The Quiet Fights

2007-05-27T14:03:00.000+02:00

Ack, I'm really not a good blogger these days, huh? Today, all I can manage is comments, sorry.

Rosa has been finished for quite some time actually. But I'm afraid I just can't be bothered to model her, let alone wash her before I took this picture. She's a pretty girl, tho'.

SPECS
Pattern: Rosa from Rowan magazine no. 35
Yarn: 5 balls of Gepard Cotton Baby in colour 187
Beads: Gütermann washable seed beads in colour 8061. Dunno how many. Lots!
My mother's getting married (for the first time) in August. This is my bridesmaid's dress. Pretty, isn't it? Fingers crossed that it doesn't mean bad luck for anyone to see that one.
There's a lighthouse outside my living room window. A crane came Thursday and put it into place. I'm still confuzzled, but hey, it should make drunkely finding my way home a lot easier!
A Milky moved into my house. Unfortunately, no Graham Coxon came along with him, but maybe I'll make him a Miss Milky, so he won't feel so alone. Light yellow polymer clay might be trickier to find, though? I dunno. Templates at Milky Fan, if you want your own.
I was watching 24 Hour Party People the other day (or actually, just the first half, it's just not entirely as good after Shaun Ryder's killed those pigeons, is it? That scene, however, is one of the funniest, ever) and today I just saw the trailer for Anton Corbijn's Joy Division-movie Control (it looks fantastic, by the way) and I was just thinking; which Joy Division-single do you prefer? I say Transmission, it's one of the few songs that just keeps getting to me every time.

Angola revisited

2007-04-30T14:01:00.000+02:00

Right, it's been nearly three weeks since I came home from Angola - it's pretty damn feeble that I haven't been able to get my shit together until now. Anyway, it was a great trip. Unlike last time, where my dad had to work like normal and we, consequently, couldn't go very far from Luanda, we wen't on a small African roadtrip this time and it was pretty good stuff.
Also unlike last time, it was (late) summer and thus really, really f***ing hot! As soon as we got off the plane, the greenhouse-like heat just smacked me hard in the face and I honestly think that I got more of a tan last time 'round - this time I spent most of the time sitting indoors shouting for the air-con to be turned on and/or up.

But actually, the fact that I haven't written anything about the trip until now look even worse when I tell you that I have in fact already written most of this post while I was still in Angola, but as I didn't bring my laptop with me on the road, I had to type it and I just couldn't be arsed. Anyway, here goes:

Friday, 30th of March
Arriving in Luanda. It's warm! Or hot, rather, the heat is absolutely stifling and very, very humid. If I'm outside or in a room without aircon, I break a sweat in 2 minutes. Ick.
But it's good to see Angola again, there's just something about it that makes me... happy. I already get my camera out on the way from the airport, dunno why, last time I was pretty wary to take pictures with people in them, but when lack of sleep has done something to my brain and seeing a children's guitar in a tree makes me giggle, so I decide to snap a shot. Bad idea! The guy in the picture gets really, and I mean really, royally, pissed off and no matter how much I try to mouth "I'm sorry!" or "Desculpe!", he just proceeds to make rather obscene gestures at me. When he picks up a rock and comes closer, Maiamona from my dad's company goes over to try and calm him down, but still, I'm pretty happy when the traffic unclogs and we can get the hell out of there!
My dad's house is pretty much the same as last time. I shower, play Bop-It and sleep. Then we go out to a restaurant called Baia at the harbour. The place is really cool, very cosmopolitan, but without losing its roots. We have lovely food, while downstairs they're having a poetry slam.
When we get back home, I ponder what to bring on an African road trip apart from your malaria medicine. It's tricky, but I go for my knitting, my iPod and my deodorant.

Saturday, 31st of March
Day one of our road trip. We leave rather late as the guy with whom my dad needs a meeting before we can go is stuck in the airport. This means we arrive after dark in Kambala, an old military base protecting the dam that supplies Luanda with electricity. Our rooms look a bit like there's no cleaner and we practically have to beg to get pillows, but we sleep ok despite incessant frogs and some birds nesting on the outside frame of our door.

Sunday, 1st of April
Day two: We leave from Kambala after an early breakfast and after seeing the church in what is left of the fortress of Kambambe. Apparently, the place has had some military value since 1604 and it's also one of Angola's nominations for UNESCO World Heritage. Now that it's light, it's also pretty cool to discover that the architecture of the base is very Bauhaus-ish, not really what you'd expect from Africa. Today's trip, however, is far from cool, in fact, it's positively awful.
I guess that I've never really stopped to consider the difference proper infrastructure makes, but it's definitely one of those things you miss when it's not there. To be sure, the road has seen asphalt at some point, but it just has so many holes and bumps and... argh! Sure, going somewhere far can be a bit of a pain, but traveling like this is actually hard work! The shitty roads make you bounce and bump up and down and combined with the fact that you have to reach your destination before nightfall, there's hardly any time for breaks, let alone rests. At one point, I'm just so worn out and sick of being unable to take even the tiniest of naps that I just start crying.
We drive for about 9 or 10 hours to get to Malanje, the capital of the Kwanza Norte province. It's 230 kilometres away.
We'd booked rooms at Hotel Gigante, but it just can't be found and when we drive by Hotel Palanca Negra, no-one feels the need to keep looking. Air-con, swimming pool, clean sheets and Italian furniture - again, it just feels odd to reach this in the middle of this vast area of disarray. But I don't dwell on it, instead I fall asleep straight after dinner, I'm just that tired.

Monday, 2nd of April
Day three: Our bathroom smells pretty damn foul - imagine a sewer stuffed with cheese. We ask for another room before we're on our way to see the Kalandula falls. Proves easier said than done. We drive to the top of a hill where we can see this, which, if you can't tell, are the falls in the distance.
But the road seems to turn in the opposite direction so we go back and turn down another road which seems slightly overgrown.
Some women are making tapioca flour by grinding the cassava on the asphalt and they seem rather surprised to see us, but we just drive on until we meet a particularly grassy patch. At first we just want to drive on, but suddenly Elisabeth, my dad's girlfriend yells for us to stop - a pretty good call 'cause behind the pretty tall grass is this:

Hm, seems that we can't get to the waterfalls this way either although from here, we can hear them.
We go back again and turn down what is basically a slightly oversized goat path leading to a a village where some kids with machetes stare at us as if we're from another planet. This obviously isn't the right way either. Eventually, we end up going up the first road again - evidently it turns back towards the falls and leads to this miradura. It's just wauw.

We spend what seems like half an hour, but is in fact more than two at the falls. They're just so pretty. I take Rosa out to show her the falls as well. Neat, eh?

When we get back to the hotel, they've changed our room. Instead of a stink we now have:

Ta-daa, a shittily installed electric showerhead! To me, it just screams hairdryer dropped in bathtub, so I go for cold showers...

Tuesday, 3rd of April
Day four. We can't figure out how to get to Gambele as was initially planned, so we go back the same shitty road to Kambambe although, to be fair, it doesn't feel entirely as bad the second time around.
We eat at the local greasy spoon for people who work at the dam (and again makes me think about the fact that I told my doctor that I'd be in Angola for two weeks under good conditions. I'm not entirely sure that sitting outside at twilight - mosquito peak hour - eating food from a country kitchen I haven't seen, constitutes what she'd define as "good conditions") - it's pretty great, even though I see the biggest spider ever and nearly manage to make a local boy cry.

Wednesday, 4th of April
Day five. At first we want to take the shorter road from Kambambe, south-east of Luanda, to Cabo Ledo at the Atlantic, south-west of Luanda, across the country that is, but when Elisabeth asks the hotel manager about this, he nearly wets himself laughing while spluttering "não possível!", so we go over Luanda instead.
We stop by the hous to have lunch, but are quickly shooed back into the car when we can't get a hold of the hotel in Cabo Ledo and have to be in the national park of Kissama within two hours. It's probably not more than 70 kilometres away, but with Angolan roads and Luanda traffic combined, making the trip within 2 hours is actually pretty hard. The last 30 kilometres into Kissama consists of a dirt road and contrary to last year, it has rained this time so this part of the trip is a 4 wheel drive mud fest. Good stuff.
At the hotel, I ponder how weird it is to see Orion when the temperature isn't sub-zero and then we drink G&T's and caipirinhas (and I remind myself to bring som cachaça home) to celebrate Elisabeth's birthday.

Thursday, 5th of April
First day of just chilling out we've had since I got here. I knit in the sun and at 5PM, we go for a guided tour around the park, but in my dad's car instead of the park's this time. The guy seems like a nice guy, although I'm not too happy sitting with his AK-47 between my feet. I see a gnu and some antilopes, but overall, the trip we had last year in the park's Unimog was a bit more exciting.

Friday, 6th of April
We've planned to go on a river safari and hopefully see some crocodiles, but the diesel for the boat hasn't come in from Luanda yet, so instead we go to Cabo Ledo to swim, say hi to to the monkey and eat some seafood.
When we get back to Luanda, we go to Bob's for burgers, slightly lame-o-tourists of us, but hey, sometimes you just need a freakin' burger. Also, if you ever get past a Bob's (apparently they're big in Brazil and there's one in Lisbon as well), try their Ovomaltine milkshake, it's pretty damn yummy!

Saturday, 7th of April
Ahh, proper bed, no shaky car, lots of aircon - it's good to be home. We go to a supermarket called Fresco to shop for our barbecue night. It's pretty weird, somehow you don't expect all sorts of special vegetarian food or the remedies for sushi to be found in Africa, but they're they are and really, why the hell shouldn't they be?

Sunday, 8th of April
Today is the day Kathrine and I are going home, so nothing big is planned. We get lunch at a restaurant at the beach called Caribe - if you ever get to Luanda, their mojitos are worth a shot!
The airport is a breeze, we don't even have bribe anyone this time and we're there early enough to get a Death by Chocolate Magnum before we leave. Yay Africa!

She's not dead

2007-04-17T00:15:00.000+02:00

Neither is the blog, is' jus' restin', while I knit on on Rosa and try to pull myself together to write an Angolan post. Pretty pictures, I swear it.

Oh, and ever so by the way...

2007-03-16T11:55:00.001+01:00

This is what came out of the wet and smelly mess below. Looks good, no? It's a birthday present for a friend (I reckon that if home-dyed, self-striping cashmere sock yarn isn't enough to turn someone into a wool-head, nothing is), but I almost don't have the heart to give it away. It reminds me of late august, blackberries and raspberries giving colour to the whipped cream by which they could be surrounded - I almost want to eat it! Fortunately, I can just dye some more...

And here is what a huge relief looks like. Last time I went to Angola to visit my dad, there was nothing but trouble with the tickets and we (me and my two travelmates whom I hardly knew) had to catch a later flight because of it and yadayada-f*cking-yada! So when I saw these babies in the mailbox a stone just fell from my heart. Good stuff - Luanda, here I come!

Do you remember this fella? That was a picture of me getting Lucky. Lucky from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation that is. Not bad, is it? Only trouble is that is has a nasty habit of falling from my shoulder, but I think I can fix that with some hooks and eyelets in the inner side seam. I made it with 9 balls of Blend Bamboo from Hjertegarn. It's dead nice and soft now that it's knitted up, but jebus, is it a pain to knit with! It splits like absolutely crazy to the point where I wondered if it was actually yarn or just a random collection of threads.
Next sweater project? A green Rosa from Rowan Magazine #35 made with free work-yarn. Oooh, the joy of threading 4,000 tiny beads onto string!

Oh, and a last thing. By now, it's hardly news that DR2 has started sending The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but can I just express my joy anyway? I'm beginning to think that I have a thing for that guy, so much that when I saw this YouTube-clip with him talking about his kids, it made me think "Mmm... procreation is hott!"

Just a few things...

2007-03-15T00:41:00.000+01:00

On working in a yarn shop: Pretty good stuff, so far at least. Free yarn for 2 work sweaters every year, plus damn nifty discounts. Nice people, both staff and customers. Good coffee from a weird machine. Yarn! Mmmm!

On the Nørrebro-riots: This has to be the coolest picture taken during the demolition.

On dying your own yarn: Addictive! Smelly, but addictive.

On how life is... Not bad, I think! Did I mention the yarn?!

She got the clap so many times, it amounted to applause

2007-03-11T13:27:00.000+01:00

Or, actually, I just finished my first Clapotis (this here being and unblocked version), so no standing ovations just yet. But I had to do it sometime, no? All the other kids are doing it n all...
The yarn is my own handpainted single-ply silk, knitted up on 5mm needles.
I really liked the pattern, there really is something strangely satisfying about dropping stitches on purpose. However, I don't really know about the yarn. Especially the colour. I don't know... it's just very colour-y and I'm not sure I'm a colour-y person! Also, it sheds all over the goddamn place and with the amount of black I wear that's just not a good thing.
But anyway, my mother says she wants it, so it's not the end of the world.

By the way, don't you just looove easily satisfied urges? Like today, when I woke up and all I wanted was buttered toast. I mean, that's ace! When is buttered toast not easily available? Excellent, I say.

Let's start! Let's start a riot!

2007-03-02T11:19:00.001+01:00

Right, if you've been living under a rock (or got hit by one), you might not have noticed that the users of Ungdomshuset was evicted by the police yesterday. I've written about this before and rest assured, bricks or no bricks, I'm still on the side of the squatters. I'm generally pretty damn sick of listening to people droning on and on about how the squatters don't respect the laws of our society - what part of "revolutionary" is it that you c***s don't understand? It's absurd to expect people recognise the rules of the society they want to throw over, to expect them to play by these rules to change the society they don't respect. And the worst is when I hear the argument "But these rules are the base of our society! If everyone did like you, society would crumble!" - that's sort of the entire point, see?
Essentially, the argument comes down to that you want people to act according to your rules because you say so - and you have the police backing you up wielding guns, batons and Mace. That's fine by me, if only you'd admit it; it not about justice, it's about power.
Also, I'm looking forward to see what the police means when they say they found a flamethrower in the house. If this time is anything like their usual way of handling the truth, when you see flamethrower, you should read "we found a lighter next to a bottle of hairspray".

On a lighter and more bourgeois note, I just got a job in a yarn shop! Yay!

Angst in my pants

2007-02-27T11:16:00.001+01:00

I'm not really sure how you can not like snow. Here we have last week's (and apparently, if you are to believe the media, this century's worst) Danish blizzard. Come on, it's not like I have a mighty interesting view from the living room window, but still, it's sooooo pweeetty!
However, now the thaw is coming on and that's one thing I really don't enjoy. Lots of weather types can be annoying to be sure, but thaw is the only one that really strikes me as gross. It just makes everything look like a soggy, filthy rag. Yuk, I say.

Another yuk was when I spent some indoor time (apparently, not many of my friends could see the appeal of throwing themselves down a snow-clad hill on something like this. Seriously, I want that one!) dying 500 grammes of silk. Goddamn, have you got any idea how bad that stuff smells when you soak it?! Anyway, I don't have any pictures of the finished product juuust yet, only soggy yarn in a colander (why is that such a funny word? Colandercolandercolander), but as of now, I'm in the midst of knitting it into a Clapotis.
Right, I'm off. I need to get my bike to a check-up. Tonight is Gilmore Girls-night, ever so by the way. Last week saw Lorelai pouring coffee over a wedding dress to the sound of what immediately after became my favourite song of the week, Angst in my Pants by Sparks. I love that show.

2007-02-16T11:33:00.000+01:00

Hey, I forgot about these. Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts. Purdy, no?

Once you go black...

2007-02-16T11:22:00.000+01:00

In a winter like this, which Politiken, I think it was, described fittingly as "not really winter as much as a constant shower with your clothes on", I don't really think that being Scandinavian is as much fun as it usually is. It might be the eskimo blood in my veins, or, in lack thereof, the eighth of Polish blood (I'm afraid that my greatgrandmother, Pelargia, is the most exotic branch in a family tree made up by almost exclusively southern Danes - not very exciting!) longing for a continental climate and subzero temperatures.
Anyway, right now I find that the best thing about being Scandinavian is the salty liquorice - mmmm, ammonium chloride for breakfast!
I think that Super Piratos are the only thing currently on the market with exactly the legal percentage of ammonium chloride (too much of the stuff can cause high blood pressure and, in children still growing, damage to the bones), but when I was a kid, my mother was crazy for a particular kind called Vampires that (at least in our town) you could only get at Wohlenberg, a local shop selling wine, spirits, tobacco and, of course, sweets. I could really do with a trip to that shop right now - it still smells like it did when I was five!
But I digress - at some point Vampires became illegal under some EU directive or other, because they contained too much ammonium chloride, but right now I could really, really do with one! I've seen you can get sets to make your own salty liquorice - maybe that's an option if I feel a bit like gambling with my health? Hmm...
Byt the way, can you tell in what the salty fish is blobbing around?

Confuzzled

2007-02-11T15:22:00.000+01:00

Hmm. Not exactly That Seventies Yarn. Not exactly bad. Not exactly was I was going for, either! I dunno. I have some colour remover, maybe I could use that to lighten it a tad? What do you think?

They want our way of life. Well, they can have mine any time they like...

2007-02-09T17:25:00.000+01:00

Right, kids. Either this experiment is going to turn out horribly bad or really well, I think. The smell of wet wool and vinegar is spreading around the apartment because, lo and behold, I'm dying self-striping sock yarn (using Eunny's method). And besides being worried that my flat will smell vinaigrette sheep permanently, I can't really figure out whether I chose the right colours for this project. What I'm going for is this. Chocolate and violet goodiness. But I have nasty feeling that what I'll end up with is That Seventies Yarn. Oh well.

Stupid girl

2007-02-05T10:38:00.000+01:00

Ah yes, the blog. I would like to say that I've been busy, but I am afraid I'd be lying, I'm not really doing anything these days apart from sleeping and playing Bejeweled 2, sad bastard that I am.
I did however find the time to knit these Cablenet socks from the Fall 2006 Knitty. Now, besides the fact that they're not blocked and I chose a really bad combination of pattern and yarn, obscuring both how nice a yarn Black Purl actually is and the tiny cables that are actually a pain in the arse to knit, do you see what's wrong here? That's right, I forgot a pattern repeat in the sock on the right! In the cuff, no less. Sigh. Do reckon it would be possible to rip down the left sock from the top and then do a new rib? Because, honestly, there is no f***ing way that I am ripping the whole foot back on number 2.
More FO's coming shortly. Possibly.

Warsaw

2007-01-16T12:09:00.000+01:00

This is what I woke up to this morning. Odd. A bit like looking into the house of East German Barbie (and, yes, I know that Warsaw isn't in former GDR).

Ooh, scary!

2007-01-11T14:33:00.000+01:00

Favourite scary movies right now:

A shark movie made by a bunch of 12-year-olds in 1978 - I wish I'd had friends like that when I was twelve! Also, a lot damn scarier than Jaw s , if you ask me...

Next damn scary thingy; a Tickle Me Elmo on fire - those things look bad enough as they are, but when they practically turn into zombies, that's where I put my foot down (to turn around and run away screaming).

And before I leave: I'm applying for a job in a yarn shop - keep your fingers crossed!

This is a minor interruption, please remain seated

2007-01-08T00:04:00.000+01:00

Ack, happy New Year everyone. I'm still right here and I actually had some posts lined up, but then it was Christmas and I didn't post my pictures of the squirrels in my dad's backyard and then my pictures of the Anemoi Mittens I knitted didn't turn out well and then I still couldn't get the new Blogger to work with Haloscan and then New Year's and sushi and I've gained something like a hundred pounds during Christmas (I have a gut! I am actually considering dieting, something I've never done. Dieting, that is) and eurgh, then I turned all mopey which is so strange because I'm normally the picture of joie de vivre. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I'll be back soon. Probably. And here is my sister with those mittens.

Riots, not diets, part II

2006-12-18T11:40:00.001+01:00

Another thing I just want to add to the post below. It's not like I generally support riots as a way of expressing yourself - I just think that all these people coming out to say that the people in Ungdomshuset should "express themselves peacefully" and in accordance with democratic principles - well, I'm sorry but they've tried that, haven't they, and it didn't get them very far.
And these people are actually just the tip of the iceberg, I've seen a lot of blogposts, these last couple of days, calling the police "soft" and not understanding why the people arrested had to be released after just 24 hours (when they should obviously have been put to jail for life/shot in the kneecaps/what have you). Well, f*cking newsflash, they had to be released because it says so in the Danish constitution! You know, the constitution that also details the private property you're referring to every single time you want the kids to hand over the house to Ruth Evensen and her cronies?
Also, I've just about had it with news programmes interviewing the neighbours on Nørrebro. Of course I have no doubt that a lot of those people are sick to death of Ungdomshuset and no doubt it's a total bummer seeing burning barricades all over your neighbourhood, but the TV puts it out like it's all the neighbours who have lost their sympathies for Ungdomshuset, which I know for a fact is just not true!
A lot of people get on just fine with the activists and if you try and notice, nearly all the neighbours interviewed as opposed to Ungdomshuset look like newcomers. Now, every neighbourhood needs newcomers, but what pisses me off is when newcomers get angry at the customs of the neighbourhood they moved into. It can hardly be a surprise to you that if you move to Nørrebro, you have to deal with Ungdomshuset and as for the riots, have you newcomers not seen any news the last 20 years?! It's not like it's the first time Nørrebro has been the site of a riot, you had 18. maj (the 18th of May) 1993 after the second referendum on the Maastricht treaty, you had the squatting movement of the 80's - actually, you could argue that riots on Nørrebro is a tradition going back at least to the People's Strike of 1943! So don't come here saying that you didn't know what you went into!
This particular way of moving somewhere is a nasty trend that has come to Copenhagen maybe the last 10 or 15 years. How crazy is it that the bar owners in Nyhavn actually have to point out that if you move there, you can't exactly expect quiet nights? That place has been full of sailor joints since the 17th century!
Likewise for the neighbours on Vesterbro wanting to close down Mariatjenesten, a service connected to one of the local churches which has been helping the resident drug addicts since 1974 and also likewise for the absolutely insane people moving into apartments next to the harbour and then complaining about the noise the ships make - do you people even know why Copenhagen is here in the goddamn first place?!
Ah, rant over...

Riots, not diets

2006-12-17T03:44:00.000+01:00

Right. I'm a wee bit drunk, having just been to a Christmas party. But before I go to bed, I just want to say, with regards to the riots in Copenhagen today.

Please remember that a country with no riots ever is most likely a totalitarian one.
Don't believe everything you see on TV. I have a friend living right next to what was supposedly the epicentre of the riots and despite the police being "bombarded with bricks, fireworks and molotov cocktails", she didn't notice the riots until she read about them on the net. Just sayin'...
Try to understand that the police are people and thus, not always good guys. Sometimes they lie and sometimes they smack people around just because they know they can get away with it.
And seriously, stop giving me that BS argument that the police are "just doing their job". That might be so, but what would you usually call someone who fights for a cause they don't believe in, just for the money? Mercenaries?

And to all those people being shocked and outraged and what-f***ing-ever by these riots, well, I'm sorry, but what did you expect?! Hasn't the people in Ungdomshuset and their neighbours said all along that this what would happen? Stop being so goddamn surprised when people stand up for themselves, just because you're too sissy to do so.

C is for cookie

2006-12-09T16:45:00.000+01:00

As you might have noticed, I've switched back to my old Blogger-template. Yeah, a gazillion other people have the same and, sure, it's not really very cool at all, but at the end of the day, the new template-editor just didn't come up with so many new possibilities that it was worth losing my comments for. In any case, I'm considering moving to a domain of my own, move to WordPress and get a proper template of my own. It's just that I'm so lazy. So don't get your hopes up.

Anyway, it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas 'round here. First sign was when I ran amok in a slightly snazzy interior design shop in inner Copenhagen*. I don't exactly what the f*ck happened, but I shopped for an advent wreath that, if someone with actual skillz had done it, could've been in ALT for Damerne right between a diet promising you to lose 5 kilogrammes before the office Christmas party so you can squeeze down into the dress you can't afford on page 32 and an article on how to make the best chocolatecake ever for your night with the girls. Sorry, got sidetracked there, women's magazines are a pet hate of mine.
Anyway, as Kristian so nicely pointed out, it looks like I turned an angel into an angelic eunuk while snatching a couple of feathers - and because of the feathers, not only is it embarassing, it's also a f*cking fire hazard. Oh well...

Later last week, my mother and sister came over. It would've been nice, had my mother not fallen ill. But still, though, I got some quality time with the sis and we went to see Santa turn on the lights on the tree of the Town Hall Square, drank chai tea and ate pizza. Then we tried to make a gingerbread house. Sigh. Not only did I manage to get hothothot, caramelized sugar on my thumb while putting the thing together, it also fell apart the morning after. After turning stale, of course. Again, oh well...

But still, Christmas is way more fun if you mess it up and no one remembers the years where nothing went wrong. It's nice enough to have something turn out right. though. and without wanting to toot my own horn, what you see on the sides turned out pretty darn well indeed. On the left, we have cinnamon-almond biscotti, courtesy of Liselotte and on the right, ginger-hazelnut-cookies, a recipe from Ysolda's page. And kudos to both of them, 'cause those are some mean cookies, kids.
Mmm, Christmas!

Ooh, and the new Knitty is up! Keeping in with the cookie theme, I want to knit the new Cookie socks (and may I just say, my f-ing God, do I want those Kurt Geiger shoes!) and, not in Knitty, but I still want to knit them, Eunny's Anemoi Mittens. Whoa!

And C is for cookie , you know... Or "KEKSE!" if, like me, you always saw Sesam Straße, the German version of Sesame Street, and the Cookie Monster wasn't the Cookie Monster, but der Krümmelmonster. Oh well...

*as a little sidenote here, could people please understand that inner Copenhagen is never, ever called midtbyen? Centrum, København K, Indre By, City, whatever, just not midtby. Århus has a midtby, Randers probably does, too, but Copenhagen just doesn't. If you move here from other parts of Denmark, it's just one of those things you have to deal with. Now.

This is a public service announcement

2006-12-01T08:44:00.000+01:00

Hey you drrty kids.
I've disabled comments for now. Yes, you know why! Because deep down in my tar-covered heart, I think you're all morons, not worthy of my attention... Or, wait, that excuse was for another occasion... I've disabled comments, because I am a conservative little bitch, who's afraid of change, and I refuse to ignore all the delightful things you have told me in my previous, Haloscan, comments. And until I find a fix to make Blogger Beta and Haloscan work together (which is proving tricky, I can tell you!) or, alternatively, convince myself that it can't be f*cking done (tricky, as I have seen it), there's just no commentting for you. Or soup.

(Let's start a) rock'n'roll riot

2006-11-28T14:16:00.001+01:00

I wrote a rather long post yesterday about the up-coming cloure of Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, but then I deleted it, because well, it was crap.
For those of you who didn't know or hadn't guessed, I think the closure is a f*cking rubbish idea, even if it has been a while since I actually went there. I don't support the vandalism, but I wonder what the politicians and Faderhuset had thought would happen, when they put 500-1000 young people in a situation where they feel that they have absolutely nothing to lose.
Anyway, for those of you who don't know the story you can read some of it in English here and sign the petition here - it's close to 10,000 now, it just needs you.
Also, try to spread the word; have no doubt, I love Copenhagen, but it is becoming more and more homogenic these days - what it really doesn't need is to shut down one of the most progressive cultural institutions within city lines.
There's a bundle of cool events coming up towards the supposed closing date, the 14th of December, and not just for people who are into punk and HC.
I'm thinking that I'll go and see Michael Simpson and Sølvstorm, who are playing on the 5th of November, maybe Baby Woodrose and Savage Rose on the 13th and maybe the marathon reading with several Danish authors (Bo hr. Hansen, Jan Sonnergaard and TS Høegh among (many) others) on the 6th. Full calendar is here.

Show up, Ungdomshuset needs you! [insert poster of snotty, vegan punk pointing his/her finger at you here].

If the cold doesn't kill her, money will

2006-11-22T11:56:00.001+01:00

I think that last year I mentioned the Danish poet who says that the year has 14 months; January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, November, November and December. This year, however, I can't really say that he's right, because, seriously, November is just going by for me all... whoosh! I'm not really spending my time doing anything major, except spending too much money, but still... Anyway, to the right you have my current works in progress. Another mitten (this time a cross between a squirrel and a pirate mitten), a sleeve for a self-designed shirt that has been under way for quite some time, a second Peacock Feathers Shawl (I gave the first one to my favourite aunt for her 40th birthday) and a Cablenet sock in Black Purl from Lorna's Laces. Apart from all of that, I should be studying, but I find myself in a perpetual state of "I can't be arsed", so excuse me if I'm a bad, bad blogger these days.
In the mean time, ch-ch-check out this version of The Fear, it's evil and gorgeous at the same time!

You're the miles left to go

2006-11-08T23:21:00.000+01:00

After going home with the f***ing rain in my face and mascara, and before I go to my warm bed, which is looking preeetty good right now, I just have a couple of things to show you.

First:

Pirate mittens! Ooo-er! Nice, no? I used this pattern from Hello Yarn and two skeins of Dale's teflon-coated yarn, Hauk. Strange stuff, teflon-coated yarn, oh well.

Second:

Lookie! I made a convert! This is my friend Camilla, whom I've known since I was seventeen. Where I'm afraid that I've chosen a road of paper pushing, Camilla is a really good photographer and make-up artist who, among other things, has done some work for Suicide Girls (as a photographer, that is). She's my first convert and she's already been knitting on the train (as you can tell, I'm rather proud). What you see, is her knitting her first sweater, a cardigan for this little girl, her daughter Kornelia (who, as you can tell, ended up looking very un-Exorcist-y).

Waiting 'round the bend

2006-10-31T01:44:00.000+01:00

So, it's nearly 2 A.M. and I can't sleep. My rest-deprived brain is starting to see a pattern. First some guys from the Danish Paranormal Institute came by in the hearse on the right while I was at work. Then I went to see The Science of Sleep (why is it called The Science of Sleep in English when it's called La Science des Rêves, the science of dreams, in French? Huh?) And now I've just seen this Mickey Mouse-cartoon which is about... something paranormal. Runaway brains. That's bad, yeah?
So you see, there's a pattern, because the guys in the hearse, mixed with sleepy science and brain-switching... uh, I give up, there's no pattern, but it's still the most excited I've been over a Mickey Mouse-cartoon since I was about 10. And I always preferred Donald Duck anyway. But you should see it, okay?

Sunday? But it can't be, it's too gruesome

2006-10-29T19:52:00.000+01:00

I don't know how you feel, but I never was able to get The Bangles when they sang Manic Monday. Sure, Mondays are rather tedious, but "I wish it was Sunday, that's my fun day"? Hardly. If you ask me, Sundays are the worst kind of days there are. I always find myself being mopey, sleeping so long that I get a headache and then just hanging around the flat, boring the crap out of myself, on Sunday and today is no exception. Sigh sigh sigh.
Anyway... last week, my mother and sister came over to visit and it was quite nice. One day, we were out walking and I took this picture of a stencil on one of those metal plates that are used to cover holes in the street - nice, no?

Writing out more lines than Burberry

2006-10-10T10:27:00.000+02:00

Aahhh, once again my normal state of quiet, instead of verbalized, cotempt of the world has returned. I nearly got there later on
Saturday when a drunken Northern Irish fan came down the carpark, tooting a horn and slurring: "Y'know... I've been to a lot of matschesss, yah? And I muscht shay, I really muscht shay... You're sho musch nisher than the Dutsch!". And I'm sure we are.

Although The Netherlands (I can't say that anymore without giggling), it's warmer there than here, isn't it? A tad? Because, gosh darnit, it has turned so cold over the last week or so! Isn't summer just around the corner? Please tell me that it is!

If not, I just comfort-shopped these earrings from shinylux's Etsy-shop. You like? I really think that if I was loaded, I buy all of Etsy. Well, not all of it, probably, but jeez, there are just so many things I like! Obviously, there's a lot of crap on there as well, just like on eBay, but still...

Oh, by the way, for the Danes; if you miss your daily dose of Rocky (the comic, not the movies, obviously) now that Politiken has cancelled it (the bastards - as if WulffMorgenthaler is anywhere near as funny), you can read it in Swedish at Dagens Nyheter's site or at Rocky's own site where you can also buy T-shirts. I'd kinda like a Rocky-tee, I just don't really know if I'm too keen on one that just has a comic strip on it - but if I were to choose a strip to get printed, it would have to be this one - becoming misty-eyed when your mobile suggests swear words when you're texting - who doesn't know that feeling?

And sorry if there are some copyright issues here. I'll delete it if Martin Kellerman or his big-shot lawyer tells me to and I promise that I tried other solutions first - well, one at least, I tried to tell the storyline, but first of all it wasn't funny and second of all I couldn't think of a proper English translation for 'spassernar'!

Ack, I'm really just blogging to procrastinate on the economics paper I have to get done by Friday. It's just so... well, not boring, but I'd still much rather be doing something else. Preferably watching TV. Or knitting pirate mittens! Well, I need them in this f***ing cold, don't I?

Flowers, kittens and chocolate

2006-10-07T16:42:00.000+02:00

I'm really in a foul mood right now, I can't figure out who of us hates one another more, but in any case, it's very much me v. The World. Not very practical seeing as I'm at my job right now and part of it is to at least be polite to people. And I'm just not in the f***ing mood, at all.
I can't think of a lot of reasons that my old hometown, Sønderborg, should be better than Copenhagen, but it does has some advantages. First of all, Sønderborg does not have any major football club. And when I say 'major', I mean within anything that looks like a league. That means that no club football with actual fans ever takes place i Sønderborg. Which obviously rocks.
Second of all, unlike Copenhagen, Sønderborg will never be the host of an international match. Also, the town hasn't got a single f***ing bar showing Champions League-matches.
All of this, as you can guess, reduces the amount of football fans in public to an absolute minimum, which, face it, is pure bliss.
Right now, the square in front of Copenhagen City Hall is full of annoying, noisy, goddamn leprechaun coloured and polyester-clad Northern Irish football fans and, God, do I just really hate them! And it's not that I like the Danish side better, it's just that they must be celebrating somewhere else - I saw a couple wearing crushed velvet viking helmets earlier on and I really can't think of anything that warrants a shot to the kneecaps like the combination of polyester, crushed velvet, viking helmet and a fat man with a T-shirt tucked into his trousers! I hate football fans. They really are the scum of the earth.

And if all that weren't enough, Lars Lilholt just drove by, asking whether or not we take Visa! Aaargh! Die, world, die die!

It takes a lover

2006-10-03T09:41:00.000+02:00

Just a couple of snippets before I go to the study hall to read some macroeconomics, ooh joy!

I don't know if you remember, but this summer a friend of mine got married. Now, her husband is Israeli and seeing as the Danish immigration laws are largely racist crap, they have to through all sorts of legal drearyness right now, when they should really just be enjoying the newlywed status. This Saturday, there's a demonstration for their, and other's, cause at Rådhuspladsen in Copenhagen. The demonstration is arranged by an organisation called Ægteskab Uden Grænser (Marriage Without Borders) and the slogan is aptly Boundless Love - aww!
Now, the thing is from 11-17, when I'm working, but you should definitely be there and receive several karmic points!

Have you seen My Fair Lady? Of course you have, I mean, Audrey Hepburn's in it and how can you not love Audrey Hepburn? Anyway, as far as I can recall, My Fair Lady features a song called Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man? - I don't really care about that, but why can't yoghurt be more like crème fraiche? That would be a good thing!

Lastly (ghastly), have you heard what Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is calling the protesting kindergarten teachers? "Socialists and troublemakers", that's what! I really think that's excellent and sooo funny! I mean, I didn't even know that socialists where the enemy these days, I thought it was all about Al-Quaeda and whatnot. Socialists and troublemakers... I can't even figure out whether he's gone back to pre-WWII or the Cold War.
The connection between Socialists and troublemakers is very pre-war, upper-class conservative and you could almost be fooled to think that the next thing he'll be yammering about is how the Communists are eating babies. Calling teachers Socialists, however, well, that's just so 70's! Next thing you know he'll be accusing them of indoctrinating the children to class war, "røde lejesvende", Erhard Jakobsen-style!

A.C.A.B.

2006-09-27T01:30:00.000+02:00

I'm really tired right now and I'd just like to say that I'd really like to think that the police are here to protect us n all, but... Well, basically, I distrust anyone whose instinct to the imperative form of verbs isn't "Uhm... I think not?" and even more so when you see clips like these two. Clip one. Clip two.
In the first you see an officer lifting his baton over his head only to use it to hammer it down on a demonstrator who is sitting down. In the second you see other officers use a leglock on a guy, one of the officers pressing his knee against the demonstrator's back. This move can cause asphyxiation and heart failure (husker du Benjamin?).
In both cases, I'd just like to know; What the f*** are you people thinking?!

EDIT: The first link is now actually working.

The fantastic thing about the female...

2006-09-17T21:49:00.000+02:00

Kristian has decided to throw down the gauntlet on behalf of the baby boys in the ultimate fight of who are the cutest; baby boys or baby girls? Well, naturally, I respect that Kristian would be a rather rubbish parent if he didn't find his own kid the cutest baby around, but if you go down to cold, hard numbers, then you just have to face that baby boys on average spend more time screaming and they learn to walk and talk later than the girls. When they grow into children, they'll have shittier, more boring toys, run around the house trying to shoot things and - worst of all - when they become teenagers, you get to throw their jerk-off socks in washer!
Anyway, none of this really matter, because I can say, objectively and completely without bias, that my little sister, Frederikke, was the cutest baby ever. Just lo and behold, Drooling Beauty!

Aww bless, no? Sorry about the crappy quality of the pic, I had to take a picture of a paper photo and it turned out to be a bit tricky...

Speaking of things that make you go "aww bless", I'm seriously considering getting a cat. When I lived at home, we've pretty much had cats since I was born (Rocky, Buster, Milla, Gina and the current one, a Persian longhair that we took over from someone else who had given it the same name as my brother. So, in a stroke of naming genius, it's just called Misser (Kitty)) and now, having lived without a cat for two years, I'm kinda missing it.
So, I spent all of yesterday googling pictures of itty bitty tabby kittens, which I really have to stop doing, because it's making me cat broody and I'll end up doing something rash! But awww... kittens!

The return of the thin, white duchess... oh wait...

2006-09-10T19:49:00.000+02:00

It's very nice of Clementine to want my 'crazy tales' back, but, alas, for the time being, there are very few of them; I finished my paper on time (although not without hysterics and gnashing of teeth) and then the new semester started and since then, I've mostly been exercising my duties as Queen of Naps.
I went to see my friend, Camilla, who about a month ago gave birth to a girl called Kornelia and a very lovely girl she was - nothing like anything from The Exorcist, fortunately.
Camilla, by the way, had been asked whether she wanted to pose for Agent Provocateur's maternity line. In the end, when everything fell into place, they apparently couldn't use her, because she was "too pregnant" (and, indeed, the model they ended up using isn't very far along, is she?), but the fact that Agent Provocateur makes leopard print feeding bras has got to be the coolest child-related thing ever!
Another cool thing are these necklaces that I just found on Etsy - they might be a bit hippy-ish, but I'm very enamoured of the stained-glass ones!

That's it for now, keep your fingers crossed that my paper will come through!

Drugs and grapes! Drugs and grapes!

2006-08-19T23:07:00.000+02:00

Before I go to bed (mmmm... bed...), just a thing that I forgot earlier. Does anyone have a recording of Danish band, Moi Caprice's cover version of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run? I heard it at a show of theirs a couple of years back and after seeing Courteney Cox-Arquette-Whatever in the Dancing in the Dark-video, I just thought of it. I remember it as really good, so if you know where to find it, please let me know.

So you remember now what it takes to make a woman cry

2006-08-19T11:37:00.000+02:00

Right, in between eating Prinzen Rolle, a thing I only have a craving for about once a decade (by the way, how wrong is it that they're just called Prince in Denmark? They're Prinzen Rolle! More German than sauerkraut and lederhosen!), looking at my nails, filing my nails, looking at my nails, watching Black Books-dvd's and looking at my nails again, I'm trying to study for an exam I have in a week. I was either ill or lazy or both when the original exam came up and in a stroke of mad genius, I thought that, hey, I could just read all that stuff over the summer. Which I could. But didn't. So now I'm caught in an evil circle of panicking over the amount of reading to be done, telling myself just how big a moron I am for not doing it earlier, and doing all sorts of other things (like this) just to avoid tht nasty feeling and thus reading less and finding ever more reasons to panic, be angry with myself and so on and so on. And of course, there's the eating of biscuits which turns into guilt of not only being a moron, but a fat moron... Oooh, complete and utter lack of confidence, joy of joys...
Anyway, I've finished the Matilda Jane cardigan, although I might end up changing the back ribbon because, although you obviously can't tell from the picture, the back ribbons look sort of funny... I think I like though, even if I might have a slight inclination to think that the top part makes me look somewhat American footballer-y...

And speaking of nothing at all, I just went to the local supermarket, which seems to employ a guy/girl who is just slightly over-enthusiastic about his/her work. Under the headline "THEY'RE HERE!!!" were bamboo sticks for barbecue kebabs and because their produce guy apparently couldn't come 'round before 1PM, the employee had found it necessary to say they of course were "deeply sorry". I mean, come on, deeply sorry is what you are if you accidentally ran over someone's puppy, it's hardly called for when people have to come back in a couple of hours to get that bag of apples...
Anyway, better get back to the studying.

Erm, why don't you buy her flowers?

2006-08-07T21:45:00.000+02:00

Wow, then suddenly two weeks has passed since I came home from Angola and where did they go? Well, we did go to Quiçama and it was rather nice. We didn't see the elephants or the palancas, but we did spot some zebras, an ostrich, different kinds of antelopes and, as you can see, a pretty nasty looking cobra. I was pretty happy to be seated in an Unimog when that one came along, I can tell you.
I also, while holding a rather big fear that I'd kill a zebra or otherwise break something, drove a car for the first time (yes, I am 24 years old and I do not have a driver's license. What would I do with it? I also think that if you're somewhat prone to road rage, it's better to be so on a bicycle than behind a ton of steel) and celebrated my 24th birthday prematurely (I wasn't afraid of killing a zebra when I did that, though). My dad and his girlfriend had bought the cake on the left for me and although it got a bit squashed on the rather rough drive to Quiçama, it's probably still one of the prettiest birthday cakes I've had (and pink! Barbie pink!). Alas, it tasted like floury, sugared fish... we left it for the maid, maybe it's a local thing.
The trip home was nowhere near as chaotic as the one going out and just a couple of days after I returned, my mother, her sister and their kids came round for my real birthday the 27th. I couldn't really figure out whether I'd been a good girl or not - supposedly the sunshine means that I had, but when it means heat that makes you uncomfortable, I'm not as sure. Also, I baked for the party, amongst others a cherry pie - try rolling out shortcrust pastry in 30 degrees Celsius, it can't be f***ing done! The party was good fun, though, but then it's hard to mess up when you have the sane part of your family, good friends, mojitos (Shirley Temples for the kids) and 4 different kinds of cake that all turned out rather well.
After my aunt and her kids left, my mother and sister stuck around for a few days more, one of which Frederikke and I spent at the Experimentarium and it was actually pretty good fun to spend a day playing around with soap bubbles, taking your own blood pressure, trying to explain the three-body-problem to a ten-year-old (and yourself) and posing for silly pictures in the mirror cabinet.
People say we actually look a bit like each other, by the way. What do you think it is? The eyebrows? The height of our pony tails? I dunno...
And to just bring you entirely up to date, I've spent the last days in a sort of hausfrau-frenzy, doing the things on picture below; re-doing my chairs, baking bread and making gazpacho, baking coffee-biscuits (and notice the P-stamp on those - they're Pernille-biscuits! Snazzy, no?) and sewing a needle holder - now I just need more knitting needles (although, to be fair, some of them are situated in some current works in progress), and also washing, ironing and hoovering - I tell ya, I would've rocked the fifties, kids!
Tomorrow, it's dying and sewing the ribbons for my Matilda Jane - the knitting has been done for quite some time, but seeing as it's been crazy hot for more than a month I haven't really felt motivated to get it done entirely. Ooh well, when I've told you all that I can't stop jumping around to the sound of Public Warning by Lady Sovereign (You can get the song from her MySpace-site. S-O-VEEEE!) and that I have a crush on PJ Harvey, I think that brought you up to speed!

Homecoming queen

2006-07-22T11:55:00.000+02:00

Ah, I'm going home to Copenhagen tomorrow night and I must admit that I'm looking forward to it. I've enjoyed being here and it's been fun and new and all, but for now, I've just had enough mosquitoes and roaches. And, mostly, I just look forward to not sticking out as much and not being every street vendor's amiga branca (that's funny, isn't it? What's the branca in Fernet Branca, then? 'Cause one thing that Fernet Branca is not, is white) and once again being able to get my point across - if I go here again, I really need to learn more Portuguese!

Anyway, later on, we're going to the Quiçama National Park where we might be able to see some animals apart from monkeys (like the one on the right who was in the back garden yesterday. Cute, ain't he?) and funny-looking insects. The trouble with Angolan wildlife is that a lot of it was, well, eaten or otherwise killed during the 25 year long civil war. Quiçama existed before that and now, with the help of South Africa among others, they're trying to re-establish it. So, fingers crossed, in the next post
there'll be some pictures of elephants and maybe Angola's national animal, the palanca negra (after which their football team got their nick name, by the way).

They say it's no game, there's strange news from another star

2006-07-18T11:28:00.000+02:00

Jeez, I just found out that the maid ironed my underwear - now that is crazy!
Anyway, we came back from spending a night at Ilha do Mussulo (which, technically, is not an island anymore, but a peninsula) yesterday. This was what I saw when stepping out of our bungalow so as you can guess, it was pretty nice and total Club Tropicana. And Angola has a Death by Chocolate Magnum - why can't we get that in Denmark?!
I think the most exciting thing that happened there was when I accidentally stepped on a fish while walking around shallow water. It all sort of confirms my feeling that while I think it's interesting and fun to be here, I just expected Africa to be more dangerous. Yes, I know that the malaria mosquitoes kill more than 1 million people every year and that I was totally gambling when I just brushed my teeth with tap water, but still, when you tell people that you've been to Angola, they don't expect tales of mosquitoes and whether or not you got the shits, do they? It's a bit sad, I think, that I might be going home and the most dangerous things to have happened to me will be when I had my feet flung over my head by a wave and my back sort of made a "crack"-sound and that I've been bitten by a possibly rabid monkey.
I want to experience something scary! I want there to be sharks when I go swimming, I want to see a lion, a rhinoceros, raging elephants or at the very least a stampeding antelope!

All the same, it's still nice to be here, even if it's still strange sticking out like I do. If you're really thirsting for attention, try being a white girl walking down to buy a Snickers in Luanda. And if that doesn't work, try bringing out your knitting - that's a surefire way!

Do something random!

2006-07-14T16:07:00.000+02:00

You know what's funny about Africa? It's the little differences... Well, actually the differences between Africa and Europe seem rather huge, but still, it's also strange that Fanta looks and tastes different here.
Not so funny that in Europe, I get about one mosquito bite a year, while here, my shins have turned into a bumpy mess (-ish). Blood-sucking little bastards.
Handsigns seem to carry different meanings as well. If you want to hitch a ride, you point to the ground and when a soldier at an old Portuguese fort we visited this Wednesday wanted me to come over, he signalled this by limp-wristedly flapping his hand downwards. I don't get it.
Anyway, turns out that while I was trying to photograph their national monument of independence (the big rocket-like thingy), I accidentally got some of the president's estate in the picture as well (it's what you can see a teeny-tiny bit of on the upper left), which for some strange reason is very forbidden.
Anyway, the fort is now a museum for the armed forces, albeit not with any signs explaining anything. It seems to have been used for actual armed forces until fairly recently, since there were gasoline stands from the national oil company, Sonangol. But other than that, it seemed very much like the sort of place that pirates had once attacked, big, white, fortress-y and on top of a cliff.
But I'd better get cracking, we're leaving for a beach bungalow at the place with the monkey, so I'll expect I'll get some bruises from swimming. Last, I have a little picture of some guns, especially for Kristian. Enjoy!

Monkey gone to heaven

2006-07-11T23:28:00.000+02:00

... or hell, depending on how you look at it. Today felt a bit more like a holiday than a family visit. We went south, crossed the bridge over the river Kwanza (the river that gives name to the local currency) and went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. There were some big ass waves at the beach we were at, so big that I started bleeding from the scrapes I got from being washed ashore. Also, try not to jump full frontal into a wave only slightly shorter than you, chances are you'll be in pain! It was good fun, though. I also met a monkey.

And, by the way, I thought that I'd been drunk at Roskilde. but a couple of weeks ago, my dad's girlfriend's son got so drunk that he accidentally bought a freakin' horse! I don't think I was that drunk at Roskilde, but hey, it would have solved the problem of getting back to the tent.

Greetings from Luanda

2006-07-10T13:39:00.000+02:00

So, we finally made it here. After even more trouble at Copenhagen Airport when we went to pick up our substitution tickets and travel on Friday, we came to Lisbon, where we spent the night at a failry nice hotel and had absolutely excellent brekfast (although I wouldn't recommend what I thought was some sort of Portuguese cinnamon bun, but turned out to be more like soggy white bread smeared with toffee flavoured ice cream sauce and then rolled together). Saturday morning we left Lisbon and then the same evening, we landed at Luanda Airport.
Like I said before I left, I didn't really know what to expect, but maybe I'd expected it to be different, but then with some sort of realization that what they show on the news is rather is exagerrated and, hey, it's not that different after all. But it really, really is. At the airport, some people from my dad's work ushered us into the queue for people with diplomatic passports and then when we'd found our luggage, he carried it for us into the car along with my dad, his girlfriend and the driver. And right now, I'm sitting on the bed, while Laura, the maid (the f***ing maid! I used to be the maid! I had a uniform just like hers!), is out in the courtyard cleaning next to the cupboard where the guard keeps his AK-47.
I feel so white, so privileged, so very out of place here. When we're driving around and I make eye contact with someone, they either smile and wave enthutiastically or flip me off while scowling. And I can't get used to the fact that I can't just go out on my own. It's weird, all weird. Not bad-weird, just.... weird.
And there's this opressive heat and the sun sets at 18.30 and there's animals everywhere, loose dogs and goats, cats in the restaurants (because there are mice) and chickens and yesterday, when we were driving to a place where there are eagles, we saw this pig with her piglets lying in the roadside.
And everything is dusty and the dirt is red dirt and... just wow, it's all really strange and new.
I'll leave you with this, my first baobab (it's not dead, none of them have leaves right now - and if anyone knows what the writing says, let me know);

The "told-you-so"-dance

2006-07-07T11:13:00.000+02:00

Ah yes, Africa! Right now, I should be sitting in white clothes in my dad's house, which has aircon, drinking cooled lemonade and behaving like a colonialist in Luanda. Instead, however, I'm sitting in my increasingly stuffy flat with two travelmates I hardly know, drinking Danish milk. And I can tell you, without even having been to Africa, that it's very much not the f***ing same!!
Somehow someone somewhere f***ed up royally, so when we came to TAP Air Portugal's check-in counter at Copenhagen Airport, they claimed that our tickets couldn't be found and that we couldn't get on the plane. Later, when TAP were called, we were told that this wasn't true, that as long as we had our booking number (to which I yesterday pointed several times), we ought to be fine. But hey, we're not, are we?!
Anyway, so far it looks like we're put on a plane later today. And I think someone somewhere owes me an upgrade and some goddamn complementary champagne!

I had a farm in Africa...

2006-07-06T08:39:00.000+02:00

Sorry, all of you, I know had was a crappy headline, but it's far too warm to sleep and it was all I could come up with. Seeing as Denmark are currently undergoing temperatures up to 30 degrees centigrade, I long for chillier climates (it's the Eskimo blood in my veins) and thus I'm leaving for Angola later today. As you might know, my dad works there at the moment and I'm going to visit him along visit his girlfriend's kids (who supposedly are visiting their mother more).
I don't really know what to expect from Angola. I know that they speak Portoguese, that they had a really long civil war, that there are somewhere between 10 and 20 million unexploded landmines there, that the country has nearly as many natural resources as South Africa and that their football squad had really cracking outfits in the World Cup (which, alas, they didn't do too good in).
So, I don't really know what's coming, but ina any case, I'm leaving tonight. I might be blogging so if I do, I'll see you there, and if not, I'll see you when I get home. And while I'm gone, don't do anything I wouldn't do!

They say it changes when the sun goes down

2006-07-04T16:14:00.000+02:00

I'm back from this year's Roskilde and actually have been for a few days. Alas, I'm in the middle of sanding down some of my chairs, so even though I'm home and I've showered, I'm still covered in dust.
It was a good festival, the weather was great, unlike last year, our tent didn't break and it wasn't utterly impossible to sleep later than 7 because of the heat. However, I just don't think that I managed to watch enough shows at all.
This is due to me not following this rather brilliant piece of advice: Imagine that you're sober and then get a glass of wine and you think that this wine is sort of sour, warm and yukky-tasting. If you then later after more glasses of wine find yourself thinking "But, oooh, this tastes just like Ribena!!" then you should've stopped drinking. And you should under no circumstances continue drinking, because then you'll end up abusing you mobile and missing most of Morrissey, The Streets, Death Cab for Cutie and Serena Maneesh in which case, you're not only drunk, you're also a f***ing idiot.
Still though, a good festival. dEUS were good, Guns'n'Roses were crap but in a funny way, Lady Sovereign f***ing rocked (ch-ching!), Spleen United were boring, Primal Scream were happy (and good) and so were Pato who, despite the awful hit, the "white man trying to fake patois"-sillyness and all the other odds he had against him, actually managed to throw quite a party. Arctic were very much misplaced on the Arena stage and it was just too much hassle to get there, while it was pretty easy to get to see Placebo who, sadly, were crap.
Next year, I think we should get a winnebago, because there's just no way that there can be three years in a row with weather that good!

If only tonight we could sleep

2006-06-25T04:02:00.000+02:00

Seriously kids, you have nooo idea how tired I am right now. I spent yesterday cleaning, sewing, ironing and knitting - ie. just being as hausfrau-ish as possible and also at some kind of work all day. Most of it because today, I'm leaving for Roskilde. I have what right now seems like a f***ing stupid deal to hook up with a friend at 6.45 AM so we can get tere early-ish and won't have to live at the new Camping South. It's near a town called Snoldelev for crying out loud - how depressing is that? If Camping East is Copenhagen, Camping West is Jutland (the wrong side of the bridge) then what does that make Camping South? F***ing Belarus or something.
But anyway, I thought that seeing as I'd been up and about all of yesterday, sleep would be no problem. Not so. I've tossed and turned, been on my back, my stomach, my side, part-stomach/part-side, diagonal, starshaped, fetal position - nothing! If you see me at Roskilde today, I'll probably be the girl who's barely managed to get up her tent only to fall asleep drooling on a patch of grass.
I had something semi-chipper to say about you people not breaking anything while I'm gone and not drinking my gin, but f*** it, do what you please as long as you don't wake me up when I manage to fall asleep! See you there.

The past will catch you up as you run faster

2006-06-22T17:16:00.000+02:00

Before I first started listening to proper music, I was mostly into dance-compilations, my mother's Bryan Adams-records and Take That. I must admit that I've redeveloped a soft spot for TT again - the Relight my Fire-video has a lot to answer for, if it hadn't been for Mark Owen's cropped black T-shirt (that says what? "Junkie's Baddy Powder"?), I doubt that I would ever have developed my weakness for skinny boys with their hair hanging down their eyes. Also, Howard Donald in a sailor's sweater and suspender belt-chaps?! He's like half of Village People cloned to be one person!
Anyway, that wasn't where I was going at all. When I started listening to decent music, it was usually with a friend whose older sister had a lot of good records. The two of them used to share a room which, after an extension was built to their house, became their parents' bedroom. Before they moved out of the room, though, their parents made the mistake of letting them write and draw on the walls, because, hey, they were going to paint it anyway. Alas, it took them quite a while to get round to the paint job, so the last time I visited their house, the walls were still bore legends like "Guns'n'Roses sucks!", "Be a hero, be a man, kill a Take That-fan" and the blur-logo. When we were at my place, we'd mostly listen to Hole and Psyched Up Janis, at her place Radiohead and blur (we were both firmly on the blur-side in the Oasis/blur-debacle, her, because she was actually a fan and while I wasn't at the time, I just couldn't stand Wonderwall - I thought the "quoasis"-T-shirt was kinda funny, though) and interchangeably Nirvana and Björk.
Another thing we'd listen to at her place (but not that often) was Whale, whom I had completely forgotten until the other day, when I found their first record, We Care. I used to love Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe and thought Cia Soro, the singer, looked so cool in the video and now that I revisit them, I actually think We Care is a pretty good album - you gotta love a song called Young Dumb N' Full of Cum!

And now that we're talking music videos anyway - Pitchfork has just made a list of 100 Awesome Music Videos (via Frekvens) and while there is a lot of good things on the list, there is also a glaring error on page 10. I mean, sure, My Doorbell is a good and funny video (I can't actually think of a bad White Stripes-video), but everyone knows that the best WS-video is I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself. It's directed by Sofia Coppola! It has Kate Moss in it! In her underwear! Poledancing! Surely, it's about the dirtiest music video ever made. Some of the early Manics-videos could have been up there as well, like Love's Sweet Exile, if it had consisted only of Nicky and Richey making out, or You Love Us, which is all finger-sucking and popsicle-licking and the clip with the little TV down Richey's pants - surely the best use of A-bomb footage ever!

Oh well, if you haven't already left, do so now by checking out Death by Kite. Not the best of band names, but Hiroshima and Bahnhof Asta are just really good!

Riboflavin-flavored, non-carbonated, poly-unsaturated blood

2006-06-21T21:06:00.000+02:00

I met a school friend, whom I haven't seen for quite some time, this Monday and we hung out for a while, ate I can't believe it's Yoghurt! and talked about a lot of things, among others whether my neighbourhood was getting nicer after it's been undergoing a lot of urban renewal projects in the last years. And I said, yeah, I think it's getting better, even if it is sometimes like a little piece of Jutland where you can always find a parking space, all the cars have trailer couplings and every store closes at 22 so it's damn near impossible to get drunk unless you're willing to hang out at the local grotty pub with their Lars Lilholt-records, stench of pee and Frem-flags.
However, I'm kinda doubting how much better it has turned, when just a couple of minutes ago, this girl ran out the frontdoor, screaming at the windows of the old guy downstairs; "I'm not gonna stand for this! You disgusting old bastard! I'm turning you in for rape, you filthy old pig!! Turning you in for rape, do you hear me?!". Oh well... I'm sort of doubting that he did hear her - or rape her for that matter - seeing as he's about a gazillion years old, can only walk at the speed of a turtle when he's holding on to something and I've stopped counting the times I thought he was dead when an ambulance has come for him with paramedics ringing his doorbell for half an hour.

Also, on a completely different note, like I said, I haven't seen my friend from Monday for a long time and now she's 8 months pregnant and set to give birth to an ickle girl the 26th next month (saw pictures of her 3D ultrasound; what came out of my mouth was fortunately: "Aww, that's nice", but what I was thinking was: "F***ing hell! It looks like something from The Exorcist!". Oh well, I'm sure she'll grow prettier, at least her mother did) and a couple of hours ago I got a text from another friend, saying "Wedding the 29th of July. More info coming soon". Now I feel very much behind - chill, you people!

Why can't you be more cynical?

2006-06-20T12:28:00.000+02:00

As I went down to local Irma to get today's batch of strawberries (got there late yesterday and there were only Belgian ones left), I couldn't help but notice this sign at the hardware store across the street. I have no clue what it is, but 25% off on the original problem solver seems like a good deal to me.
But right now, I'll settle for taking my problems to you, in this case literary.
As you might know, I'm going to Angola next month and what I need is 1 or 2, maximum 3 (4, if two of them are skinny) books to keep me amused through 17 days (although obviously I'll be doing other stuff as well) and two 12-hour plane trips. I'm a very fast reader so nothing too light, although nothing too heavy either, I have both The Iliad and The Odyssey, neither of which I've actually read through cover to cover, but I just know that I'll get bored with them when I constantly have to look up who's son of who and how you can tell by their patronyms, etc. etc.
I don't have a very girly taste in books, I tried the Brontës, but we never got along and if you go to the other end of the scale, I own Bridget Jones' Diary, but wasn't amused except for the on time where she lists her calorie-intake, weight and number of cigarettes smoked, which in this case was "22, all of them post-coital" (was that in a day? I forget, but if it was, it must either have been rather measly performances or remarkably fast restitution - I've never met a guy who wouldn't need at least a weekend to get through 22 p.c. fags (poor pun intended)).
I read High Fidelity at least once a year, but that one is out of the question as it would only last half a plane trip. I loved On the Road, but never got into Burroughs, I like Camus' fiction, but have been reading The Rebel since 1998 and am still 100 pages short.
I don't seem to be able to become friends with poetry, I didn't think American Psycho was as graphic as the hype made it out to be, I've loved Generation X since I was 13, I've read all the Harry Potter-books and Lord of the Rings (liked HP better) and I think it's sort of depressing that JT LeRoy isn't an actual person.
So, any suggestions?

Everyone seems to know the score

2006-06-18T19:23:00.000+02:00

I must say that it's a lot easier to appreciate the World Cup now that Denmark didn't qualify and we're all happily rid of morons in national jerseys, flags and stupid hats with their watered down beers and ridiculous chants.
Brazil-Australia is on in the background and I've just been wondering whether appreciating football is a bit like learning a language? I mean, in both cases there are things that are obvious and basic enough, like the scoring of goals, the theoretical use of yellow/red cards and, well, basic grammar like conjugation of regular verbs, where the adverbs go in a sentence, etc.
Then there are things that are a bit more tricky, the classic example being the offside rule, which, by now, I understand and I can even sort of appreciate why it's there, but when it's used in practice, it always manages to catch me by surprise. All in all, exactly the same way I felt about the subjunctive mood when I was learning French.
But even if you get the basic and slightly more tricky stuff when you're learning French, you'd still have a hard time watching an entire movie without subtitles. And that's pretty much the same with football. I mean, I can see why De Rossi was sent off yesterday, but all the filler stuff, the things between goals, send-offs and missed chances, you know, all the passes and the different ways of playing, it just goes right over my head. In Danish, you can say "han går igen" and "han går igen" and in a slight shift of pronunciation, the sentence means either "he leaves again" or "he haunts" and I should imagine it would be pretty hard to tell for someone learning Danish. Similarly, during a match you have the commentators going "Ooer, they're really attacking much more after scoring a goal", "They're really looking tired now, pushing backwards", "That defense is so strong, look at the way they stand", etc., and every time they say something like that I find myself thinking: "What are you on about, they're running around no different from what they did five minutes ago?". So seriously people, how do you f***ing tell?!

It's always better on holiday, so much better on holiday!

2006-06-16T11:48:00.000+02:00

Right, a rather picture heavy post coming up. Just got back from my mother's yesterday and while usually, when I'm back home in Sønderborg aka Shitsville, I just piss about being really bored, I actually had a really good time. I was at the beach and went swimming and it was pretty great and not too cold at all, I had crazy excellent asparagus from a farm just a couple of kilometres from where my mother lives and bought my favourite scrubbing stuff from Origins at more than 50% off, which is always nice.

I had Nesquick cereal for breakfast every day and thought it was hilarious that the little present inside the package was one of 6 "crazy body parts". And if you're Danish and easily amused, like me, you'll also find it funny that crazy body parts in Swedish are "knäppa kropsdelar". Dirty.

I bonded with the kitty. Actually, my mother has two cats, a grey fluffy one that sheds its hair f***ing everywhere, never purrs and in general is just really boring and then this girl who's actually not my mother's, but my dad's girlfriend's, very cute, very fat and very keen on my yarn.

I baked my sister's birthday cake. An if you're in doubt, they're supposed to be carrots, not fingers. And, yes, it was rather good, if I do say so myself.

We invited Slash and he was really excited about the board game we gave him and said "Ooer, I wanted this even more than a new Les Paul."

And then I just generally hung out, knitted (nearly there on Matilda Jane, just need to find buttons and ribbons), read (House of Leaves and my mother's glossies) and went to see where my brother moved in with his girlfriend.
Anyway, Roskilde Festival is coming up and until then I think I'll experiment with what happens if you live off club sandwiches and strawberries & cream for a week. Yay!

Ooh, yummy! Yarn!

2006-06-01T11:49:00.000+02:00

Right, it's back to normal service here. I don't know who the batty lady looking forward to Champions League final was, but I can assure you she's not coming back anytime soon! That is of course unless the current land of my father, Angola, makes it anywhere in the forthcoming World Cup (the thing starts on my dad's birthday so maybe that's a sign for me to gamble some money - the odds on Angola winning the thing is 1:600!). I love the fact that one of their players is called Loco and another is called Love - and they all look like a bunch of mean f***ers dressed in a Syndicalist flag!
Anyway, what I'm actually excited about is this:
Mmm, yarn! Soft, soft Rowan Wool Cotton. Mmmm! It's for my Matilda Jane cardigan and I must say that I'm pretty chuffed with the place I bought the yarn. When I bought the yarn for my Arisaig, I went for Angel Yarns and it took something like 6 or 8 weeks for it all to get here. I don't think it was entirely their fault, but it was still annoying as hell so this time I went with English Yarns instead. Ordered on Monday and the postman just handed it over. I like those people - and the postal service!

Also, I just bought the København Con Amore book. It's pretty good and you should definitely check it out even if it is missing the railway tracks seen from Dybbølsbro (it's best at night) and the excellent stencil that until 2 or 3 years ago was on a pillar at the station at Jyllingevej and said "USA UD AF VIETNAM" (USA out of Vietnam). I went there to take a picture of it yesterday and alas, it had been painted over, but I remember standing with a friend and wondering whether someone came and repainted it every couple of years since it was still there. This is the same friend whose favourite toilet grafitti should also be published somewhere although it's not too surprising that it isn't in Con Amore seeing as both it's authors are men and the grafitti is in the girls' room at Floss;
So you finally made it to the ladies', Darren. Well, you always did like to take it up the...

That's it, better start swatching!

Hi, I'm Pernille and I'm...

2006-05-17T07:43:00.000+02:00

... about to admit something sick and twisted to you. So far, I think my blog has steered well clear of the confessional genre. I've always thought that while I find these blogs highly entertaining, sometimes, the idea of sharing the ins and outs (pun intended) of my life with the world, it just doesn't appeal to me.
But there comes a time in every girl's life when she does something so violently shameful that she has to share it with world in the hope that there is someone that will set her straight. A cry for help, if you will. So here it goes, my confession is as follows;
I'm excited about tonight's Champion's League final.

Latin American night at The Quiet Fights

2006-05-14T20:31:00.000+02:00

I know this is rather mean to the alpaca, but still...

(via Glampyre)

Imagine knitting with yarn made of Ronaldinho's hair, though. Brrr...

And the birds in the garden, they all started singing

2006-05-08T11:13:00.000+02:00

I woke up in a pretty crappy mood today, but then I went out to take out the trash and I was met by all these flowers and things, it was very pretty. Like this? Well, a girl can't stay cranky forever, can she? So right now I'm listening to Lamb which feels very summery.

Also, see this. Any Dane would know that spring isn't official until the beech has leaves and any kid knows that these leaves are edible, however, does anyone know of a salad recipe that actually incorporates the leaves? Just curious...
And did you know (I didn't till last Friday, so bear with me) that the way you can recognize an original Danish tree is that they all have monosyllabic names, as in eg, ask, bøg, el, etc. (ahorn/maple used to be known as ær). Useless fact of the day, now I'll go get my laundry.

100, v. 2.0

2006-05-07T19:35:00.000+02:00

A lot of the stuff on this list was just no true these days, so I thought I'd better update it.

1. I feel a bit like Renton in Trainspotting-sequel Porno; I couldn’t care less about the winners of football-matches, but I like when Manchester United and Brøndby lose.

2. And I cannot watch an entire match without becoming excruciatingly restless.

3. ~~I think football-shirts on girls should take lust’s place as one of the 7 deadly sins.~~
I don't like football shirts, except the vintage style ones made out of cotton. However, the new ones are made of polyester and polyester=white trash.

4. Shorts are a privilege you earn when you join the ranks of civilised people and start shaving your legs.

5. I don’t like boy children…

6. … Or girl children if there are a lot of them.

7. ~~I don’t like bands from Danish city Aarhus.~~
I think I might like Figurines a tad. But not enough to buy a record.

8. And I have a particularly hard time taking the dialect of that city seriously
Well, come on, who bloody wouldn't?

9. I’m fascinated by moustaches because it’s one of the few things that look equally good on men and women.
Aw, man, that's still so true!

10. I don’t like Mars bars.

11. Or peanuts.

12. But I like Snickers.

13. I can throw a brick exactly far enough to not have it hit my own feet.

14. I often wonder where my ability to sleep anywhere went.

15. Especially at festivals.

16. ~~I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 16.~~
I was a vegetarian from when I was 16 till 22.

17. ~~And, no, I don’t eat fish.~~
I do, actually. I don't like it as much as I used to, though.

18. ~~Or chicken.~~
I don't like drumsticks

19. ~~Or Bassett’s wine gums.~~
I really like Bassett's wine gums. Especially the sour ones!

20. But I do wear leather shoes.

21. I’m sometimes afraid that I’ve listened far too much to music and lyrics written by men.
Still wondering about this one.

22. And not learned a thing because they are no less strange now than when I was 10.
Possibly even weirder, actually.

23. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.
But sometimes it is.

24. My favourite painkiller-brand is called Syndol and sadly you can’t buy them in Denmark.

25. I’m not afraid of heights, but jumping down from things scares the living daylights out of me.

26. I’m disappointed every time I see a shoe that at first glance looks really nice, but at a closer look has a heel made of wood, plastic or, even worse, metal.

27. And I am convinced that the kitten heel is the devil spawn of a meeting between the shoe industry and cobblers.

28. Men come and go – Chanel slingbacks are forever.

29. Now all I need is to be able to afford a pair.

30. I think Bottom is funnier than Young Ones, but for some reason it’s Young Ones that I have on video.

31. That Friends has had its last season is so about time!
Now, if someone could just finish Joey as well, that would be nice.

32. I wish TV would stop advertising for medicine against foot fungus.
And medicine against diorrhea and erectile dysfunction.

33. I also wish that I was better at being cold in French.

34. Can you say that in English? It’s when you go outside in minus 5 centigrade wearing a dress and stockings and no-one can tell that you’re actually freezing your arse off.

35. I’m slightly worried when I meet former friends and they’ve decided to become witches and to go see English druids.
It's been a while since it happened last, though.

36. It’s not that they’re not nice persons and all, I just don’t get them.

37. I don’t get religion in general.

38. I’m really annoyed that I can’t understand what Serge Gainsbourg sings in Je T’aime, Moi Non Plus because it doesn’t really seem to be a song with too complicated a message?

39. I wish I had a middle name, but I can’t think of anything good.

40. Sometimes I think that the only thing standing between me and a future as a cat lady, who wears her housecoat outside, is the fact that I don’t have a cat.

41. So I’m pretty afraid to get one.

42. I’m just afraid of dogs, period.

43. However, if I did get a cat, I would call it Krupskaya and thus be naming it after Lenin’s wife.

44. If you ask me, sheep and ducks are the funniest animals in the world.

45. And maybe penguins.

46. I have a brother and a sister.

47. Both are younger than me.

48. I think that because I’m the older one, I should get special privileges, but mostly, people laugh at this assumption.

49. My brother finds it particularly funny and thinks this is okay, just because he is much bigger than me.

50. I’m not too good at keeping my surroundings tidy.

51. And I’m even worse at looking for things, even when I’ve cleaned up my room.

52. My favourite quote is “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution”.

53. Although Emma Goldman apparently hasn’t said it all.

54. In this case, it doesn’t matter that I’m terrible dancer, it’s just important to know that I wanted to, I could.

55. When I get old, I want to have my hair long.

56. And do it up in a chignon, ‘f course.

57. When I get that old, maybe I’ll have a driver’s license too.

58. But this is purely theoretical.

59. I was born on the 27th of July 1982.

60. Here, this day is in the middle of the hottest days of the year, but on a ten year average, it’s the coldest of these days.

61. I don’t think it’s my fault, but you never really know, do you?

62. I find it very sad that you can no longer buy Pernille-chocolate in Danish shops.
But now that they gave it a comeback, it was just a bit disappointing. Especially because you can't get the nutty version.

63. I don’t miss the dark version called Senator, though, that was just gross.

64. I was a really pretty baby.

65. Not that it’s helping me now.

66. I was born with black hair, then turned blonde, then a darker blonde and right now I’m pretty ginger.

67. The ginger is dyed, though.

68. My eyes, too, have a variety of colours.

69. A bit like David Bowie has it, but with the brown and blue mixed together in the both eyes. The same, but different.

70. I swear too much.

71. Or maybe I just have too much to swear at. ~~I haven’t quite decided yet.~~
Actually, I have decided on this one. I recently found out that I swear more when I'm in a good mood than if I'm feeling depressed, so it's just that I swear too much. Bollocks.

72. ~~I like knitting, but I have yet to make anything I actually want to wear.~~
I like knitting.

73. I’m good at baking, especially cakes.

74. Some people would also say that I was good at cooking.

75. And people who don’t like vegetables or garlic would very much beg to differ.

76. I’m allergic to some kinds of perfume. Not all kinds; e.g. I’m fine with CKbe, but CKone makes me itch.

77. I just don’t want to wear CKbe.

78. I like gadgets.

79. But I very rarely buy any.

80. I don’t think I buy that many things, really, but my money tend to disappear into thin air anyway.

81. My parents took me to my first concert when I was three.

82. I seem to remember that the band had a toilet on stage.

83. But then I also claim that we had dandelions growing on our bathroom floor, something my mother denies.

84. My favourite toys were a wooden train and my Lego.

85. I wasn’t allowed to have Barbie dolls until I was 5; my mother thought it was a woman oppressing toy.

86. She was right, but don’t tell her that.

87. For a long time I wasn’t allowed sugar either. Damned hippy parents.

88. The first book I read by myself was Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter. I wanted to be her from I was 7 till I was 10.

89. The first record I bought with my own money was No Need to Argue by The Cranberries.

90. If it’s okay to compare books and records, I still think Ronia is a lot better.

91. I fell asleep clutching a teddy bear for so long that I have a very hard time sleeping without holding my duvet.

92. As a consequence, I always wake up with cold, cold arms.

93. My favourite spectator sport is figure skating.

94. Mostly because the commentators always speak with a lisp. It’s funny.

95. I like white flowers.

96. And succulents.

97. But I don’t like red roses. They’re tacky and overexposed.

98. Don’t trust people who say that smoking isn’t cool. It is.

99. It also gives you wrinkles, though, so I quit.

100. I never thought I’d get here. But yay me.

Definitely not a googlewhack

2006-05-05T11:40:00.000+02:00

If you can read Danish then this is one of the funnniest book reviews I've read in a long time (if I've actually ever read a book review I would characterize as 'funny').

I could wrap you up in cotton wool

2006-05-04T22:31:00.000+02:00

New shoes and a new Knitty-kitty. I ran out of yarn so she's a poor little legless freak. She's not very pretty either. However, she smells really nice as she's stuffed full of lavender and my mother has agreed to adopt her, so if the kitten needs surgery, it's her that'll have to deal with it.
I also just got my new passport. About time, especially seeing as I was wearing a studded dog collar in the old one and had about two inches of hair. Hopefully, this should keep the passport-checking people at the airport from looking at the picture, looking at me, looking at the picture and then looking at me again only to make some inane comment about my style hange. Oh well - summer's here!!

I'm very sober and very, very bored

2006-04-30T00:19:00.000+02:00

Now, there are few ways to ruin your day like spending it at my work. I know I probably don't look too busy, but I am, you know. I'm solving sudokus (made it to evil-level) and knitting, IM'ing my friends and reading the paper, I have things to do! And then there's all these people asking me questions... "Do you know where I can find the Tivoli Gardens?", "Is there a toilet my toddler can use? He/she/it's bursting.", "The machine ate my credit card, can I please get it back?". So silly, it should be bloody well obvious that the answer to all of these questions is "NO! Now leave me alone!". F***ing tourists. And natives.
So anyway, I'm tired and cranky, how are you? I'm planning on doing some comfort shopping Monday and buy these shoes. Purdy, yes? No? Well, I have slutty taste in shoes, what can you do... However, I think they will go nicely with Ysolda's Matilda Jane cardigan which I am planning to knit in black and white.

And when you're cranky, there's nothing like knowing that there are sadder bastards than you out there. Take Mads Langer, for example. If you don't kow him, he's the guy with the dreadful, awful, terribly appalling Breaking News-song (you can listen to it on his website, if you're luck enough to not have heard it). Anyway, this Thursday, ickle Mads did a show on Danish radio. Bad enough as it is, however, it gets worse when he decides to play Killing in the Name by Rage Against The Machine as you can witness for yourself here if you scroll to about 45 minutes into the clip. Hint: If you're a sissy from Skive ("it's about politics and, like, stuff"), Killing in the Name is not the best choice for a cover, but as I understand, it was chosen for him by the radio listeners, so I'm going to let that slide. However, standing there with your little sissy voice and then go "I want everybody to f*** me up. Let me see your fingers! F*** me, f*** me!", that's not a good idea. Ever! Unless, of course, you are a member of Rockbitch.
It's actually a bit sad, because I think that Mads Langer has some potential as a pretty boy, it's just too bad that every time he opens his mouth, you want to beat the crap out of him. He's sort of like the male Gwyneth Paltrow that way.

When you're coming back, if you're coming back

2006-04-18T21:59:00.000+02:00

I'm back, I hope you all had a nice Easter. I spent mine doing mostly nothing and then visiting my parents in their respective parts of western Denmark. Thursday, I went to my dad's new house which is in... Well, actually, I'm still not too sure where it was, but it was somewhere i the northern part of Jutland around 50 kilometres from anything remotely like civilisation. It's a nice house and all, it's just that I have a slight phobia towards the combination of trees and darkness (yes, I do realize that it's silly), so putting me in a house surrounded by just that is maybe not the best idea in the world. Also, I'm just not too keen on the countryside. Fair enough if you like living there, but I just prefer having street lights in the vicinity and the fact that I don't have a driver's license and need people to drive me more or less everywhere if I wanted to go, it just makes me feel sort of trapped.
Anyway, I spent some of the time knitting socks, as you can see. The one on the left is part of a pair of Jaywalkers and the pink one on the right (in a colour a so-called friend of mine subtly described as "red wine vomit") is a Broadripple.
I bought the yarn for both pairs at The Natural Dye Studio and even though both colours should have been spun from the same kind of wool, the blue ones are really soft, while the pink ones are a bit itchy. Strange.
And judging by the pallor of my legs, it should go ahead and be summer pretty darn soon, I must be needing vitamin D or something. Knowing me, though, I won't get as far as an actual tan, I'll just go from blue to white. From Smurfette to... oh, I don't know what.

Speaking of knitting (-ish), I'm really not very impressed with the spring issue of Knitty. It's just not very good, is it? The only thing I can see myself knitting are the Hedera socks by Cookie who also designed the Pomatomus socks that I knitted in December.

Anyway, I also went to visit my mother in Sønderborg and to go to my family's Easter breakfast. Family gatherings with my family are usually a great source for gossip, but this year nothing really crazy happened unless you count the phone with MMS-jokes about and pictures of anal sex that was passed around. So charming.
Anyway, the Easter breakfast used to be the day where I would just eat loads and loads of candy, but apparently now I'm "too old". It's most sad, because I have a thing for Kinder chocolate that I should've grown out of years ago but somehow just haven't, and Easter used to be a great excuse for eating loads of that. Oh well. In the evening, my sister, Frederikke (on the left), had our cousin, Johannah (right), over to play geishas. Geishas aren't too fond of chocolate, I learned, so while they were nibbling at their sushi (carefully arranged cucumber slices) I got to eat a bit of theirs. Just another reason why they're the only two kids I like.

Angry young women

2006-04-08T22:24:00.000+02:00

Right now, there's a debate going on in Denmark on whether or not it's ok that public service channel DR2 has hired a scarf-wearing Muslim woman called Asmaa Abdol-Hamid to be one of the two hosts on a debate programme about the divide between the Islamic and the Western world recently revealed (or made more evident) by the cartoon crisis.
Now, I will readily admit that I have yet to see the show, so some of you might think that I should just keep quiet, however I'm right now really, really annoyed with a doctor called Vibeke Manniche who's leading an initiative ironically called Kvinder for Frihed (Women for Freedom). Most of all she reminds me of when I read The Handmaid's Tale in high school. There's an episode where one of the figures, called a martha, if I remember it correctly, who's sort of a mixture between a chaperone and a policewoman, talks about the freedom from and freedom to. In the fictional future society described in The Handmaid's Tale, women are free from a lot of things, like pornography and worrying about decision making, while they are no longer free to do other things, like going out to bars or choosing the man they want to be with.
While I don't actually think that Vibeke Manniche want to deny women the right to go out to a bar, it just gets me angry when she wants Asmaa Abdol-Hamid fired because she wears a scarf. Wearing a head scarf is supposedly a practice that is oppressive of women and hosts on a publically owned channel should not be allowed to propagandate this oppression.
Now, I agree with the last part. I just have a really hard time seeing how a thing can be oppressive by default? Just like I don't understand how bras, make-up, stilettos or even porn and prostitution (yes, a bit of a leap there) can be oppressive by default. Do I think that it's wrong if women (or men) are forced to do porn or be prostitutes? Well, obviously. Any sane person would. Do I think it's wrong if women are forced to wear a scarf? Yes, I do, but not any more wrong than if they're forced to wear bras or any other piece of clothes or whatever. But the key word here is force. I think force (be it force as in holding a gun to someone's head or force of economic deprevation) is oppressive, not things.
And I just get terribly annoyed when women like Vibeke Manniche are taking someone's oppression as given, just because she doesn't agree with what they do or wear. And I get especially annoyed when she wants sanctions against this person because of this disagreement and then calls it freedom. Or feminism. Because it's f***ing not.
Oppression of women is wrong, dead wrong, but it doesn't get any more right or any less oppressive just because middle class bitches like Vibeke Manniche dictates its terms or chooses to disregard what other women see as choice. Choice to wear whatever you want, shake hands with whomever you want and blow whomever you want in front of as many cameras as you see fit.
If you made to here, I salute you. In short, I just wanted to say that people who pass judgement (actual judgement, not the kind of "Oh come on, there must be a law against those freaks from the Black Eyed Peas!"-kind of judgement of which I myself am very guilty) against other people legitimate, self-concerning choices piss me off. Rant over.

Concert Interruptus

2006-03-25T22:51:00.000+01:00

Just finished my Peacock Feathers Shawl from Fiddlesticks this Thursday. I'm rather proud although I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. It's very thin and not at all useful for everyday wear, but seeing as I have a lot of leftover yarn, I'm thinking of knittting another one for my favourite aunt who's turning 40 this summer.
I won't be starting that immediately, though, I think I'm going for something slightly more no-brainer-y next. Socks, probably.
Anyway, info on the shawl:
Pattern: Peacock Feathers from Fiddlesticks.
Yarn: Laceweight cashmere from Colourmart in a discontinued colour called Thorntree.
Needles: 2.5 mm bamboo circulars and a 2.5 crochet needle for the little hoops on the edging.

I had a pretty good "screw you all, I'm going to Brazil"-moment the other day when I was lead to believe that I would get back about £3,000 worth of excess taxes. For about five minutes, I was dozing off to a world with one of the new Macs with Intel processors, a pair of glittery Miu Miu-sandals that I saw at Nørgaard, and a shitload of new handbags. Alas, I found the error and what I'm getting is more like £20, if I'm lucky. It's better than having to pay extra, but still... I want three grand and I want them now!

Also, I found myself wanting to listen to The Bangles today. I should get a Greatest, or something, but right now I settled for downloading Walk Like An Egyptian. So catchy. I once dreamt that I went to a Bangles-concert and when they started singing Eternal Flame, they floated above the audience all angel-like. It was kinda strange, but not as strange as the dream (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it) I had the other day where I was being chased by a bunch of German warlords on black horses, lead by Lemmy from Motörhead! Scary shit, I tell you.

Anyway, I think the reason for me feeling like listening to The Bangles was that the other day, there was another rerun of the episode of Gilmore Girls where they go to see The Bangles in New York. I was thinking that I really liked that episode, especially when Lorelai goes all bad-ass on Madeline and Louise. It's a really good episode, but then I got thinking, what if you had to make a Top 5 over episodes of Gilmore Girls? And because I'm "working" tonight, meaning I'm just sitting here with nothing to do except drinking free Coke and solving sudokus, I decided to make one. Except I liked way too many episodes, so I ended up with a Top 10.

10. You Jump, I Jump, Jack. The episode where Rory gets invited to Logan's secret society gathering and Lorelai's parents find out that she's dating Luke. I just thought it was funny seeing Luke drunk on a golf course and I thought that Rory and Logan jumping out from a high tower armed with nothing but umbrellas and formal wear was a really nice moment.
9. Like Mother, Like Daughter. Lorelai has to do a fashion show with The Booster Club and Rory is invited to join high school sorority, The Puffs. Worth it for having Lorelai and Emily in awful attires dancing down the catwalk to the sound of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and for Rory getting really angry about not being allowed to sit at lunch with her walkman and a book.
8. One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes. Lane goes through a short-lived rebel phase and dyes her hair purple while Lorelai is doing a speech at Stars Hollow High. When asked by the teenagers whether she regrets having Rory at 16, her answer is no, thus infuriating the Stars Hollows moms. A good episode, because Lane's band practices London Calling by The Clash and because it's good seeing Lorelai shouting at the blonde, twin-set-wearing, stay-at-home-moms.
7. The Festival of Living Art. The Festival where people re-enact famous paintings comes to Stars Hollow, Sookie decides to give birth at home helped by a scary hippie midwife called Bruce and Lane's band gets a new guitarist called Gil. Good because the new guitarist is Sebastian Bach from Skid Row, because Rory and Lorelai are both wearing cool costumes and because Kirk goes all cuckoo when he is to be Jesus in The Last Supper while Grant Lee Phillips, playing the town troubadour, has the role of Judas.
6. Happy Birthday, Baby. Rory decides to go to Yale and it's birthday week for Lorelai at the Gilmore House. Cool, because Lorelai's birthday presents include the world's largest pizza and the leather jacket that Joe Strummer wore on the 1979 Pearl Harbour tour!
5. They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?. There is a 24 hour dance marathon in Stars Hollow and while it's on, Rory gets so distracted by Jess insisting on making out with some girl that she ends up shouting at him in front of Dean, thus giving Dean the final argument for breaking up with her. A good episode because it has Lorelai and Rory with 40's hair-do's and vintage shoes, because Rory starts dating Jess, who is dirrty, and because when Kirk wins the dance marathon he does his victory lap to the theme from Rocky!
4. Presenting Lorelai Gilmore. Rory is convinced by Emily to come out at the Daughters of the American Revolution-debutante ball. I really like this episode, because it has Christopher, Rory's father, coming in a Volvo and because I love the scene where Lorelai and Christopher dance. Yes, I am a big softie.
3. Raincoats and Recipes. The episode where Sookie and Lorelai's Dragonfly Inn finally opens, where Luke and Lorelai kiss for the first time and where Rory loses her virginity to Dean (although he is now married to someone else). It's not as good an episode as it could be, but it gets a 3rd place just because of all the action!
2. The Reigning Lorelai. Lorelai's grandmother, Lorelai, dies and while Emily is busy sorting out her papers, she finds an old letter where the gran begs Richard not to marry Emily. This makes Emily decide that she wants nothing to do with the old bat's funeral and go off in her dressing gown, smoking cigarettes and drinking martinis. This episode is just good, because Emily is hella cool when she's drunk.
1. I can't get started... The episode where Sookie marries her produce guy, Jackson, and Lorelai sleeps with Christopher, they contemplate getting back together only to have it all crashing down when Christopher finds out that the girlfriend he's just broken up with, Sherry, is pregnant. A sad episode, but still good, if only because it's just so evident that Lorelai and Christopher should be together.

There, done. Me, having too much time on my hands? Noooo.... Please let me know if you don't agree, I'm thinking that number 10 should maybe be swapped for the episode where the Stars Hollow High cheerleaders do their routine to One Step Beyond by Madness!

If I only could make a deal with God

2006-03-17T11:48:00.000+01:00

Neat colours, aren't they? Now, if only my goddamn nails would stop splitting, so I could use the stuff, that would be much appreciated.
The crumpled up pile of yarn in the background is my Peacock Feathers Shawl. I'm on chart 7 now, the last chart before the edging. It really is a very nice knit, but the 400+ stitches-rows that I'm on right now, they're pulling out some teeth.

Do you know the feeling of looking at a date in your calendar and then thinking you must have forgot someone's birthday? I had that feeling until I remembered that today is St. Patrick's Day. It's not something that I've ever really celebrated, but now I kinda feel like getting hammered. Oh well, I think I'll settle for baking brownies instead, not that I'll feel much better after eating a whole batch of brownies (and knowing myself, that's what I'll end up doing) than I would after (and during) drinking Guinness.

Tour the world with MC5

2006-03-13T12:31:00.001+01:00

I think that I've complained before about the fact that you can't buy Urban Decay-products in Denmark. I just can't think of why I haven't thought of eBay until now.

Apparently, UD has discontinued their rather lovely nail polishes. Now, why they did that is beyond me, but in any case I just bought two, one in Kiss, which you can still get as Lip Gunk (with Cherry Coke-flavour -very nice!), and one in a colour called Metropolitan that was discontinued ages ago, but of which I had a long gone gooey bottle standing on my bathroom shelf. Maybe it just went wrong when they changed the really neat medicine bottles for these - they're just nowhere near as nice.
I'm also considering buying one of their flavoured body powders, I just don't know which colour/flavour yet. Seeing as I'm just about the palest person since Edward Scissorhands, the slightly green gimlet-flavoured one is probably a bad idea, yes? I'm thinking it'll make me look seasick.

Also, I was just checking out on which keywords people get here and to the one who did a search on "how to fix clogged hair spray bottle", seriously, why don't you just buy a new one?! It's not like they're expensive. If, for some strange reason, you don't want to do that, I'd try a sewing pin.
And whoever wanted to find "go fish fights", I think there is a Monty Python-sketch for you.

I've got Valium if you've got Special Brew

2006-03-10T17:10:00.000+01:00

Have you noticed:
- that the intro to Sort Sol's cover version of El Toro sounds remarkably like the intro to Spanish Caravan by The Doors?
- how much goddamn cowbell there is on Generation Terrorists by the Manic Street Preachers? I've had that record since I was 17 and I didn't notice until today.
- that The Buzzcocks are playing at Rust the 23rd of April? "E-VAH falleninlovewithsomeone, everfalleninlovewithsomeone, everfalleninlovewithsomeoneyoushouldn'thavefalleninlovewith?" Par-tay.

I need high heels just to stand up

2006-02-28T22:12:00.000+01:00

Wa-hey, the medals just arrived at the Harlot. Glory glory.... me!
And even though it's not like I need any more shawls, I just ordered the pattern for this. Pretty, eh? Like the last one, I'm not sure I'll actually wear it, but it should be a fun knit.

Speaking of challenges, if any of you people can guess why my template looks all funny with the sidebar at the bottom when you see it in Explorer, could you please let me know? Because then I'll try to fix it. Alternatively, you could just switch to Firefox, but hey...

And just before I leave, I just want to say: I <3 the internet. Grrr! It's like being a kid in a candy store. Except I can't have any of that candy which is a bit of a bummer (pun sort of intended, although I know it was crap... I blame fatigue. And the parents. Anyone's).

Going for gold, part V - gold obtained

2006-02-24T10:56:00.000+01:00

Right, it's been a bit messy 'round here the last week, but I managed to finish knitting my shawl on Monday and then it's just been laying around waiting to be blocked. This is what it looked like then:
Big (or actually rather small-ish) ol' crumpled up piece of not-very-nice-ness. That wouldn't do, that wouldn't do at all, also because the Yarn Harlot clearly stated that just as the marathon runner needed to cross the finish line, the shawl had to be blocked.
I don't have a spray bottle, so pin and spritz is not really an option for me. So I threw the thing down a colander (wool is fragile when wet, so it's a good idea with some support for it. Also, I just think that 'colander' is a funny word. Colandercolandercolander. Anyway...) and submerged it. Ah, submerging. The joy. Is there anything quite like holding someon.... I mean, something under water until he's... it's (dammit) ready to do what you want it to do?
More specifically, this is what I wanted my shawl to do. If holding something underwater doesn't do the trick entirely, the next step is to shove him... oh crap... it full of tiny pins so it can't move a muscle or, in this case, pattern repeat. Do it on your bed, you won't be disappointed, I promise.
And then, if you work hard (seriously, shut up, I do work hard sometimes. I do too!), this is what you'll have in the end. That and a totally well-deserved gold medal, seeing as I'm, to the best of my knowledge, the first of the ones who are knitting this shawl to finish (there are 2 or 3 knitting it who aren't blogging and I don't really know how far they've made it). Also, go me for getting Denmark its first gold medal during these Winter Olympics (I told you the curling chicks were crap. Honestly, what do you expect from Danish girls called Denise? How white trash can you get?). Anyway, quick facts:
Pattern: Diamond Fantasy Shawl from Sivia Harding.
Needles: 3.0 mm straights (I'd recommend circulars and the pattern does too, but the ones I had were painstakingly rubbish) and 4.5 mm double pointed needle (for brilliantly conceived i-cord edging)
Yarn: 3 skeins of Alpaca in colour 4400 from Garnstudio.

Going for gold, part IV - don't say forget it

2006-02-19T17:57:00.000+01:00

Right, according to my super-accurate calculations and finger-counting, I should now have knitted 22,347 stitches and have 11,290 to go. Should be easy as pie, yes? No pictures, because, well, they're boring - I'm still on the straights, so it's really just one big crumpled up piece of fabric right now... and heavy as hell! The fingers on my left hand have a nice blue stripe from the yarn now, it's really not very pretty. Oh well.
I've been watching a bit of the other Olympics this weekend and not even figure skating (there was ice dancing this Friday, but I honestly find that a bit blech - I prefer the jumps!) - I'm pretty hooked on the snowboarding. I've always kinda wanted to learn how to skateboard, but I just don't really seem to have the balance for that. Snowboarding just looks ace and an athlete called The Flying Tomato (or Il Pomodoro Volante in Italy) who does his routine to Back in Black by AC/DC? I mean, how cool is that? Also, it was a bit fun to see Lindsey Jacobellis mess up her 50 metre lead in the boardcross final by doing a show off grab just before the finish line. She probably kicked herself afterwards, but still... it takes some style, you wouldn't see 'em do that in the Nordic combined or something.
In general, I just prefer winter sports. Obviously, curling and hockey are boring as hell, but I like the figure skating and the ski jumps and all of it. Maybe it's because winter sports are the only ones I've ever been able to do without feeling like a prat. The one time I went skiing, fell and rolled 50 metres down a slope to end up lying spread-eagled on the ground excepted, that is!

Anyway, neither knitting nor sports tonight, I'm going to see Editors. Should be good!

Going for gold, part III - leave it for the other girls to play

2006-02-16T12:09:00.000+01:00

Ah, un-blocked lace, isn't it frightfully exciting? I know, you can barely contain yourselves, can you? This is how it looks if you're not a lazy bastard with your photographs. The red thread doesn't mean that my shawl is taking Kabbalah lessons, it's just a lifeline. I should be less lazy with those as well.
By the way, everyone knows that you shouldn't run with scissors, but did you know that it is also a bad idea to run with coffee? In your flat? Oh, you did? It's just me, then. Carry on!

Going for gold, part II

2006-02-12T10:40:00.000+01:00

So, this is what we have now. I had to shift to some cheap-ass aluminium straight needles I had kicking around because the stitches kept getting caughton the join between cord and needle on my circular and it was driving me absolutely crazy. I don't really know what I'll do when I get to the longer rows, because I'm not to sure my straights are going to be long enough to keep the stitches from tipping off the edge and going back to those circulars makes me want to cry. Also, just ignore the fact that right now it looks like the front of a size XL-thong right now, it'll get better. I'm not really sure I can see myself actually wearing this, though - maybe I'll give it to my mother.
And on a totally unrelated note, the drain from my tub seems to sort of clogged, probably by a giant disgusting hair ball. Oh well... knit first, then fix plumbing with metal coat hanger!

Going for gold, part I

2006-02-11T12:01:00.000+01:00

See? See this? That's about five hours of work. Do you see the problem? The "that's about 10 inches at the top, I need to get it to 78 and study as well" problem? Remind me again, why am I talking to you people? I'm off, 60 pages of economics, then work where I can knit. Hopefully.

Already late

2006-02-10T21:40:00.000+01:00

Right, the rules say that you can cast on at 2PM in your time zone, so technically, I've had 7½ hours where I've been allowed to start, but didn't. I can't figure out when the f***ing flame is lit, I haven't got the time to sit through the entire Opening Ceremony as I was supposed to be at a party 45 minutes ago so I just cast on now. It was three stitches, it was during the Ceremony and I won't be getting a head start because of it. Right. I tried really f***ing hard to take pictures of my hands holding the needles but it's just im-bloody-f***ing-possible. Right. OK. I really need to go now! Bye!

Faster, higher, stronger

2006-02-10T17:59:00.000+01:00

Right, just did my shopping for the Olympics and I think that I am just about ready now. There's Pingvin Mix, because we were making jokes about that after the movie yesterday, peanut-M&M's because... uhm, they're just good, you know? Marabou milk-chocolate, because it's the solid workhorse of chocolates and then Lindt dark orange chocolate with splits of almonds, because, well, I dunno, it's just pretty good - if Marabou is the husband you keep coming back to (yes, I know I just said it was a solid workhorse, but it's essentially the same thing if you're married to the right man), then dark chocolate is the lover who's seductive and nice to visit sometimes, but you wouldn't want to live with him. In the corner we have Häagen-Dazs Belgian Chocolate. I haven't really figured out how to knit and eat ice cream at the same time, but I'm sure I'll find a way! Also, a friend recommended it to me as "frozen chocolate mousse" and if it all goes wrong, I'll blame the ice cream (I bought it instead of the Ben & Jerry's I would usually buy) and thus blame him (what do you mean it doesn't work that way? Of course it does)! Oh yeah, and pattern, yarn and needles. Should be good!

It's just a lie, you don't travel light

2006-02-10T09:02:00.000+01:00

I went to see March of the Penguins yesterday as a friend of mine had free tickets and we thought we might as well. For those of you who haven't heard of it (it might just be me who hadn't till this Monday), it's a documentary about the penguins in Antarctica who come up of the sea, waddle 120 kilometres to get to this one special island where they mate, the mother waddles 120 kilometres back to sea to eat, waddle 120 kilometres back to where daddy penguin has been keeping the egg warm and not eating for 4 months, then they have little baby penguins, daddy penguin waddles 120 kilometres back to sea to eat and the 120 kilometres back again and then the mother can waddle the 120 kilometres once more! All this is accompanied by (in Denmark) Sofie Gråbøl and Søren Sætter-Lassen pretending to be Mr and Mrs Penguin in a very... uhm, I dunno, a very felt way, ie. they talk a lot about death and now we make love (penguins don't make love!) and now we wander and oh, hello, my little Son of Winter.
Contrary to what you might think now, I didn't exactly dislike the movie. Face it, penguins are hilarious; they walk funny, they shoot up the water to belly-flop on land and sometimes they slip on the ice and that's also pretty funny. There's loads of this, 1½ hour in fact and there's also some great cinematography going on, but if it hadn't been for all the pretty pictures, I would have just been waiting for the silent "crrrrrr" of the movie projector in the back of the classroom!

Also, this might be my very blonde side showing, and, yes I realize that I'm nearly 24 and yes, it's probably embarassing, but I just don't get how birds procreate! Birds or any other animal whose offspring come out of eggs, like snakes - especially snakes! I mean, how does it work? Do they just slither up and down one another or what? I just don't get it... the hard eggs, how does the spunk get in there and all? And how do birds get it on? The way the penguins did it, it just looked like standing sort of close and then bopping their heads up and down and it just seems terribly inefficient, you know? I realize that I could just look it up on Wikipedia, but that wouldn't make for a very good post, would it?

Anyway, the Olympics start tonight. Both the Knitting ones and the other ones... you know, the ones with, like, 1,000 fewer contestants (no, really)! I'll cast on when the flame is lit so expect a lot of swearing and talk about alpacas and chocolate. See you there.

For all you're worth, then no more

2006-02-04T00:26:00.000+01:00

Just a short post before I go to bed. You can generate a word cloud from your blog by going here. You can also get a T-shirt printed with your word cloud if you are into that sort of thing. Anyway, here's mine (via JenLa):

Count your blessings and your sheep

2006-02-03T12:34:00.000+01:00

Just as the "real" Winter Olympics has mascots (called Neve and Gliz, is that "Snow" and "Ice" in Italian, or?), I decided to get some as well. I bought them on Etsy, from Katie, and seriously, how cute are these things? They're very nice pets anyway - very clean! Haven't really decided what to name them yet. Fred and Ginger?

And I also just bought a cone of lambswool from eBay. It's Jaguar-green (that's the car, not the cat) and I plan to make something in the lines of this with it, if I can figure it out. Sorry about the weird proportions of the drawing, the stuff I make when I'm just doodling is usually ok, but I always run in to trouble when I try to draw on purpose, so to speak. Oh, and my dad just tells me that it's not actually called "Jaguar-green", but Old English Racing Green. Cool.

I need a holiday somewhere in the su-u-un

2006-02-02T18:24:00.000+01:00

Finally finished Arisaig and just wanted to share... I did some pictures where you could see my face as well, but I just didn't like them, so you'll have to live with these, even it makes it look slightly like my boobs are in for a mugshot.
Anyway. On the table:

And on me:

And now I think I'll go change the music now - I've heard Advert by blur about 50 times in a row now. Bet my neighbours love me.

I could live a little better with the myths and the lies

2006-01-28T01:03:00.000+01:00

I know that there is this Danish poet who says that a year has 14 months; January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, November, November and December, but I think I might be inclined to differ and say that a year has 22 months and ten of them are January. This month really seems to go on forever or is it just me? It might be the snow (and I feel like such a traitor for saying that), but this week in particular has just seemed never-ending. I've slept most of the time and when I've eaten, it's been nothing but carbs. I've been so tired that I've been procrastinating on going to buy food and then not eating, thus becoming more tired and procrastinating more and what have you. One day, I had rice, lentils and ketchup, probably the most depressing meal in the history of mankind. I don't even like ketchup.
And today, I fell asleep on the sofa when I got home from work and when I woke up at 10PM, I couldn't be arsed to cook so my dinner consists of popcorn and soy milk cocoa. Mmmm, soy milk cocoa. It's funny how you can take something like soy milk, which essentially tastes like liquid flour, and cocoa powder, which is just hella-bitter, mix it together, add sugar and then you'll wind up with what is arguably one of the best non-alcoholic drinks there are.

Also, I know I promised no yarn talk, but can I just say that The Knitting Olympics has now got more than 1800 contestants? 1800! I mean, how crazy is that? Moreover, Jenifleur over at JenLa has made a lot of buttons for the various teams and the un-factual ones are really funny. I almost want to be Irish, just to be able to use the button that says "Drink first, then knit". However, she's also been kind enough to make a button for the Danish team, which, to the best of my knowledge (although I haven't checked out all 1800 listed blogs, sorry), consists of me. Our button is mostly funny because it just screams "What the f*** do they have? Any clichés on Danes? Anyone? F***.... Oh, Danishes!". I couldn't figure out anything better myself, mind you. Maybe, in the light of Danish politics, it should say "We don't like you". Anyway, you can see them all here. They also have a lovely Simpsons-button for those of you who like to watch (winkwink, nudge-nudge).
In addition to the JenLa-teams, there's Team Wales, where you can join if you just think they have a cool flag or know where Wales is, a Team Caffeine that I should join as well and a team for goths who knit with eyeliner (both at, erm, Beadslut). The whole thing is crazy, I tell you!

What's not exactly crazy, more just plain weird, is this phone number that keeps popping up on my phone. A couple of weeks ago, someone called me at 4 in the morning and said "Hello?" into the phone to which I sleepily replied "Hello. Hello? HELLO?!" and then hung up. Then, the next day when I tried to call back (when people I don't know call me at 4 in the f***ing morning, I'd like an explanation) I was told that the number doesn't exist. And then today, I received a text from the same number that simply says "##kÄXÝï²:G@□" and when I want to shut down the message, my phone tells me that the sender would like a reply (what the hell would I say to that?) and would I like to answer now (didn't know that you could ask for answers, by the way. Could come in handy sometimes)? It's all very weird, it feels slightly like an episode of Lost!

Make a cup of tea, put a record on

2006-01-21T00:35:00.000+01:00

I wrote a really long post about the upcoming Winter Olympics and about how one of my friwnds said that curling seems like a couple of guys sat down, smoked a lot (a lot!) of pot and thought out this joke-game where, like, dude, these people with, like, brooms and stones - "Heh, stones.... Funny..." - come out and, like, they have to sweep the way for the stones? On ice, yeah? And instead of just forgetting along with the deep and meaningful conversation about having a Snickers in your purse, that joke just went way, way too far?
However, I just thought that all the talk about winter sports was getting in the way of what I really wanted to say.

The Yarn Harlot had an idea a couple of days ago. Seeing as the Winter Olympics are coming up, she thought she'd take the Olympic motto of "Faster, Higher, Stronger" and use it to create a Knitting Olympics. You can see the rules here, but essentially they're just that you have to choose a knitting project that will somehow be a challenge to you and your knitting experience. Then, you have to cast on when the Olympic flame is lit on the 10th of February and finish before the flame goes out on the 26th. If you finish, you get a medal. If you don't, you get shame.
At first, I liked the idea and kinda wanted to join, but it just seemed so... well, geeky. However, when she a day later, after questions about whether or not there would be drug testing, decided to have a drug policy that was simply "you should be careful to make sure you are consuming enough drugs", I decided that this sounded like my kind of game. Also, seeing the list of athletes that is now about five miles long and ever growing, I thought that at least I wasn't the only geek out there. And it could be worse, I could be a Trekkie.
I decided that my project should be Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy Shawl (I like this picture better (via January One) and I've bought some super, super soft alpaca in a sort of aubergine-y colour for it.
So. Root for me, send more chocolate and cheer me up when I start telling myself that I'm a big loser who'll never get done on time - I'm the best chance Denmark has of getting a medal during the Olympics (no, the fat curling chicks aren't really that good).

And seeing as the KO will most likely incite a lot of knitting posts, I promise - apart from some pictures of my cardigan which is nearly done now - that I'll keep the yarn talk to a minimum until then.

Charlie don't surf!

2006-01-08T17:04:00.000+01:00

Just went through a tiny shopping frenzy and bought Stitch 'n Bitch and Stitch 'n Bitch Nation from Amazon. Apparently the first is out in Danish now as well, but I just think that Kvinde med Pinde is such a f***ing stupid title! I can't be the only one thinking chicks with sticks/dicks. Also, the Danish version would set me back as much as both of the English books, so it was really no contest.

I also bought the Editors-album and I Am A Bird Now by Anthony and The Johnsons. A friend of mine has had The Back Room for a while and I know I like that one, but Anthony and The Johnsons is a bit more of a gamble. It might be too sissy, who knows...
Tomorrow I'll see if I can find Chords and Dirty Limericks by Death to Frank Ziyanak. I haven't really heard anything but Fe Fi Mo Fo, but I just think it's really catchy (or catty, considering the singer's "Rrrauw!"). Has anyone heard the rest of the album? Jens Unmack likes them, so I'm thinking it can't be all bad. You can see the video for Fe Fi Mo Fo here.

I've heard that you're not supposed to include more than one subject in one blogpost, but hey... there are so many things you're not supposed to do - call me a rebel with a rather feeble cause! I stayed up all night for no particular reason and knitted the left front of my Arisaig cardigan, so now all I need to do is make the sleeves and the ribbons. I'm not sure I should post pictures before I block the sweater, because it makes the lace look wonky and also, the whole thing looks about 5 sizes too small and I don't think it is, really (though that might be hubris), but I started it on the evening of the 28th of December and I'm just really chuffed with myself for having all of this done so quickly. So here goes. I really need a digi-cam.

Anyway, as you may or may not have noticed, DR2 has a Marlon Brando-thing going right now. They've shown The Godfather, which I missed because I was drinking depressing Cosmopolitans, this Friday Apocalypse Now Redux was on and in half an hour, it's A Streetcar Named Desire. So I'll just go and see if I can make it to Irma for some dinner before that. See y'all later.
By the way... Apocalypse Now... it's about girls, right?

Put it away

2006-01-06T13:08:00.000+01:00

Favourite quote of 2006 so far:
"HOLY HOT FARGIN DAMN- ITS GOT A SCROTUM ON THE ZIPPER" from the comments to this post. I have the sense of humour of a 15-year-old boy, I'm sorry.

You only tell me you love me when you're drunk

2005-12-31T14:26:00.000+01:00

Just to squeeze in the last post of the year. I hope you all had a nice Christmas or whatever you celebrate (and if you don't celebrate, then I just hope you had some nice days off).
I'm just about ready for 2006; I bought cola, I made risotto (not a lot of people know this, but slightly stale mushroom risotto is actually the best hangover cure in the world - ever! Come over tomorrow and I'll totally prove it to you) and in a minute I'll hit the shower. I'm apparently celebrating the evening with a lot of people from Jutland... don't really know how I feel about that, it just not the same as Als, you know!
So all there's left is to wish you a happy New Year's Eve and New Year in general and repeat my advice from last year: Don't blow off any of your limbs; you’ll miss them tomorrow if you can’t dial for pizza or reach out for the Coca-Cola and paracetamol.

Sock it to me!

2005-12-22T10:40:00.000+01:00

So, this is how the red snapper socks turned out in the end. They'd fit better if I had cankles or just fatter legs in general, but hey, Christmas is the day after tomorrow, so I can get that yet.
I used a 100% merino-yarn called Bambi from Grignasco (I don't think they have a homepage) in colour #36, which is like maroon-ish, and 2mm needles. The pattern is Pomatomus from the latest issue of Knitty.
And the blue, dead-ish looking thing in the lower right corner, that's my leg. First one to make fun of my complexion will get a boiled bunny in their Christmas/New Year's post, I f***ing swear.

Ooh, and I just bought an iPod! i got it yesterday and she's so pretty, I can just sit and stare at her and go "Awww!". I still have to name her, though. I'm thinking of Greta, mostly because I got a Christmas card from a friend of mine in Sweden yesterday as well and it had this very lovely Greta Garbo-stamp on it (that's the Swedish version. It's a joint effort with the US Postal Service so they have done one as well. And no, I'm not usually a stamp nerd). Maybe, I just should name my computer as well. It could be named Pernille Rosendahl or Gwyneth Paltrow, because, you know... It's f***ing annoying.

One last thing. The Manolo, he asks "What does $14,000 [yes that's three 0's] boots look like?": And the answer is: "Fantastic".

Sing along and it might just get you through

2005-12-11T12:54:00.000+01:00

Went to see Franz Ferdinand this Friday and I'm kinda ashamed to admit that while I'm still not really sure whether or not I thought it was a good show, my cloakroom ticket from that night still makes me snicker. But then again, I'm easily amused. It was a good night, most of the night, though. G&T's, beer and dancing, I mean, what's not to like? That the evening ended with me and my friend standing in the f***ing cold waiting for a train that just never came, because someone had decided to jump in front of it on one of the busiest nights of the year, well, we'll just leave that. If my toe could leave it, too, so I could regain feeling in it, that would be nice.

And this is how the first red snapper sock looks now that I've turned the heel and started on the foot part.

Hoping there's a method to your madness, baby

2005-12-07T23:11:00.000+01:00

As the yarn for my cardigan still hasn't arrived and my plans to be done with it by Christmas will most certainly be wrecked by now, I got so bored with sudokus yesterday that I decided to buy some yarn for socks. Actually, I had been out all day buying Christmas presents and decided that I wanted pizza, but then I thought "Screw the pizza, I want merino!" and then I bought yarn for these socks. And this is what I had done after a day at work.
If you check out the pictures that go with the pattern, you can see that the original was blue and because of the scale-like structure of the pattern she named it after the blue fish. But seeing as mine are red, they could be named after that fish from that Led Zeppelin-book, Hammer of the Gods. You know, the one that the groupie gets in... well, The Netherlands. Wasn't that a red snapper? Or was it a shark? If it was a shark, then it's not really funny, is it?

Anyway, if we're going to be seedy, I might as well mention that when I was out buying presents yesterday, I was browsing around a video store, trying to find the Harry Potter-movies for my little sister (who fortunately doesn't read my blog). The Harry Potter-movies! Take note, because that should prove that I wasn't in the adult section (although I could have been in Accord on Vestergade, where the music-DVD's and the porn used to be curiously lined up next to each other so your inner monologue would go "Kylie Greatest? Nah, already have that one... Pulp Hits.... possibly... Lost in TV? Oh, it's just a sampler... Stevie Wonder Live? Fuck no! .... Asian Street H...... OH! Now where was that Morrissey-single I just saw?!"
Anyway, looking around, I stumbled on a pile of discounted DVD's containing, amongst others, Cherry Falls, one of the worst movies that I have ever seen in its entirety, and a movie bizarrely named Lesbisk Erotisk Mesterværk 8 (that's Lesbian Erotic Masterpiece 8 for that one person from Afghanistan who was once here. Hope you found what you were looking for). I mean, it's strange enough to name one film after a fictional magazine blurb (and that's obviously not from any fictional magazine I'd read), but f***ing eight of them? That's just crazy!

It's like Jell-O on springs

2005-11-27T18:35:00.000+01:00

Just spent the afternooon watching Some Like It Hot and just like the other times I've seen it, it's just really good. The jokes are funny, the costumes are excellent and Marilyn Monroe is (or was) just so pretty as Sugar Kane.

But obviously, this intro just serves the purpose of letting me say: "Speaking of sugar canes...." because I just used the very same for the decoration of my Advent wreath. Usually, when I try my hand at other crafts than knitting, it never really turns out the way I imagined it. However, not to blow my own horn or anything, I think this turned out pretty nice. Colour-theme and all - I feel so Martha! Sorry about the scrummy picture, my mobile isn't really much of a camera - I also like to think that in real life, the sugar canes look less Photoshopped.

You've got nothing to do so you just stay in bed (oh poor thing)

2005-11-23T16:59:00.000+01:00

I still haven't got all the yarn for my cardigan, so I'm keeping myself busy with this instead - oooh, the joys of having a job where I do nothing all day! And speaking of lace, I'm usually not a fan of knitted dresses and skirts (too hippie), but I kinda like this (via Ysolda). What do you think? Is it terrible? Am I just fooled by the pretty (and skinny) model and the drinks?

By the way, if you've read my 100 (which I really need to update as it still says that I am a vegetarian and well... The stuff about moustaches looking equally good on men and women is still very valid, though), you'll know that my favourite animals are sheep, ducks and penguins. I might have to add another to the list - the alpaca! Crossover between sheep and llamas, how can you not love them? I want one for Christmas, I'm sure it'll fit nicely into the flat.

2005-11-21T13:13:00.000+01:00

If I ever have kids, I'm totally dressing them up as Yoda as well. Not just for Halloween, that hat is the epitome of everyday cool. Alas, it's crocheted and I am a rather reluctant hooker - it's no fun when you can't watch TV at the same time, you know.

Dark and difficult times lie ahead

2005-11-21T00:22:00.000+01:00

You know, Daniel Radcliffe, I really like the Harry Potter-books. And movies. Loads. And I think you rock. You obviously have excellent taste in music; you nearly had Franz Ferdinand in the latest movie (it turned out to be Jarvis Cocker and Jonny Greenwood instead, not a bad substitute if you ask me), you like The Libertines and you are a pretty nifty 16-year-old (again, like Peter Hayes, it's the hair) - if I were 16 years old again, I'm sure I'd have a major, huge crush on you. But seriously, hon, don't pluck your eyebrows! It wasn't a good look for Boy George, it wasn't a good look for that fella from The Calling, it's really not a good look for any guy. Fair dues, you might have unibrow tendencies, I shan't say, and obviously you're supposed to have two eyebrows, not one, so the middle bit is okay, I guess. But really, don't pluck anywhere else. Don't let anybody do it either. Just put the tweezers down. Please.

Oh honey no!

2005-11-19T01:30:00.000+01:00

A couple of Danish bloggers has been posting their top fives of hot guys 'n' girls over the last couple of days. I thought about doing the same thing, partly because I was bored, partly because I have too much time on my hands and partly because one list included Colin Farrell and another Elijah Wood, so I wanted to set the record straight, 'cause that is poor f***ing taste if I ever saw it.
Anyway! I'd been considered several candidates, you know, Brett Anderson (Brett gets two links for being sex on a stick), Johnny Depp (that picture because collarbones + cigarette = dirty. Also, because, you know, he's 40, he was bald in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he's had a beard, for f***'s sake and I still would), the smackhead from Marion (that picture because... come on, it says 'shag'), mid-nineties Alex James, start-nineties Nicky Wire (I wanted the picture with the popsicle for this one, but when I couldn't find it, I just thought "F*** it.") - you know, your basic skinny, somehow-looking-a-bit-like-an-ugly-girl-makes-a-shithot-guy indie-girl favourites - the staple goods!
There were lots of candidates, of course, and another was Peter Hayes from B.R.M.C., because even though I met him once and he is around 1,60, he is still one dirty f***er. Or, at least I thought so until I saw this picture and nearly f***ing cried. It's almost as bad as the time Brett dyed his hair blond. The guy had such nice hair, so what possessed him to do such a thing? What is he lacking? Eyes? Friends? Mirrors? Surely not taste? What? I just don't get it. So sad...

You used to make me smile when I was down

2005-11-10T22:05:00.000+01:00

Normally, I don't post these test-thingies, but chances are that a few of you will want to know which indie-album you are. Can't really say which part of me is this Belle and Sebastian-album, it's probably not the "She was into S&M and bible studies"-line... Most likely it's the tag that Jack Black gives it in High Fidelity - sad bastard music!

You are Belle & Sebastians If Youre Feeling
Sinister.

What essential indie rock album are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2005-11-02T19:46:00.000+01:00

And if that Pulp Fiction-remake ever comes along, I reckon The Gimp should wear this.

Feed the horses with your candy

2005-10-30T16:18:00.000+01:00

Considering the fact that I complained about not having money to burn, I've been burning quite a lot over the last couple of days. Bought myself a new bicycle because the old one finally broke. Possibly not beyond repair, but definitely beyond the repair it was worth. The last time I got an entirely new bicycle was at my 10 year birthday, so it was probably about time anyway. And it has also convinced me that it is probably a good thing that I don't have a driver's license as my initial reaction to being overtaken on the bicycle lane is now in the lines of "F*** off" and then going really, really fast to get away from them again. On the other hand, I would probably make a good Parisian taxi driver. Or, if they one day decide to remake Pulp Fiction, set it in Copenhagen and let The Wolf be a female cyclist, I could possibly do a fairly decent job at that as well. Ish. It'd be a f***ing strange movie, though.

Also, I've just bought tickets for the Franz Ferdinand-show on the 9th of December, which should be very nice. I haven't got the new album yet, sort of embarassing, really, but I'm sure it'll be a riot. A dancing riot.

And as the last thing I just bought yarn for this cardigan. I haven't really knitted lace before, so it's not entirely impossible that I'll completely mess it up, but I really like it (even if it is a wrapover), so I'll give a try.
On another knitting-related note, I finally found a knitting blog that I like. Obviously, seeing as I am clearly a dreadful person, it's the one were two knitters team up and slag off the products of everyone else's hard labour one by one, and the one that gets comments like: "Wait. You can crochet a strap-on? Holy shit. I had no idea. What's next? Knitted anal beads?". Don't really (want to) know what that says about me, but I think it's funny.

It's a sign of devotion

2005-10-27T00:36:00.000+02:00

If I had money to burn - as in serious money to burn - I would buy these. Mmmm, Christian Louboutin...

2005-10-24T09:54:00.000+02:00

Can someone tell me who made the song in the new ad for Sony's Bravia-TV's? It's the one with loads of space hoppers (is that really what a 'hoppebold' is called in English? It's a shitty name) in the streets of San Francisco (I think). The chorus is something like "to lean on" something something and I think the song in the ad is a slightly toned down cover. The singer on the original has a slightly more squeaky voice and it could be The Shins? Maybe? So far, Google isn't my friend on this, all I've been able to find is a Michael Bolton-song! (Imagine the shame if the song I'm looking for is actually a Michael Bolton-song... the horror!)

A decade of sun

2005-10-23T14:42:00.000+02:00

Finally got 'round to buy the Spleen United album. Considering the fact that they're from Aarhus (or similar) and all have stupid (is there any other kind?) beards, it's actually rather good. I have a feeling that it'll really grow on me when I give it the more thorough listening that I haven't done yet - my mother has been visiting for the last couple of days and I didn't really find it worth the bother of putting it on and having her go "It's very noisy, isn't it?" and "How can you listen to that? It's terrible.", which are, from what I remember from living at home, her two standard lines to about 95 % of my record collection.
However, you have to hand it to her, if she hadn't insisted on watching the Eurovision Song Contest higlights-thingy yesterday, I would possibly never have found out what a great song the 1965 Luxembourg entry, Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son (that's Wax Doll, Sound Doll, I think. Strange.) by France Gall is. Not much indietegrity in the Eurovision, but after all, this was written the one and only Serge Gainsbourg, whom you have to love, and Belle and Sebastian has done a cover (it's not very good, though).

While she (my mother, not France Gall) and my sister were here, we've dyed my hair to what I think is pretty close to my natural colour. It's hard to tell if it's right because I haven't had my own colour since I was 15 or so, but I think we got the slightly mousy brown about right. As you might be able to tell, I'm already a bit sick of it and I've only had it for a few hours. Oh well.

Just before I leave, could someone please explain to me the point of portable porn? Yeah, it's nice that the new iPod displays video and all that, but porn? What the f*** are you going to do with it? Watch it on the bus on your way to work? I mean, come on... (actually, don't).

Votre mère fait quoi?

2005-10-11T00:10:00.000+02:00

Nearly a year ago, I went to see Melody Club at Vega. The day after, I talked about the lead singer's tight trousers and the fact that the world would be a better place had more men worn pointy, red vinyl boots. But it's not until now that I have found a picture (via Ulolla) so you can see for yourself. Mmmm, dirty!

Also, I've learned that both Togo and Angola has qualified for next year's football World Cup. As my sister is half-Togolese (that sounds so Star Wars) and my dad currently resides in Angola, I think I'll be rooting for these two, it's a nice excuse to not be cheering for Denmark. Not that I need any, the fact that I've never met a roligan (or anyone wearing a Danish national squad shirt for that matter) who wasn't a wanker, is really all the excuse I require.

2005-09-23T17:41:00.000+02:00

Yeah baby!
Eat me up-jokes below.

2005-09-18T21:32:00.000+02:00

Mystery #1
If the European gigs with The Tears are cancelled as it says on Gaffa's website, then why doesn't it say anything on The Tears' own website, on Vega's site and, even more confuzzling, why can you still buy tickets?

Mystery #2
When you put your pillow in the washing machine, then why the hell does it come out smelling like the men's room? That is, slightly of piss and naphtalene? Not very nice, I can tell you!

Very metal

2005-09-14T01:33:00.000+02:00

This is what it's turning out like so far. Not too bad, but it'll look better when I get all the loose ends on the back sewn in. Not that it matters much because when I put it in the washing machine, you supposedly (and if it turns out right) won't be able to see the stitches.
Anyway, just thought it was nice. Sorry about the picture quality, it was taken with the rather scrummy camera on the mobile at my work.

All I've ever done is tame

2005-09-13T01:17:00.000+02:00

I've talked about it before - that maternal sense of the seemingly obvious that I just can't see myself possessing - ever. At New Year's, I could've used someone to tell me that I probably shouldn't have tried to pour liquid chocolate into my mouth while wearing the only white shirt that I actually owned and liked.
Right now, someone should've f***ing told me that I shouldn't try to untangle my knitting at 00.30 because odds are that I'll only make things worse. Which I did. And I hate picking up stitches. Hate. Hate it even more than I hate beards and girls who play handball. Which is a lot.
Anyway, I'm knitting this. Except I'm knitting it in red with a black skull. If it turns out nice, I'll post a picture.
Speaking of knitting, I'm slightly intimidated by the world of knitting blogs. I like knitting, but those people are scary. I sort of suspect that they are the same people who have pregnancy blogs with countdowns, stretchmark-counts and talk about how much they tore, even if knitting doesn't have quite the same need to know/nice to know-factor (and that factor should be taken into consideration by real life people, too, especially at family dinners. I don't care how long you were in labour. No, really).
The point is, I don't want to turn into one of those people. Please let me know. I don't want to turn up with this on my knitting needles.

Waking up and getting up

2005-09-07T08:34:00.000+02:00

Nothing says "Goodmorning Wednesday!" quite like the twittering birds, a sunbeam coming through the blinds, the scent of freshly made coffee and the sound of your upstairs neighbour hurling out his hangover. Bless.

You said it made you feel dirty

2005-09-01T15:27:00.000+02:00

Have you noticed that En Midsommarnattsdröm by Håkan Hellström and Life on a Chain by Pete Yorn sound quite alike?