That’s what it said in Futura Bold on a T-shirt I was given by my sweet friend M., way back in our salad days. It was the corporate font of the ad agency he was working for, one of the more interesting places of the Nineties ad scene in Frankfurt, a place called Trust. They were remarkable for well designed and implemented corporate culture, and sneered at by the more conservative ad crowd, for being a bit flashy, in your face, and bold, but looking back, probably mostly for being different.
From today’s perspective, it was simply decent corporate design, and as far as I know the owners had a deep understanding of the secret weapon used by even the smallest enterprises today: the corporate idea. They were trying to establish something special and new (for Frankfurt in those days anyway). They certainly were hard to overlook.
One of the things the agency would do was print T-shirts with clever taglines like this one (kudos to whoever was responsible for it, could find no reference online – if anyone should know the wordsmith, please tell me and I’ll shout their name from the rooftops, here in my own small Speaker’s Corner of the Internet). The T-shirts were handed out to the staff, and my friend swiped one for me, good man. He really was. We lost touch when I moved away, and I miss him.
As my 25 years older self, I think it’s a huge, tall order, what it said on that T-shirt. Even though a migrant myself, I am not free of racism. In fact, while feeling kinship towards my Egyptian bestie N., my Spanish friend M., my daughter’s Romanian piano teacher etc. etc., I sometimes feel sort of a reverse xenophobia towards whoever makes stupid comments about race, gender, or sexuality. Not sure if that’s a thing, or just me being weird. Talk to me if you have experienced similar things?
In a way, this makes me no better than a right-out racist, I feel. And I get now that this is exactly what ‚in your mind‘ means. Why would I resent people only because they don’t share my own values? Gotta watch that. And fight it. In my mind. And in my children’s, whom it’s my job to bring up as smart and open and tolerant people. I should make them their own ‚Fight Racism‘ T-shirts. I’m sure my son would wear one.
So, that got a little deep ;-). Want to see a few pretty fall pics to lighten the mood?
One of the pics above was not taken in the country, can you guess which one?
Oh, and here’s my favorite shot, with a strange, extraterrestrial feel to it. Also, ears :-).
In terms of crafts, I used my free time to finish projects. First, rainbow baby blanket for tattoo artist, check.
As you can see, I added a picot border, and I’m not sorry.
Second, Starry Night socks for my daughter, check. Of course, I ran out of yarn on the last few cm and needed to improvise with another navy blue yarn. I blame the dog, who stole my ball of yarn and played with it a bit, entangling it to the point that forced me to throw out a considerable piece, the very length that would have enabled me to finish that sock, probably. Thankfully, my daughter still loves them despite the patchwork.
And third, don’t even know if you remember, I started out to make a stripy sweater in early spring, made from an ancient stash of silky black mohair yarn, a yellow skein of organic pure new wool I had bought at the school fayre last year, and some off white cashmere silk blend I had left from the lace mittens I’d made for my MIL two years ago.
The color scheme was inspired by Finnish crafts artist Tuija Heikkinen whose Instagram I follow. She’s a true genius, and I admire just about everything she creates. She posted a piece of I don’t even know what to call it? It was these little mannequin-like dolls dressed in what I would call Swinging London Sixties dresses, featuring the colors I used, among others. I saw her post, loved it, my imagination ran with it, and it resulted in this:
I had no pattern, but I have a favorite similarly cut sweater I used as a model. As usual, this method involved some trial and error, there was swearing and frogging, but in the end it was pretty straightforward once I had figured out the design. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, as well as very proud to have finished it, and it’s still 2019 :-)).
This week, it was back to school and getting into the groove of city life, which is so much easier now I’m taking daily walks by the lake in the community forest.
Work-wise, there may or may not be romance novel(s) in my near future, which would be lovely, so please keep your fingers crossed for me.
Enjoy your weekend, and the hour we’re getting back tomorrow, for summer time is no more.
This was me yesterday after finding this big ass porcini mushroom… which, as it turned out, was way too old, and inedible to anybody but the maggots that were already feasting on it. There may be people who welcome that extra protein and just eat it anyway, and more power to them – my husband always says we’ll be eating bugs instead of chicken sooner or later. I’m not cut out to hack that. But it was fun to discover that Old Man Mushroom all the same.
Moving on to crafts :-).
The above is what became of the rainbow pattern baby blanket. I’m still debating whether to do a picot border – but I could easily imagine just leaving the slim border of SC stitches all round. Opinions on this matter would be very welcome! I brought what feels like ALL the other yarn, so I’ll be tinkering and that is an awesome way to spend my free time.
A Stitch is a stitch 