drama at sea

i can't stop following this story of the collision between the stena immaculate (a product tanker, not an oil tanker, as all the news reports keep saying) and the solong (a smaller container vessel) off the east coast of england yesterday. it's in the area of immingham, where i've spent a lot of time filming ships, so when i first heard about it yesterday, i rushed to the report to see if a dfds ship was involved. it was not. 

i am inordinately fascinated by a shipping accident and kept refreshing the bbc app all day yesterday, as well as following the string of rescue and firefighting vessels that converged on the scene in my marine traffic app. the product tanker was loaded with 220,000 barrels of jet fuel and sitting in an anchorage off immingham when the solong came along and rammed into the side of it at 16 knots. the crew of the stena immaculate abandoned ship within about 30 minutes because it turns out that jet fuel is quite flammable. there were reports that the container vessel was carrying containers of sodium cyanide, but those were apparently false. they had some containers on board that had once had that substance in them, but which were currently empty. 

the captain of the solong has been arrested for "gross negligence manslaughter "(one crew member of the solong is missing and presumed dead). it will be interesting to know more of the story. the crew of the solong was russian and filipino and it was americans onboard the stena immaculate since it was chartered by the us navy. 

both ships are still smoldering today, but expected to remain intact. there were rumors that the solong would sink, but they've been debunked. it has disappeared from marine traffic, but someone probably turned off the ais. it will be very interesting to learn how they could have missed a large product tanker at anchor in an official anchorage, but i guess that will come out in the coming days. and i will be glued to the news, ship geek that i still am at heart.

you can put the girl in the kitchen, but you can't take her off the ship. or something like that. 

added - this guy does a good early analysis using marine traffic.

 

a few of my favorite things

with all the utter madness being caused by a certain spray-tanned madman, it can be hard to look on the bright side these days. but some sunshine and warm temperatures this weekend made it easier around here. i worked on clearing all of last year's plants out of the greenhouses and pruned my grape plant back. molly lounged around, watching me. she's still my bestie. got her back in 2012 in minnesota and she's still going strong. when i get back from minnesota and arizona (i'm going on thursday), it will be time to do the last work to get them ready for the season. 

i went out to nina's to get some presents to take with me to the us and ended up buying these two tiny vases for myself. it's the little things that make us happy - i filled them with the last of the snowdrops and they're so cheerful. yesterday, we grilled the first sausages of the season. and today i actually went running (well running and walking, but there was some running), it was so nice. it's amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine makes on one's mental health. 

and the last favorite thing - these soft, comfy ugg slippers. sabin sent them home to be stored here and i had to have them. they are so soft and comfy, they make my feet very happy.

here's hoping you found some moments of happiness in your weekend!

it's been a good week

this will forever be the week where i learned that i will become a danish citizen. it's also the week we officially were accepted in 3daysofdesign at work. it's one of the coolest design expos in the world and it takes place in copenhagen (of course) in june. i also had really good days at work - getting to be creative in different ways with a variety of colleagues.  and getting a great reminder that the best ideas always happen in the moments where you bounce ideas off one another and they grow and become something better. i am grateful to have such creative people around me, who make my ideas better and who open up my world with their ideas. i really needed that in the face of all the madness the spray-tanned satan is causing. there are still bright spots in the world and i intend to keep embracing them. but now, like olga, i'm going to rest. 

a bright spot in a time of darkness

on the day after the election last november, i filed my application for danish citizenship. it definitely felt like it was time. and yesterday, i received notice that they would grant it. the news took my breath away. i had actually received the letter a couple of weeks ago, but i don't look at my official inbox often enough. it seems appropriate that i opened it on the day of the state of the union address by the spray-tanned clown. what a complete and utter privilege. i sent screenshots to everyone i know. and my beautiful people were as excited for me as i was for myself. i am so very lucky. 

my name will be written into danish law in january next year. then i will participate in a ceremony in my local municipality and then, a few weeks later, i can get a danish passport. and i can vote in national elections. i don't have to give up my american citizenship, as denmark now allows dual citizenship. but who knows how much longer there will be a united states. these are crazy times. i might actually end up stateless for a time before this comes through. but what a safety net to have. i knew husband was the right person for me. i had no idea how right back then, but i know now. 

sparks joy

i got these two cup shelves via work. we have a new category called kvik living. i am a little bit suprised myself how happy it makes me to have my mug and cup collections out where i can see them instead of tucked away in a cupboard. this morning, i stood and looked at the shelf to determine which of the starbucks mugs i wanted for my morning tea. i selected arizona, since i'll be headed there next week. it was nice to have a moment to think about it and admire the collection, rather than just grabbing the first one from the cupboard.

and the handmade cups are kept above the espresso machine. i always look and see which one i'm in the mood for. it's actually a different one every time. i don't always go for the same one. and i legit consciously think about how happy it makes me to see them all there on the shelf. 

in these dark times, it's even more important to find the small things that spark joy. the world has become quite uncertain. there's an enormous shift going on and it's not for the better. i don't know where it's taking us and i could let myself become consumed with worry about it. in the wee hours of the morning, those worries often surface. but if we look for small moments of happiness, maybe they will multiply. i want to hold onto some shred of optimism in the face of it all. it seems a small form of bravery, when i otherwise feel helpless and like i'm not doing a damn thing. maybe it starts with your morning tea in a favorite mug. or a little beautiful corner of your home. maybe it's from there that one gathers the strength for the storm that's surely on the horizon. 

noticing

the sun is noticeably returning. especially noticeable when it's actually shining, like today. it's 5:37 p.m. and the sun hasn't set and it's beaming through the bedroom window, casting gorgeous planty shadows on the wall. this is a picture i would have shared as an instagram story and not thought much more about it. i don't miss that one bit. the habit of noticing and taking pictures of things is something i've been doing since i got that first dslr back in may of 2008, so no credit to instagram there.

i'm still taking daily pictures and have been sharing them over on this tumbler since about 2011. honestly, though the pictures have been taken with my iphone in recent years, i consider that quite an accomplishment. i don't think i've skipped a single day. i might have almost forgotten and taken a grainy night photo, but i've for sure taken a photo every day since we did that blog camp 365 back in 2010 on flickr. 

ahh, those were the days. facebook for sure ruined all that. and i'm so glad that era is over. at least for me. i am still putting my daily photos on flickr. i use it more as a repository than a social space these days, though some of the old crowd is still there. it's sad to think of those who aren't because they're no longer with us...like cyndy and char. but thank goodness we had those times. coming back here feels like coming home. 

if only it were true

an old colleague from lego posted this on linkedin the other day. she's no longer there and i don't know why she left or if she was pushed out. this isn't about her story. it's about mine. and the stories of a number of other friends. it's a story that i haven't seen anyone telling. because everyone loves the product lego makes so much, but weirdly no one tells the truth about what an utterly shit place it is to work. 

i scrolled past this post, and i'll admit i had hard time taking it seriously, what with it being written in comic sans and all (despite the resurgence of that font in recent years). i'm quite certain this person is using it without knowledge of that. then i stopped to ponder. i think she's got the right things on this list, but what she doesn't realize (or is trying to ignore, because she's campaigning to get back in or to cash in on her time there), is that they're the wrong way around. everything that lego is actually about, when you are on the ground, inside the hallowed halls, is the stuff on the right, not the bits on the left. and i think if people started to speak up, there would be a lot of folks who agree with me on that. 

to be fair, if i read her caption, she's talking about innovation, not about it being a great place to work. but if you really look at them, those items on the list aren't about innovation, they're about a workplace where you'd like to work. and lego isn't that. except in the imagination. 

i'm still scarred by my year there. i had come to them with experience from companies like microsoft and maersk, but it was like i'd never had a job before and none of that experience counted for anything. the head of the department i was in had started at lego when he was 16. he was then approaching 60 and had been parked in an obscure corner of lego, forever a senior manger and never a vice president. he was known within the afol community, because people there recognized that if they wanted to be sent free lego, they needed to kiss the ring of this sad, awkward man, who had trouble looking anyone in the eye. 

maybe that was where i went wrong. i didn't kiss the ring. i had too much respect for myself and my experience. and maybe he knew that i saw right through him and knew he had been sidelined. maybe he could see that in my eyes and it made him have to face it himself, which wasn't fun for him. and that's why he had to do away with my job after only one year. 

at the same time as he did so, he had to admit that i'd actually done a really good job and he couldn't fault me. he told me that lego wasn't ready to work closely with their adult fans. what a joke that has turned out to be. they're working with them in a major way today. and i was a big part of starting how that would pan out. he can never take that away from me, even though he took my job away. that was ten years ago. 

he retired a couple of years ago, still not a vice president, even though there are many vps in lego. still a little norwegian nobody in an obscure corner of tech house in billund. that obscure corner isn't so obscure anymore now that he's gone. hopefully, he was also pushed out. and i suspect the old colleague that posted this was too. she was one of his minions. and so now, she's left spinning yarns about lego on linkedin...full of ego and strategizing, trying desperately to look an authority in what she thinks is an unironic use of comic sans. 

a night to myself

husband is at swimming and then the annual meeting of his triathlon group. so i'm all on my own tonight. i love it! and so does olga. i found the quilt that husband's mother made for him by hand some 30 years ago, washed it up and put it on our bed this morning. olga fully approves. and i'm sitting in the comfy chair in the corner of the room, computer in my lap, enjoying the silence and some candlelight and the fact that i don't have to do anything but exactly what i feel like doing for the next couple of hours. 

this is where i'm sitting, in a well-loved nanna ditzel chair. i've thrown a cozy fleece over it and a cute graphic pillow from ikea. those little side tables, i found in a secondhand store. that plant is about 4x the size it was when i got it half-dead on a markdown at the grocery store during corona. i took this picture a few months ago, so right now, there are more baskets (3 to be exact) full of knitting projects at hand than you can see. when i'm done writing this, i'll probably knit and listen to a cozy mystery set in the 20s. i like lady hardcastle at the moment. i've listened to them before, but it's always comforting to listen again. in these troubled times, we have to take comfort where we can get it. 

this is the quilt that husband's mother made for him. long before my time. i never got to meet her, as she died the year before husband and i met in macedonia. but i feel like i get to know her a little bit when i look at all the beautiful details of this quilt. it's hand-quilted. the middle squares are all related to husband's life - his time in the royal lifeguard, a danish flag, an apple tree, i think there's even one that represents him and his ex, but that's ok, because it's part of his story. the squares around the outside are all traditional quilting patterns. i think she was exploring form and color - both of which i love and relate to. looking at it feels like having a little chance to know her, even though i never actually had that chance. we leave some of ourselves behind in the things we create and they can be felt by those who encounter them. 

wow, i've missed being here. i didn't even know that i thought any of that until i sat down here and started typing. amazing how leaving meta platforms has already freed my time and my thoughts for better and deeper things. what an incredibly good decision that was. i feel physically lighter and relieved. and i'm already settling into myself in a way i haven't in way too long. and even though the blog era is over, i'm happy to be here for myself again.

i bought this buttcrack character from the wonderful sandra juto. she was one of those i followed and admired and even probably felt a bit unworthy of back in the old bloggy days. she is so cool - a swede with an impeccable design sense, who moved to berlin. i never managed to get one of these guys back then, but she recently made a few again and i chose him. he's whimsical and he takes me back to that time, back when i couldn't wait to come here and write and figure out what i thought about the world. i stayed in touch with her through instagram (so there were some good things about it at one point) and found out that he was for sale there, but now, i'll just have to visit her site to find out what she's got on offer. and that's just fine. i have a lot of her wristworms as well, in a variety of colors (and i just spotted a couple of new colors that i might have to have). she's going to stop making them, so if you too would like some, you might want to pop over and get some. 

i'm impatiently awaiting the arrival of a whole lot of new weaving yarn. last week, i attended an artist talk with astrid skibsted and we made these vikleprøver (yarn windings) and after that, i got inspired for my next tea towels (think taylor swift eras tour colors). i became acquainted with astrid's work a few years ago through a project at trapholt, then i interviewed her for our podcast at work. we had a long and wonderful chat after the talk last week and i was reminded how enriched my life is by the creative people i encounter. it's no accident that both of the ones i've just mentioned (incidentally, i'm wearing some of sandra juto's wristworms in this photo), are both working with threads. maybe what the world needs right now is more threads to bind us together. 

and on that note, it's time to knit. i'm going to the states in two weeks to visit the child and my sister and some cousins and my last remaining aunt on my father's side and i need to finish at least one sophie scarf.  i will even be able to squeeze in a visit to my old bloggy friend sandra. i can't wait! 

bye-bye meta platforms

i did it! today, i deactivated my facebook and instagram profiles and i did not tick off the box to continue to use messenger. i feel as serene and peaceful about it as this picture of snowdrops that i picked in the garden on the window sill. if anyone wants to get in touch, contact me here, write me an email or send me a letter! 

i've long wanted to leave facebook and more recently started thinking about leaving instagram. seeing zuck's cold, dead eyes staring out from under that mop at the inauguration sealed it for me. it took me a little while because i do actually have to be on both platforms for the sake of my job. and it's why i've deactivated and not deleted completely (yet) my profiles, because if it messes something up in relation to work, i will need to log back on and fix it. but zuck doesn't deserve to make another dime from my attention. 

when they announced that they would no longer be doing any content moderation, i knew that my time on those platforms was up. facebook was already an absolute cess pool, but things will only get worse now that all the racist uncles are completely unshackled. 

i don't want any part of it. i deleted my twitter the day elon musk took it over and i haven't missed it for a single second. i will miss instagram a bit, but i'm sure that will fade. facebook, i won't miss at all, except for maybe those groups where people are selling looms. but people sell looms in other places, like on the blå avis. 

i didn't make any big announcement on either platform and i have no regrets. 

rage making

my old bloggy friend bill sent me this beautiful piece on rage making by sarah kendzior. she seems to have been able to put voice to what i've been feeling and doing — directing so much of my attention and time to threads and making, in the face of feeling helpless to stop the madness my fellow countrymen are wreaking and have wrought in electing a senile spray-tanned wanna-be king. 

there are so many parallels in my own weaving story to hers. i too got my loom from a wonderful 80-year-old woman who is teaching me to weave. we are both searching for meaning and something tangible and beautiful in the threads. 

i am enthralled with the threads themselves...i love the process of setting up the loom - i love using the slay hook (just learned that term from sarah, it's called a rittenål in danish and i am learning this craft in danish). i love that every single individual thread passes through my hands countless times before becoming a whole piece of cloth. sarah seems a bit more frustrated by that, wanting to get on to the making part. but i love the time the process takes and i love getting to know each and every thread.

people keep asking me how long it takes to make a tea towel. once everything is all set up, i can weave one towel in about 2 hours. but the last batch of 11 took me a total of 46 hours from when we began to make the warp to when i hemmed and ironed the last one. there's no way to put a price on them that would compensate me for that work. but the work is priceless to me in terms of keeping me balanced and sane. 

i love that this craft is being passed down to me by a woman who learned it properly back in the day and who wove many beautiful things on the loom that now stands in my home. she got the loom from one of the early, famous danish weaving teachers of the 20th century, cis fink, who also wove countless beautiful things on it before it became emmy's. and now it's mine. i wish it could tell me tales of all the threads its seen and known and held. sitting at it, turning threads into cloth, feels like joining that long tradition and line of women who came before me. it feels wholesome and good and odin knows we need that feeling more than ever today. 

while the need to create something tangible and beautiful and useful from mere threads is driven by a need to escape from a world gone mad, surely it's also healing somehow. repairing the tears in our existence, creating something beautiful that i can hold in my hands and give to friends as gifts. i feel joy every time i dry a dish in the kitchen with the beautiful rainbow towel i made. and i feel so happy when i gift one to a friend and they tell me later how much they enjoy using it. maybe those small joys will help us through this and it will all be ok in the end. 

going on about yarn again...

this is fast becoming a fiber blog. but that's what's been consuming me of late and so since it's always been mostly for me (sorry, but that's true), i'm recording my progress here. since i last shared knitting 10 days ago, i've finished my sophie hood. i love it. it's so soft and warm. and our weather is still chilly, so i finished it in time to use it this winter. also, how cool are my new glasses?

i also started two new sophie scarves. one is brown and i think i'll send it to my sister.

and one is dark green with sparkles in it. i couldn't resist that yarn. and it was marked down at one of the three lovely yarn shops that are within about 15 minutes from our place. that's both nice and a bit dangerous, since i find myself thinking about yarn all the time.

i'm almost to the point where i will get to start the colorwork on my kastali sweater. i like this red and it's been very relaxing getting this knitted up. 

i knitted quite a lot more on the brown sophie scarf on the way to copenhagen yesterday, but it's too dark to take a photo of my progress this evening and i strangely neglected to photograph it yesterday. 

and i can't resist leaving you with this photo i took the other day of all the things i've completed so far. one sweater, four sophie scarves and my sophie hood. all by petite knit. people on tiktok like to hate on her (why are women so hard on one another?), but i think her patterns are awesome and she's definitely helped me become a knitter. 

turning threads into fabric

i turned this... 

into this...

and all clipped apart, hemmed and finished, they look like this...

and here's a closer look at a few of my favorites...the first one, i'm keeping for myself from this batch.  

this has the classic look that karoline wanted.

i'm loving the madras plaid vibe of this one. i did a few variants of it.

i ordered up a bunch of new colors from a new source in sweden and i'm going to do some that are inspired by taylor swift eras. it will be a fun exercise in playing with color even more!

and on my needles

 

at the end of march last year i got my first real knitting lesson from my friend emily. i didn't finish that sweater (the novice sweater by petite knit) until late in 2024, but since then, i've been rather actively knitting and getting a bit more adventurous. 

i've finished four sophie scarves by petite knit - two long and two of the shorter version. they're a nice project to have on the needles for taking on the go. i've got a couple more queued up and i just have to cast one on again. i'm thinking the next one will be brown. 

back in november, i bought all this luscious yarn to make the holly sweater by knitting for olive. my friend emily, who taught me to knit, is making it too. we both wanted to finish by christmas, but that didn't happen. for me, it's because i encountered the berries, which seemed a little advanced for my level of knitting. i think for emily, she just ran into a knitting dry spell and hasn't felt like working on it. 

but thanks to the wonderful, experienced knitting ladies at my tuesday evening knitting group at our local museum, i have now learned how to make both german short rows and the berries (turns out it wasn't really that difficult) and am well on my way again. it will for sure be done in time for next christmas. 

and then last friday, i decided on the spur of the moment that i had to make a sweater that i saw in the window of a knitting store in a nearby town. it's icelandic wool and an icelandic pattern called the kastali sweater. it's supposed to be a cropped sweater, but i bought extra wool to knit it a bit longer. i'm already well on my way - this one is knitting from the bottom up, which is my first time trying that.

i'm even further than in this picture - it's quite easy to just knit in one color while watching t.v. in the evening. and much nicer than doom scrolling on my phone. i would actually never have imagined that i would be good enough at knitting to be able to knit and watch t.v. at the same time. i'm still a timid knitter, but my skills are coming along and i am getting braver. 

and lastly, the end is in sight on my sophie hood, also by petite knit. i'm so glad i went back for the last ball of yarn, because i definitely wouldn't have had enough. it's kamelia by permin and it was in a sale basket at my local yarn store. when i first started, it nagged at me that i might not have enough yarn and so i went back and got one more. good thing i did! it's so soft and i can't wait to wear it. i hope to finish it and block it this weekend. 

i'm currently trying to leave all meta platforms because i finally realized how evil those running them are and i don't want to give them any more of my attention, but you can find me and my knitting projects on good old ravelry. and i hope to be back here a bit more regularly now too. plus, i might actually start posting in earnest on substack. 

on the loom right now

i'm making another set of tea towels at the moment - these were colors chosen by husband's eldest for her kitchen in her new apartment. 

she wanted blue, green and brown and we also spiced things up with some accents in orange and tomato red, as well as a neutral, undyed thread. 

 i've finished 7 of 10 so far. i like the ones best that are ending up plaid. 

of course, i get quite a lot of "help" from mazikeen.  

 oh, and on the little loom, i've just prepared all the fabric to get started on that new rug for the kitchen.