Not exactly working according to plan.

Later (much later), your name in the history books is Håkon The Good. How did this happen?

Let’s start at the beginning

Håkon returns to Norway quite a few years before the incident of the sacrifice to Odin. He travels with an entourage of priests and clergymen, having lived in England since he was a small child.

He is the youngest son of Harald The Hairy. His father sent him to England to be brought up at the court King Athelstan, possibly to keep him out of harm’s way.

Harald had his reasons for sending Håkon, his youngest son, abroad. One of these might have been that Harald’s oldest son, Eirik Blood Axe, had an annoying habit of killing off his brothers so that he wouldn’t have any competitors for the position as heir to “The Way North”.

Around a year after his return, Håkon starts challenging his half-brother Eirik (he with the bloody axe) and gathers enough supporters to chase Eirik to Denmark, and Håkon gathers supporters all along the western coast of Norway.

Håkon is eager to reform the traditional laws and infuse Christian ethics into the customs.

It’s a tough crowd.

He is met with suspicion when encouraging people to quit blood feuds, which is kind of a national sport at the time.

Keeping Sundays holy is another newfangled idea which is met with much scorn and ridicule.

He also is against putting weak babies out in the forest to die and tries to milden the practice of keeping slaves, by freeing a small number of slaves each year.

He introduces a defense system, mandatory lighting of signal fires along the coast if enemy ships are spotted, to warn when enemy ships are approaching so they have time to man shops and be prepared to fight. In theory, this was a good idea (Re: Eirik Blood Axe). But Håkon has also been known to punish people who lit signal fires too quickly, and then the foreign ships turned out to be peaceful merchants. This caused a fair bit of bitterness and frustration among the peasants who were given the task of guarding the coast in this way.

The long term plan

So, Håkon’s wants to turn the Odin-worshipping men into Christians and persuade them to chant latin phrases and waft incense in honour of the White Christ instead of slaughtering a horse and drinking its blood in honour of Odin.

Diplomacy and compromise

In order to keep the peace with all of his supporters (even the ones who still worship Odin), Håkon gives in and partakes in the ritual, after long deliberations and probably with an anguished soul and accompanied by much wringing of hands and tossing around of prayers and incense by his by then not very merry band of priests.

You see, Håkon had learned another thing besides Christianity at the court of Athelstan. He learned diplomacy.

He lost the battle, but Christianity won the war.

His reign was one of long discussions and compromises rather than fueling conflicts and I suspect that in part, this is why historians have named him Håkon The Good. The changes in legislation that Håkon introduced prepared the ground for other, bigger changes later on.

Around eighty years later, Olav Haraldsson (later known as Olav The Holy), managed to convert enough people to Christianity to make this new religion the main one (with methods that would not be approved by Amnesty International today so I’m not sure how holy he in fact was), and Olav The Holy has since bathed in glory, known as the king who made Norway a Christian nation. Håkon The Good, the king who paved the way with legislation and diplomacy has not got such a prominent place.

But I’m jumping ahead.

The final battle

Back to the year 961. Picture this: Håkon is unsuspectingly resting with his small army in his farm in Fitjar on the west coast of Norway, when the sons of Eirik Blood Axe together with mercenaries from Denmark launch a surprise attack. How did they get this far north without the signal fires warning Håkon and his men? Perhaps the peasants were reluctant to light the fires, fearing punishment.

But here they were. Bloodthirsty and vengeful, with many ships, already in the bay down below the king’s farm.

A bloody battle follows (right in the spot where the local Spar shop is today), and Håkon’s small army manages to chase the bigger army of Danes off to sea again. But during the battle Håkon is mortally wounded by a poisoned arrow, and dies later of the wound.

A tragic story, really.

He fails to convert the Odin-worshippers to Christianity.

He dies after a battle that his army won.

He leaves no sons to reign after him. Legend has it that he married a heathen woman and had a daughter called Tora, but the historic sources say nothing about what became of her, if she ever existed.

Why am I telling you this? Because we have a historic play about Håkon The Good here in Fitjar, since we are rather proud of the fact that one of his farms was here and this is the place where his final battle took place.

And I am fortunate to have a small role in this historic play. Two years ago was the first time this play was staged and I was going to play a small role as a farm wife, but then I broke my ankle a week before the premiere and instead ended up watching the play from a wheelchair (which was kind of amazing too).

But THIS time I am going to be on stage, I promise, and this time I am playing a völva.

And what is a völva? I’ll tell you more about that another time.

I’m sharing one of my favourite paintings this month. I love it because I love those blond nights of the Nordic summer, and I love, love, love water lilies. And this painting has both!

But first, a little bit about the artist, Kitty Kielland (1843–1914).

Strong, unusual women are scorned

Kitty Kielland was not considered good looking, and she was far too strong to be liked by everyone.

She was one of the few women who painted landscapes in the 1800s in Norway. Until then, landscape painting was dominated by male painters, and the motifs considered “proper” and feminine enough for female painters were portraits, domestic scenes and flowers. Kitty Kielland challenged this, and went on painting landscapes.

She did a few portraits, though, and here is her self-portrait:

You’ll notice that she is a very different personality from Oda Krogh whom I wrote about in the July edition of Start With Art. Did you miss that? Look it up here.

She was berated and criticised (very strongly, mostly by men) for overstepping boundaries and venturing into the then male dominated landscape painting.

She was strong. She painted what she wanted to paint, and won prizes for many of her works and exhibited her work in Norway and in France.

Too strong for her time

Besides painting, she was also a feminist and was actively advocating for women’s rights. Which did not make her many friends among men. But she was close friends with other women painters, and shared a flat in Paris with Harriet Backer (remember Harriet Backer, from Start With Art in June?) for a couple of years.

Her younger brother, the famous author Alexander Kielland, described her: “She has sharp edges but a soft center”. She was secretly in love with the author and poet Arne Garborg, and he only discovered this through a letter she wrote to him many years later, after he had married (and lived very happily with) another woman. Kitty remained single throughout her life, but she openly expressed the longing for someone to share her life with and have a family.

On to the painting:

The Start with art painting I have chosen for August is Summer Night by Kitty Kielland.

This is a landscape that captures the light Nordic summer night in a magical way. It is oil on canvas, and is a mixture of bold strokes (the trees and the hills in the middle and far distance) contrasting with the minute details of the reeds in the foreground.

The colours are cool and calm. There are greens of varying depth and only the merest hint of lilac in the clouds and the reflection of the sky in the water.

It is a painting I know well, having gazed at the water lilies and the mother-of-pearl sky and almost feel like I am breathing the moist cool evening air. But as I was preparing this article, I discovered there is a person rowing in a little boat in the distance! How could I not have seen that before???

Look closely and you’ll see the person in the boat. Wouldn’t you just love to be that person peacefully gliding on the calm lake on a summer night?

I don’t know many paintings that bring my pulse down like this one. Just rest your eyes on the painting and let the calm sink in.

And Kitty Kielland herself, she inspires me to be strong.

Tell me: how does this painting make you feel?

The text in this article is created entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

The cabin:

We’re off to a weekend of hauling water from the stream and heating it on the wood stove.

A weekend of spending more than an hour doing the dishes. Not because it’s a lot of work but because I have to put down the dish cloth and grab the binoculars every time there is movement on the water, in case it is one of the resident loons landing.

A weekend of making filtered coffee into a thermos, and drinking it from the cup with the broken handle.

A weekend of perhaps finding some cloudberries. Because they’re supposed to be ready for picking now.

I want to tell you about cloudberries, these plump, bright orange cloud-like berries that have only one glorious berry on each plant.

I’m not going to tell you exactly where to find them, obviously.

Cloudberries are called multer in Norwegian, some people say molter. It’s untranslatable. “Heavenly mouthful” is a feeble attempt. Cloudberry is close enough.

I live in the southern part of Norway, where the cloudberries grow on select marshes up in the mountains, and the locations of the cloudberry marshes are well guarded secrets. If you ask the locals where they go to pick cloudberries, they become shifty eyed and very vague and the conversation goes from jovial to guarded before you can spell “faux pas”.

The true sign of belonging to a family is not when the father-in-law holds the tenderhearted speech at your wedding, but when they reveal the locations where they go to pick cloudberries.

Up north in Norway cloudberries are plentiful. You can come across vast marshes completely yellow with cloudberries. But in those areas the land owners have the berry-picking rights and it is forbidden to pick cloudberries without the permission of the proprietor. But in the southern parts of Norway, you are allowed to pick any wild berries everywhere.

Around our cabin (in Telemark, which is in southern Norway), there are marshes with cloudberries, and we are allowed to pick them. If we can find them.

It is possible to buy cloudberry jam in grocery stores. Expensive, but possible.

I find the idea of cloudberry jam preposterous.

I even avoid freezing cloudberries to save for Christmas.

I also treat with silent contempt the idea of defiling these heavenly delicacies by smushing them up and mixing them with whipped cream, which is a common manner of serving cloudberries. “Cloudberry cream” is the most luxurious Christmas dessert served in Norwegian homes and consists of a miniscule amount of cloudberries (or, a spoonful or two of cloudberry jam) stirred into in vast quantities of whipped cream. I know that this method of serving them will make a small amount of cloudberries go a long way when making a large dessert for the whole extended family at Christmas, but I don’t like it. It’s like making Gin & Tonic with half a teaspoon of gin in each drink to make the gin last longer.

Cloudberries are truly wild berries.

I have never heard of a cloudberry farm, and have never heard of anyone even attempting to domesticate them.

Cloudberries are a fickle bunch. The spring weather has to be just right, not too warm too soon, and no frost. If there is the merest breath of frost when they bloom, there will be no cloudberries. When that happens, we can walk for miles in late July and only manage to gather a small handful of berries, even on marshes that where promisingly bestrewn with the delicate white cloudberry flowers in spring.

However, some years we are able to gather so many cloudberries that we have more than we can eat. Oh the joy! Then, and only then, will I freeze what we don’t eat at the cabin, and bring them out at Christmas, to be enjoyed as a special dessert.

Husband and I partake in the most hedonistic of rituals: Eating the cloudberries right after we pick them instead of saving them for Christmas.

Cloudberries taste best after spending a day laboriously trekking across marshes hunting for them and gathering them in a small bucket, reverently eaten while they are still sun-warm heaped on a plate, sprinkled with sugar and and with a little heavy cream, like this:

But here’s the thing. Some people (heretics! savages!) don’t like cloudberries.

These poor souls have no taste for these berries. They find them too crunchy. There are rather large seeds in each little ball of deliciousness, kind of like raspberries. They think they taste weird. They just don’t get it. They have no understanding for the superb reverence with which the taste of these berries are to be treated.

I don’t mind. For every family member not liking cloudberries, there will be more for me.

“And what do they taste like?” I hear you ask.

The flavour of cloudberries is hard to describe.

My husband is the one who has offered the most accurate description: They taste like the breeze coming off the mountain and the sun warming your back.

The photos are taken by me. Text and illustrations in this article are created entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

The hilltop itself is a powerful location and was probably an old sacrificial place for worshipping Odin and the old gods long before the Christian church was built there.

Anyway, the church is commanding the hilltop now. It’s a stave church, built with standing logs called staves and covered with wood chips slathered with black tar. The smell on a warm summer day hits you deep somewhere behind your heart and awakens something in you. It’s a reassuring scent. The smell of sun-baked tar on ancient wood reminds me that there have been rituals before this and will be rituals after this, people will always seek comfort and guidance in each other and spiritual energy.

The church was also a place for gathering each Sunday. Staying home from church was not an option. And who would want to stay at home from church on the one day of the week where you would laboriously trek from your farm to see people other than your grumpy husband and the old sourpuss of a mother-in-law and the twitchy aunt and the old half blind guy that helps with haymaking and ploughing the fields? Who wouldn’t grab the chance for some fresh gossip? The chatting and exchange of scandals and other news outside after the service was more of a magnet than the priest droning on for hours.

Going to church in those days was the Twitter of the Middle Ages, with snippets of gossip whispered from ear to ear including sideways glances, shared in the hopes that your juicy piece of information would go viral.

The church was also a place for social recognition and regulation. Upcoming baptisms and marriages would be announced, and punishment would be metered out for overstepping social and legal boundaries.

People found guilty of unsavoury behaviour (such as bludgeoning your neighbour with a stone, or having a child out of wedlock) would be banned from entering the church and had to listen to the service from under the roof of the covered porch that runs on either side of the building, via small holes in the wall.

The backwoods of Telemark was a rough neighbourhood (for a priest to be assigned a church in Western Telemark was NOT a prestigious assignment) and in the guided tour of the church (highly recommended) they tell you that at times there would be more people listening to the service from the porch than there were inside…

Next to Eidsborg stave church you’ll find Vest-Telemark Museum Eidsborg, with a collection of old houses, barns and stables. One of the houses is a storehouse which is allegedly the oldest secular wood building in Europe. There are runes cut into the wall greeting/blessing the writer of the runes and whosoever beholds them: “Vestein wrote these runes. Hail he who wrote, and hail he who reads (them).” I feel thoroughly blessed each time and awestruck that this building was storing food at the time Gengis Khan invaded China, at the time of the crusades and the inquisition.

In the modern museum building there is a permanent exhibit of old artifacts, and always some kind of interesting seasonal exhibit. This year’s exhibit is of a Norwegian knit designer who finds inspiration in folk art from telemark.

The museum café serves waffles with sour cream and jam and strong coffee (A must for me every time we go there).

My personal connection to this church is that it was the church of my childhood and youth. I remember the candles burning at the end of the pews but not the candles closest to the ropes dangling from the church bells in the middle of the church, they were never lit. The scorched tips of the ropes told of the reason for this.

Both my parents are buried in the surrounding graveyard so in the summer, we come here often, when we are at our cabin. I like to touch the rough rock of their gravesite and to wander quietly around the church.

Read more about Eidsborg stave church here

In other news, I participated in a super fun workshop with (Follow her! Subscribe to her!) where she inspired us to loosen up and let go of perfectionism, and after that I felt inspired to make a very loose sketch of the church using different colours and a looser line, here is the result:

Text and illustrations in this article are created entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

Norwegians avoid massive enthusiasm and extreme excitement.

Going overboard with expressions of feelings is not something Scandinavians do. A simple "that's nice" will do, there is no need to add squeals of excitement and exclamation marks.

Being animated is not exactly frowned upon, but it is considered frivolous and childish, especially if expressed loudly. Feelings are best kept inside, contained within a rock hard shell of stoic acceptance of any calamity or success.

This general rule is disregarded and cancelled when there is a soccer match.

Even at soccer matches in the lower divisions in rural middle-of-nowhere, feelings are expressed vividly and violently.

Parents who are generally prone to passive-aggressive insults delivered sideways in a subdued tone are known to scream in purple faced gladiator-style rage when their ten-year old is tackled on the soccer field without the referee whipping out the red card against the perpetrator (a bulldozer of a child with a permanent scowl and a buzz cut, EVERYONE could see that that was foul play).

Similarly, when said child scores a goal, there are tears and snot wiped on jacket sleeves amid howls of joy and hugging of innocent bystanders and passers-by. Which is decidedly un-Norwegian conduct.

During FIFA World Cup, regular rules of conduct have been suspended and Soccer Law instated.

Because this time, Norway has a team that is actually winning matches, so all of Norway is in an emotional state of emergency, with feelings flow high, wild and free.

And when NORWAY WON AGAINST BRAZIL, even our Crown Prince Håkon joined the throng of people in front of the royal palace in Oslo to celebrate.

What’s with the rowing?

It’s something the Norwegian soccer team started doing when goofing around doing some promotional videos in preparation for the World Cup. They dressed up as vikings and pretended to row a viking longship. This caught on, and now all Norwegian soccer fans are doing it. Everywhere.

It’s not going to last.

Relax. Norway is not going to morph into some kind of Columbian salsa dancing exuberantly joyful nation.

There are bound to be consequences. The nation will wake up hung over and remorseful when the World Cup is over, and we will revert to our usual state of even-tempered low adrenaline display of feelings.

But until then: Row! Row! Row!

With very warm and quietly exuberant regards,

Jorunn

I write and sketch without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

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This month’s work of art is Japanese Lantern by Oda Krogh (1886)

There is a woman. She is sitting in an open doorway. The air is still. You can almost hear the mosquitoes humming. It is night, and the full moon casts shadows across the fjord outside, creating deep blue shadows. The moon is not visible, but the glow from the Japanese lantern in the doorway is acting as moon.

The colours

There is delicate balance between warm and cool. The moonlit sea is so cool, one would almost mistake it for a winter scene, were it not for the fact that the doors are wide open. The warm light from the lantern is reflected in the ceiling above the lantern and in the warm skin of the woman’s hands resting in her lap.

The mood

The mood is peaceful, not sad.

Why is she sitting in the doorway? Is it too warm to sleep? What is she thinking about? Is she regretting that last serving of greasy meatloaf that she ate at dinner? I’m guessing it is a more romantic setting. She looks calm and pensive. Has she lit the lantern in anticipation of a visit from someone she loves, and is waiting by the door for them?

But it’s not really a portrait, is it. The woman isn’t the focus. She is only there to make you feel the peace; make you take a deep breath and be part of it. Sit with her for a while. Be still in the moonlit night.

The artist

Let us take a minute to focus on the artist, Oda Krogh. She had very little formal art education. She was part of a bohemian group of artists, and lived a scandalously free life, according to the female ideal at the time.

In her life, Oda encountered so many other famous persons, the Wikipedia article about her is like reading the who’s who in the late 1800 Europe. She had a child without being married. She got divorced. She was a true bohemian. The author Amalie Skram wrote about Oda Krogh in a letter: “Hun er storartet; hvis nogen har frækhedens nådegave, så er det hende.” (“she is formidable, if anyone has the gift of outrageous audacity, it’s her”. For a while, her family lived in the same house as Oscar Wilde after he had served a prison sentence, something that also created ripples of scandal among her contemporaries and caused people to shun the Kroghs and the other people who let Wilde share the dwelling.

Stories of her scandalous life sometimes overshadowed her enormous contribution to art, but times change, thankfully. The Japanese Lantern shows her fascination with light as mood and her fascination with all things Japanese (which was all the rage at the time she created this picture).

Here is a portrait of her, painted by her husband, Christian Krogh. She looks so wild and free.

Inspiration

Oda Krogh had no formal art education. She learned from artists, she worked with other artists. She was strong. She challenged conventions. She took up place. Take that with you this day.

Links

All the time when I wrote this, I had Cat Stevens on my mind, singing Moonshadow from Tea For The Tillerman. If you’re as old as I am, you’ll love listening to Cat Stevens singing Moonshadow. Listen to it again, while looking at the Japanese Lantern. You’re welcome.

The ideas and text in this article are written entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

They lived on one of the few farms on an island in a lake called Røssvatnet in the north of Norway.

There was ice on the lake but it being June, they didn’t trust that the ice would hold so when they fetched the midwife, they dragged a boat with them, and put the midwife in the boat and dragged her across the ice to the island to help with the birth.

My father would have been 99 today, had he lived.

This morning, my son reminded me of this metaphor for grief: Grief is like an explosion of glitter. In the beginning, it’s everywhere. As time goes it looks less bombed, but you still see it in cracks all over the place. After even longer time, you find a little bit of glitter now and again, behind a book in the bookshelf or when you move a sofa. I had such a moment a while back when we were at our cabin in the woods, I found my father’s old leather pouch that he used to keep coffee and sugar in his backpack. I breathed in the smell of it and suddenly he was right there beside me. A glitter moment.

Text and illustrations in this article are created entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

It’s called “By the piano” (1894) , and I’ll let you sit with it for a while to take it in and form your own thoughts and feelings around this painting, before I share my own. Here it is:

This month’s painting is By The Piano, by Harriet Backer

You can almost hear the music coming from the painting and wafting through the open window into the garden beyond. Because of course there is a lush garden outside. Must be. Obviously.

What is she playing? Chopin? I think she is playing a quiet, meditative piece. The listeners are pensive, lost in the music.

The room is lit by natural light from the window. There are curtains. I see curtains. Light, white, lace curtains. And there is a slight breeze coming from the window. Because I definitely get a feeling that the window is open, not closed. I don’t know why, but I do.

Maybe it’s the movement of the paint strokes around the window. The window isn’t painted clearly as open, but it has a feeling of openness to it. Do you agree?

Fun fact about Harriet Backer: Her sister Agathe Backer-Grøndahl was a famous concert pianist. So their family gatherings would most certainly be full of music and art.

Another fun fact: Her contemporaries painted grand landscapes. She painted rooms with objects like flower pots and women embroidering. Norwegian National Romanticism was the trend. But Harriet painted quiet interiors and everyday scenes. I love her for that. Her painting style was influenced by impressionism, which she was thoroughly exposed to when living in Paris for a decade. But she isn’t a “proper” impressionist either. Although she treats light the impressionist way (by making it infuse every work, in quick, broad strokes), the other impressionists mostly painted outside (think Monet and his water lilies, Sisley and his bridges, Renoir and his Paris streets). Harriet Backer took the impressionists’ treatment of light and domesticated it.

The marks are broad and there are no meticulously painted details, just a suggestion of green plants and something like a turquoise vase on top of the piano.

And look at the chair that the pianist is sitting on! It looks like it is on its way to disappear into thin air, like the Cheshire Cat.

Colour

The pianist sits on a red chair, and that same red is echoed in the easy chair that the other female in the room is sitting in. But the main colours in the painting are blues and greens that make you feel that the breeze coming from the window is rather cool. The person sitting in front of the window is wearing a scarf around his neck and across his chest. Definitely cool Nordic summer weather.

And there is a mist shrouding the interior, the shapes are blurred and the colours slightly cooled and muted. In colour analyst terms we would place this painting in the territory of the three Summer Seasons.

Inspiration

In artwork, it inspires me to paint with broad strokes and let the feeling of the situation guide the painting process.

In clothing, it inspires me to dress like I feel. In summer, I love to dress in wide linen dresses. The mutedness and soft flowy feel of linen captures the easy breezy essence of this painting. Linen invites us to be soft and crinkled.

In interior, it inspires me to buy some light lace curtains, and open the windows!

How does this painting inspire you?

Links

For more information about Harriet Backer, watch this video from Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the curators talk about the exhibition of Harriet Backer paintings. The exhibition was in 2025, so don’t get any ideas of going.

Apparently it’s a yearly thing, and people all over the world participate with it, quietly on their own or publicly by posting what they create, every day for 100 days.

What I learned

I practiced drawing with ink and painting with watercolour and posting it publicly as notes on Substack and my Instagram, and these are some of the things I learned:

I have no idea what I’m doing

…and that’s a good thing. Having the courage to do things badly, with joy, is better than not trying for fear of failure.

There are some awesome artists on Substack

And they are doing all kinds of wonderful art. Collage, fabric arts, guache, watercolour, charcoal, crochet, and a myriad of other techniques! I am gobsmacked. And they are supportive and kind to amateur beginners. During this project I have discovered artists who are so good that looking at their art gives me goosebumps and makes my heart beat faster. But I have decided that instead of becoming despondent because what I create is not that good I let myself be inspired, and learn from them.

Copying what I see others are doing isn’t cheating

For learning purposes, it’s ok to copy. I can never do it like them anyway, and I learn a lot about colour and technique from it. And weirdly enough, copying helps me develop my own unique style.

Prompts, challenges and themes are the bee’s knees

Getting prompts, challenges and themes from others makes me push my boundaries and moves me out of my comfort zone.

More supplies don’t make me a better artist

Practicing a lot with what I’ve got does. I found this quote by John Muir Laws: “It is not the pen. It is not the paint set. It’s not the journal. It is not the pencil. It’s the pencil miles. It is time in the field, observing, wondering, and drawing.”

Buying art supplies is fun

But even though I have accumulated an impressive array of different brushes and dip pens, I find myself grabbing the same favourite brush (Princeton Neptune no. 12) and fountain pen (TWSBI Diamond Extra Fine nib filled with Noodler’s Ink 41 brown) all the time.

Reference photos are not cheating

Painting from memory sucks.

Showing up every day is more important than perfection

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes progress.

“It is not the pencil. It’s the pencil miles.”

I have met kindred spirits

The community of others doing the same challenge is extremely positive. I have met so many positive, vibrantly supporting people during this process, and I cherish the connections I have made.

Creating is addictive

But, grabbing my art kit and sketchbook first thing in the morning is a much better way to start my day than checking my phone.

The 100 Day Project was just the beginning

I have no idea where it will go from here, but I am happily going.

Text and illustrations in this article are created entirely by me without help from AI, but supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

After I have revived my interest in drawing and painting, I see things differently. And as we arrived at the cabin this time, my attention was drawn to two framed ink drawings on the wall, drawings that my father had made and sent to my grandparents. They had them framed, and after their death my father got them back. In my youth, I vaguely remember these drawings hanging on a wall in a room we hardly used. Now that I inherited them, they are hanging on the wall in our cabin, and I have looked at them from time to time, remembering my father fondly as I did, but nothing more.

Now, I studied them.

I studied the marks he made.

I studied the details.

I studied the shading.

I studied the black ink.

I studied the little signature he scribbled in the bottom right hand corner of the drawings.

He and I share the same initials. Another connection with my father. It got me thinking that if I start signing my paintings, it will be another connection to hom.

My father wasn’t a professional artist, he was an engineer at a hydroelectric power plant. But now that I think back, he was always sketching. He used to scribble little funny drawings in the margins of newspapers while doing the crossword puzzle, or as a little add-on in a letter. And always with black ink. Or any ball point pen or pencil that was within reach, on any paper that was on hand.

I never looked at it as art. It was just something my father did all the time.

But I guess he was an artist, in his own everyday way, drawing the farm where he grew up:

Life on Røssvassholmen where my father was born was a rough one. I’ll tell you that story another time.

And a small ink drawing of me with our dog in the snow, outside the house that we lived in:

And now I am the same. I draw and paint every chance I get. I think he would have liked seeing what I create. I feel his arm on my shoulder when I draw.

Text and illustrations in my articles are created entirely by me (this time you see ink drawings that my father made) without help from AI. My work is supported by numerous cups of tea and persistent encouragement from my personal assistant:

Links that brightened my day

Would you like a cup of tea?

Things the French find bizarre

Keep it simple

I don’t trust a restaurant that has photos of the dishes displayed on a poster outside or on the menu.

I prefer the small restaurant in the side street of a small village, the kind where they don’t speak English and if I ask what an item on the menu is, the waiter goes and points at a plate someone is eating at the next table (the lady with said plate will salute me with her second glass of rosé as he does so, signaling that I can safely pick this plat du jour).

The kind of restaurant that welcomes a worker in his muddy shoes, screwdriver and hammer in the tool loops on his trousers. Who proceeds to eat a three course, two hour lunch, sharing a carafe of red wine with his work mate, before getting up, slowly, and saunters out to the little white van (they always drive little white vans, with or without a logo on the side) to go back to work.

There is a little restaurant in Gaillac, Occitanie, called Morgan’s Grill.

It is so full of old lamps and artfully mismatched chairs that if they should decide to open a brocante shop instead of running a restaurant (I hope not!) they are well stocked to do so.

Husband and I enjoy driving there to have lunch. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t change their meny very often at all, and Husband eats roasted lamb shanks every time. I eat that sometimes too, but I am more adventurous and also sample other things from their short but excellent menu.

The first time we were there was a Sunday and we were both having lamb shanks with ratatouille. It was a warm day, we were sitting in the shade under the big umbrellas on the sidewalk. I noticed an old lady having lunch at a table near us. She had just arrived when we came, sitting alone at a small table near the entrance, and was greeted with much kissing and fond remarks by every waiter and some of the other guests that passed by her table.

Obviously she was a regular. Nobody kissed us.

Her handbag was old but elegant and was placed on the table beside her plate and her glass and carafe of red wine (because who in their right mind places such a precious handbag on the ground).

She was old, and attractive in the way only a French lady can be tiny and delicately wrinkled like a shriveled raisin, hunched over, frail as a brittle twig but still exquisitely beautiful.

I suspect lipstick and immaculate accessories plays a role.

Her hair was silver and styled in the way of someone who cannot quite reach the back of their head anymore. Her handbag was old but elegant and was placed on the table beside her plate and her red wine (because who in their right mind places such a precious handbag on the ground). She wore a black and white houndstooth pencil skirt and jacket ensemble (not Chanel, but she carried it as if it was) complete with black Persian lamb fur collar and dainty shoes. She sipped wine as she ate, leaving her scarlet lipstick liberally smeared on the side of the glass. She conversed with the waiters as they passed, but for the most part she was silent, absorbed in her three course meal and then a little cup of coffee at the end.

When she had finished her food and drunk all her wine, she paid, and after warm abundant kissing and send-offs from the waiters, she teetered unsteadily (either from arthritis or Merlot or a combination, I’m not entirely sure) past us and doddered across the road, presumably to go home. Or perhaps to go visit the grave of Jean-Claude, her second lover after her husband Laurent died forty years ago. We held our breath, forks lifted half way to our mouths, watching her slowly but unsurely make her way across the street and along the square, until we lost sight of her.

I have never seen her again, but the image of her wine glass and elegant handbag has stayed with me along with the idea that it’s a wonderful thing to be able to go alone to a restaurant and eat a three course lunch and polish off a carafe of red wine at the age of 97.

Links you cannot live without

This will make you want to buy a yellow bra

Possibly written by a raccoon inside a blanket fort

The handsomest Italian I have seen in a while

Morgan’s Grill in Gaillac, Occitanie, France. If you’re ever in Gaillac, go have lunch there. I recommend the roasted lamb shanks.

Painting has become yet another way to fuel my creativity, and is quickly giving me a new direction for this Substack.

When I dipped my toes or rather, my brush, into paint, I thought that I wanted a BIG set of watercolours with as many hues as possible, to give myself a huge range of colours to play with, and I was longing for the day when I could expand from my 16 half pans Cotman beginner watercolour set. I quickly invested in a Charvin Arts 24 half pan set. HOWEVER. At the moment I find it fascinating to play with just a few colours at a time and mixing these and the range of colour magic I am discovering is thrilling!

There ARE similarities between a small selection of clothes and watercolour painting.

None of them do well when toppling a glass of red wine over them. Don’t ask.

In addition to this profound wisdom, I have arrived at the following:

A limited palette gives you a wider range of possibilities in watercolour painting, in the same way that having a small, curated wardrobe actually gives you more creative potential.

The caveat (there always is one):

You HAVE to experiment. If you start out with only those few colours and only use those without blending them, it is boring and limiting.

BUT if you start to mix, and mix in different ways, unexpected ways, a limited number of colours blended according to your creative heart make them uniquely yours.

Having a limited number of clothes projects your personality.

Because when you want to own only a few clothes, you think very carefully about each item and keep only the ones that you slip into with the comfort of a mermaid slipping into her tail.

Using your personal creativity to mix ten clothes (read about the system I created here) and a few well chosen accessories in unexpected ways gives your seemingly limited number of clothes a range of possibilities.

Or you can simply say that owning and wearing just a few clothes is great because it frees up your mind for thinking about other things than clothes.

I like limiting myself to a few paint colours and the creativity that it unleashes in me. I’m not saying I won’t paint with a lot more colours. I will probably end up owning a lot more art supplies than clothes.

You might have known this all along, but the connection between watercolour and wardrobe was a revelation for me.

With brush in hand (trying not to dip it in my tea mug),
warm regards from Jorunn

What hit me in the heart this week

You’re the same person. The people around you pull different parts of you to the surface.

I found this surprisingly calming

The light in this hallway

Finally, a club I want to be a member of

My mother kept a very neat and tidy house. She did, however, allow me free use of the shaded terrace and a limitless supply of jars and boxes for containing wildlife that I caught and studied. I suspect this was disguised as kindness, but in reality it was a cunning trick to keep me out of the house. Which I complied with willingly, only running down in the basement from time to time for a fresh load of jars.

I caught mice and lemmings and tried to make them into pets. I was particularly busy with this during lemming years, when there would be an abundance of furious furballs to catch and try to tame. This included some extra trips into the house to fetch band-aids when they bit me.

The best part of the year was spring. I would load a couple of large jars onto the back of my bicycle and ride to a secret pond I knew about, where the frogs would lay their eggs. I would return triumphantly with a lump of frog eggs sloshing around in a jar and a selection of slime and rocks to tasteful decorate their temporary home on a table on the terrace.

My studies were only interrupted by frequent bike trips to the library, borrowing books about nature. My favourite book was My Family And Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. And in spring, the baggage tray on my bike invariably had a rickety stack of books about amphibians. And I was heartbroken that there were no salamanders (of which there were beautiful pictures in the books I borrowed) spawning in our local ponds, only ordinary frogs.

I sat for hours, chin in hand, gazing at the lumps of frog eggs, eagerly running out on the terrace every morning to look. They grew from little black dots to little tadpoles and wriggled free of the mass of egg jelly. Feeding was haphazard and experimental. I remember bread crumbs as part of their diet.

They grew back legs. And then front legs. And then their tails shrunk and I would transport the surviving miniature froglets back to the pond I found them in.

Life has graceously granted me a second chance at studying tadpoles and frogs (alas, no salamanders), in the pond that Husband dug for me. I am gleefully watching, but have no need to gather them in jars now that I have my own proprietary pond. But I spend lots of time at the edge of the pond, looking for my wriggly little friends and hoping that they will grow up to be good frogs and make me proud by coming back to spawn next spring.

I don’t think I will study zoology but I can paint tadpoles and frogs.

Random links that will make you smile (unless you are made of cement)

Take me to America

Miranda Hart goes Trinny & Susanna

This should be on your reading list

This work is watercolour on humble cardboard, and it is not a painting to be exhibited, but a design drawing or pattern sheet.

The colours are delicate but the strokes are bold, and he uses a brown outline to accentuate the leaves, and the blue lines in the water create a swirly feel, repeated by the shape of the little fish.

The style reminds me of something Japanese. But the fish are not colourful Japanese koi or goldfish, they are humble brown trout with pale pink spots. And the flowers are not exotic lotus flowers or flashy waterlilies, they are a common weed found around ponds and in ditches along any road in spring.

I haven’t seen this work in real life, but from the photo of it, it seems like he has left the the brown of the cardboard as part of the design, and the watercolour being transparent lends a sepia tone and adds to the mellow feel.

The artwork is clearly meant as a prototype for design, or at the very least an example of this possibility. The artist has written the note “Paa Skiensutstillingen 1892” (at the exhibition at the town of Skien, 1892) and the fact that it is exhibited as a work of art in itself places it firmly in the Arts & Crafts movement, where decorative design is valued as fine art.

I wonder if he meant it as a study for fabric design?

It might be. It follows the principles of surface design for fabric: look at the way the design elements meet in the corners and along the edges, imagine joining it and you’ll see what I mean. You can easily imagine this block being repeated across large panels of fabrics.

Here, I’ll show you, this is what it looks like when I put four of the panels next to each other:

It’s really cool when we join the panels and create a larger piece, and you can really see the diagonal swirly movement. I can SO see this as a wallpaper or fabric, can’t you?

How does this painting inspire us?

In many ways. I feel inspired to go paint something in those delicate Light Spring colours. It makes me want to play with swirly shapes and paint little fishes.

Clothes?

Nah… I’m kind of done with posting pictures of clothes for a while (the urge may or may not return). But if you are a Light Spring, you can totally use this painting as inspiration for putting together a summer outfit. I would go for pale yellow sunglasses and sandals (the echo effect!) and then a pale green or blue (or both!) breezy light summer dress.

Interior

I think it would be fantastic inspiration for creating wall panels or wallpaper ( are you taking notes?). Imagine a pale yellow sofa in front of it, YASSSSS!

Or a stack of pastel coloured breakfast bowls like the ones posted here:

And fish! How about something fishy for your house?

I absolutely adore this fish shaped vintage Japanese ceramic plate. Or this Scandinavian table cloth with herring design.

Your turn. Does this painting want you to grab your paint brushes and dip into a few joyful hours of watercolour bliss? Or are you more inclined to go searching for that fishing rod you know you have stashed in the garage? Or start planning a pond to grow yellow march marigolds and pink water lilies? Doooooo iiiiiit….. doooooo iiiiiit…..

Links that tickle my fancy

Forget mountain climbing. Forget sky diving. Try extreme birdwatching. This documentary will have you in stitches. I found the link to this in Amy Steward’s Instagram, and I am forever grateful!

What if joy is more important than flattering?

I found the best article I have read about decluttering in a long time on ’s Substack.

The most inspiring newsletter on the planet about how to not write like an accountant called Derek.

Would you like your very own Season colour palette?

You can order your own Season poster or Season palette fan from NDU colors. If you want a special gift when ordering, use the Nordic Simplicity code when you order. Click here to find the code.

In fact, this question is so good, that I am making it into a post here, because I am sure others are wondering about the same thing.

Hi Jorunn!

As we age, do our colors gradually change from decade to decade? Or do we remain in the same seasonal palette throughout life?

Thank you!

Hello dear reader,

Thank you for writing to me!

And with such an interesting question. It is something everyone is wondering about. Because when we grow older, our natural colouring fades, our hair turns silver and our skin is not as radiant as it used to be.

So it is natural to wonder if, perhaps, we should moderate the colours we wear accordingly.

I am here to tell you that toning down your colours to match your slightly faded older age complexion and hair, is not a good idea, with one exception. I’ll get back to that in a bit.

It is a far better idea to embrace your colours even more. It will make hair and skin glow and show their healthiest self.

As a Bright Winter, a cheerful maraschino cherry red beret will make your silver hair shine and your cheeks radiate with a natural glow, and if you tone it down and go for a more muted red, your skin will take on a dusty appearance. Try it, and you will see the difference.

If you were a Summer, you will still look as radiant in dusty lavender as you always did, but perhaps it is a good idea to explore the richer end of your colour palette, and leave the palest colours in your Summer palette for accents and further away from your face.

And as an Autumn, seek the spicy more saturated options in your palette (of which there are many) and Springs, keep using the sun drenched corals and apple greens, no matter how old you are!

I hope this was helpful, and feel free to ask me questions.

With very warm regards,

Jorunn

PS. Ah, yes, the exception: The only exception I can think of is makeup. It might be a good idea to scale back on the very dark and matte lipstick colours as you age. The same retro dry lipstick that has looked really good on you might not be the best choice when those pesky little wrinkles appear around your mouth, and also the darker end of your lipstick collection might start to feel a little goth. I recommend switching to a very moisturised lipstick, and perhaps a teeny weeny bit lighter. Without going more muted. Use your Season’s intensity to its fullest.

In other news

The best encouragement for The 100 Day Project

Feast your eyes on this

Do your pants hurt your feelings?

They are healers living in our homes

It may seem like a small thing for you, but it is an exhilarating joy for me every time someone restacks one of my stories! So if you liked reading this, why not consider restacking it, so that more kindred souls can enjoy reading it with their cup of tea in the morning?

(Restacking is the little circle of arrows under here. Clicking on that will open the Substack app, and when you restack, it makes more people see it!)

I know the world is crashing and burning and my challenges are molecules in a drop in the ocean.

But small things are big things for me.

Which reminds me, I want to re-read The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. As soon as I find it in the packed boxes of books waiting to be moved into our new house. Oh god I do hope it is in one of the boxes, and that I have not given it away or (heaven forbid!) tossed it. If not, I’ll have to borrow it from the library.

Because the god of small things is my god now.

I can’t remember what that book was about, but the title has stuck with me and I remember that it was an exquisitely good read.

Must read it again.

I give thanks to the god of small things very time I caress an item that is dripping with memories.

I offer a small apology to my mother when I give to the thrift shop a dish that I know she treasured. But I will never serve raspberry jelly in a cut crystal bowl with three legs.

I feel the sting in my heart when I come across items that remind me of a time of my life that is painful to think about.

I rejoice in life that gives me second and third and fourth chances.

I ponder the fact that our possessions are the next generation’s garbage.

I sift through boxes of items that I couldn’t bear to part with when we cleared out the house after my parents were both dead. And I give to the charity shop and I toss. And I toss and I toss. And I offer a silent prayer to the god of small things that the next generation will have less garbage to sift through after us.

It was the correct decision to do this, but I am also allowing myself to mourn.

I am also allowing myself a bag of crisps (salt & vinegar, thank you for asking), to be munched in pleasurable solitude, wiping the crumbs off my face and hiding the evidence, and finishing off with a cup of Lapsang Souchong, in my Sunday cup. I feel Lapsang Souchong is exactly the right tea for special occasions like these.

And I will be fine. After I have allowed myself to feel all the feelings I will be ready for the next chapter, with bells on! Although I have no idea what that chapter will be.

I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

And that is a good thing. It opens up a myriad of possibilities. And I am READY.

It may seem like a small thing for you, but it is an exhilarating joy for me every time someone restacks one of my stories! So if you liked reading this, why not consider restacking it, so that more kindred souls can enjoy reading it with their cup of tea in the morning?

(Restacking is the little circle of arrows under here. Clicking on that will open the Substack app, and when you restack, it makes more people see it!)

Totally unrelated links

Chickens and roos to brighten your day

Looking for crochet ideas?

Chris recommends his three favourite classics

Wondering what to do with all that creative energy?

Time flies. The only thing that grows faster than my grandchildren is my chin hair.

Remember when you were a child, how the days towards Christmas crawled slower than a teenager taking out the trash?

These days, I am starting to think: Is there any point in stashing away the Christmas decorations? Because Christmas comes rolling around again faster and faster, like a loop on the Magic Mountain roller coaster.

By the way, I hate roller coasters. If ever you managed to trick me into coming along to a theme park, I would happily be the keeper of any and all bags while the rest of the group went on the roller coaster. I get enough of a nauseating thrill just watching others enter the rickety little carriage of doom, strap themselves down and prepare to scream like badly paid actors in a horror movie, and afterwards declare how much fun they had.

You’ll find me (and your bags) at the nearest food truck, munching on loaded fries.

Time flies and we are getting older.

We are moving to a new house, a smaller one, and Husband and I are in the process of sorting through decades of stuff and deciding what to bring, what to give away, and what to toss.

My name is Jorunn and I am a squirrel.

I hunt and gather, hiding treasures (and then promptly forgetting about them).

So taming the squirrel and going through with this sorting process is very necessary, both in order to fit all our things into the smaller house and also so our children will have less to go through when (hopefully very many years from now) we are no longer here. Swedish death cleaning is popular, not only in Sweden, but it does not get easier just because it’s trendy.

Norwegian Death Cleaning

Husband and I are very different. He can take one look at an item, and immediately place it in one of the three piles. Me, I caress the item, savouring the memories, imagining different uses I might have for the item, and fretting over whether or not I will regret giving it away:

A half finished embroidery.

…that I (or my mother, can’t remember) started around the time when Nixon was president in the US. Who knows? Maybe I’ll decide to take up cross stitch embroidery again? And perhaps those colours might be considered chic again some day? Answers: Nope, and nope. Reluctantly, I put it in the thrift store pile, hoping that someone else will finish it.

Knitted doilies.

My mother knitted a myriad of doilies. In colours that I would never use in my home. And I don’t like doilies. But get rid of them? I feel I am giving away my mother’s love. For now, I have put them in the “keep” pile. I have not got the heart to give them to the thrift store. I’ll put them in a box as a memory.

A hodgepodge of patches.

Bright red and garish green fabric remnants from a Christmas quilt made in the early 80s. Those were easy to donate, including said quilt.

An unfinished flannel quilt with cats. Definitely a keeper. I AM going to finish that. One of these years.

Squares of vintage cotton fabric from turn of the century (no, not 2000, they’re from early 1900s and I bought them at a yard sale when I lived in the US.) But I probably won’t take up quilting again (except to finish the flannel quilt), because I have enough quilts to cover all our beds. In multiple layers. I have put vintage squares aside for now. Maybe I’ll use them in a collage one day.

But now, a celebratory cup of tea. I am exhausted from all these decisions, and will continue sorting another day.

Eyes on the prize: My creative studio

In the new house, I will have a room of my own.

I call it “my creative studio” and will spend many lovely hours making art by the window. It will be the shining reward at the end of all this sorting and tossing.

And I will fill my creative studio with things that inspire me (many of which I have salvaged from the basement while sorting and tossing). But no doilies allowed. Sorry, mother.

I can’t wait to give you a tour of my creative studio once I have moved into it and made it mine. But first, the butter yellow kitchen.

. . .

Tell me. How do you feel about Swedish Death Cleaning? And are you able to do this without moving to a new house?

While under the influence of paracetamol and mentholated cough drops I decided to feature one painting each month, and see how it can inspire us for dressing and for interior design, all from a colour analyst viewpoint. And now I am determined to see it through.

You can find previous issues here.

April’s painting is by Edvard Munch.

And it’s a happy one! Shocking, right?

His most famous paintings are full of jealousy, angst and screaming insanity. But he also created some gloriously sunny works.

And for April, I chose this:

Høysommer (directly translated High Summer) was painted late in life. After years of struggling with mental illness, Munch entered a much more grounded and stable phase in his old age, and this painting is from that time (painted in 1917), after he had moved from Oslo to the countryside.

So Munch isn’t only the painter of emotional trauma and drama, he also painted nature and light, in paintings filled with sumptuous joy and juicy colours!

Colours

I just love the luscious colours and the carefree feeling of this painting. The women are not posing for attention. They are luxuriously stretching their rounded bellies and languidly lounging on sun warmed rocks, enjoying a carefree day of sea bathing and sun bathing.

It’s like both the rocks and the bodies are made from the same warm glowing fleshy material. The sea looks so fresh and inviting, you can almost smell the salt sea air mingled with the smell of sun baked warm rocks.

The painting has three distinct colour blocks. The glowing warm peach and pink of the bodies and the rock is sandwiched between two blocks of cooler colours: the fresh, brilliant turquoise and blues in the sea and distant land in the background, and the cooler grassy green and teal in the foreground.

The bold brush strokes create almost a stained glass effect.

In terms of Colour analysis Seasons, this painting puts me in the mood of the three Spring Seasons, with peachy warm pinks and the vibrant turquoise and purply blues:

Clothes

I don’t know about you, but this painting got me thinking about swimsuits.

NOT because I have a problem nudity and women skinny dipping, far from it, some of my best swims have been naked, impromptu swims from the boat on hot days in a bay far from other people out in the isles.

It’s the COLOURS. They just beg to be translated into swimwear.

And the website that reflects the colour palette of this painting the best, is Sheila May Swim in Australia.

I wish I could include Summersalt because their swimwear is excellent quality, but their colours just aren’t juicy enough… Their Summersalt X Bridgerton collection is super cute, but not really vibrant enough to be featured in this post. Well, maybe this one, but that’s it.

Interior

Let’s see if we have more luck with interior. IKEA has some pretty juicy and cute stuff in their TJÄRLEK series.

I am also reminded of the Jennifer Orkin Lewis teacups. They are adorable, but oh so hard to find.

I found these on Etsy (macaroons optional):

I can imagine these cups in a picnic basket of those sun- and sea bathing women in the Edvard Munch painting (off to the side, not visible in the painting). But of course the women in the Høysommer painting would be drinking champagne from the cups, not tea.

Obviously.

With very warm regards,

Jorunn

More links

Would you like your very own Season colour palette? You can order your own Season poster or Season palette fan from NDU colors. If you want a special Nordic Simplicity discount on NDU colors products, click here.

The trousers are still on the floor ❤️

Perfectly styled outfit

Would you like a cup of tea?

I am Jorunn Hernes and I live on the remote west coast of Norway.

I am an introvert and an INFJ.

I am a weird, bubbly and enthusiastic kind of introvert, so nobody knows I am an introvert because when I am out in public I talk too much. And then I lie awake at night fretting about all the dumb things I blurted out.

I don’t care for small talk. I often scare away strangers by asking them what book they are reading at the moment. If I had a tattoo it would be “I Kill Small Talk For Fun”.

I believe that you are more than the sum of your outfits, and that dressing for your body shape is way too limiting.

I believe that colours can change your mood, uplift your soul, and potentially change your life.

I believe that playing with colours is the best alternative to watching the news.

Norway commentary

If you are looking for content about life in Norway, there are a few stories in the Nordic Simplicity archives. For example, my father used to steal sugar cubes from cafés.

Or, the time when my breasts made me eat a whole bag of crisps. And learn How to start a conversation in Norway. Here’s a roundup of most of these stories.

Colour commentary

I also write about style. With very unfabulous photos of myself. Like this one: How to dress the spare tire. And I answer real questions from real readers, like How to wear monochromatic outfits.

And there’s more content about simple style, like this article, where I explain simple ways to take any plain dress and make it interesting.

And How to sell torture instruments. Or How to keep warm and look cool.

There is also content about colour analysis Seasons, like this article.

If you want to see more, check out the whole archive of previous posts.

What more can I tell you about myself? I have been a certified personal colour analyst for more than a decade. Which is like being your personal trainer, but with colours instead of dumbbells.

…and this is where it gets spine-tingling:

I am currently in the process of simplifying my own life. I feel like I am standing on a diving board, ready to jump. Until recently, I have been doing personal colour analysis from my studio here at home, and I have traveled with my drapes, seeing clients in London and Oslo also. I have just now decided to retire from active colour analysis and will not have a studio where I see clients anymore.

That’s such a big change that it should be written in capital letters: BIG CHANGE. What now?

Keep posting every week? THAT IS THE PLAN

Play more with watercolours, coloured pencils and dipping pens? YESSSSS

Write about colours and how they affect us? OH DEFINITELY

Write more about art, like the monthly Start With Art series? ABSOLUTELY

I even have a new assistant to help me write:

Do join me, as we drink copious amounts of tea together and refresh our enthusiasm for the simple things in life, and figure out where to go from here.

There are a few snags, though…

The pitfalls of thrift shopping:

Thrift shopping takes time

It’s difficult enough to go into any clothing store looking for a crisp, white, roomy but not oversized shirt with a small collar and buttons, one that don’t scream “I’m an accountant who drinks decaf and have a guinea pig called Steve”.

But try doing this in a thrift store, and the hours fly by.

Thrift shopping is full of distractions

“Hello, can you help me? I’m looking for - Oh, look at that cute 70s blouse with that brown and orange swirly print!” Spoken with the hand written shopping list in hand, the one listing 1 crisp white shirt (as per explained above).

Thrift shops don’t have it in your size

The chances of finding exactly what you want, in exactly your size, is minimal. And patience to wait until what you’re looking for comes up in your search, is rare commodity.

Thrift shops don’t have it in your colour

Even though cute 70s blouses in orange and brown are all the rage now, to everyone but those of us who lived through the first time those were popular, it may or may not be in your palette, and buying one that might end up in your to-donate-pile is really not your style, babe.

Is thrift shopping still worth it?

Hell, yeah. It is SO worth it. Because the thrill when you finally find those cosy dungarees that you have coveted, in your size, and just the right leg length, at a fraction of the price you would have had to pay for a new pair, PLUS the feeling of not contributing to the mass production of new clothing, is the best.

Links

…that made my day brighter (and hopefully yours):

About dogs

Brothers Karamazov

We do not care

This is why I am thinking about getting a gathered skirt that I love but I thought I could never wear