rescued dog dance party

I was in a bad mood tonight, repetitive strain in my fast-typing parts, and I was too tired to get to yoga but then when it was too late to get there on time I really wanted to go ... wah wah wah ... but then I came across this adorable video! Much better mood now!

OK GO is such a fun band, maybe you watched their other videos, esp Here It Goes Again, a million times on YouTube like I have.

Sometimes dogs being made to do tricks for a long time seems cruel but these pooches look joyful....am-I-right? They're all rescued dogs! And the band has a webpage supporting animal rescue.



One of the fun things I do for practicing Swedish is to count dogs when we're out walking, and try to describe them with the Swedish words I know ... so many dogs out there!

en hund, hunden är söt
två hundar, hunden är svart
tre hundar, hunden är liten

I still can't pronounce "sju" which means seven...just three letters but so tough to pronounce, you have to make a sound kind of like clearing your throat!

Swedish Royal Wedding

Just another reason that great things come from exercise .... the Swedish Crown Princess married her gym trainer a few minutes ago! I watched it online, it was beautiful!

Swedish phrase of the day: kungligt bröllop it means "royal wedding."

Arlanda is the "Official Love Airport" this year, ha ha. I got smooched when I was there last month, so I guess it's true!


A lot of the stores were brimming with Royal Wedding souvenirs .... china, tea towels, chocolates ...



Victoria and Daniel paper dolls:

lots of postcards ... I liked this cute one:

and this silly one, "how to become a Swedish Prince" ... the text describe's Daniel's upbrining, gym ownershop and royal romance leading to his becoming a prince:

temporary tattoos of the newest royal couple:

and coasters of the royal family:

glass knick knacks, there is a lot of Swedish glasswork:

Victoria wasn't always the Crown Princess. She's the eldest child of King Gustaf and Queen Silvia, but when she was born, the law stated that the first born son would be heir to the throne. That law was changed in 1979. Too bad for Prince Carl Philip! Strikes me as odd because the Swedes seem to have a "gender doesn't matter" approach to everything, but I guess that wasn't so before 1979. She has studied in different countries, supports Swedish public radio and struggles with an eating disorder. I'm just learning about things Swedish, and I don't live over there, so I'm not bored of or annoyed with the royal family yet!

Glad Påsk!

Happy Easter! Glad Påsk!

nerdy Swedish crafts in San Francisco

While I was in San Francisco there was an Etsy labs event at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, connected to the Open Source Embroidery exhibit. I put it on my list of things I really wanted to do in our short time there, and yay, we made it happen! I spend a lot of time at etsy.com, so I knew I'd like something organized by Etsy people.

We got to the entrance and behind the desk there was this knitted poster:


We were looking at it with squinty eyes and the woman working there said "you won't be able to read it, it's in Swedish." ha ha haaaaa, because my guy is Swedish. He didn't get it because it is a knitting pattern, knit into the ..... knitting! I almost had it figured out before she said that.

Turns out that the exhibit came from Sweden! It was mixing fibre arts with technology. Here's a quilt of text messages embroidered onto different fabrics. The texts are in English, Swedish, Norwegian and Spanish:

So the picture quality isn't great, but I like them so I can practice. I like to read stuff that Swedish people write casually, because that helps me learn how they really speak, which I don't really get in my workbooks.

There was also an embroidered motherboard:

An HTML colour quilt, it was spectacular:

A chair you could embroider on while sitting in it, listening to the iPod woven into the armrest:

And other cute textile art, like this:

Swedish Cinnamon Bun Day! (Oct 4)

Sunday was the 10th annual Kanelbullens Dag in Sweden, so I baked up a batch. Mine were vegan of course. It took a lot longer than I expected, you have to let the dough rise, twice! So give yourself half a day if you want to make some. Totally worth the time! Apparently the whole thing got started as a way to encourage people to bake at home more.


I used this recipe, mostly. I didn't have any vegan yogurt, and I didn't get cardamom because it cost $10/bottle. And I couldn't find pearl sugar. Have you seen it in Canada? It's just sugar, but it's in bigger chunks than granulated so it looks nice sprinkled on top. I'll have to get some next time I'm in Stockholm. They look prettier with the pearl sugar, and maybe I'll try a recipe with a glaze next time. And I guess I should shell out the $10 for cardamom next time!

I got my guy to take a picture of the pearl sugar (pärlsocker) at his grocery store in Stockholm, I was curious. He baked cinnamon buns on Sunday, too, of course!


Over there at ICA, the ingredients to bake cinnamon buns were on sale: "bake your own buns and celebrate cinnamon buns day on Sunday":

long time no blog

Wow, I haven't blogged in nearly a year! Since NXNE last June.

I've been trying to see more than 100 bands a year for the past few years, success again in 2008 ... I saw 110. (I met a really great guy at one of those shows!) Here's the list of bands I saw.

I went to Sweden in the fall .... that was super-fun. It's so clean and stylish there. I was in Stockholm and in a small town outside Stockholm. I'm slowly learning to speak and read Swedish. Here's a collage I made of some of my favourite trip pictures:

Magnolia and Bobbie Dazzler came too, they loved it! I just got Bobbie in August.

Föda! Here's a collage of some of the really great food I ate in Sweden and on my flights. I was so excited that there was a vegetarian food fair when I was there! I had no trouble eating vegan there at all:

I got a really cute pink mini computer! It's on Linux and it's 11"... teeny tiny, and PINK!

I had lots of visitors last year and went to a few weddings, still doing school, sort of still doing crafts. Hurt my ankle, which interrupted my Wii Fit fun.

I'm off to Sweden again, for Easter. So excited! I was bummed to learn that the Easter Bunny doesn't go to Sweden. But there's still candy though, there is always candy in Sweden!

A couple weeks ago I went to Påskbasar, an Easter fair at the Swedish Lutheran Church in Toronto. I've been poking away at learning to speak Swedish since August, do you think that when I got there I could remember how to say anything other than 'hi' and 'excuse me'? Now I know, next time I go to something like that I'll have to prepare a few sentences from scenarios that might come up so I can practice on Swedes. Hopefully I'll get to practice my Swedish in Sweden next week! But they all speak English so well.

I don't know much about Swedish Easter yet, but they have a soft drink especially made for Easter, called påskmust. And kids dress up like påskkäringar och påskgubbar, which are witches who fly to the mountains on broomsticks. But the kids don't go to the mountains, they draw pictures on cards and give them to adults, who give them candy or money. Sort of like what we do here for Halloween. There were kids at the Easter fair singing songs and walking around with brooms and collecting candy:

Here are some cute little folk art Easter witches I got there:

Whoever lives in this house must be really fun! I saw this while walking near Corktown last weekend:

Glad Påsk! Happy Easter!