🏜 arizona :: maybe for the last time 🏜

(this is a substack that i just published)

i just spent nearly two weeks in the united states. i was very conscious the whole time that it might be my last trip there. our daughter is moving back to europe this summer to continue her studies in portugal. without her in arizona, i won’t really have any compelling reason to visit there again, despite still having some friends there. i still have family in the midwest, including my sister, but with the situation being what it is, i have to wonder if there will be a united states to go back to a year from now.

what struck me most during my visit was just how normal everything seemed. people were driving their cars, doing their shopping, picking up their coffee at the starbucks drive-thru, dining in restaurants, enjoying happy hours. just going about their lives as if there wasn’t a circus being performed from the whitehouse. as if the entire post ww2 world order wasn’t being torn asunder by a merry band of unqualified, unserious nitwits and the world’s (formerly) richest man and his minions.

i looked on in fascination. and i did all those normal things too - drank margaritas at happy hour, ate delicious mexican food, stopped by trader joe’s for those new light pink strawberries everyone on tiktok is talking about, got a new tattoo, shopped at the gap and old navy, went antiquing, picked up starbucks and ordered the best breakfast burritos ever from door dash. i even celebrated my birthday while i was there.

and it all felt so normal. it was just a really nice holiday in sunny arizona.

is everyone just avoiding reality? i honestly don’t know. i do my share of protecting myself from the daily deluge of the news, as i just can’t take the pace at which it’s coming. but i do follow along and know what’s going on. i do know that those clowns shared classified battle plans on a friggin’ signal chat, on which they included the editor of the atlantic (and any number of russians who were surely listening in as well, since at least one of them was in moscow at the time). i know that trump continues to threaten to take greenland and to insult denmark for being a “bad ally.” i read today that the european union is advising everyone to have 72 hours of food supplies laid in (that doesn’t really sound like enough if you ask me).

how can any of us think this is normal? how can we go about our normal lives, drinking cocktails and eating chicken & waffles for brunch? how did i do that? i honestly do not know.

🍹 drinkie poo - just a few things i drank on the trip 🍹

unicorn mimosa at hope breakfast bar in edina, minnesota

bloody mary with a beer sidecar at the lowry in minneapolis

exsw margarita with tahin rim at palma, phoenix

desert cactus margarita and blood orange margarita with tahin rim at papi gordo's, arcadia neighborhood, phoenix

cold brew coffee at hula's modern tiki, phoenix

a very spicy bloody mary at hula's modern tiki in phoenix

mango margarita at hula's modern tiki, phoenix

pickle bloody mary at the attic, arcadia neighborhood, phoenix

board & bottle at the original postino's in phoenix's arcadia neighborhood

cider flight at six byrd cider co. in phoenix's arcadia neighborhood

oyster shots at casey's moore's in tempe on my birthday

so many great happy hour experiences. not pictured - whole bottle of bubbles at sun bar for bunch on my birthday, all the starbucks drinks i got - the blackberry sage refresha with coconut milk was so yummy, a black & tan at casey moore's on st. paddy's day and loads of bubbles at ruby's parents' house in scottsdale on sunday. 

if this was indeed my last trip to the us (which i consciously thought about the whole time i was there), at least it was a good one. 

🧶 yarn candy 🧶

i had a couple of days in minneapolis at the beginning of my trip, so i made it my mission to visit yarn stores. funnily enough, they had a lot of the same yarns and patterns that we have here in denmark. the danish knitwear designers and yarn companies are clearly hot all over the world. i knew that from knittok, but it was fun to see it in reality. this store, bewoolen, had a lot of hand-dyed yarns that weren't scandi, but they were very pricey and i didn't see anything that i couldn't live without. 

i do just enjoy seeing lots and lots of beautiful of hanks of yarn though. i don't think i'm experienced enough to be able to see the potential in them and think that they would be perfect for one or another sweater that i have in my ravelry queue. i'm not honestly sure that i'd really like hand-dyed for sweaters. i think the variegation can yield weird results. but maybe one day, i'll just see the perfect hank and have to have it.

i did get this cute little bundle of minis, though. the color combo just appealed to me and wasn't one i'd have thought of on my own. that's the best part of visiting a yarn store - getting inspired. i don't know what i'll make with it - i was thinking of using it in some colorwork socks, perhaps. they also told me it would make a nice winter hat.

i'd been seeing lots of talk about japanese noro yarns on knittok, so it was fun to see some of them in person. i got these two to make another sophie hood, so it's not entirely true that i'm not inspired by variegated yarns. i also got myself some of the famed chaiogoo needles - just 3 pairs in the sizes i seem to be using most. i don't feel worthy of the full $200 set of interchangeables as of yet on my knitting journey. 

i went back to the store a second time with my sister (she knitted that sweater she's wearing, by the way, and even made up the pattern herself!). we didn't end up buying anything the second time around, but it was our last stop that day and we were getting a little bit hangry by the time we were there. sometimes there can be so many choices that you end up not choosing at all. 

i got some beautiful yarn to make a bella blocking sweater at another yarn shop - dandelion fiber co. here, they had some of the danish knitwear designers and knitting for olive and other scandi fibers, but they also had yarns from some american manufacturers. the yarn i bought was from tumalo fibers in oregon. 

i got enough yarn to make the bella blocking and with two skeins of lucky tweed by kelbourne woolens, another american yarn maker, i can also make the vest no. 1 by my favourite things in the same pretty mustard yellow tone.

one more basket of inspiration - someone at bewoolen has an eye for this color combo, it's very similiar to the small hanks above. i had to snap a photo to remember it for future projects. 

🌵 i love cactus! 🌵

i spent the past week or so in arizona. if it is indeed my last trip there (sabin is moving back to europe in july), it was a very good one. i'm still processing it all, but i wanted to share my favorite arizona thing - some cactus! i love saguaros and the prickly pear were absolutely gorgeous, all purple and pink. i want to make tea towels in a color palette inspired by them. 

i have much more to say, but the jetlag is currently getting in the way, so i will just leave it here for now. 🌵🌵🌵

 

drama at sea

i can't stop following this story of the collision between the stena immaculate (a product tanker, not an oil tanker, as all the news reports keep saying) and the solong (a smaller container vessel) off the east coast of england yesterday. it's in the area of immingham, where i've spent a lot of time filming ships, so when i first heard about it yesterday, i rushed to the report to see if a dfds ship was involved. it was not. 

i am inordinately fascinated by a shipping accident and kept refreshing the bbc app all day yesterday, as well as following the string of rescue and firefighting vessels that converged on the scene in my marine traffic app. the product tanker was loaded with 220,000 barrels of jet fuel and sitting in an anchorage off immingham when the solong came along and rammed into the side of it at 16 knots. the crew of the stena immaculate abandoned ship within about 30 minutes because it turns out that jet fuel is quite flammable. there were reports that the container vessel was carrying containers of sodium cyanide, but those were apparently false. they had some containers on board that had once had that substance in them, but which were currently empty. 

the captain of the solong has been arrested for "gross negligence manslaughter "(one crew member of the solong is missing and presumed dead). it will be interesting to know more of the story. the crew of the solong was russian and filipino and it was americans onboard the stena immaculate since it was chartered by the us navy. 

both ships are still smoldering today, but expected to remain intact. there were rumors that the solong would sink, but they've been debunked. it has disappeared from marine traffic, but someone probably turned off the ais. it will be very interesting to learn how they could have missed a large product tanker at anchor in an official anchorage, but i guess that will come out in the coming days. and i will be glued to the news, ship geek that i still am at heart.

you can put the girl in the kitchen, but you can't take her off the ship. or something like that. 

added - this guy does a good early analysis using marine traffic.

 

a few of my favorite things

with all the utter madness being caused by a certain spray-tanned madman, it can be hard to look on the bright side these days. but some sunshine and warm temperatures this weekend made it easier around here. i worked on clearing all of last year's plants out of the greenhouses and pruned my grape plant back. molly lounged around, watching me. she's still my bestie. got her back in 2012 in minnesota and she's still going strong. when i get back from minnesota and arizona (i'm going on thursday), it will be time to do the last work to get them ready for the season. 

i went out to nina's to get some presents to take with me to the us and ended up buying these two tiny vases for myself. it's the little things that make us happy - i filled them with the last of the snowdrops and they're so cheerful. yesterday, we grilled the first sausages of the season. and today i actually went running (well running and walking, but there was some running), it was so nice. it's amazing what a difference a bit of sunshine makes on one's mental health. 

and the last favorite thing - these soft, comfy ugg slippers. sabin sent them home to be stored here and i had to have them. they are so soft and comfy, they make my feet very happy.

here's hoping you found some moments of happiness in your weekend!

it's been a good week

this will forever be the week where i learned that i will become a danish citizen. it's also the week we officially were accepted in 3daysofdesign at work. it's one of the coolest design expos in the world and it takes place in copenhagen (of course) in june. i also had really good days at work - getting to be creative in different ways with a variety of colleagues.  and getting a great reminder that the best ideas always happen in the moments where you bounce ideas off one another and they grow and become something better. i am grateful to have such creative people around me, who make my ideas better and who open up my world with their ideas. i really needed that in the face of all the madness the spray-tanned satan is causing. there are still bright spots in the world and i intend to keep embracing them. but now, like olga, i'm going to rest.