only in denmark

i was just watching the new digital channel for children with sabin and they showed this video. it's a puppet who, after a hard day at the office, likes to wear women's underwear. it then comes out that his colleagues all do the same. this could never happen in the US without everyone on the channel being hauled away to the electric chair. but i could not stop laughing. and i simply had to share. don't ever say the danes don't have a healthy sense of humor.

i give you gepetto news: undertøj

oddly inspired on a monday

i awoke this morning, my brain buzzing with ideas. it's rainy and cold and grey as usual for november in denmark and a monday on top of it, but strangely, i feel sunny on the inside. and bright and hopeful. and inspired and full of energy. i woke up early, reaching for my little idea notebook that's beside the bed, to scrawl down some ideas that just had to get out. then, i read some of meg mateo ilasco's craft inc., a neat little (albeit rather amero-centric) book on turning your creativity into your living. but as amero-centric as it is, there is a lot of really useful advice and stories from people like lotta jansdotter and denyse schmidt sprinkled throughout. very inspiring stuff. along the same lines, this is also very inspiring to read (yay heather!!).

there are lots of reasons for renewed energy in spite of the weather. our thanksgiving on the weekend was an occasion of the best of energy-giving vibes. great conversation. masses of food. babies. the best-tasting turkey ever. pretty pies. loads of wine. and lots of laughter. and even a thanksgiving-related quiz, thanks to aunt M. totally worth all of the cooking and i was strangely calm and ready in the end. the table was even set (which is rather unusual for me). i must have gotten the tears and tension out of my system with the turkey fiasco on thursday, so it was all calmness and enjoyment on the actual day. and i even remembered to serve all of the dishes (also unusual). martha would have been proud.

i just had a great phone conversation which lightened my heart considerably and makes me feel like the door i'm closing right now is closed in a good way - not slammed and not left hanging open to interfere with what might be next. that's a big relief and clears out much anxiety that i didn't even know was lurking. now i'm well and truly ready to see what doors will open next. i'm sure only that they will be bright and colorful.

if you don't have the gold edition of disco underworld - live and in print, all of the highlights of the online editions - run and get one, don't delay!! i'm so inspired to read everyone's stories and really pleased to be among such high caliber, talented people! yay for stacy childs, editor of this fabulous magazine. she's the one who told me that writing is the new praying. and i'm pretty sure she's right.

a brilliant bird

the turkey was, in the end, completely worth the second mortgage we had to take out in order to acquire it. a veritable triumph of a turkey. tender, juicy, really the best one ever. but i'm a bit exhausted, so i'll have to tell stories about it tomorrow.

so for now i'll just say that i'm thankful for such interesting, funny, erudite, well-traveled, intellectual friends and family. it was indeed a privilege to share a bit of my cultural imperialism tradition with them. and i was really impressed with how much they ate. and drank. brilliant.

in the midst of it all

why is it whenever i have the most to do, i cram in a bunch of other projects? i'm working on finishing up the magazine i edit at work - going back and forth to the computer, giving feedback and seeing it comes together into a final, print-ready draft. in between, i've made three kinds of pie crust/pastry so i can make christina's apple crostata and two different pies for my thanksgiving feast tomorrow. then, when i got beets in my organic box this morning, i decided to add a roasted beet salad and a beet chutney to tomorrow's menu, so i got a start on those. the sweet potatoes are ready to pop into the oven tomorrow. the bread is cubed for the stuffing. and then i remembered that i hadn't yet made a present for my new little niece iben, who we will meet for the first time tomorrow. so i dashed out to the blue room and made a little baby duvet cover. luckily, i had some fun fabrics and ribbons in the stash, so it wasn't hard.

#91 - matrioshka baby dyne cover

then i decided that the halloween banner we had up in the dining room had to go and a more thanksgiving-y themed one had to go up. so i got out the felt scraps and cut out some leaf shapes, added some colorful wooden beads and strung them all together with bright yarn (see, there IS a reason for the yarn stash too). this is another one of those things that flashed, fully formed, into my head.

#92 - autumn felt garland

now i'd better get back to those pies. hope everyone's thanksgiving was great yesterday. i'll definitely take lots of pictures tomorrow at ours!

trapped in one's own expectations

i went to the butcher this afternoon to pick up the turkey i ordered last week. i said i wanted a fresh one, not frozen and i said it had to feed 21 people. strangely, it did not occur to me to ask for a ballpark figure of the cost. i guess i was too busy asking whether the turkey would be frisk in danish,  seeing the smile cross the young man's face as i realized my mistake and he said, it would be possible to have it fersk. the two words, while sounding quite similar are the difference between whether it's had a good night's sleep and is happy, chipper and energetic and whether it's not been frozen.

the turkey was in an enormous box and weighs more than 10 kilos (20-odd pounds). it was wrapped in some kind of butcher paper and plastic, so i didn't open it up 'til i got it home. i guess i didn't look at it while i was at the butcher shop because i was too busy trying not to faint dead away at the price of it. it was a mind-numbing price, one which i do not even dare to type because that would be like saying it out loud. shall we just say that i am thankful i only do this once a year and next year i may cook up a small herd of veal calves  and a little suckling pig instead and it will still cost less.

so i get home and mix up my brine in sabin's old baby bathtub (after scrubbing it and giving it a treatment with two kettles of boiling water). then, i unwrap the turkey to lower it into the brine and right there on what should be its pristine and quite possibly gold-plated breast was an enormous black wart/zit-like thing that could possibly be an attack by another bird or cancer or the beast attempting (apparently quite successfully) to grow another eye right there on its breast. in other words, a horrible, awful, unslightly blemish on my very expensive bird. so there will be no martha-like presentation of the golden brown beauty at the table, because i had to cut a bit hunk out of the skin to remove the barnacle. and as i was fuming about that, i discovered that there were no giblets. so i did what any highly strung wanna-be martha would do. i called husband and burst into hysterical tears.

he gave me a pep talk and i went back down to the butcher, determined to tell them off. and i went in and started to explain and once again, to my dismay, burst into hysterical tears. but it worked. i got $50 back and he gave me two bottles of wine. and he was really apologetic. he had ordered the bird from the big meat market in copenhagen where restaurants go and he hadn't seen the blemish himself because it came all wrapped up. i gave him the cut off little nasty bit in a small zip loc and he said he would talk to them when he goes in on saturday and he assured me that it wouldn't happen again in the future.

now my enormous, but flawed turkey is in its brine and everything else is on schedule. we will have a great thanksgiving on saturday, but we will be carving the bird in the kitchen before serving it. those swedes who are coming are always so martha perfect, i'll just have to dazzle them with the pies.

why oh why is everything a competition...i blame martha.

thankfulness: why yes, it is another list

it's that time. thanksgiving. my favorite of all of the holidays. a day of fabulous food that you don't have other days (or maybe only on christmas). a day to pause and think about, if only for a few minutes, the abundance life really does offer. a day to share with family and friends. a day of card games and board games (in my family, growing up, anyway). perfect turkeys, sticky sweet potatoes, stuffing, gravy, creamy mashed potatoes, spicy pumpkin pie with plenty of whipped cream. tho' we're not celebrating 'til saturday, i wanted to do my thankfulness list today, where it could enter the big thankfulness cloud out there in the world.

i'm thankful for...

: : these two people. and the times we have together, whether it's at the dinner table on a nightly basis or running along the beach in the wind as the north sea crashes on the sand beside us.  they really are my life.

: : i'm thankful for having a great kitchen in which to cook the thanksgiving feast and a whole lot of guests to share it with.

: : i'm thankful for friends - long-term ones who we can visit in our pajamas if we want to and new ones who we are just getting to know and who we solve the world's problems with over dinner and glasses of red wine late into a saturday night. and blog friends (more about that in a minute.)

: : my creative space.

: : books. and living in a home surrounded by books. i think it's good for the soul.

: : blog camp. and the way it has transformed cyber friends into real life friends. and that they want to come back again.

: : collaborations and potential collaborations and having my creativity pushed by the creativity of others.

: : a fresh start and a light heart.

: : the weaving lessons i'm going to start in january.

: : living a place where i don't have to worry about health insurance, unemployment, child care or homelessness.

: : i'm thankful to all of you for reading what i have to say and leaving your comments (i know everyone is saying this in the blogosphere today, but it means a lot and you know i don't like to be sentimental). and i'm really happy you told me about the loading issues, so i could make some adjustments - please do let me know if it loads better now!

happy thanksgiving everyone! even if you're not where it's thanksgiving, it doesn't hurt to pause and be thankful, just for a second.

this girl...

i thought it was time to update my long-ago this girl post, because it starts to feel like i'm a slightly different girl now, tho' much of that post is undoubtedly still true. life doesn't stand still.

this girl...

...rests more easily in herself these days. she feels sure of her decisions and her place in the world. she knows what she wants and has at least an idea of the first steps towards getting it.

...at times feels impatient with the pace of things. she wishes they would just happen already.

...doesn't always use her time as wisely as she could.

...has a much better idea of what she needs from the people around her and especially from her work than she once did.

...believes that writing is the new praying.

...is moving towards living a more creative life.

...has a more generous spirit than she sometimes lets on.

...has SO many ideas. so many that it's sometimes quite paralyzing.

...isn't that fond of sentimentality. or sap. or fake people. or people whose contribution to a conversation is about something they once saw on a reality t.v. show.

...finds the universe a mysterious place at times.

...really wants to simplify, but finds it difficult. and she also has a terrible time getting rid of stuff.

...wonders if she has enjoyed the child enough and isn't really ready for her to be a 'tween and start texting and hiding in her room and all that.

...has realized that followers come and go and that's just life. and the same is true with friends.

...is still nikon not canon. a mac not a PC. iPhone not blackberry. more barthes than baudrillard. murakami not dan brown (in fact, she feels a bit uncomfortable putting them together in a binary). more big ten than ivy league. more cook than chef. black tea not green. salty not sweet.

...loves a latté in the early afternoon and a glass of wine in the evening.

...is a sucker for a british crime show (morse, midsomer, frost, bergerac, taggart, lynley - you name it).

...loves learning and searching and trying new things.

...needs to laugh every single day.

...is still a bee charmer.

and who are you boys and girls? (give it a try, it's really fun to write in the 3rd person.)

a wordless wednesday that's also a corner view

corner view

people lack imagination

preemptive apology for blurry pictures. these were taken at 3:45 p.m. and as you can see in the window reflected in the mirror, it's already pretty dark outside. and we know that i refuse to use flash. or a tripod. but i think you'll get the idea anyway...

we met with our real estate agent today for a status meeting. he had some analytics on the hits the house has had on the website. it's been viewed 896 times in the 42 days it's been for sale. six couples have looked at it, so an average of one per week. he says those numbers are unbelievably good. i would like to have looked behind the hits to see how many of them came from all of you guys and my droning on about it here on the blog, but i didn't want to be too much of a web nerd, not in that context.

we talked about what we could do to make it better when people come to view it. and he mentioned that several people had commented on the missing plaster on the bricks in the hallway. i burst out laughing. because it is so obviously missing intentionally and obvious that we've carefully painted up to the edges. because that's how we WANTED it to look. rustic. maybe a little mediterranean or at the very least balkan. but he said that 3 of the couples who had looked at it expressed grave misgivings about plaster that wasn't staying in place. and i wondered, do people really truly lack imagination to that level? and apparently the answer is yes. half of the people who have looked at the house have proven they have a limited imagination. why am i surprised?

last visits

"we own time, but time also owns us."

i will miss the poetry on the streets of oslo.

sometimes when you leave a place, you know it's your last visit, at least for the foreseeable future. when i left oslo a week or so ago, it was with a light heart for that fact. i'd enjoyed the city for nearly two years, but commuting via plane will wear you down. especially if you don't get what you need from those around you when you're there - intellectual stimulation, exciting tasks, being included, being consulted on areas of your expertise, drawing on your knowledge and network, positivity towards your ideas (for which they claimed to hire you), managerial support, belief that you are capable of your job despite your gender, i could go on, but i think you get the idea. so leaving oslo, i felt happy that it would be the last time i would be there, at least for the foreseeable future. sometimes life is like that.

but other places, you don't realize that you won't be back anytime soon. like the philippines. i've been there 16 times since december 2004. so it feels really strange that i didn't go there at all in 2009. and i find myself really longing for it. it feels like something has been missing in this year (singapore was NOT close enough and is definitely NOT the same) because i haven't been there. it makes me wonder whether i enjoyed it enough when i was there last november. did i realize that it might be the only time i ever buy a fresh coconut from a young boy who paddled up on his coconut-laden surfboard? did i fully appreciate the uniqueness of that experience at the moment i had it?

and although i returned to manila many times after my visit there in september 2005 with husband and sabin, did i appreciate how great it was to be there together with them? and did i realize it might not happen again? i don't think so. tho' i loved the experience, i didn't place anything extra in it, thinking it might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing. i took for granted that we'd go again. and probably we will, so maybe this angsty feeling is for nothing. and maybe i just have this overwhelming sense of nostalgia  because i keep thinking of that house we looked at on sunday and how sadly frozen in time was.

i know one place that i didn't appreciate enough because i definitely didn't think it would be my last visit and that's Cape Town. of course, there's still a chance that i will go back there at some point, but when i was last there, i didn't realize it would be later rather than sooner.  i didn't realize how very long it would be before i was lounging at moyo at the spiers winery, chatting away on the phone and enjoying a fabulous glass of wine. sigh.

i worry a little bit that the world is changing so much with all of this talk of climate change and that long haul flights (except perhaps to the US), are largely behind me. and i'm changing too. i no longer want to have a job where i travel 150-200 days a year, where i'm away from my home and my family. i want something different from life now. i had great experiences, but maybe now they are just memories. memories of times i wonder if i appreciated enough.

of course, there are places that you hope you don't visit again, despite how colorful and amazing certain aspects of them were. like chennai. honestly, it's quite possibly the most uncharming place on the planet and if i never go back there, i'll be quite ok with that. phuket is another one of those for me. they can keep phuket. tho' i had a fantastic afternoon there, playing in the waves that had so cruelly killed so many less than a year before. it's one of those memories where i was conscious at the time that it was a wholly unique experience that could never be duplicated.

when we left singapore this past summer, husband was quite clear-eyed about it not bothering him at all if he never went back. i feel a bit that way too, since singapore is disneyland with nationhood. tho' if remain in shipping (which i wouldn't rule out), i will likely go there again. but i guess the whole point of these musings is that we never really know what the future holds and where it will take us.

monday bits & bobs

available now on etsy

#88 wool-backed scarf w/patchwork of anna maria horner fabrics and embroidered detail

available now on etsy

#89 - a little tree in the backyard that i've been artistically shaping.

i've tied it and twisted it to itself now for two years.

i think i'll make husband dig it up and bring it along when we move.

#90 - a creative closet door solution in our upstairs bathroom (ikea fabrics, of course)
collaboration with husband (he did the bits that needed building).

* * *

the part about customer service

last week, i complained about the new photo uploader here in blogger. rather loudly and petulantly (because i hate it) on twitter and on the blogger in draft blog. some people were quick to encourage me to switch to wordpress. (shhh, i might have even created MPC over on wordpress in a fit of pique.) but, i want to say that two very cool things happened. one, when i complained loudly on twitter, a member of the blogger team in krakow immediately responded, asked me to clarify my problem and gave me a fix, all in 140 characters or less and within minutes of my complaining tweet. then, on friday, one of the blogger team - you know, one of those people with an actual google.com email address - contacted me and asked me to clarify the comments i left on the blogger in draft post. i answered and she answered me again right away, letting me know that they'd try to incorporate my suggestions (more than 5 photos and not all popping in at once) as they fine-tune the photo uploader. now how's that for customer service? awesomeness. no wonder these people are controlling the weather. so i'm SO not switching to wordpress.

and speaking of customer service, i'm still waiting for those technical support clowns folks at etsy to give me a response to an issue i reported there clear back on THURSDAY. what's up with that? etsy totally sucks at customer service. boo.

last monday, i was at a grocery store far from home (over near ikea) and just as i paid, the register went down, but not before the card machine told me my purchase was approved. however, the machine couldn't generate a receipt, so i was forced to go through on another cash register and pay a second time. on friday, i went back with a printout of my bank account, showing the two identical amounts they had taken from me, right in a row, and they refunded one of them. i dared to say that i thought i deserved a little something for my time and for the fact that i had to drive all the way back to that store, because their customer service was so bad that i couldn't go to my local one to get the money back. and i threatened to spread the word about their bad customer service on twitter and facebook. and because i dared to ask, i got a really nice bottle of australian cabernet sauvignon reserve. if you don't dare to ask, you'll never get anything. never underestimate the power of social media.

* * *

i've done my first ever guest post over on A New Simple Something! today, be sure to stop by and do a little window shopping in copenhagen! i was so happy Shokoofeh asked me to be one of her guests while she takes a little breather to gather her inspiration once again. isn't the blogosphere wonderful that we can do these things for one another? do be sure to stay and look around a bit, Shokoofeh has a really beautiful blog and there are lots of awesome guest posts over the past week!

a time warp

i'm thinking of chickens and eggs and which comes first and putting all of one's eggs in one basket and all of those egg-related clichés. 

we've been house-hunting this weekend. we haven't sold our house yet (we're not worried, it will sell and it's being viewed regularly, so no problem there). we don't want to buy another house before selling this one - we've heard far too many horror stories of people who did that and sat with two mortgages for far too long and we're not going to put ourselves into that situation. so maybe it's silly to look at houses, because what if you fall in love with one and then it sells before you sell yours and you have to look all over again? and you always think "what if?" about that house that becomes ever more perfect in your mind, for being out of reach?

on the other hand, if you look at houses, you know what's out there and you get a better idea about what you like and what you want. we looked at 3 places this weekend. one of them, we'd really like to have. we looked at it before and they've actually even just lowered the price. it has a lot of promise and we think it might be The One. we looked at two others. one that is enormous and has a lot of potential, but was also likely to be a complete money pit. the last one we looked at wasn't the house for us, not at all, but i'm very glad we looked at it.

the house is owned by an elderly widow who lived there since the early 50s. her husband, who died 7-8 years ago, was swiss, so there was definitely a whiff of the swiss chalet over the place, with small curlycues around the wooden door frames and phrases in german etched in wood hung here and there on the house. i didn't have my camera with me, as it was again a dark and rainy day, but i don't think it would have felt right to snap pictures anyway, not with her there, weeding and digging in the garden despite the rain and the fact that she must have been well into her 80s. you can see some pictures here on the website, but they have clearly done a major photoshop job on these, as it's never been that light in this house. ever.

the house was like stepping inside a time machine. they had decorated way back when they moved in and then the clock stopped. heavy wooden furniture, dark wallpaper, maidenly twin beds in the bedrooms, a lace-topped baby grand piano with a complicated piece with a german title laying open, low ceilings, vaulted walls, small colored-glass windows. it was like a museum, with both the objects of a museum and the hush and that musty, old smell of ancient books and linens.

stepping back outside, i had to shake my head to bring myself back to 2009. it really felt like entering a time warp. and that was both fascinating and a bit sorrowful. it was so strange to think of an entire lifetime lived in that house, being held there between those walls, preserved, an imprint of time. surely there were memories layered there in the books on the shelves and doilies on the elaborately carved, very upright couches. hints of an earlier time and an earlier sensibility - one both accessible there and yet incomprehensible in some sense.

i wonder if one day someone will look at our house and think the same? will we stand still like that? how does that happen? is it a question of money? or stubbornness? or lack of awareness? what is it? the lady seemed very tough and spry, out in her wellies, doing hard labor in the garden on a rainy sunday. i both admired her and felt resentment radiating off of her. she must have been sad to be facing that she could no longer take care of such a large place, its barns full of beautiful old horse-drawn vehicles and chickens and the detritus of more than fifty years. it must have been hard for her to see people traipsing through her house, trampling her memories with those blue protective plastic covers on their shoes. it made me feel sad and yet i also indulged some of the strangely attractive kitsch that is nostalgia. nostalgia for something which i never experienced, but which was obvious there in the very fibers of the place. i wonder how many of her memories would echo there in those walls, long after she was gone. does a life lived so long in one place leave a heavy imprint that cannot be erased?

such heavy thoughts on a rainy, grey day. so i lightened my mood (and hers), by buying fresh eggs from her, a whole tray of them. and she smiled at me when i told her i wanted some eggs and for just a second, i think it was ok for her that people were looking at her house.

monocules©

we are working on something really fun around here and i'm really excited about it. as those who came to blog camp 2.0 know, sabin invented these little one-eyed guys. with some help from my sister and a clever and creative friend of hers, we have dubbed them monocules©. and we are working on their story. and a whole product line. and i'm giddy. because it's totally a family project. sabin invented them and makes them, husband's spinning the story, my sister came up with the name and me, i'm the paparazzi, posing them fetchingly in the garden. it's a collaboration made in heaven. are they super cute or what? we'll be sharing their stories very soon.

from whence trends?

i've been observing my creative patterns this week. i don't know if it's the energy coming from relief of resolution regarding my job or if i'm just getting more in tune, but increasingly, i notice fully-formed pictures of things i'd like to make appearing in my head. i rush to scribble them down in a notebook that i've devoted to just that. and then, strangely enough, i actually go ahead and make them. very interesting how that works. it actually seems like the more i make, the more ideas i have to make more things. why didn't someone tell me this sooner? (we'll leave aside that my computer time has been limited by troubles with our antique (2004) router this week.)

and in my eternal quest for inspiration, i stumbled across an interesting list on a south african website by trend forecaster li edelkoort. i learned about it on the wonderful beatnik bazaar blog, which i've been stalking because i think that thaya has created a shop that has a lot of the elements (antiques, works by local artists, handmade things) i'd like in my eventual little gård butik.

some of the trends which li edelkoort picks (she's of course, talking summer, as we enter the darkest part of winter, which in and of itself is refreshing) are interesting and from what i see around the blogosphere, spot-on. and of course, it has me pondering where trends come from. is there simply something in the air? do we pick up on it and find ourselves drawn to museums (like my weekly wednesdays at the henie onstad art center) because there's something painterly in the air? or watching miami ink because scribbles abound? and why am i suddenly mad for embroidery? and obsessed with topographies? (i have had a thing about maps for awhile - as the blog campers who have seen the ceiling in my hallway can attest - and that's been covered in maps for 8 years, so it's not exactly new.) and doesn't it seem like collage is everywhere? in ads, in magazines, in museums.

here are my favorites of li edelkoort's trends...all collages from the link above.

embroidery

collage

handcrafted

paintings

maps

scribblings

another trend that i didn't see there, but which i've noticed of late is that of high end designers in low-end stores. the recent rush on jimmy choo's at H&M is a case in point. also a case in point that the H&M in oslo was full of them last week, no lines, no wristbands, no appointed shopping times. so apparently there is a difference in cultural response to these things. is it just financial crisis driving cheaper versions of designer brands into the hands of the masses? where do trends come from? and who is driving them?

what trends have you seen of late?

ikea is more than just meatballs

i hadn't been to ikea in several months and i went the other day to stock up on the throw pillow cases i use for my etsy pillows. i wandered into the fabric section and fell in love with several fabulous fabrics. ikea has some seriously great fabric designers. in addition to the one that i got to make a bedspread for sabin's new and improved big girl room, i found these beauties as well (please forgive the pictures, our light sucks this time of year):

this makes me think of dr. seuss.

this has a dr. seuss-ish quality as well and i love the colors

birds and cages in cheerful colors. i can think of lots of good things to make with this.

and a seaside scene to remind us of warmer, lighter times.

i've finished sabin's bedspread and made a couple of pillows as well. i "quilted" the fabric to a fleece (also from ikea) and put a binding around it, which i sewed on with the machine to save time. i've decided that what kills me about binding is that hand sewing takes forever.

#86 - bedspread for sabin's bed

the fabric is designed by lotta kühlhorn for ikea.

it's so cool i decided she needed credit.

i know this picture is blurry, but the light is horrible these days and i wasn't patient, nor can i hold still.

also blurry, i realize. again with the lack of light. yet i show you the crap pictures anyway

because i want to count #87.

a nihilist at heart

everything is irrelevant

except for really cute animals

the nihilist people's party

i think because notes from underground is my go-to book when i want to wallow in darkness with an overtone of mania, i've got a soft spot for nihilism. tho' i do realize that notes from underground is a cautionary tale against nihilism. this soft spot for nihilism meant that on tuesday, when it came time to vote in my municipality and regional election, which i get to do, despite not being a citizen of denmark, i ticked off the nihilistic people's party, just for fun. and because they had the best campaign posters.

creativity update: the home stretch

when i last left you with my creativity count, we were at #78, the ghosty cupcakes from halloween. also that evening, sabin was wearing a halloween-themed ugly doll costume which i slaved over but failed to get a good picture of. you can see her face peeking out of the mouth, rather far away, in the middle of this picture. somehow, that is the only picture and she refuses to put it on again for the sake of a blog photo. i know, her priorities are all skewed, i'll work on that...

#79 - sabin's halloween costume

#80 - the very best pumpkin i've ever carved in all my thirty-twelve years.

#81 - rainbow baby quilt, going to a very special home.

#82 - our latest little fun monster guys. sabin and her friend sewed these (you can see that),

but i'm counting them because i made the pattern and helped significantly.

#83 - a new pillow design, which will go up in my etsy shop this weekend

(it has a partner that's similar, but not exactly the same)

#84 - anna maria horner fabrics + wool = a pretty scarf

this one's for my neighbor (the one who reminded me recently about how sometimes you have to close one door before another one opens) but there will be a similar (tho' even more fabulous because it has embroidery) one in my etsy shop this weekend.

* * *

on the creative front, i'm really excited because i've signed up for a weaving course which starts in january. i talked to the most delightful older lady about it on the phone and i just can't wait. i found a weaving laug like the one at the museum in randbøldal in a town much closer to home. i've also got a lead on a loom, tho' it happens to be in scotland, but husband's a logistics expert, so i'm sure we can figure that out.

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tonight we opened a jar of the apple chutney i made back in september and i am happy to report it is fantastic (that's the very jar we opened, the dark one there on the right)! if you have any apples left from your apple trees, run, don't walk and make this chutney, it's not too late. we had it as an accompaniment to a wonderful chicken gumbo from jamie oliver's new america cookbook this evening, but we will be eating it with just about anything...a roast, a curry, our thanksgiving turkey...it's wonderful! and so satisfying to have made it myself. in fact, i don't think i counted it before, so it's #85.

only 15 more things to go in the year of creativity! i think i'm going to make it.

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p.s. dear blogger, i HATE your new photo uploader. it sucks beyond belief. bring back the easy, good one from blogger in draft. please, pretty please? you know, the one that lets us upload our photos, choose where they go and when and then lets us change them to the size we want without changing the html in 3 places....yeah, that one. give it back! don't make me ponder wordpress....

p.p.s. dear blogger, thank you for helping me very quickly via twitter. and while i'm still not entirely happy with the new photo uploader (only 5 photos at a time? please, that's pathetic), i can now make my photos the 800 wide that i want to without distortion. it's a bit more cumbersome than it was, but it is pretty cool to be able to look up pix that are already in the picasa albums and i'm sure you'll keep improving it. oh, and please send some sunshine.

wordless wednesday - nyhavn