Maybe it’s just the deadly-hot weather of dried-up August, but I’ve been dreaming of a northern summer.
© 2008–2011 Nina Egli and Family Affairs
I’ve had my eye on the Swedish Summer dress since the Family Affairs Spring/Summer 2012 collection debuted back in March. For me, though, the really alluring part isn’t so much the dress as it is the description:
…you have been making blueberry jam all day in your summer cottage in the middle of the Swedish woods, it’s a full moon tonight and you are going for a skinny dip later…
I mean, of course you are.
What’s more, the wonderfully talented photographer Hilda Grahnat just posted photos of her post-blueberry picking dip from a few weeks ago. It really is what a Swedish summer is made of!
On the non-summer side of things, I’ve fallen pretty hard for the Pia Wallén Crux Blanket, which is unfortunately a) very expensive and b) now only available in cotton flannel (instead of WOOL, like God intended). At least I know I’m in very good company– and I feel like someone I know (I guess it’s Susan?) often says that the cross on the Swiss flag is the greatest piece of design that exists.
Anyway, I have it in mind to make a quilt version– I guess out of the different greys of old men’s suits, like the quilt that hangs in my parents’ downstairs hallway. It looks like Celine has already made a beautiful Crux Quilt– plus, hers features a grey ombré background– so I know it definitely can be done!
I don’t know if the next step is to go spend $50 on a pile of old suit jackets and start cutting squares, or if it’s to find a similar quilt pattern and modify it. If anyone knows anything about quilting, I’d appreciate hearing it.
It’s old news, I know, but this article from the New York Times about Minneapolis’ Bachelor Farmer also has me wishing I lived somewhere colder (or, at the very least, near a restaurant inspired by the New Nordic Cuisine). Just, listen to Noma’s Claus Meyer:
We have got Mosc ox, reindeer, juice turnip from the arctic area, king crab, slow growing Limefiord oysters, Greenlandic ice water flounder, grouse – the one bird in the world than in the most intimate way communicates the flavours of its territory, ancient local cow, pork and lamb varieties, more than 50 species of wild berries from the forests; broke berries, cloudberries, artic bramble, cowberries… Berries that have only been sampled and tasted by few people outside the Nordic region.
And, this, because it seems to be straight out of
Babette’s Feast, and I thought that things in Denmark had maybe changed since Dinesen wrote:
The unambitious home market demand was mainly the result of a 300 year long evil partnership formed by ascetic doctors and puritan priest. In together they have led an antihedonistic crusade against the pleasure giving qualities of food and against sensuality as such. The idea of organizing beautiful meals with great food has been considered a sin. The philosophy they so successfully communicated was that if you just ate something of inferior taste and did it in a hurry instead of enjoying too much you would get a long healthy life and end up in heaven.
As such, we planted a row of
rutabagas– which word, you know, means
root ram (ram, as in male sheep. No idea why that’s the word.) in Swedish– last Wednesday.
