Tuesday 27 May 2008

handcrafted loveliness

via highfashiongirls blog i found out about this gorgeous jewellery. forget about pilgrim, which is nice, but pretty tame in comparison to this. luxe deluxe. this is lovely, handsome, purely beautiful.

here are some of my favourites:



50s wrap-dress

i really got into the thought of sewing more again. and not only shortening jeans and trousers, but sewing a dress or a skirt. today, i found a pattern for a pretty pretty wrap-dress by butterick from the 50s. it's not for free, but it really is appealing:

Sunday 25 May 2008

about batman

people probably think me crazy to chose batman as a topic for my next exam, and i guess, i probably am. i have to admit, of all superheroes it was always batman who fascinated me most, and i have always wanted to have a black t-shirt with the yellow bat-logo on it. (i still haven't got one, so if you want to make me happy..)

anyway, the exact theme of the exam is "tim burton's batman - aspects of evil". and the exam is in one week's time, so i better get going. yesterday, the last two dvds (bought on ebay) finally arrived. batman forever and batman& robin, so i took on me the challenge to see batman forever. i hadn't seen it before, because i didn't want my positive image of batman destroyed, but now there was no way around it.

and it hurt!!! val kilmer as batman hurts, not only my eyes but even my ears. it's a shame!!! i kind of liked the new batman (batman begins), i guess i can live with it because it has a serious approach to both the comic, the villains and batman himself. and it is dark.

batman is supposed to be dark. batman forever is an explosion of basically every colour you can think of. batman is supposed to be serious. this was an explosion of inept one-liners. and, batman is supposed to NEED the batsuit to look stronger and more frightening than bruce wayne. bruce wayne is absolutely not supposed to look like a businessman with bodybuilding as a hobby.
sorry, but on a scale of zero to ten with ten being the highest credits, this movie earns a minus two.

Thursday 22 May 2008

a girl can never have enough shoes II

i did some windowshopping (when supposed to be studying), at wedins.

i thought those ballerinas with two stripes would be very much me.






i also thought that those 70s pumps might be very nice. even though i already have two pairs that look like those. it's just that they are a size too large, and i thought about selling them on ebay.

i guess i should do that. and buy these ones the next time i am in oslo.

a girl can never have enough shoes

my summer dream shoes, swedish wooden, in 70s style.
swedish hasbeens.















but i think i would prefer them in black. or red.

Wednesday 21 May 2008

Who is your personal Jane Austen?

i just did this hilarious test about who my own private Austen was:

Who's Your Jane Austen?

the problem was that i already had read "the jane austen book club". and i'm like grigg. in case you read it too.
i recommend it anyway. warmly. more jane austen for all of us!!

Sunday 18 May 2008

premium chocolate

yesterday, i had the chance to finally try one of a series of chocolates which i have been dying for to try. i'm talking about zotter-chocolate, which is hand made, organic and fair trade, expensive as hell, but the money is definitely worth it.

and it's not only the above named niceties that makes this chocolate so interesting. it is, above all, the fact that they offer about 70 different sorts with basically every taste that you can and cannot imagine.

how about "beetroot with galingale"? (i didn't even know that something like galingale existed..)


or how about "rose and basil"? sounds like a lovely summerday in the garden...


and here, my i-really-want- to-try-sort: "sour cherries with sesame". did i mention that cherries are my favourite fruit?


so "grey poppy - cherry" is definitely the second in row which i want want want to try...

Friday 16 May 2008

reading europe - europa erlesen

when a. and i travelled - amongst other places - to budapest last summer, i had the chance to borrow a somewhat different "guide" to the town. it was small, perfect travel-size so to say, and it was called "europa erlesen - budapest" (reading europe - budapest). the basic idea behind it was to gather pieces of literature, both poetry and prose, that had something to do with the town, that discribed the town and its inhabitants in one way or another, and thus give a very differentiated picture of the place you visit. there were both german and hungarian authors, and some from other countries as well. phantastic!

i never really gave a thought to that this actually must be part of a series of books, until i, when looking through the further- information-pages in my new travelguide for moscow, discovered that there is a "europa erlesen - moskau" guide as well. and when checking the publisher wieser-verlag's homepage, i saw that there were surely around 100 other cities and regions to be explored through literature, especially from eastern europe, but also lappland, iceland, new york and oslo (which is not available anymore, but i found it on ebay - so now it's mine). so, if you can read german and go on a trip, check if there is one of those wonderful literary guides available! they are not too expensive, and they make the journey so much more interesting..

Wednesday 14 May 2008

hula hula hoop

today i went to the gym. i finally broke last terms record of using it 3 times, i've been there at least 4 times now. maybe 5. i actually don't know.
what i do know is that i need need need to train my stomach muscles, and what i also do know is that i need to find a way of making this a lot of fun. and what i do remember being a fun thing was spinning those hula-hoops when i was a kid. and isn't the picture telling the same?

i guess i will buy one.

it's pink and green and it tastes good

during the last weeks i rediscovered rhubarb. i just love the colour, and even more i love the fresh taste of it. so, i have been making rhubarb muffins, rhubarb-fruit-jelly and a rhubarb-strawberry-sauce to have with vanilla-icecream. and tonight, i did a new recipe from the cooking magazine viva!. it was supposed to be a quark-semolina-dessert with rhubarb-compote. i think i got it a bit wrong, mostly, i have too much sugar in it (blame the kitchen-scales!!) and then i didn't have any whipped cream. i guess, i also should have used a mixer but i did not. anyway, it tastes delicious.

this is how it is done, or rather, how i did it: bring 250ml of milk with 20-30g of sugar to the boil, add 25g of semolina and stir while simmering for 2-3min. let cool down. in the meantime, mix 250g of quark with a little bit of milk and some jogurt so it gets nice and creamy. blend the semolina with the quark-mix.
cut 300g of rhubarb into small pieces, bring to the boil with 60ml of water and 50g of sugar and let simmer for about 4-5min. let cool down.

put one layer of the rhubarb-compote into a dessert-bowl, then one layer of quark-semolina-cream and pile until the bowl is full. enjoy!!!

i still have their recipe on sweet and warm rhubarb-pizza with almonds to try out...

Tuesday 13 May 2008

on purchasing music

this weekend, i had the chance to see glimpses of a reportage on the swedish television svt about the music-industry, its ongoing problems with pirating and possible solutions. i'm not very much into this discussion, as the music business is definitely not where i am aiming after i'm done studying. but as someone who loves listening to music (at least, every now and then) i still have some interest.

basically, most of the time it was the same arguments and the same points that everybody has heard a thousand times, up and down again. "the music-industry has failed to jump on the internet-wave in time, selling cds is not the main way of distribution anymore, and so on and so on." anyway, there were two points that i found interesting and important, for me as a normal girl who wants to be able to listen to music legally on which ever medium i chose.

the first one is, that if i pay a certain amount of money, i want to own the piece of music and be able to copy it to as many different places as i want. this means, that things like copy-protection don't make me want to buy a cd, or that copy-limitation does not make me want to download music legally. if i, for example, download a certain song on the itunes-store, then i can only copy it to three different media. my mobile phone, my ipod and my computer. if my computer breaks down or my mobile phone gets stolen, i have to buy the song again, as i cannot copy it one more time because of copy-limitations. so, no option.

another example: a few years ago, before mp3-players became something everybody has, i bought some cds in sweden and norway which have a special copy-protection. this copy-protection disables my computer from importing the songs to itunes, as my cd-burner/player just cannot read them. what am i supposed to do now? buy the songs from itunes and pay for the cd a second time? for me as a not-earning-so-very-much-money-student not an option. basically, the only way to get a free version of the cd i have purchased would be to download it illegally. which i do not want to do.

so, what would be important for the music-industry is to find ways that enable people to easily purchase the music they want for whichever media they chose to use for listening.

the second point had to do with the amount of money people spend on music. it's actually a fairly easy mathematics: the more money i spend, the more value i want to get for it. people like to spend money on concerts, as they get an unforgettable evening and the artist in person, something special, for their money. if i buy a cd, i get a plastic box, a nice cover, the songtexts, some information about the artist, someting i can hold in my hands. real value. if i download, i get data and can listen to the music, but nothing more. no cover-art, nothing in my hands. not so much value. so, if i have to pay the same amount of money (or almost the same) for downloading an album as for buying it on cd, i feal cheated. especially if i get copy-limitation with it.

in brasil, there is this movement that sees cds as a merchandise for the concerts. apart from the rest of what they were doing (basically only sampling the newest hits from the us, without paying for the right to use it - me, i don't like that), this is a very good point. they record the concerts directly, and in the end of the evening, people can come and buy a cd with the concert they had just heard for a small amount of money. no really good quality, but a reminder of the good time you had there, and therefore also a reminder to go to the next concert.

basically, this means one thing: if you want people to buy your cd, give them value. something extra. it also means, if you want people to download your stuff, make it cheap and easy.
there was one, well, not solution, but still a suggestion that someone had on the reportage: pay around 10 euro per month for a listen-online-program. this means that you can chose to listen online (no download) as much as you like, and you can listen to what you like. make your own radioprogram. you don't own the pice of music, but you get all you can eat for a fair price. me like. very much.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

a harvest of tares

on very rare occasions, i buy the one or other of those women's magazines. it may happen once or twice a year. on even rarer occasions, i find something worthwhile to read in them as well, which was the case with the last one that i bought in march.
i read a book review about this small piece of norwegian-rooted literature, hjalmar hjort boyesen's "a harvest of tares" ("selbstbestimmung"). a small german publisher, Lilienfeld, had rediscovered it somewhere, and decided to do a reprint, which was released a bit more than a month ago.

anyway, i had read the review, and it stuck on me like glue. i searched almost all of lüneburg's bookstores (i still prefer buying books in person, it is so much nicer), but none of them had it in store, and i was not quite sure if it really really would be worth spending 19 euro. then, i had the chance to read some pages on a bookstore online, and decided to purchase. today, it arrived. and, what should i say, i only read the first chapter so far, but i love it already.

in the center of everything stands hulda, the eldest daughter of a norwegian reverend in a fjord-parish at the end of the 19th century. she is young, beautiful and headstrong, and she is supposed to marry the new young and extremely inexperienced curate. but then, also, there is this artist, who is everything that the curate is not, whom she falls in love with, and whom she eventually will follow to a new life in the united states.

i don't know how to describe exactly how the book is written, or what makes it so special, but it is extremely appealing, it feels interesting and what i have read touches me deeply. i can relate to this girl in a way that i haven't even related to some of jane austen's characters, whom i love dearly. maybe it's because i know the beauty of the fjords, or maybe it is because i also am an eldest doughter (even though in totally different circumstances).

as i said, i haven't read so very much yet, but i can't wait to continue. so, with all my heart, i already strongly recommend it.

Sunday 4 May 2008

car. by ikea

i heard ikea was planning on launching a car.
















and here is the tool:

Thursday 1 May 2008

monday's child

ever since i had been to sweden with a., i have been looking for this song. i didn't have a clue about who the artist was (or rather, i knew it was "something veronica", but that doesn't really help usually) or what the song was called, but today i kind of stumbled over it when reading the news on some swedish newspaper's webpage.

this is swedish soul. at it's best.



veronica maggio. måndagsbarn.