Tag Archives: misc

some more photos

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I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth again, sorry about that (to all one of you who reads me, you know who you are, Heidi).
Sadly I find myself losing interest in a lot of things, and listlessly falling into a depression about a certain deplorable work situation. Kicking myself for having passed up almost every opportunity in my life thus far to advance my career. Hating myself for still wanting it so bad.

Enough of that noise though, I get my fill of it without spewing it out on the internet. At least it’s almost christmas. Here are some more photos from the shoot earlier this fall.







Ginger Elizabeth

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Today Heidi took me to Ginger Elizabeth for some really guilty lunchtime chocolate snacking. I of course forgot to bring my camera… iphone will have to do today. :/
I love finding great craftspeople still exist in the world… things made with care just make me ridiculously pleased. Not to mention the chocolate.

On another note–wow! I had 121 hits on my last post on Tuesday! :o that is a lot for my little blog for those of you who might not guess… thank you DwellingGawker! I even took this little iphone snapshot to commemorate the moment <3

I haven’t really told you what’s going on in my life recently, in case you care, here’s the update:
I now live mostly alone, my mother having moved to Fresno for her new job. Living alone is really boring so far. I pulled my groin muscle doing yoga like a frickin’ month ago, and now it hurts to run, so I’ve been trying to compensate by biking and swimming and everything in-between… but apparently that is still keeping the muscle from healing, so I’m taking 10 days off until my birthday to let it heal. And I am going insane. I haven’t taken a whole week off of workouts since like 2009. My sweetie is being a trooper pretending I’m not a crazy person as I try to compensate with random baking projects (super into the Elmlid sourdough idea today), woodworking classes, patio reconstruction, spoon carving, fire pit hunting, canning, insane photo projects, shit tons of Jamie Oliver cooking shows, wine shopping and in general just running in 10 directions at once. Damn I need a workout, this can’t be healthy.

Pappa

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It’s been a little over two years now since my grandpa died, and I miss him sometimes horribly. I was prepping a post about the town house today and suddenly thought of him.

He loved a good walz, a hot sauna, and always carried rock candy around for little kids (he even hid some under his mattress when I was small). He didn’t get along with a lot of people, and was the center of at least one decade-long family feud, but he was my grandpa and I love him. I wish I could call him today.

good things to come…

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I’ve been remiss, not only in a lack of posting sense but also my budget management… somehow I spent $90 on a single basket-full of groceries last night, and today I broke down and bought a gorgeous vintage Dior sweater on Etsy (in my defense I had to, it was such a steal!)

Tomorrow won’t be any better, I’m being sent into the big city for a Boxworks seminar and an after party featuring an open bar and Third Eye Blind. So excited, it will be 90′s nostalgic bliss with fancy cocktails! But my route from the Bart station to my destinations is dotted with such landmines as Anthropologie, H&M and UO, I don’t know if my wallet will escape unscathed… and suddenly I realize I have nothing to wear to a nice conference anymore, I’ve out-shrunk all my business attire… silver lining I suppose.

In any case, hope to snag some nice pictures for you in the city, and my house is almost ready to show off so I’ll try to do a shoot here in a week or so :p

Lyydia Wilhelmiina Osala

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As I was unpacking some books today (yes I know, longest move ever), this little old clipping fell out on to the floor. Upon closer inspection I realized it had fallen out of my great great (great?) aunt Lyydia’s confirmation psalter from around 1908. Not sure why I have it, I must have grabbed it from among my grandpa’s things when we cleaned up his house after the funeral. My grandpa Mikko never seemed the sort to hold on to sentimental knick-knacks though, so I wonder how it ended up there either…

I took the opportunity to leaf through the sheaf of papers again, once upon a time in college I read this little booklet on the bus. Since then my erstwhile dog chewed through the antique hand-stitched book binding (I seem to be finding more and more things that dog ate) and now I’m not sure all the pages are here anymore, truly tragic. It was never completely bound together in any case, it was an old bible that Lyydia had taken apart and refinished in embroidered fabric (guess I get my fixing-up gene from that side of the family) and stuck some of her letters, diary entries etc. in between the covers. Her handwriting is beyond gorgeous, even down to the very last careless ink splotch.

I thought I’d translate one of her notes for you, a lot of them are just dates with some kind of scripture quotations dating from 1908 to 1937, but others seem to actually be about her. I feel like a detective piecing together her life. Anyway, here goes, it’s a bit awkward because she used no punctuation or capitalization, very stream of consciousness…

“1922 – it is midsummer eve,
Oh how it is beautiful outside. All of nature seems dressed for the occasion of midsummer night. It is tragic that I myself am imprisoned inside in bed, even though outside it is the most beautiful summer. At first it was too hard to bear such a midsummer, but now I’ve learned that this too is a gift. It is so lovely to think that He hasn’t abandoned me after all, but is just reminding us of who it is that allows us our health and good days.
Here too there is such a beautiful scent of birches and roses, they bring me the vigor of life, it’s as if the illness has left me. Oh blessed midsummer, I wonder if it will be my last…”

Rather dramatic, I think I can safely say that she didn’t die of that though, since she kept writing notes in this book at least until 1937.

I hope you have enjoyed this brief foray into pre-winter war Finland, please join me again next time I dig up some old stuff.