a new hummingbird tattoo!

when i was in arizona, sabin and i went to our favorite tattoo artist, lolo, to get a new tattoo. we wanted to match, but not be completely matching. we wanted something to remind us of arizona, since we share a lot of experiences there and we both went to arizona state.

we chose a hummingbird and lolo created one for us that would look great both in color and as a black line tattoo. i love color and sabin loves black lines.

when we arrived, we weren't sure where we wanted to place the tattoo. it turned out that we could actually place it in the same spot on our right arms, which wasn't our plan. but it just felt so right!

so cool and so meaningful, not to mention beautiful! what a great experience! 

* * *

i just posted over on substack.

tea towels inspired by the eras tour

i was chatting with my sister and my swiftie friend on our group chat and we decided that my next weaving project should be tea towels inspired by the eras tour. so i ordered up a bunch of new weaving yarn in new colors. it arrived right before i went to the states. last weekend, i got started on seeing how the colors i ordered play together.

i made vikleprøver/yarn windings to play with the colors. i think i'll start with lover, which is the one at the top. followed by 1989, which is the one at the bottom. i need to adjust the colors for midnights (on the right), as the brown doesn't work and it needs some burgundy. the one on the left is reputation. that one, i want to play with a more graphic look. 

we're going to make the warp for lover this weekend. i'm even going to put that sparkly yarn in there, together with the purple, so that there's a little sparkle to them, even though that's not necessarily traditional in a tea towel.

the planning is actually becoming part of the fun for me! that's not normally my core competence, nor something i like all that much. i'm learning how to achieve the look i'm going for. and even learning what i like and what i don't. i think it's going to be a fun exercise. and with all those eras, it should keep the loom occupied for a few months to come.

 

glorious spring and some random thoughts

the weather has been completely glorious for the past few days. it was 21°C when i got home from work today around 5. i changed into running pants and decided to go out for a nice walk, maybe with a little intermittent jogging. i ended up talking to the neighbor for like half an hour since she was out in her garden when i went past. we talked about a little of everything, including the spray-tanned satan wreaking havoc on the world. she said she wished someone would "do something" about him. me too, sister. 

interesting that my 85-year-old neighbor in denmark seemed more informed and interested in what he was doing than many of the people i encountered while in the us a couple of weeks ago. she's pretty plugged into the local scene as well - telling me that the field across the road will be potatoes this year rather than corn. i think that's good. last year's corn crop was pretty dismal.

* * *

the one thing i like about daylight savings time is having the light at the end of the day. it's 8:30 p.m. as i write this and there's still a glow. i wish we could just stay on this time and keep the evening light. 

* * *

i don't know if you are on tiktok, but i've started making some knittok videos the past couple of days over there if you'd like to check them out. i did my first wip wednesday, which is a thing on knittok. on wednesdays, you just show and talk about all the projects that you're working on. and today, i did a yarn haul video featuring all of the yarn i bought in minneapolis. i'm not a great editor, as you will see, but everyone's gotta start somewhere. i think i'll do one with knitting hot takes next. it's also a thing over on knittok. you know what a sucker i am for joining a new community.

speaking of tiktok, it sounds like it might go away again for the americans, but perhaps trump is too busy inflicting tariffs on remote australian islands inhabited only by penguins to remember it should be turned off. they say the tariffs were calculated by chatGPT, so i guess ai really is going to be the end of things. 

 

🏜 arizona :: maybe for the last time 🏜

(this is a substack that i just published)

i just spent nearly two weeks in the united states. i was very conscious the whole time that it might be my last trip there. our daughter is moving back to europe this summer to continue her studies in portugal. without her in arizona, i won’t really have any compelling reason to visit there again, despite still having some friends there. i still have family in the midwest, including my sister, but with the situation being what it is, i have to wonder if there will be a united states to go back to a year from now.

what struck me most during my visit was just how normal everything seemed. people were driving their cars, doing their shopping, picking up their coffee at the starbucks drive-thru, dining in restaurants, enjoying happy hours. just going about their lives as if there wasn’t a circus being performed from the whitehouse. as if the entire post ww2 world order wasn’t being torn asunder by a merry band of unqualified, unserious nitwits and the world’s (formerly) richest man and his minions.

i looked on in fascination. and i did all those normal things too - drank margaritas at happy hour, ate delicious mexican food, stopped by trader joe’s for those new light pink strawberries everyone on tiktok is talking about, got a new tattoo, shopped at the gap and old navy, went antiquing, picked up starbucks and ordered the best breakfast burritos ever from door dash. i even celebrated my birthday while i was there.

and it all felt so normal. it was just a really nice holiday in sunny arizona.

is everyone just avoiding reality? i honestly don’t know. i do my share of protecting myself from the daily deluge of the news, as i just can’t take the pace at which it’s coming. but i do follow along and know what’s going on. i do know that those clowns shared classified battle plans on a friggin’ signal chat, on which they included the editor of the atlantic (and any number of russians who were surely listening in as well, since at least one of them was in moscow at the time). i know that trump continues to threaten to take greenland and to insult denmark for being a “bad ally.” i read today that the european union is advising everyone to have 72 hours of food supplies laid in (that doesn’t really sound like enough if you ask me).

how can any of us think this is normal? how can we go about our normal lives, drinking cocktails and eating chicken & waffles for brunch? how did i do that? i honestly do not know.

🍹 drinkie poo - just a few things i drank on the trip 🍹

unicorn mimosa at hope breakfast bar in edina, minnesota

bloody mary with a beer sidecar at the lowry in minneapolis

exsw margarita with tahin rim at palma, phoenix

desert cactus margarita and blood orange margarita with tahin rim at papi gordo's, arcadia neighborhood, phoenix

cold brew coffee at hula's modern tiki, phoenix

a very spicy bloody mary at hula's modern tiki in phoenix

mango margarita at hula's modern tiki, phoenix

pickle bloody mary at the attic, arcadia neighborhood, phoenix

board & bottle at the original postino's in phoenix's arcadia neighborhood

cider flight at six byrd cider co. in phoenix's arcadia neighborhood

oyster shots at casey's moore's in tempe on my birthday

so many great happy hour experiences. not pictured - whole bottle of bubbles at sun bar for bunch on my birthday, all the starbucks drinks i got - the blackberry sage refresha with coconut milk was so yummy, a black & tan at casey moore's on st. paddy's day and loads of bubbles at ruby's parents' house in scottsdale on sunday. 

if this was indeed my last trip to the us (which i consciously thought about the whole time i was there), at least it was a good one. 

🧶 yarn candy 🧶

i had a couple of days in minneapolis at the beginning of my trip, so i made it my mission to visit yarn stores. funnily enough, they had a lot of the same yarns and patterns that we have here in denmark. the danish knitwear designers and yarn companies are clearly hot all over the world. i knew that from knittok, but it was fun to see it in reality. this store, bewoolen, had a lot of hand-dyed yarns that weren't scandi, but they were very pricey and i didn't see anything that i couldn't live without. 

i do just enjoy seeing lots and lots of beautiful of hanks of yarn though. i don't think i'm experienced enough to be able to see the potential in them and think that they would be perfect for one or another sweater that i have in my ravelry queue. i'm not honestly sure that i'd really like hand-dyed for sweaters. i think the variegation can yield weird results. but maybe one day, i'll just see the perfect hank and have to have it.

i did get this cute little bundle of minis, though. the color combo just appealed to me and wasn't one i'd have thought of on my own. that's the best part of visiting a yarn store - getting inspired. i don't know what i'll make with it - i was thinking of using it in some colorwork socks, perhaps. they also told me it would make a nice winter hat.

i'd been seeing lots of talk about japanese noro yarns on knittok, so it was fun to see some of them in person. i got these two to make another sophie hood, so it's not entirely true that i'm not inspired by variegated yarns. i also got myself some of the famed chaiogoo needles - just 3 pairs in the sizes i seem to be using most. i don't feel worthy of the full $200 set of interchangeables as of yet on my knitting journey. 

i went back to the store a second time with my sister (she knitted that sweater she's wearing, by the way, and even made up the pattern herself!). we didn't end up buying anything the second time around, but it was our last stop that day and we were getting a little bit hangry by the time we were there. sometimes there can be so many choices that you end up not choosing at all. 

i got some beautiful yarn to make a bella blocking sweater at another yarn shop - dandelion fiber co. here, they had some of the danish knitwear designers and knitting for olive and other scandi fibers, but they also had yarns from some american manufacturers. the yarn i bought was from tumalo fibers in oregon. 

i got enough yarn to make the bella blocking and with two skeins of lucky tweed by kelbourne woolens, another american yarn maker, i can also make the vest no. 1 by my favourite things in the same pretty mustard yellow tone.

one more basket of inspiration - someone at bewoolen has an eye for this color combo, it's very similiar to the small hanks above. i had to snap a photo to remember it for future projects. 

🌵 i love cactus! 🌵

i spent the past week or so in arizona. if it is indeed my last trip there (sabin is moving back to europe in july), it was a very good one. i'm still processing it all, but i wanted to share my favorite arizona thing - some cactus! i love saguaros and the prickly pear were absolutely gorgeous, all purple and pink. i want to make tea towels in a color palette inspired by them. 

i have much more to say, but the jetlag is currently getting in the way, so i will just leave it here for now. 🌵🌵🌵

 

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!