The end of one year, the start of another

2014 went by fast when you look at it in hindsight... swoosh! But a lot of interesting and good things happened, and some that we could have been without, as always.  My blogging was reduced due to other things, but here is a little summary of the things I never got time to show you earlier from the year that is about to pass on to history (2014).

WEATHER: There was a very cold and wintry beginning. Everybody learned the word 'polar vortex' with caused low temperatures and snow and ice.

FOOD: Many good Swedish-style breakfasts, which are like true mini-smorgasbords. Kalles Kaviar we have to get at IKEA here in the US. 

CRAFT and ART: Philadelphia and Baltimore Craft Shows, as well as Morristown and Peter Valley. Weavings by AA, trips to Grounds for Sculpture, and much more enlightened and enlivened 2014. This sculpture below by Brower Hatcher is one of my favorites at Grounds of Sculpture... it is really a place worth many visits.  Below that is a piece of one of Erin Wilson's many handmade, innovative artwork quilts, which we love. (The photo doesn't really do it justice, since it was taken with a smartphone.)

SWEDEN: a trip in March to the homeland, led me back to some places I hadn't seen for over 35 years, and Fiby Forest was a wonderful place to revisit. March is usually a cold and dreary month in Sweden, but there are wondrous things if you look closer, red beetles, green mosses, and colorful food (indeed, these days Swedish food is not just boiled potatoes, brown meat and sauce).

IDAHO: Summertime was conference travel time as usual, this time in Idaho, a new state. Up into the dry areas of the Bitterroot mountain range was an experience - hiking around Blue Lake, and being in all the alpine meadows with new kinds of birds and flowers, and views and vistas. I am going back!

PLANTS: Lots of work work focused on plants as usual, especially neglected weeds, lichens, and edible and urban plants. Beauty and wonder is everywhere...

BUGS: But there was also a lot of insects showing up wherever I was, and they too can be gorgeous. Looking at them this year and finding help online to identify and learn about them lead to a whole new world opening up.  I guess I have to learn more about fungi next year...

OPTIMISM: And now, it is the last day of 2014. And, I end with a quote by Cheryl Strayed from her book Wild, on what nature (and life) really is about:

“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental.”

Recycle, reuse, refine

I have surfed the net and stumbled upon some fantastic art made of waste.

Like these sculptures made of broken CD's made by the Australian artist Sean Avery, found on the website Demilked.com.

And lots of amazing insects made from old electronic components, by Julie Alice Chapell, presented on her Facebook-page and on Etsy.

Electric wire is also recycled into art, like these little trees by BarbaraCCreations on Etsy

More pictures here. 

Be well, everybody!

Stamp of the Day: Hammarby

Not far from Uppsala, a little to the southeast on the large flat plains of glacial clays deposited just a hudnred thousand to a couple of million years ago, is a farm on a little hill.  It is Hammarby, Carl von Linne (Linnaeus)'s18th century farm, where he lived when he work as a professor of medicine and botany in Uppsala.  In town he had his scientific garden, and out here (within riding or walking distance) he had his farm and wild plants.

There are a couple of buildings at Hammarby, most built of horizontal logs that are painted with the typical red iron oxide paint of Sweden ('falu rödfärg').  This is where he lived with his family, the famous scientist that was convinced that he was put on this Earth to catalogue all living species and put it into some kind of reasonable system. And so he did.  Plants, Animals, Fossils, Rocks... all got a Latin name, a binomial of a genus and species epithet.  Like 'Homo sapiens'.

This Swedish stamp from 50 years ago shows Linnaeus in his garden outside the main building.  If you walk up the creaky and narrow (and extremely worn) stairs to the second floor and then take a right, you end up in his bedroom.  All the walls in there are covered with botanical prints, used as wall paper.  He was surrounded by plants, and even while asleep or in midwinter.  Tropical trees, orchids, fleshy flowers from far-away places were pasted onto the walls with starchy wall paper glue.  I assume there was regular wall paper printed in the mid 1700's, maybe not?  It is a bit strange today to see these antique and extremely valuable prints from the 1700s pasted up on the walls, covering every surface, and now stained with water, insect droppings, and dust.  Some of the prints are colored, maybe by hand. 

Hammarby is a great place to visit, so go there next time you are close to Uppsala.  And then go to the Cathedral inside Uppsala ('Domkyrkan') where you can step (or dance) on Linnaeus' grave.  His gravestone is set in the floor.

Weaving by the Swedish artist Karin Larsson in the beginning of 1900s

I was inspired by a young artist to show you this.
Karin Larsson's The Four Elements, in her weaving loom. Enjoy!

More on Karin Larssons work here, from an exhibition about her.

Do you Doodle?

Another day and a new meeting... Many results in doodle drawings such as this. Do you doodle? And is it rude to doodle in a meeting or not?

Green, brown, yellow and purple...

For the first time in my adult life I have tried to dye something, and it came out great!

 I have memories of dyeing a cotton scarf at a camp when I was maybe 12. The plant we used as dye was birch branches and aspen leaves. The people that used aspen got these really nice yellow scarves. We that were stuck with the birch got dirty light-green to beige scarves that looked old and worn... It was a major disappointment, especially since I had asked for permission to use the aspen, and the camp leaders said - no, we will split all groups in two parts, and you can't be in the other group. Why not? No idea. Probably some kind of semi-I-will-show-the-kids-I-have-the-power scheme.

Anyway, since then I have not dyed anything with natural colors that I can remember, and I am not counting stains from tomato sauce, blueberry jam, wine, or coffee on my shirts. In early summer I bought some undyed white silk scarves, white cotton yarn, and cleaned wool rowing (basically unspun naturally white wool). We got some books, and read and learned. The materials have to be pretreated with alum, a chemical, so the dye takes better, so I did that.

 Now, what to use as dye? I knew I wanted to make different colors, and base it on all natural, things I had at home.

The first batch was red onion skins. Who knew that red onion can give green colors!? Surprise! The colors showed in the book didn't really match what I got, and that is probably due to the chemistry of our well water. I also dyed some filter paper in this batch.
 
Second batch, coffee... Old coffee grains, cooked up again, filtered off, and then used as a dye bath. I think my coffee was pretty weak, so it became a light brown.
Third batch, yipeee, Turmeric! From the spice cabinet. What a color! Bright orange!!! Like, like, I don't know what. A living, deep orange.
Final fourth batch was a little test. Sometimes we have fresh blueberries from the store that go bad (=mold) in the fridge, so I had saved up a bag of them in our freezer. I cooked the berries down, filtered them, and then used the blueberry juice as a dye bath for 4 days. I had put the textiles and the dye liquid into an old orange juice bottle. Unfortunately I screwed on the top tight and left it out in the sun - after 4 days the bottle was ready to explode. Fermentation! :) Nothing got destroyed, and the colors of light purples are gorgeous.

The dyed wool and cotton yarn is now in Baltimore in AREA's artsy hands, to be used in some creative work. I can't wait to see what she will do with it.

What I learned?

• Always treat your fibers with mordant, then the colors will be better. 
• Don't hang the finished textiles for too long in the sun or they will become sunbleached. 
• Do not make fermented blueberry juice. 
• Big-mouthed orange juice plastic bottles are great for long-term dyeing.  No risk that an animal will drink it and you can shake it a lot to distribute the liquid well. 

Two lovely hotels... on either side of the Atlantic pond

I have two hotels that are my absolute favorites, and they are both alike and so dissimilar that you wonder what do these really have in common.  Neither is cheap, so save up first for a fantastic experience. So, on to the reviews and reminiscences:

The first is Sigtuna Stads Hotell in Sweden,just northwest of Stockholm, where I stayed maybe 10 years ago with PP.  It is a hotel from 1909 that has been immaculately renovated, cared for, and preserved while being updated to modern standards.  It mixes old white and unpainted wood with modern chrome and clean lines.  It is a blessing for tired eyes, and tired bodies.
      It also helps that they have the best Swedish breakfast buffet I have had in a long time.  It really impressed my husband-to-be at the time, he still talks about it. Take a visitor here from another country and they will really 'get' what Swedish breakfast is about.  Hardboiled eggs, many kinds of cold cuts, cheeses, Kalles kaviar, musli, yoghurt (several kinds), homebaked bread, real butter, jams, and on and on.  It might be changed now but I doubt it.
     Their dinners are also amazing, and all based on local, sustainable food. I have no memory of what we ate for dinner only that it was exuberant, memorable, and plainly amazing.  You sit in the old dining room and look out over Lake Mälaren, not far from the island Björkö that was one of the first Viking cities and trading places (named Birka by the vikings). In these areas history goes deep, as does the sense of nature and responsibility.
     The early 1900s components melds here effortlessly with 1950s,. 1960s, and 2010s both in design and food traditions. (Note how I left out 1970s and 1980s?  That was totally on purpose.)  I love this place and want to go back. (More photos via Google of this hotel here.  Worth googling and oogling and longing for. )


(Images borrowed from Sigtuna Stads Hotell website)


The second place is a recent discovery - Hotel Vermont, in the city of Burlington in the state of Vermont in the United States of America. Burlington sits on the eastern shore on Lake Champlain, and on the other side of the large lake is the Adirondack Mountains, blue shades in the distance on a clear day.

(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)
 Hotel Vermont is only a year or two old, so brand-new really and they have incorporated sustainable, beautiful and functional design throughout.  As much as possible they try to promote local food, local artists, and local artisans.  The soap is made locally, the mugs are from a local pottery, the artwork is local, and even if the glasses with cows on them are Italian, they are imported and sold locally in Bennington.  We know because we bought the same glasses in Vermont a few years ago, and I think they are gorgeous.
 
(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

The artwork behind the check-in desk in the lobby, a large wooden collage of reclaimed wood, has a very special story.  It was designed and constructed by Duncan Johnson by wooden pieces from destroyed houses after hurricane Irene which destroyed large parts of Vermont villages in 2011 through massive, and I mean MASSIVE, flooding.  Hundred-year-old covered bridges were washed away, people were disconnected from the world by non-existent roads for weeks, and houses filled with mud and water and fell apart. Hurricanes don't always have the worst effect along the coast, which Irene showed.
 
 (Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

But back to the hotel - our room had understated art, a very smart bathroom solution where one person can have privacy on the toilet and the other can take a shower - all arranged through frosted sliding glass doors.  There is free sparkling and mineral water in the hallways (which are very quiet!), as well as many kinds of coffee and tea.  The bed, oh the bed.  It is alike a dream sleeping in that bed.  Just perfectly soft.  Amazing pillows too.  A hotel with bad mattresses kills a good visit.  (OK, worst mattresses ever?  OTS research station in Palo Verde, Costa Rica, takes the price.  Then there is a big gap, and unfortunately Hotel Latchis in Brattleboro comes in second.  If they changed their mattresses their hotel would suddenly get 4 stars in my book - I love that art deco hotel but the hard old mattresses are killing me...).  Someone at Hotel Vermont really cares about sleep quality. Thank you!
 
(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

The breakfast is served at Juniper, a small restaurant near the well-designed bar, which in itself is a great treat.  Many local beers and other liquids there too (at the bar).  Back to breakfast, which was amazing and not too expensive.  Mushroom ragout on homebaked bread with a soft-poached egg on top, and I was in heaven.  PP had grits with a sunny-side up egg and young pea shoots, and he was in heaven too.
    A few days earlier we had paid $11 for breakfast at an inn in southern Vermont, for food that was about 5% of the value and experience of this food (moldy, uncooked, tasteless), and this food was not much more expensive.  How can that be?  "Could it be a whistlepig?" [That latter quote is a somewhat internal Vermont story, which involve groundhogs, a bike, and Whistlepig whisky, and now is a family quote here at home. Sorry, couldn't help myself. ]

(Images borrowed from Hotel Vermont's website)

So, we stayed at this hotel and I failed to take any photos.  How is that possible?  I don't know. Whistlepig, maybe? :)  Actually, I didn't have any whisky, but I did have an amazing elderflower drink.  Vermont knows their elderflowers, it goes in their lemonade, beer, and even rum.

(For the record, all reviews on this blog are voluntary, and do not include ANY kind of marketing or money from any commercial companies.  It is just my own personal opinions of places where I have paid to eat, sleep, walk, think, shower, and be for a little while. Just so we are clear on that. If I win a million dollars on a lottery someday, you'll find me at either of these hotels for a little while :)   )

Night Lights

The last night in Costa Rica I went up on the hotel roof, on the 5th floor, and looked out into the Central Valley around the city of San Jose.  It was so black, and with little dots of lights here and there.

Then I turned on the camera in night mode (very long exposure, no flash) and realized that you can make totally new images from a scene like that by fooling around a little bit.  So, here are some of my abstractions from that night.  (More photos like this here on Flickr.)

 

'masts'

 

 'flying east'

 

'lonely snake, away from the flock'

 

'sea horses'

Garden update from New Jersey: baby mantis and poppies

The baby praying mantis' are out, growing quickly by eating aphids.  We see up to 10 at the time, and they are hanging out by the daylilies, which opened their giant yellow flowers today.

We have had too much rain already.  But the plants love it. In the last week we have had 7 inches of rain, which is nearly 200 mm. The fruit on my car window is an immature red maple samara.

AREA and I went to The New York Botanical Garden a few weeks ago. Philip Hass has an exhibit there where he has made giant, oversized sculptures inspired by Arcimboldo's The Four Seasons.  What do you think?  We weren't too impressed.  Gaudy and overblown, I think. It also looks like a plastic flower arrangement. (more photos here)

And, among the nicest things our town has done recently is the installation of solar panels by each school, and, the sowing of wildflower seeds around their newly planted trees.  Here are the weedy cornflower and poppies flourishing, with the solar panels in the background. People stop and take photos, just like we did.  This is so much nicer than green, sprayed, sterile, lawn.

Art, art, art...... from the capital

A little less than a year ago I was visiting Washington DC and took a few hours to visit some of the amazing museums they have here.  Here is just some quick snapshots of some great art and design I saw, for your enjoyment:

Neil Jenney's 'Coat and Coated', Corcoran Gallery.  This is a self-referential piece of art.


 John Garret's 'Mixed media', Renwick Gallery.  Metal quilting...


Darryl and Karen Arawjo's 'Nest of Fifteen' handmade baskets, Renwick Gallery.


Larry Fuente's 'Game Fish', made from toy pieces mostly, Renwick Gallery. 


'Michael James' 'Quilt #150, Rehoboth Meander', Renwick Gallery.


Stairs inside the Museum of the American Indian.


The outside of the Museum of the American Indian, designed as a sedimentary rock wall.


Window into the courtyard of Freer Gallery.

Which one is your favorite?