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
Yesterday was Shrove Sunday, tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Tuesday. Today, the day in between, is Blue Monday. From when I have read it got its name from the Blue Cloth the priests in the Catholic Church covered the altar with on the start of Lent.
Here in Norway we do not have any specific traditions for this day, but as a preparations for the coming 7 weeks of Lent, I have picked, from my shelves, a few books which will follow me through the Lent weeks.
Michel Pastoureau´s Blue, The History of a Color. Victoria Finlay's Colour, Travels Through the Paintbox. Nature´s Palette, A Color Reference System from the Natural World, by Thames&Hudson
What an amazing blessing to live in a world filled with colours. What if God created the world in black and white only? Can you imagine? I am looking out my studio window just now. A sky in a multitudes of grey shades, winter green trees, white snow, a red house up the road with stacks of logs piled up along the wall, birds in brown, yellow, splashed of blue (on the blue tits), a mother and her daughter coming home from school, the daughter with a happy, pink backpack, a man holding a red plastic bag. Colours everywhere.
If you have been following Britt Arnhilds House in the Woods for some time, you will know that Lent is a lot about colours for me. Seven weeks of lent, seven colours in the rainbow, and so I have given each week is own colour, starting with red. Two years ago I expanded this rainbow calendar to also include knitting. I have talked a lot about this in my YouTube videos the last few years.
With Lent starting on Ash Wednesday, and each week starting on Sundays, we are already into the third week of Lent, which according to the rainbow calendar is yellow. I will come to that, but since I haven't been here for some time, I want to start with the beginning, with red.
This year I want to knit wrist warmers in the different colours of the rainbow. Using my own designs, kind of, I find inspiration in a wonderful book I have with watercolours by the Austrian Swedish painter and designer Josef Frank. In the images in this post you see both the painting which is inspiring me, and also the finished wrist warmers.
What a balm for there soul in is to sit here in my studio, looking at colours, making drawings, knitting.
If you want to see and hear more of my rainbow calendar, you are welcome over to this video, which I posted during red week.
***********
You can easily find my other active blogs through my new webpage, brittarnhild.no The other blogs, which focus on different themes, are all in Norwegian, but the images are all our shared language, and you can always easily use google translate :-)
On Facebook I hava a page connected to this blog, which I call, obviously Britt Arnhild´s House in the Woods. Feel free to subscribe to it. I am also considering making a group connected to this page, where we all can post, chat, have discussions, sharing and so on. Would that be of interest for you? Well, let's see where this path leads us, shall we?
I do have an account on snapchat as well, mostly for family and a few close friends. Let me know if you are interested in getting the stories I share there, and we might connect :-)
Lucky me to have knitting these days. I knit every day, not all day but not far from, and I have knitting projects around everywhere.
This rainbow cardigan, photographed at our cabin two weeks ago is on of my newest finished objects. Knitted in left over yarn only. Being a knitter for soon to be 60 years, hardly throwing away any left over yarn at all, I love challenging myself to find ways to used it. Knitting the rainbow.
I love the colours, I love the wool, I love the garment and have used it more or less every day since I finished it. Like every morning when I take my daily walk in the garden, feeding the birds, opening the greenhouse door, checking the beds.
Ever since I discovered the church St. Martin in the Fields, many London trips ago, I have made sure to give it a visit. Down in the crypt for tea, home made cakes and a stroll in the book store, up in the church for peace and quiet, and for music.
Yesterday I was lucky, I arrived in the church half past twelve, which gave me just enough time for tea and cake down in the crypt, before the lunch concert at 1pm. A concert with Gabriella Jones playing harp. The church was slowly filling up while I sat there, clearing my mind for all the noice, hustling and bustling from the busy London streets.
Gabriella Jones came in, and her long, dark hair, shining eyes and bright smile filled the church. I closed my eyes, focused on the music, not on the coughing harking of the man behind me while Scarlatti´s Sonata in A started to flow. My whole body relaxed, and behind my eyelids colours appeared. Blue at first. The dark blue of the sky just after the sun has set. Then a little red, some orange, glimpses of pink. I not often see colours when I hear music, but when it happens it feels like a special blessing.
The sonata and the following applause ended and Gabriella started to talk about the next piece she was to play, and its composer, Canadian Caroline Lizotte. I wanted to stay in my colour land, but opened my eyes when I heard Gabriella say: "Caroline Lizotte draws every colour she can from her harp......."
I continued to stay in heaven for the rest of the concert. Gabriella Jones´lovely music (angels play harps, don´t they), the colours drawn by Caroline Lizotte, and also the knowledge that Lizotte writes all her music by hand, not on the computer.
:::::::::::::::::::
You know what? Advent is soon here :-) I had my morning tea at Fortnum&Mason yesterday, and while enjoying their special Christmas blend tea, I started to plan my advent blogging.
I do have some surprises coming up this year.......like, doing something in my vlog (on YouTube).......hopefully. So do not hesitate, come over to my YouTube chanel and subscribe, to be sure not to miss anything :-)
::::::::::::::::::
Do not forget to watch my latest knitting vlog (pssst, in the advent vlogs I hope to speak a mixture of Norwegian and English)
Today we had more time. Still long work hours, but for lunch we had a two hours break.......everybody out.
I did not know it yesterday, but the paths I photographed took us right into paradise.
The lunch break was all planned, with activities we were doing together, kind of teambuilding. A lot of laughter, a lot of challenges, kind of out of the comfort zone stuff.
Like when we were blindfolded and had to be lead by the person next to us. I could smell creation then, I could feel it, with my fingers, my hands, my feet inside the hiking boots, branches against my head, my ears listening to whatever they could hear. A woodpecker not far away.
Two eyes to see. What a wonderful blessing. No, three eyes. My blue pair, and the lense of my Nikon.
After I had posted photos of salads from my garden on facebook, several friends asked me if they could come and have a look, and to come and learn about edible plants, or edimentals as a crazy garden and salad man here in Trondheim calls plants which are both edible and ornamental. Then the idea of an open day in my garden was born, and I created a facebook event: Colourful Salads.
The open day was yesterday. First my parents came, they wanted to fill their buckets with black currants, to make jam.
And soon the garden filled with colourful women, eager to learn how to make colourful salads.
What fun to walk around with them, showing them my garden, talking about the plants and then let them all pick what they wanted to make their own salads.
This photo was taken by one of the women. Isn´t it beautiful :-)
Some time ago I bought a beautiful book, filled with amazing pictures about the colours of the garden. When I first saw the title of the book I knew that it was one I had to have. Then the book arrived and it was not at all what I had expected. A lovely book, though very different from the images I had made up in my mind. This was actually a good thing, because the images I had created opened up for a new creative path in my life, the path where the #365coloursofthegarden or #365fargerihagen as I say in Norwegian, grow.
I post my #365fargerihagen photos in my instagram account @akeleiehagen and also link them to my facebook page. Instagram is a medium for sharing photos and qiute short texts, so I add just one or two sentences, but the flowers and the colours I share, follow me though the day.
For some days now I have been exploring the whites in the garden. I am amazed by how many different shades of white there are.
Reflecting upon the small things in nature, like the different shades of a colour, as an amazing way to help you love Creation and The Creator. To help you see the importance of taking care of life in every shade. To help you seek sustainability in your everyday choices.
All texts and photos by Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland
About me
About me
I am living in a red house surrounded by a blue garden near Trondheim, Norway. I love everydays and post about my steps through life. Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods is open to everybody. Welcome over!
Recent Comments