After a spring best characterized as an extended winter, summer has all of a sudden appeared. I’m under no illusions that it will last, so with a glorious 4-day weekend (Constitution day fell on a Friday, followed by Pentecost weekend, with Monday being a public holiday), we’ve dropped everything and are spending as much time outside on our patio as possible.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- looking for the details while trying to find refuge from a day-to-day lacking routine.
- eating fresh bread for “kveldsmat” and wrapping cheese in cloth instead of plastic. So far, some hardened edges, but way better than mold.
- wearing sandals and sporting bare legs, oh my!
- collecting little moments of summer preparations, a marching band in front of the university museum, colors, and random tableaus.
- bouncing from sewing project to sewing project, and not really feeling too inspired by any of them. It will come back. In the meanwhile, mending, patching, and little fixes.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- travelling for my easter vacation. First a few days in the Netherlands and Brussels, and then on to Italy. Brussels was absolutely lovely, and I hope to go back and spend more time there! It’s charming and new and old and people are nice, and there is a huge beer selection. Good things.
- eating fresh artichoke for the first time – they’re in season!
- reading about historical (fictional) Venice in “The Glassblower of Murano” for two days while sipping wine. Ok, so half of the time it was raining so I sat inside. Lest I make this too idyllic-sounding (though it was delightful, and exactly what I needed in my vacation).
- sawing and hauling and stacking wood. Burning wood. Sweeping. There is a rhythm to the days at this place in Italy, and it revolves a lot around manual labor, followed by eating, and then more of the same. It’s quite lovely, and a huge reason we travel down there in the first place. Last time the visit was so short I didn’t really fall in to this familiar rhythm, but this time I eventually did, and it made me remember why I enjoy spending time there. Much needed.
- knitting on the same sweater as I did last time. Except, in the meanwhile I’ve ripped it back to the hem band and now I’m doing every other row of not quite identical colors. I’ll save the details for a separate post, but it felt ironic, yet appropriate to be redoing the work in the same geographical place.
- making quick art to hang out with the printer, the aloe plant, and the receipt pile. (after coming home, rummaging to find my resumes, and stumbling across this font excercise and having a frame on hand in the right size. Perfect.)

These past few weeks, I have been…
- soaking up sun… sun that we’ve actually had! Look, sun makes shadows!
- eating winter fruits and vegetables; lots of avocado, some fennel, parsley root and parsnip. Mostly avocado though, I can’t get enough!
- looking for signs of spring everywhere. You wouldn’t know it by the temperatures we’ve been having, and the snow (!) we woke up to the other day, but I *am* seeing crocuses and snowbells and pussywillow, and the fact that there is daylight both leaving for work and coming home is a dead giveaway. Spring *is* on its way.
- sorting out a more pulled-together wardrobe, piece by piece. I have a couple of new-to-me bags, some new jewellery, and plans for pieces to make to fill in the gaps.
- making costumes like a champion. Cutting out muslins of old bedsheets, pillow for my knees, and canned tomatoes as patternweights. I’m doing the costumes for a dance collaboration with a chess-game setting, so I’ve been dreaming up kings and queens and rooks and what-not, and it’s quite fun! It’s all black and white of course, but I’m using a range of fabrics to keep it interesting, from linen and bamboo, through boiled wool and cotton gauze, to fake and real leather. It’s really starting to come together now, and that is always the best part of a project. Soon on to finishing touches!
- reading a beautiful aussie magazine that John brought me back from his work travels. Every page is a treat, and I’m still not done reading it. Just looking at that cover makes me happy.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- tidying piles, and hanging my patternmaking rulers, just in time for a bout of patternmaking (working on a costume project!)
- eating homemade bread with jam and sour cream, and some tea. I know, it’s rich, and if my mother reads this she will scoff and tell me I shouldn’t be eating this for breakfast pretty much every day. It’s one of the things I’m indulging in while John’s on work travel (the other things being chocolate-covered oatmeal cookies and obscene amounts of Gossip Girl. Don’t tell anyone).
- bemoaning the lack of light apparent in my grainy pictures. I wait not so patiently for spring, haha!
- reading about medieval stuffs. My first degree is in Medieval studies, and it always lingers in the background for me. My dad got me a couple of books on medieval cooking and social history for Christmas, and I’ve been fondling the pages and reading here and there and trying to understand (with surprising success!) the original old english recipes, and day-dreaming away. Also, some studies on medieval clothing for a couple of the costumes I’ll be making. Mmm, such fun!
- dressing for work-meetings with my Geithus lace top (yep, still working on the new sample), and a Hound blazer.
- flying through an alpaca sweater which is crazy soft and I just want to pet it. After a year-long hiatus I finished both sleeve in about a week, and now I’m just looking at miles of stockinette, and I’m thrilled.
- enjoying the signs of a lovely evening of visiting friends.

These past few weeks, I have been…

- amusing myself with six shades of grey at work.
- cooking with red cabbage, so pretty. Sarah B of My New Roots is my new best recipe friend, and I’ve been working my way through a bunch of her recipes, picking up new tricks here and there.
- reading my new favorite magazine. It’s pretty much the life I want to live with growing things, mindfulness, creating, cooking, and travelling – but with the impressive trait of being inspiring instead of preachy.
- altering shirts. Well, at least one shirt. John has a pile of dress shirts he’s been asking me to take in, and I’ve finally started on that pile. This one went from making him look like a 12-year old to actually fitting. I even moved the shoulder seam up! I expect about a dozen more of these, and the threshold to start much lower than it’s been.

These past few weeks, I have been…
- taking some blueish and blurry pictures to share with you. It’s still dark outside whenever I’m not at work (which also limits a lot of picture-taking to the weekends still), but for the first time now it’s not dark when I *leave* work! Small victories.
- eating green things. We brought back some jugs of our freshly made olive oil from my parents house, and man that stuff is green and bright and peppery! It was especially good drizzled over a bowl of white winter vegetable soup (that is, potatoes, celery root, and parsley root. And lots of cream), with some feld salad to top it off. Feld salad also goes by the names of field salad, lamb’s lettuce, corn salad, and mâche.
- riding a wave of drive and inner calm, and while I’m not quite sure where it’s coming from, I do hope it will stick around. I’ve been clearing off surfaces, tackling projects, and feeling determined rather than overwhelmed. It feels very good. I have been deep cleaning just one small area a day (a table, a shelf, a windowsill), and adding function – I now finally have a place to store my jewellery! Those are soap-dishes from Ikea holding all my earrings now, sitting pretty in the bedroom windowsill. Also, getting back into projects from way back – after a year of hiatus I’ve cut the lining for my Minoru jacket, and I’m so looking forward to getting it  done. It will be purple and cozy.
- dressing for the cold with strategic layers – that tiny pocket tank I’m wearing backwards is hiding the high neckline of my thermal longsleeved underlayer, haha!
- reading again. “The Devil and the White city” is about the 1893 World Expo in Chicago, and it’s making me miss the city, look up buildings and addresses, and relive my Windy city years. I haven’t read fiction in such a long time, but that too is feeling so good.