys in her own mind. this has mostly been a good thing, but has sometimes gotten her in trouble.

once she's decided someone is stupid or not worth her time, it's totally over for her and that person. she can't really even be nice anymore. it isn't very fair. but she knows it about herself.

she is pedicures and fake eyelashes. she's natural, locally-grown organic produce. she's posh hotels and backpacking it on a balkan train. she's hugo boss suits and flannel pjs all day. she's a midwestern girl. she's european. she's sushi. she's tropical fruits on a philippine beach. she's pork rinds on friday evening. she's gold lounge and the first one off the plane. she's at home everywhere and nowhere. she's a coach bag and H&M dress.

she's moscow, not st. petersburg. she's nikon, not canon. she's white chocolate, not dark.

she's an avid reader. a writer. a photographer. an artist. she's finding her place.

she is mostly chaos. a force of nature. evolving. becoming. a bee charmer.

* * *

wow, that was fun and really liberating to write in 3rd person. you should try it too.

when one thing becomes another

husband and i went for a walk in the woods on sunday. our real purpose on such a walk is what we like to call forestry. because we always spend some time liberating small beech trees to bring home for our hedges. we're thinning them out, helping the forest, you know, forestry. husband is making a labyrinth in front of our house (we hate being like the neighbors, you see) and it requires quite a lot of beech hedge. we don't mind waiting for it to grow up, so we bring home really small saplings from our forest walks. you can see the beech trees above, they're the ones with the brown leaves that don't fall off 'til the new ones push them off in spring. the ones you can see in the photo are larger than the ones we take, those are like only a foot high.

anyway, on our walk, i kept stopping to take photos of things like seriously tiny mushrooms:

i am amazed at how there are always mushrooms of some kind growing in this forest, no matter what the weather or when you go. year round, there are mushrooms or fungi of some sort. i only know of edible ones in the autumn, but there are probably some you can eat year-round. it's just that you don't want to mess around with that if you don't really know them well. 

we got to talking about inspiration, which, as you well know, is on my mind of late. i said i felt driven to take pictures of mushrooms for some reason that i didn't yet understand, but that i felt it would come to me eventually. and i wondered aloud if there was some way to fast track that process, because right now, it seems like it's taking an awfully long time from inspiration to product, so to speak.  

just as an example, two years ago, when peter, my father-in-law died, we got these ceramic "odin's eyeballs" that had belonged to him. odin is the head god in nordic mythology.  part of the story, which i need to do a bit more looking into, is that odin dropped his eyeball into a well, in order to gain the gift of knowledge. i don't remember the exact reason that peter had these eyeballs (there were several sets, we got one of them), but it also had to do with seeing clearly after the breakup of his long marriage in the late 90s. in any case, they have held a strange fascination for me since they came into our home. they reside on the window sill in our addition and i am drawn to them often. one snowy day, i took them out and took some pictures of them and we used them for our snowman's eyes.

combined with the memory of my friend michellea's fantastic i-eye collage and heavily influenced by this photo from flickr (and who wouldn't be inspired by sandra juto?), i have been feeling that i need to do something with eyes. and somehow, all of this input clicked into place on friday and i came up with this pillow, which will be the first item i list in my etsy shop later this week, together with two more i'm working on that are of the same theme.

but it took me a really long time to get to this point (especially if you take into account that the first inspiration came clear back in 1990). if i really want to have an etsy shop and be part of a local artist's group and contribute something to eyebuzz's first 'zine, i'm going to need to fast track this inspiration a bit. (i'm trying to find my way here and any advice is appreciated, by the way.) 

yesterday, in an attempt to get on this creative fast track, i gave myself a little exercise. i saw this beautiful embroidery by the ever inspiring margaret ooman of resurrection fern on flickr :

and i gave myself the assignment of making one like it from all of the scraps that were laying on the table after a weekend's worth of creativity. what i thought was that i would imitate it, that i would make a nest and a bird and eggs. that it would, of course, reflect my scraps, so it wouldn't be an exact copy, but that i would somehow end with something similar. well, something interesting happened along the way. i began by making the nest, but when it was finished, i saw something else. i saw a bowl. and among my scraps, i spotted a red felt circle, which demanded to be trimmed into apples. and in the end, this is what i created (#24):

i can hear the echo of margie's lovely nest, but i did end up making something my own. which i guess is what inspiration is about. and i did manage to fast-track the process--since i saw the nest on flickr on friday and made this already on sunday. so perhaps there's hope if you just push yourself a bit. if not, there's surely a ton of things i've been pondering in the back of my mind from the inspiration gleaned years ago, if i can just coax it out. 

i promise to stop harping on about creativity very soon. i'll start my new job and get out of the house and be with people and the navel gazing will surely taper off.  thanks for bearing with me in the meantime!

a weekend in denmark

i'm tumbling so many upcoming posts in my mind. when my inspiration/action correlation began to clear on friday, it provoked so many thoughts and ideas. so in the coming weeks you can expect posts on:

1. alice in wonderland
2. architecture
3. whether hyperlinks represent a topography of thought
4. nordic mythology
5. really tiny mushrooms
6. bullying in the workplace
7. whether it's possible to fast-track the process from inspiration to art
8. a perfume review (i've been thinking for awhile of doing these on a weekly basis)
9. hugin & munin
10. eyeballs

* NOTE: checking them off as i do them. 

but all of these things are still swirling in my head at the moment so for now, i'll just share some scenes from a winter-almost-spring weekend in denmark, some of which are hints to the above:

sabin's first riding lesson

it went smashingly and she's in love

mmm. latte.

and felt heat protectors in scrumptious colors (#22).

ATCs for sabin's swap

oops, we were supposed to mail these yesterday.

oh well, they're so good, tomorrow will be fine.

"where do i report my quest?"

lots and lots of world of warcraft

eyeballs (#23)

really tiny mushrooms

hope your weekend was full of laughter, candlelight , fresh bread, inspiration and a bit of fresh air.

a foot fetish?

i'm not that keen on taking pictures of random strangers in public. i think i'm reluctant to have a confrontation if they catch me at it and ten years in scandinavia has rendered me unable to use what should be my natural american ability to just talk to strangers (tho' in all honesty, i'm not sure i ever had it) and ask them if i can snap their picture.  however, i have no problem at all photographing people's feet. it somehow seems safer. you can do it more surreptitiously and i've found that it can be more interesting than you think.

it all started with a really cool tattoo i saw in a really cool spot on a foot. i want.

then i saw these shoes. they were sparkly. i like sparkly. however, i'm less keen on socks with sandals. even if they are pink socks.

then you find yourself sitting someplace with a good coffee and just shooting all of the feet that go by.

there is the occasional odd fashion choice.

and the odd dog.

sometimes there are sweet little people in pink.

then you start looking out for alternative-type people. i have to say, i prefer socks with my docs.

sometimes the shoes surprise.

more cute tattoos. little stars on that same part of the foot.

i think this may be the start of something fun. but at least i'm finally off those eyeballs.

this girl: an update

thanks to some hints from bambi and her sister barb and their recent this girl posts and because i'm finally feeling like myself again, it seemed like it was time for an update of the this girl post (which, to give credit where credit is due, was started by the fabulous gillian ever so long ago).

~ hates righteousness, but can be pretty righteous at times.

~ needs more courage.

~ needs more discipline.

~ needs more practice.

~ needs less stuff.

~ needs to focus.

~ loves rocks and cameras and feathers and books and art supplies.

~ takes photos every day.

~ hates to capitalize. especially i.

~ talks too loud.

~ gets what she wants.

~ has a sneaking suspicion that it will all work out.

~ likes robots and eyeballs and embroidery floss and brand new pens.

~ wears blue nail polish.

~ watches too much LA Ink, Miami Ink and What Not to Wear on Discovery Travel & Living.

~ has a list of names to submit to What Not to Wear (with Clinton & Stacey).

~ should probably herself be on that list.

~ is superior and humble. haughty and kind. snobby and forgiving. messy and obsessive compulsive. thoughtful and oblivious. one big mass of contradictions. and likes it that way.

~ loves cats and horses and bunnies.

~ wants pigs and a few chickens.

~ goes to bed too late every single night.

~ loves her iPhone. and iMac. and iPad. and her nikon(s).

~ wishes stuff didn't matter so much.

~ wishes sometimes she didn't care so much.

~ is glad she cares so much. because it's what makes her who she is.

the eyes have it

once you start looking, you find that eyeballs are everywhere...

by the side of the road

on the beach

on the birch trees

and sometimes they even follow you home.

#38 & spring has arrived!

#38 - spring nest gift packaging

the atelierBB plates are all wrapped up in springlike garb and ready to take to the wedding party today. the sun is shining, they promise up to 18 degrees (C) and it's a completely glorious day to celebrate a wedding. i realized that brigitte's logo, which has two Bs, back to back, is perfect for the couple as well, since both their last names start with B. it just feels so great when you know you've found the perfect present. i love it.

* * *

one more quick thing to share. the wonderful little merfish that margie of resurrection fern created for me, using my own stones from møn's klint, arrived yesterday (and yes, they were ordered and paid for BEFORE austerity april began). i had to photograph them together with some of their now more "naked" brethren:

aren't they fantastic? i'm going to take them to møn's klint next week and pose them for pictures on their beach of origin. i know, i'm a little obsessed, but it's better than eyeballs, eh?

anyhoo, we're off to riding lessons. more tomorrow...

insecurities and haunted castles

i packaged up and sent off the very first order from my long-procrastinated etsy shop this morning. if i had realized exactly how motivating that act would be, i would have done it a long time ago (oh please, who am i kidding, i probably wouldn't have, i would have procrastinated it exactly as i did). it is a bit with trepidation that i did it, as all sorts of "am i good enough" thoughts swirl in my head. why do we do that to ourselves? is it the small town girl in me? is it a woman thing? is it because i went to grad school at the university of chicago where self-doubt comes complimentary with every degree? why is my head filled with the idea that i might not be worthy of having someone buy what i have created? do i have to go all stuart smalley here and repeat an "i'm good enough, i'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me" mantra? so i'm trying to fight those thoughts and focus on the feelings of inspiration and motivation i also feel from packing the things up and getting them ready to send. and new ideas are already popping into my head, some of which actually do not include eyeballs, believe it or not. :-)

* * *

a lazy weekend stretches ahead. sabin's downstairs finding carrots to give to silver star after her riding lesson. we made red velvet cupcakes last night and we'll take a couple of those for her instructor and the sweet little girl who helps out with the lessons. i'm wondering if the woman who looks like sarah palin  will be there today. i have a hard time not staring at her.  i sneaked this picture of her last time. isn't it uncanny? that's her daughter in the light pink sweater on the left. couldn't she probably pass for piper palin? poor family, i wonder if they know...

* * *

we're going to dinner this evening at my favorite little castle. it's called dragsholm slot. it's haunted and is totally one of my favorite places. it's been a couple of years since i was there and the last time, we kept the ghosts at bay by singing around a piano, or did we try to coax them out, i don't really remember anymore:

through the years, i've used it as a venue for workshops whenever i could. the food is great (the chef is french), the wine list top notch (which is why can't really recall if we were trying to attract or repel the ghosts above) and while it's a bit worn and slightly shabby, it's super charming and inviting, despite, or maybe because of, the ghosts. i hope we might run into them this evening. i'd love my last experience at 41 to be an other-worldly encounter.  i'll definitely be back with more stories and photos from there tomorrow.

gin & tonic sorbet

what i love about the blogosphere is how it's constantly expanding, like the universe. it gives us new ideas and brings us new inspiration and new friends all the time. and new friends mean new opportunities to play old games. :-) so, thanks to my new blog friend polly, who writes beautiful things like this (go read it now and come back, i'll wait, believe me, it's worth it), i have five new interview questions. we know i adore this format, so here goes...

Polly: I know you've lived in Denmark for some time now. As An American in Copenhagen, (Gershwin's new tune) what do you like the most & the least about being an expat in Europe?

me: it's so strange to realize that i've lived in denmark for more than ten years now. where did all that time go? it's been so full of experiences and laughter and fun, that i really can't believe how it's flown by.

i have to say that i feel less like an expat than i once did and that now i really only have that expat feeling  when i choose to, which does still happen occasionally and usually after an encounter with an especially cold, unfeeling aspect of danish culture.

what i like most about being an expat in denmark is that i more or less have permission (at least psychologically) to treat situations which bewilder me in some sense from an anthropological standpoint--as an analytical observer of the strange behavior of the natives.

what i like least: during the bush administration, answering for all of its sins just because of the passport i carry. i didn't vote for the man, and could definitely not explain him. but thankfully that's over. actually, the same happened during the waning years of the clinton administration, where i was asked to explain what we were doing to our president over the whole monica lewinsky thing. my response was always the disarming comment that i would have been doing what monica had done if i'd been given the chance--clinton was totally magnetic if you ever saw him in person.

the other thing i like least is that i fear that i will become a permanent speaker of the language we affectionately call "danglish." this is a mixture of english and danish, which pretty much takes the worst of both and throws them into a grammatical/verbal mishmash. i feel at times a distance from the vibrancy of living within a culture of which the native tongue is your native tongue and therefore you are hip to all of the neologisms as they happen (staycation, carmageddon and the like). i fear i will preserve some mid-90s version of english for all eternity (or at least the rest of my life).

Polly: And if not in Copenhagen, where do you think you would be right now?

me: this is a very interesting question, not least because i've pondered it on occasion. but even more so because if you'd told me fifteen years ago that in fifteen years, i'd be living in a house with my husband and daughter in a small town of 18,000 in denmark, married to a guy i met in macedonia, and commuting to work in the shipping industry in norway, i'd have laughed and said it was completely impossible. i could never in my wildest imagination have imagined the series of events that would have to happen for me to be in that situation. and yet, here i am, doing all of those things. so i think it's not a question we can ever really even imagine the answer to.

what i imagined would happen with my life was that i'd finish my Ph.D. and be teaching slavic literature at some american university somewhere (preferably somewhere like berkeley, but more likely somewhere like KU (no offense to kansas, they at least used to have a perfectly good slavic program with an emphasis on the south slavic even, i almost went there but instead chose chicago)) because you have to take what's available the year you graduate.

instead, i am ABD on the Ph.D. and don't intend to ever finish. i unexpectedly met a nice danish boy in the balkans and followed him home. in a fit of boredom i ended up working in the software industry and accidentally worked for microsoft for a few years. then i found myself in the maritime industry, which feels strangely like home for someone who grew up in the middle of the US about as far from big-ass ships as you can get.

i guess if it wasn't copenhagen, it could be oslo or singapore or hong kong or manila. i could see myself ending up working for lloyd's list or trade winds or fairplay, reporting on shipping industry news.

but, you really never know where life will take you, so i try to stay open to the possibilities that present themselves.

Polly: Your latest obsession is eyeballs and you seem to be a very creative and crafty person. What inspires your creativity?

i think a lot about this and am trying to tune in to what inspires me, in the hopes that i can make it happen a bit more. but what i'm learning is that you can't make it happen. but, what i think you can make happen is being in a state of openness to inspiration. but i find that i'm not very good at predicting what will inspire. a flea market or a museum visit often can do it, but of late, the light falling a certain way on a branch might be what grabs me. sometimes i'm surprised by what makes me feel inspired.

flickr almost always inspires, but i sometimes feel it mires me down too much and actually serves more to overwhelm me or lead me astray than truly inspire me.

i get a lot of inspiration from my reading and i read a lot...articles, books, fiction, non-fiction.  i think it goes without saying that i find a lot of inspiration in the blogosphere (and yet i felt compelled to say it, hmm...).

i have a couple of highly creative friends who i try to spend time with when i have a lot of ideas swirling in my head, but can't see a way of making them come together. because that's the thing about me, sometimes i have given myself so much input that i get stuck on the output part. i think i need to develop a more disciplined way of dealing with that (but that's the stuff of more pondering and another post).

i'm also a person who is inspired by a deadline. together with a friend, i signed up for an art exhibition at the end of october, because i need a goal like that to go for. i know that the pressure of needing to have enough things to exhibit will inspire me and spark my creativity. it's just how i work.

but probably what inspires me most are the daily conversations i have with husband. he's a super smart, funny, thoughtful person. he thinks about things and articulates his thoughts very well. he has lots of wacky ideas, but usually they only appear wacky at first and then you realize they're really deep (and probably somehow related to evolution/cultural capital/the industrial revolution). he's also got a marvelous ability to see things in fresh, new ways. if i'm stuck on an idea, i tell him about it and he always, always helps me see it from a fresh, new angle. i love that about him.

and i do think i'm getting over the eyeball thing, because i've started to notice and think about nests...oh, and stones. and i'm developing a bit of a thing about windmills, especially old decrepit ones. i hope this new obsession doesn't go all cervantes on me...

Polly:  A fashion question:  If you could only live with one accessory for the rest of your life, which would it be and why? Only one item! (I've been asked this question, it's a good one... )

me:  i have a lovely pale green (we have a cloudy day and it doesn't look very green in this photo) embroidered pashmina that i bought in goa a couple of years ago. at the time, i didn't really need it, but i also didn't want to go home empty-handed after a very eventful trip. i almost didn't buy it because the guy selling it rubbed me the wrong way, but then one of my colleagues was going to buy one too and the price suddenly got better if we both bought one, so i went for it (totally to help her out, you know, altruistic me).

i'm so glad i bought it, because i have used it so much. i've bought two seasons of winter coats to match it, i've used it as my only "coat" on a cool summer evening. it dresses up any outfit and gives it a touch of exoticism and luxury. just yesterday, i wore it to the funeral and some of the other guests were trying to appropriate it from the coat rack at the house, thinking it had belonged to the deceased and was now fair game. (luckily, i retrieved it in time.)

it wears beautifully, i've had it dry-cleaned a couple of times, but it continues to look like new. it's a color i never tire of and now that i'm doing a bit of embroidery myself, i find myself carefully inspecting the marvelous stitchwork. so my one accessory would most definitely be this scarf.

but i'd be pretty sad to give up my "obama won" ring.

Polly:  Everyone in this chain of interviews have asked and answered this next question so now it's your turn :-)  If you had to choose a flavor of ice cream that most fits your personality, what kind do you think you would you be? Feel free to make one up if necessary.

me:  i asked husband this one, actually. and since his favorite flavor of ice cream is licorice (silly dane), he said licorice.  it's unusual, a bit peppery, not at all normal, rather strong and can be a bit overpowering. not everyone likes it, but if people like it, they love it. 

i actually think that fits pretty well. but i can tell you that licorice is not my favorite ice cream.

i'd personally probably try to concoct something like a gin & tonic sorbet if it were up to me. grown-up, sophisticated, relaxing, refreshing and with a bit of sass. something you'd like to spend time with every day.

thanks, polly, for these fun questions (i may have to actually invent a G&T sorbet now). if anyone wants to play along, knowing you have to identify yourself as an ice cream, please let me know. :-)