@brittarnhild
Autumn is here, winter is on its way.......
Winter is a challenging time for me, for several reasons. One of them is the lack of colours.
I have decided to search especially for colours this year, and to help me I have started an account on instagram where I each day post a palette of the day.
The picture above shows today's palette.
If you want to follow my hunt, you can follow me on palettoftheday on instagram
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@brittarnhild
My mother's younger sister, my aunt Oddrun, is in the prosess of moving, which means she is doing a "deep-clean" in her apartment, cleaning out a lot of stuff she has collected over the years. Several times she has contacted me, knowing that I am the real collector in the family, asking if I want this or that. Yesterday Terje and our son, who is home for a week from Stockholm, drove over to get an old rose painted coffin, which used to belong to my grandparents. Inside the chest she had put an old weaving made my my grandmother's sister, and a few pictures. One of the photos showing my great grandma Ane-Martha, which I never met, and also a picture of grandma Olga with her sister and a friend, all three dressed in the tradition costume, bunad.
Grandma Olga is to the left in the picture.
All three women are holding some handiwork. The one to the right a knitting, the one in the middle probably some crochet, and grandma Olga, well, I am not sure, but it might be some lace work, nupereller.
Grandma Olga was a seamstress. Before she married she worked in a school for blind children, sewing and mending their clothes. She was the one to teach me knitting and after she died I inherited her button collection and her sewing equipment.
I love the rose painted chest, I might show it to you some day. But the old photos really made my heart sing.
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@brittarnhild
Back in the summer of 1978 I went to Sweden together with a group of students from my home city Trondheim. After a week in Lund, south in Sweden, we took the ferry over to Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. During the trip I fell in love with one of the other student. Two years later we were married, four years later we had our first child, and today, 46 years later, we are back in Gotland, the island of roses and fairytales.
When we came to the island, earlier today, I was concerned all the roses would have gone for the summer, so I started to photograph rosehips to illustrate this blogpost.
But no need to worry. The roses are here, a plentiful of them.
The island of roses and fairytales.
Just like our marriage.
We did get a good start, didn't we?
I hope to show you more roses and more fairytales in the days to come.
And rosehips.
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@brittarnhild
Day one of our late summer vacation is almost over.
We drove from home not long after breakfast, arriving at Røros in perfect time for lunch.
I have written so many times here in the blog, so let me just say that we had a very nice lunch and then continued south east to Sweden.
And look who we met as soon as we crossed the border :-) You know him Ardi, don't you?
We had a couple of stops before reaching our goal for the day, small charming places like the village of Idre, where we did a nice walk down by the lake.
The church there was closed, but still nice to pass by.
Our stop for there night is Mora, in Dalarna, Sweden. We had a stop here last year as well, and wanted to see more of the place.
Tonight we've had a 5km hike, and I picket my "bouquet of the day" which I will share on instagram tomorrow.
All wildflowers, down by the river.
This area of Sweden is known for the "dala hest" (Dala-horse), these red painted houses. You find them everywhere, and I can stop photographing them.
We are on our way to be now, hopefully we'll meet again tomorrow.......
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@brittarnhild
We are leaving for a roadtrip to Sweden first thing tomorrow morning. The sunflowers I have in vases indoors will not survive, so tonight I have been painting one of them.
I keep a creative journal .
A painting or a sketch, a few words.
Today I wrote about a visit to my father. He might or he might not live till we are back.
We had a good time together.
He recognised both me and Terje.
We sang hymns and said the Lord´s Prayer.
We said goodbye.
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@brittarnhild
I have been retired for more than 4 years now.
I love retirement. I love the freedom, the white canvases stretching ahead of me every morning when I wake up, the long meals and coffee breaks, the freedom, the everything. I love it, and still, somehow, it can still be challenging to come to terms with. What now? Is this all?
I have more than enough to fill my days. I have my family, my garden, my books, my hikes, my friends, my knitting, my writing, my painting, my piano, I cook and I bake, I travel.......you name it. Still, especially at nights, dark thoughts tend to find their way into my brain. Is this all?
When these thoughts come, the easiest way out of them is to fill my time with more activities. There are always more books to read, more knitting to be done, more hikes to do.......
.....but then again....... What now?, Is this all?
Well, do I really have to do all what I do? Do we really have to do all what we do?
Putting a WE instead of an I into the question is helping me to see that I am a daughter of our western world. Value measured in what we do, not what we are.
No, this is not all!
There is more to it.
I live. I am loved.
We live. We are loved.
I believe in a God who has created our world. Who has created me.
There is a meaning somewhere.......or actually, there is a meaning here and now.
My life is meaningful.
Our lives are meaningful.
Not because of what we do. Not because of what we are.
Life is meaningful because we are!
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When these thoughts are thought, I walk out in the garden, out in the woods, up the hill.
To pick flowers.
I know that questions will come again, and I will continue to pick flowers for as lone as I live.
Hopefully.
And when I can't manage to pick flowers anymore, I still am!
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@brittarnhild
I love sunflowers.
Every year I grow them in the garden with the grandkids, and now they have started to bloom.
I fill the house with them.
And from morning till night I dance the sunflower dance.
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@brittarnhild
After discovering the instagram account @onebouquetperday I have been reading and searching more about the Slow Flower movement. For years I have trying to live my life as much as possible according to the Slow Life movement, and Slow Flower is for me a natural extension of these thoughts.
I still have a lot to learn and to reflect upon. Like, which flowers to buy, where to buy them, are they local, which footprint are they making.......
Flower shops are closing down fast here in Norway, while supermarket sell more and more fast growing plants. I never buy flowers at supermarkets, I always support local flowershops.......but there is of course so much more to this. And knowing myself I know I will love exploring more of these "slow" thoughts.
I just ordered Amy Stewarts book Flower Confidential, The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers. Can't wait to start reading it.
I will continue to do my slow flower one bouquet a day, like this one I picket at the small island of Smøla today, and will post at @og_en_liten_blomst tomorrow
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