For the love of socks, and not just any socks...

I spend about half of each year wearing my favorite socks - those times when it is colder and you need something warm and cozy on your feet.  It is even better (I think) if the socks both makes your body and your mind happy, and therefore I love colored, patterned socks, especially striped socks. My favorite winter socks are from Smartwool, an American company that actually makes their socks in the US.  They have striped, cabled, patterned, funky, long, short and just gorgeous socks.  OK, so I am a sock woman...  Right now I have Swedish socks on, cotton with black and white stripes like a piano.

A few days ago I ordered a 3-pack of new socks from them.  I expected to get just the usual, three pairs of socks tied together with some plastic strap in a plastic bag.  But, big happy surprise when they arrived today.  I opened the postal package and inside was a long, narrow brown cardboard box.  On the top of the box it said "Lucky, lucky you!".  Ahhhh!  I opened the box, with a Christmas feeling in my stomach, and there they were, neatly folded up, three pairs of differently patterned red socks.  My heart filled with joy!  Not only did I get socks, but I got LUCKY socks!  Smartwool really knows how to please the customers.  Thank you, Smartwool!  And the box, that will be perfect for storing my jewelry-making tools...

Oh, I should also tell you that these wool socks can be washed in the washing machine (on cold, low temp), and last for a long time.  Yes, they do wear out, but that is because I wear them so much. 

PS.  I rarely endorse products, but in this case I really think this product is great.  And I didn't get paid a penny to write this, in fact, I paid over $40 to get three pairs of wonderful socks.  Nobody on this blog gets any freebies from any company in return for good reviews.  Nope, here we tell the truth as we see it.

Our brains are lying to us

I just read this:

"the human mind is superb at seeing pattern, even when it doesn't exist, [...], and the human mind in contrast often has trouble seeing actual patterns in multidimensional space"  

[Curtis Clark on Taxacom]

...and it is so true.  Examples are sayings such as 'bad things come in three' (they don't, statistically).  Our brain is fooling us at times, and other times, we cannot just grasp the immense patterns in 3-dimensional space and time.  Just try to understand the universe...

Some amazing and cool Scandinavian style fabric designs can be found at this UK website, Fabric Rehab.  I love this owl print, and it reminds me of late 1960s early 1970s things I saw when I grew up (or maybe it was early 1960s and they were still in style in my part of Sweden?).

How about this dandelion fabric? OK the color is a bit mustardy, but otherwise?


Kristen Kimball, of The Dirty Life fame and hard work, has written an essay on the Oprah website - worth reading.  There is also a great interview with her here, which I don't think I have linked to before from this blog.  More about living off the land locally, on this blog.

And while you are reading all these great things, often building on shared resources and shared commitments and responsibilities, here is one woman who's research is famous for studying this, everyday life around the world and how we share things ethically and honestly: Elinor Ostrom. She got the Nobel prize in Economics for her research, which is pretty remarkable, when you realize that:

"Ostrom’s key idea is that neither the state nor the market is the best manager of our collective resources—it’s us, we the people. The commons concept is catching on in a big way as we look at how to lighten our impact on the earth, live within the means of our natural resources, and navigate the ownership issues of a new digital era."

Read more here, and there is an interview with Elinor here.  I met her last year through work, and the best quote from her that day was: "Shame can be a most useful feeling."  She was talking about shaming people into doing the right thing, like when they had mock trials along the Rhen River accusing big companies of destroying the water of the river with pollution.  It led to the clean-up of the river, quite voluntarily, by several companies who wanted to be known as the ones that do the right thing, not the wrong thing.  The same process can be used when a village manages a common forest, grazing land, etc., but it only works if you have democratic processes in place and if all people care about the outcome.  Her research is most fascinating, and have implications for how we don't manage common resources today like the air, oceans, water quality and quantity, and carbon dioxide pollution.

OK snapshot: Puzzling street art

Torget utanför teaterhögskolan. (The square outside the Theatre
college). Stockholm, Sweden

Shapes

This tropical greenhouse at Missouri Botanical Garden reminded me of
Buckminster Fuller's head on a recent stamp of the day. The greenhouse is called the Climatron Conservatory and includes 1200 plant species, and also some tropical birds.

More art: Floating glass (by Chihuly) in the Victoria waterlily pond in front of the greenhouse.

Leafy greens

Plants from Missouri Botanical Garden (photos by LS).

Pattern or chaos?

These heirloom Indian corn cobs (majs, maize) are patterned not by a designer, but by the turning on and off by certain genes based on random pollination by wind. So a random event leads to a pattern, or does it just look like chaos? I don't think so, even irregular patterns are patterns in my mind. But I think different people see patterns differently, and that there is no right or wrong in pattern vision, just different views and opinions.

Is the Humber bridge making a pattern?

Two more patterns: These fern leaves are making a pattern, at least for my eye.



But can a pattern be made of one thing?



If not - where is really the difference?

2 make a pattern "proof"

Here is a pattern of 2:



This is the kittens inspiration:

Pattern-quiz

When does a pattern start to emerge? How many repetitions does it need? And how is it with complex patterns, sometimes things not resembling each other makes "it" happen.
Does many things of the same type always create a pattern ?
How does the brain sort the images out, is it because we start to see a new object, a pattern instead of singular objects? Do the objects need to be small or do we see patterns even when there are just three of a thing standing in a row?

When do you see the object and when do you see a pattern? Place a comment!

by EH

Picture1. Leaves
Picture2. A pillow
Picture3. Strawberry tart
Picture4. Lilies of the valley
Picture 5. Lions
Picture 6. Pots in a row

Cabbage

Another nice pattern from last Sunday at Rosendal's garden.

Patterns: Succulent leaves

New York Botanical Garden, 2003, photo by LS