fabulosity all around (and a giveaway)

i'm all for looking at the world differently, with fresh eyes, from a new perspective. wearing orange tights with red shoes and taking photos of my feet against the green grass in front of a snotty spa hotel in skodsborg while i wait for husband. but seriously, i have to draw the line somewhere and that somewhere is here.  apparently nancy reagan gets regular visits from ronnie during which he talks to her. i always knew the woman was nuts. tho' admittedly running the US by astrology does seem better in retrospect than the 8 years of the bush administration.

* * *

A VERY BIG THANK YOU!! so big, i had to use actual capital letters, so that's big. thanks to all of you and your votes, my story will make the print issue of disco underworld. i quite literally couldn't have done it without you, so to celebrate, i'm going to give away one of my helleristning stones.  if you want to be entered to win, please leave a comment on this post. i think i will make an entirely new helleristning on one of my stones from my recent trip to norway, so this picture is just a sample. you will get a totally new, unique to you, very own helleristning. :-)

so, to review: leave a comment to win a helleristning stone on a stone from norway. it's my thanks to you for helping me make the print issue of discounderworld! and speaking of discounderworld, there's a new issue out now, full of cool people and things! you can go read it right after you finish reading here. :-)

my lovely assistant (i haven't decided yet whether it's sabin or husband) will draw the winner on friday.

* * *

did you know that you're limited to 200 characters in labels? it's practically a tweet. i'm feeling restricted!

* * *

and while i was sitting here, killing time waiting for magazine proofs and in between last-minute edits and trying to shoo a bumble bee out of the addition (they get totally confused by the big windows), the mailman knocked on my door. he brought me this:

a package from the fabulous (i know, i'm overusing that word, i can't help it, there's just so much fabulousity) lynne of wheatlands news. and look what was inside!

rocks and toys and cards, oh my!

and lynne's 82-year-old mom made the cards.

i love that!!

these are seriously cool toys!

husband is gonna love these.

and so is sabin.

i might have to hide them and play with them all by myself.

and each of these rocks is cooler than the next!

lynne calls us stone freaks rotsifarians--b/c rots is rock in afrikaans--i LOVE that too!

the flat one is from namibia

the others are from diamond diggings at alexander bay

the red one is a "red luck stone" because it indicates the presence of diamonds (cool!)

and the little one is covered in eyes!!!

i love the little beaded doll too. 

it appeals to my superstitious side.

THANK YOU LYNNE!!!

i love having these little pieces of africa right here in denmark.

* * *

blog camp note:  don't forget about blog camp II scheduled for september 4-7 here in denmark. i have room for 4 and one spot is tentatively booked. all of you north americans should be checking ticket prices right now (i hear air france is having a sale (ha, bad joke, but i couldn't resist)). but seriously, there are some good prices out there, so do book ahead! and if you're coming all that way, we can arrange for spending a bit more time than just a long weekend.  there may be one more blog camp during 2009 in the US--we're in the tentative stage of planning a trip and just might make time for a few days of blog camp fun sometime in the autumn. stay tuned for updates on that one.

* * *

don't forget to check out the latest issue of disco underworld now.

there are lots of cool and creative people featured this month!

finishing my torso (for now)

we're going to show our torsos this thursday with a big opening splash! so i've been frantically working on finishing mine. it's been sitting there on the sideboard, covered in words, painted blue, but unfinished.  i know i want to somehow incorporate some feathers, but i don't know yet how - perhaps this little feather bouquet i found on the beach contains an answer to that.

otherwise, i've been sketching and painting some small drawings of places i love and places which have been influential in my life to decorate the torso. this is the church of sv. jovan kaneo (john the baptist, if i remember correctly) at lake ohrid. influential since i met husband in macedonia, tho' not in ohrid.

st. basil's to signify my russian soul. i sketched or printed old sketches onto some pages from an old encyclopedia - that way the pictures still incorporate words, as words are important to my conception of my torso (and thus myself).

i couldn't resist using the colorful houses of nyhavn in copenhagen to represent denmark, which has, you may imagine, become an enormous influence upon me, having lived here for 15 years now. i loved those colorful houses along the canal when i first visited and seeing them still makes me smile.

and chicago, a sort of composite of places and buildings and that chicago pizza. it's the place from which i jumped off to my life in europe, so it had to be there.

and i couldn't resist a few helleristninger (nordic petroglyphs). they just speak to my soul. i drew them with that fabulous payne's grey ink.

i love this circle of life helleristning. it's long been a favorite. and symbolizes a feeling of community that spans the world (and which centers on this blog in many ways). it is essential to include on my torso.

these were some new helleristning that i came across that i'd never seen before. i love how the one figure appears to be floating away on a balloon. that felt symbolic and important as well. and in general i love that circle with the cross inside - it's the nordic sun symbol. light is so important in this part of the world, that it had to be included.

it is once again evident to me that i am a person in need of a deadline. i'd been procrastinating working on this and tho' i've thought about it pretty much endlessly, nothing was happening on it. but now, when the exhibition looms, ideas are coming together. i came across a package of little bitty people that i found in an antique store in the US last summer and i thought that since i've not used any photos of husband and sabin, that i'd use some little bitty figures to signify them. i included sabin's lost twin as well, because she's also part of who i am.

funny how once you start working, you get in a state of flow and ideas come and things just begin to happen. a garland on which i've written a bucket list to decorate the hanger. in that flow, i hit upon a way to incorporate a few feathers, which i seem to collect wherever i go.

i don't think i will be able to declare my torso officially finished on thursday when it goes to the exhibition, but it will be finished enough to show. i suspect that i will continue adding to it and it will change and grow evolve. just like me.

and the winner is...

we printed out the post from tuesday and clipped out all of the names of everyone (except me) who left comments. my lovely assistant folded them and put them in this little pink bag.

it is so fitting that the name that my lovely assistant then drew out of the little pink bag o'names in my yay-i-made-the-gold-issue-of-discounderworld helleristning/petroglyph giveaway belongs to none other than....

stacey childs, editor of discounderworld!  stacey, please send me your snail mail address and i'll send a little piece of denmark your way (because i ended up using a stone from a danish beach--it just fit better than the ones from norway).

the stone itself is fashioned after this helleristning which we saw at an exhibition at our local little fjord museum last year. i used red ink because that's often what they use on the helleristninger out in nature in order to make them more visible for photographs. sometimes, like below, they also use white. it just depends on the color of the stone.

i wish i had enough smooth rocks suitable for painting on so that i could send one to everyone who entered (but oddly, i do not--must go back to the beach soon). thanks for playing and be watching in the near future for another opportunity. this was fun!

monday resolutions

this week i shall:

1. really finish that VAT report and get it submitted.
2. do some designs for my gocco swap. (i'm so excited about this! yippee!!)
3. paint the knobs of my købmandsdisk enamel red.
4. paint a big helleristning of a viking ship on the side of the købmandsdisk.
5. finish insulating the writing house so the walls can be finished (even tho' i hate getting up on a ladder due to my extreme clumsiness).
6. order a pretty stove ventilator that looks like a lamp and which has the lyrical name "grace."
7. buy tickets to oslo.
8. take my bike instead of the car.

this week i shall not:

1. spend too much time in front of this computer (as beautiful as it is).
2. sit indoors while the sun is shining.
3. cut myself while preparing dinner.
4. cut myself while cutting apart tiles.
5. forget to water the roses in the upper garden!
6. tell sabin "later" when she asks to draw, read, play pictochat on the DS, bake something, have an ice cream, etc.
7. let the laundry pile up.
8. go anywhere without my camera.

what does your week bring?

don't forget! big petroglyph giveaway tomorrow!

remember--if you want to be in on the big thank-you-for-voting-for-me-for-the-gold-issue-of-discounderworld petroglyph/helleristning/stone giveaway (i need to work on these names) tomorrow, do leave a comment back on this post. i'll print them all tomorrow morning, snip them up and have one of my lovely assistants draw the lucky winner. because yes, it's constitution day tomorrow and therefore, a holiday. ya gotta love denmark

* * *

and while we're on the subject of giveaways, mal* at turning*turning, the most thought-provoking art therapist out there, is giving away a lovely mini quilt in my most favoritest colors to celebrate her 100th post and you can enter to win that as well. so run over there--she actually gives you five ways to have a chance to win! but you've gotta be on twitter for one of them. ;-)

#700 and advice on getting there

photo adapted from an idea by marathoner81 

thank you for the inspiration!

i love the suggestions you guys came up with and i will be using some of them (yes, including a helleristning stone giveaway, HRH TFM that was a good idea) in the coming days, but what i thought i'd do today actually isn't really in the comments (i said i was going to be dictatorial about this). but i do thank you all very much for giving me some great ideas and you will see them coming to a blog post near you very soon.

since BoN hit me a little over a month ago, i've had a number of quite a few people email me to ask for blogging advice. how i got started, what i do to stay motivated (P&P asked some of this in her suggestion below), how to go about it, how often to post--a whole range of questions. just this morning, gypsyfeet, a blogging newbie who is a canadian living in korea (cool!) emailed me and asked for some advice. then it hit me that THAT was what i should write about for my 700th post.

i know you regulars don't really need any advice and i'm not sure i really have anything worth saying on this topic, since i've really no clue what i'm doing, i just keep doing it. however, i won't let those doubts stand in my way, it's just that i wanted to give you the chance to skip to other posts or another blog at this time because this may not apply to you.

* * *

background

i created this blog in 2004. i had just been wrongfully fired from microsoft (as my lawyer ended up proving, but which i knew from the moment it happened) by my total crap hack insecure middle-level fargo-based manager. my original intent was to expose the middle layer of management fat around microsoft's middle (i'm sure it's still there and likely still needs exposing) and it made me feel good to create the blog.

at first, the blog was closed to the world--i wasn't naming MS by name b/c my case was pending and i didn't want to jeopardize it. what i ended up writing about was how i felt about being fired and my subsequent search for a new job. then i got a new job and i was really busy and i didn't post at all during 2005 and 2006. towards the end of 2007, i was feeling really tired and burned out and wrote a few posts again. it was also at that point that i opened up the blog, thinking no one would find it anyway, so what did that hurt. then it hit me that my job was actually killing me and my relationships and my family life and so i left it at the end of 2007. i decided then that blogging would be a way to heal and find my way back to myself.

i've always written journals and used journaling as a way of thinking things through and helping me sort out the world around me. my need to do that after leaving the stressful job was great and this little blogger compose space just spoke to me, so i started channeling those musings through the keyboard rather than writing them out in journals. i found it was an easier way of being sure that i wrote every day--which had also been a longtime goal that i had never really been able to fulfill. i type fast and so i could get the thoughts down faster anyway. whatever it was, the blog as a medium clicked for me.

so i wrote happily along, trying to find my way back to myself and especially to my creativity and my family and well, my life. i also started reading a lot of blogs. i lurked, because i didn't really know how the whole commenting thing worked and it seemed like all those people commenting knew each other and i just felt like an outsider. i also was in a process of working out what i liked and what spoke to me, so i favorited a lot of blogs in different categories and visited them regularly, but quietly. i doubt any of them knew i was there. some of them i still occasionally check in on, but for the most part, i'm not really actively reading the same blogs today that i was then (that's mostly because i've moved on from the scrapbooking thing).

in mid-march 2008, around my birthday, i got my first comment. i was astounded that someone had found me as i seriously never imagined anyone finding me or reading what i was writing. i was writing instead of going to therapy and just enjoying it for the act of it and for myself. so i was totally surprised how cool it was that someone left a comment. that someone was the elementary. she writes lovely, thoughtful posts and can turn absolutely any tiny detail into a totally delightful story with a life lesson attached. she's wonderful.

getting a comment on my blog gave me the courage to comment on some of those blogs i was reading. and it turned out that then those people came to visit me and suddenly a few more were commenting and it started to feel like a community with friends. to this day, i still don't feel worthy of commenting on a blog like hula seventy, so it can be that you'll feel that way too. but maybe it's just me. and it can cut you off from wonderful people--for example, for the longest time i felt unworthy to comment on paris parfait, but tara is one of the most generous, wonderful bloggers i know. all it took was that i finally had the courage to leave her a comment.

* * *

the medium

i love the blog as a medium. i think it affords the opportunity to be all over the place and explore different genres. one of the early comments after BoN hit me was, "i love your blog, but i don't know what it's about." i felt like, "yes, success!" you see, that's precisely what's cool about the genre of blog (if it indeed is a genre, i'm on the fence about that--i think it's becoming one)--it's anything and everything you want it to be. but, from my point of view, it's above all personal. so my advice (and it is advice, not rules, i don't think there are really rules to blogging) will reflect this--i'm not advising you how to sell your etsy stuff (as if i know anything about that) or find customers for your interior design business or photography studio or create a blog where you post tutorials of crafty stuff. all of my advice is about blogging as a personal expressive tool--gypsyfeet called it my "thinking out loud" style this morning and i think that's an apt description. so this is my advice for thinking out loud. :-)

* * *

the advice

1. be real, if you're bummed out, say so. if you're elated, share it. people will see through it in a minute if you're not real. that annoying blog that made me hate the word "rad" is so thoroughly and completely fake sappy sweet that it makes me want to throw up. and i'm certain it's all an act because that shines clearly through in all of the vapid self-portraits that are used in every post. and i refuse to link to it here so that you are spared and to avoid sending any visitors her way.  instead, i'll give you a link to a new blog i found recently of someone who i think is blogging in a very real way and i love that! go read marinik's blog, her husband has cancer and is dying and she's writing about it so beautifully and so authentically, i'm amazed.
   
2. go out and read a lot of blogs, when you find one that speaks to you, click on their blog favorites because chances are it will lead you to more blogs that you'll like.
3. don't be afraid of leaving a comment--but leave an honest comment--if they moved you or made you laugh or even pissed you off--say so (politely, articulately), but don't just say, "nice blog." and leave a link to yours. i never ever click those links, but if someone leaves me a sincere comment, i always click on their profile and have a look at their blog. it's really about being real again, just like in #1.
4. by being real, i don't mean that you have to expose real names of your family members and such--i refer to husband as husband because that's what we all call him, but i know some people say spouse or hubby or kid #1 (please don't say kidlet, that's just wrong, but of course, it's a choice and you're welcome to make it) or whatever because they want to protect their privacy. that's totally cool and doesn't mean you're not being real.
5. it's up to you to decide how often you want to post. i post every day because that's part of what i want with blogging--i want to write on a daily basis. but one of the very best blogs i've ever read and which i read religiously is truth cycles and hele posts only once in awhile, as the spirit moves her. i'm sure i'm not the only one who wishes she would post every day, but that's not her way of blogging and every one of her posts is worth the wait, so whenever a new one pops into my reader, i rush to read her first. what's interesting is that i don't always comment the first time, her posts merit careful thought and i often go back to post a comment later.
6. use great photos. i have come to the point where i would almost call myself a photographer (don't worry bill, i won't actually do it ;-)) and i can tell you that if you look back at my early posts, that was not the case. i bought my nikon D60 in early may last year and my photos have steadily improved since then.
7. carry a little notebook with you to scribble blog ideas in. whenever i'm out, i see half a dozen things i want to blog about later. for this reason, i don't go anywhere without my camera or my little blog notebook. and i mean nowhere. they come to the grocery store with me, just in case.
8. if you see a blog post you love on someone else's blog--be it a list or writing in reaction to a particular question or quote--write your own version and link back to the person who inspired you. inspiration is viral in the blogosphere, but do give credit where credit is due. it's not nice to steal people's words and ideas.
9. try out other voices. write in the 3rd person once in awhile. write a fairy tale. i never do poetry, but lots of people do to good effect. the medium allows you the freedom to try out all kinds of things.
10. listen to what people say in the comments. i've been amazed, especially of late, at how reactions to various posts were very different than what i had imagined they would be. i thought i was being really funny with my snow white post and people found it to be a sad little tale. i hadn't seen it that way at all, but could totally see what they meant after i got that reaction. listening to the feedback you get in the comments can totally help you grow as a writer.
11. i love to change my blog header regularly. it makes me happy.
12. don't go too nuts with the gadgets in the sidebar. (i know, i don't follow this well enough myself. but i do try to avoid things that are flashing or have too much distracting motion.) the star of your blog is your blog posts. there are tons of awesome free blogger templates out there to help you be creative and display the things you want to display.
13. this is a personal preference, but i really don't like those music players that trigger music automatically when i visit a blog. you don't really know where people are when they're reading your blog. maybe it's late at night and their baby has just gotten to sleep and they click to your page and music blares out and wakes the baby. or they're at work and don't want to broadcast to the world that they're reading blogs. put the player on, fine, but don't have it trigger the music automatically. or share your playlist in another way--i've seen blogs with changing "listening to now" lists. that's cool and i've discovered a lot of great music that way, so i love people sharing their favorite music, i just want to be able to play it on my own terms.
14. answer your comments. i don't always have time these days, but i try to, especially on the "important" posts or on a post where i wanted a dialogue about the topic. if there's an email address on the comment, i often answer directly to the person. sometimes i indulge in these (perhaps annoying if one has subscribed to comments or if one feels left out) IM conversations, which are an occasional bit of fun. i love that whenever i comment on magpie's blog, she always answers directly to me. it makes me feel recognized and worthy and like a friend. mary and meri both do that too. and i think that's way cool.
15. if you don't feel like posting, don't post. everyone goes through periods where you just feel a lack of motivation. there's nothing that says you MUST post something--it's really totally and completely up to you. that's the beauty of blogging, it's totally subject to your whims.

* * *

the conclusion

i write for a living in addition to all this blogging, as well as coming from a long line of journalists, so writing is in my blood. i might feel a lack of motivation some days, but i can't imagine having nothing to write about. i think about blogging all the time--everything i do, everyone i meet, everything i observe, every picture i take is all potential fodder for a blog posting. i scribble them down in my little notebook and if i'm having a blah day, i turn to that and find ten ideas that get my mojo back. in my view, the more you write, the more you will have to write about.

everyone always asks me how i have the time. it's because i prioritize it. it's important to me--more important than watching t.v. and getting enough sleep. i'm a night owl, so very often my posts are composed late at night and set to post at a particular time the next morning.

blogging has made me more present in my everyday world, despite the fact that i send it all out into cyberspace. i'm more grounded and more observant than i was. and it's what has brought me here, to my 700th post. and i think that's a good thing.

erik is alive!

remember last june when we painted on some innocent vinbjerg snails in the garden? i named mine erik, since i had painted a little viking helleristning on it. well, until today, i never saw those snails again, but today, there was little erik, making his way around the garden, about 5 meters from where i had originally found him and painted on him.

i was so excited, i ran into the house to tell husband, but he looked at me bemusedly and waved me off. i don't know why he didn't think it was exciting that erik was not only fine, but had survived the winter and everything!

in light of my continuing inability to actually sit quietly and meditate, i decided to pick violets and make a batch, not of the jelly, but of violet cordial (i invent a new cocktail every year, you know).

it takes nearly an hour to fill this jar with violets. violets are small. which is why it's a meditative activity. it's also an activity you just have to do. there are no shortcuts. you have to find them and pick them all, one by one. it's good for your soul, i tell you.

i had to go all the way down to the lake (there are lots of violets out in our pasture) to gather enough. and when i was done, i felt totally calm and zen. just like they say you do after meditating.

and i also found this 5-leaf clover. which has to be even more lucky than a 4-leaf one, doesn't it?

and now i'm off to play with these beauties (heather moore's fabulous cut out & keep for cloud 9). the colors are so much better in real life than they look in photos. and super soft and wonderful.

another successful drink & draw weekend

i had a little weekend getaway with a few friends. one of them has moved over to fyn (the island between us here on the "mainland" and the big island where they keep copenhagen) to an idyllic little village and opened a gallery and B&B. so charming! and she's got a beautiful studio, where she showed us how to do the monoprint technique she's been working with of late. we used "china paper" - a thin, but surprisingly strong paper that can take a lot of layers of paint and texture.

so much fun. we each chose a color palette and after a walk, to gather bits and bobs from nature, we settled in to work. we used a variety of techniques - painting with acrylics, using gel pens, printing with feathers and plants, slowly building up texture on our pieces.

i found myself working with mustard yellow, teal, payne's grey (it looks quite black in these photos) and a peachy color that i mixed, plus the odd metallic gold accent. it was interesting how we were each drawn to a specific palette that i'm not sure any of us consciously knew we had in our heads.

some of my pieces worked and some didn't. some worked for awhile and then stopped working. it was an interesting process and one which i thoroughly enjoyed, but never really felt i had control over.

through it all, we laughed and drank some wine and enjoyed some good vegetarian chili, told stories, shared and laughed some more. we had moments of silence, deeply concentrating on our work, and then more laughter and sharing. it was that kind of powerful feminine medicine that you just need once in awhile.

i was surprised by the direction some of my pieces took - these two got rather dark after i became inspired to use a bit of dusty grey pastels on them, giving them a very different look than my other, bright pieces (underneath, the palette is the same). and some of my old favorite helleristning motifs came out from somewhere in my subconscious. it felt right, like moments of flow always do.

here's the end result of one of the others - i think you can tell that she's actually educated as an artist.

this friend did two rounds of the small sheets of chinese paper, with very different color palettes. she felt the second round went much better than the first. but sometimes it does take warming up when you're learning a new technique.

and our hostess, who had been working with the technique for some time, made some beautifully textured, multi-layered pieces. beautiful to see the individual ways our creativity manifested itself, expressing something utterly unique, using similar materials. magical. we definitely need to do this more often.

friday confession - the little stuff

tho' i've been sprinkling my posts with confessions all week (i can kinda see how it gets addictive, all of you catholic dahlings out there), i thought it was time for another round of friday confessions.

forgive me odin....

: : i wore the same t-shirt and sweatpants all day long for three days this week.

: : sometimes we make our smoothies with ice cream instead of yogurt. even in the morning. but we still call them smoothies because that sounds healthier than milkshake.

: : i'm going to be partying and schmoozing working at nor-shipping next week and will likely be quite shockingly absent from the blogosphere. i'm confessing this because it worries me and makes me wonder if i will exist if i'm not online. there will, however, be wine, so i think i'll get through it.

: : i have sprinkled this post with gratuitous shots of flowers that otherwise have nothing to do with anything. (there's a lot of sprinkling going on in this post.)

: : i was a right bearcat this week for about 24 hours due to PMS. husband bore the brunt of it. but he was stoic. which is just another reason why he is a keeper. i even yelled at him for taking out the garbage (not for NOT taking it out, but for taking it out). it was that bad.

: : i'm having trouble getting the child to answer the questions you all posed last friday. she's gone all shy on us. i'm trying to sneak them in over dinner now, but so far, she hasn't fallen for it.

: : i'm going in to copenhagen tomorrow to hang out with a friend of a friend. i've never met her, but my friend assures me she's totally cool. i haven't even blogged with her, so how can i know that's true? i can't decide if meeting a random stranger who may not even exist given that you've never met her in cyberspace at her hotel in a european capital is cool in an adventurous sorta way or just stupid.

: : i have an old man crush on david letterman. i've had it now for 25 years.

: : i often obsessively reread my own posts. editing them 4-5 times to get spacing right and fix typos and other general grammar mishaps which occur since i live outside my native language and am unlearning to speak/write any known language, but instead will end up collapsed in a heap of danglish peppered (but thankfully not sprinkled) with russian swear words.

: : i may have accidentally applied for a job in singapore this week. which is weird because i don't even really like singapore.  but i think it's a great place to be an ex-pat.

: : i've never read any jane austen (i'm sorry bee). isn't that horrible?

: : i really laughed my ass off at heidikins' bikini waxing gone wrong. really laughed. at someone else's pain. like real, true pain. i'm sorry heidikins. i couldn't help myself.

: : because b is doing it and i can't stand not being part of stuff, i'm doing the wreck this journal online journal wrecking course thingie. i'm going now to throw my journal myself into a mud puddle, as i guess that's the first assignment...

* * *

will be back later today with the winner of the helleristning giveaway.

monday ephemera

you know what can totally make your monday? when someone starts it off by saying, "if you tell me to jump, i'll say how high." in fact, i think that's set the tone for my whole week - it's going to be a good one.

gold's curio store, sante fe

wouldn't you like to visit this place?
perhaps take in the monster show?

colorado, a pioneer merchant

this photo makes me think you don't have to have everything perfectly in order to be able to get started. you should just jump right in.
that's another motto for my week.

 these photos are from this fascinating collection of images of america from 1897 to 1924 by the detroit photographic company.

* * *

last week, the voynich manuscript, this week, the book of kells.

* * *

if you really love words and writing and even reading, read this.  

it will make you want to wake your verbs right up.

* * *

the h boards on pinterest: hairy, halloween, helleristning, homesteading, house ideas (this was one of my first boards on pinterest), husband could make this (a personal favorite).

can you feel sad and happy at the same time?

how on earth am i going to leave this?

this weekend i spent some time sitting by the fire out in the blue room, as it's come to be known - not to be confused with a bar by the same name in a little middle-of-nowhere town in the upper midwest. i tried to soak it all in. of course, the house has been for sale for awhile and i've known that i will have to part with this room, and in many ways, that's ok. there are things we learned from it and will do differently the next time (more square meters and better lighting). but oh, how i have loved this space - i have literally whispered "i love you room," upon entering on more than one occasion. there's just something so right about it. something that it's hard for me to define. it is at once light and roomy and yet cavelike. that must be the combination of lots of windows on both sides and the dark, rich, turquoise paint i chose. but it also has to do with the creative corner, where i sit, completely surrounded by art supplies - stamps, tape, paint, paper, fabrics, you name it, it's there.

these essential ingredients all come with us. when we go, all that will stay behind are the little wood burning stove and the blue walls. i haven't even decided if i'll leave the linen shades. i was always going to make them longer by adding some fabric to them, but i never got around to it. i've got to check to see if i need them on the windows in the new place (we still haven't heard whether our offer is accepted - there are some challenges (which may or may not involve morse code, telexes and possibly a dog sled team) reaching both parties to the sale).

although i'm sorrowful to leave this space, i am already scheming and planning the new space. i want that end wall that needs to be torn off anyway to incorporate various reclaimed windows, i want a balcony with a little office/computer space that overlooks the big room below, i want more space for books and better shelves for the fabric stash. i want a bigger table that's better for cutting out fabric and patterns and a big wall for laying out quilts. and the colors, just imagining the colors is exciting.  it might not be turquoise this time around. maybe it will be white with purple accents. or green. or a completely different blue. or a hot-blooded magenta. i don't really know. yet. but i think having all of these exciting possibilities is what will get me through the sorrow of leaving this beautiful space behind.

* * *

i've just drastically marked down everything in my etsy shop. i really don't want to have to pack these things up and move them, so do check it out. i'd much rather package them up all pretty and send them to you! there are a few helleristning stones, a couple of pillows, a baby quilt and a scarf. i know winter's almost over, but then you're ready for next fall!  there are a few of the spice line of clarity birds left as well in the big cartel shop, so if you'd like one to fly your way, go there. there will be a new line of clarity birds for summer (after the move). i'm also putting off the art journal course that i mentioned that i was planning until after we're settled into the new place - i had never announced dates anyway so we should be cool there. i just know my time will definitely be limited in the coming couple of months. we've got a LOT of stuff to pack!

panic sets in (in a good way)

my very first market draws near. it will be on saturday and i'll have a table, together with jude & elizabeth at a spring market in sønderborg. the local fish shop guy had the idea last year and they hold four of them per year. it's a mix of food and handmade items and they want to have a focus on organic - i imagine the june and august markets will have more local food. but i imagine a lot of things about the market, because i've never been to it, nor have i ever participated as a seller myself.

sabin has selected a few of her stones to sell as well (tho' i have to sneak a few back out since i want them!)

it feels like i've been working towards it for forever and a day, but i suppose it's really only since january. i have quite a good stash of items built up, but there are lot of unfinished items as well, that aren't going to make it this time. i'm trying to be kind to myself about that. i have plenty - i have birds and stones, a couple of quilts, a tea cozy, a coffee cozy, some sweet little duvet covers for the baby duvets they use here in denmark (baby dyne, as they're called), garlands. lots of items.

a new helleristning viking ship - now i'm branching out a bit more from the originals.

my sewing machine broke down in earnest on the weekend and i was a bit panicked as i have a number of unfinished things for the market that need sewing. but i came up with an idea for some scarves made of jersey that won't need any sewing! i found beautiful, thin, soft jersey in soft spring colors and got out my gocco printer.

i drew up some feathers and burned two screens and got to work with the fabric inks. i've done plenty of gocco with paper in the past, but not much with fabric. i learned so much about how the ink behaves and how the screens behave. the hours melted away as i worked on the scarves. in a very good way. it was definitely a feeling of being completely in flow. and that's what it's all about, really.

i am absolutely delighted with how they turned out. again, an instance of something that's even better in reality than it was when the picture popped into my head. it's also an interesting exercise in how necessity does indeed breed invention. i was a bit panicked about my sewing machine and wasn't sure i'd get it back in time to finish the last items that i wanted to take to the market, but then this idea came to me (surely a product of hours of browsing goodness on blogs and online - but also my own) and i was able to do it without needing the machine.

better photos of the scarves once they're totally dry. i'm really excited how they turned out! and while i had the screens out, i did a little stack of moleskines with feathers for the market as well.

i have all day tomorrow to finish the items i can finish (i DID get my machine back - more on that later, as it's a story itself) and then i'm ready. i'm really ready. i have no idea whether anything will sell, but if it doesn't,  my etsy and big cartel shops will be well-stocked next week. and the process itself has been worth it.