If you have been in my presence at any time in the last month, there is probably no way I haven’t already regaled to you every last detail of my Nordic Dreamvacation at least once. I can’t just forego converting it to blobbovision, though, so here goes. Træna! Træna, I learned, is actually a municipality of thousands of tiny islands off the coast of Norway, including Sanna, which forms the dramatic silhouette you see above. Lying just below the arctic circle, Træna sees sun 24 hours a day in midsummer, and each July is host to a music festival on the islands Husøy and Sanna which lets people like me, who are not year-round Arctic fisherpeople, experience all the adjectives depicted above firsthand.

Drew and I started planning our adventure last November, after thinking about it for several years, and it thoroughly exceeded all the built-up expectations. But Træna was not the only stop on our dreamvacation. Let us follow along with Drew’s backpack:

Salient moments

1. Oslo: The first night there, the bartender detects my particular ‘merican way of speaking, and in about 18 seconds we determine we both come from the same 10 mile radius of Jersey Shore suburbia
2. Træna: Unable to quite process the full range of stimuli hitting us as we step off the ferry boat onto this ridiculous island, I am unsure how to react to the 20 or 30 small blonde children with various makes and models of wheelbarrows entreating us in Norwegian to let them help us carry our things to the campsite. I think there is also a group of people singing songs under a welcoming banner
3. Walking to the campsite, I am agape and giddy. Drew turns to me and says, “This is my favorite temperature!”
4. While sitting in lush warm grass swatting bugs with a hundred or so cohorts who also could not fit into the tiny church where Erlend Øye is playing his Kings of Convenience song “I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From,” we enjoy a brief impromptu whistle-along. I have been taking notes:

5. We are sitting in the pews of a wooden church built in 1773 to see Ólöf Arnalds perform. During a particularly quiet moody song a tiny spider, descending slowly from the ceiling, passes exactly in front of my face. I stare at it for a second, elbow Drew so he can see this perfect thing that is happening, then pinch the thread trailing behind it and redirect it to the church floor
6. Walking along a road which we are pretty sure leads to the mouth of a tunnel up the inside of a mountain, we notice a small lone figure on the beach in the distance. As we draw nearer we realize it is a woman in a wedding dress wading in and out of the waves. Her attention is fixed out at sea, presumably in search of her lost sailor fiancée. Maybe she is art, maybe she is a ghost, we speculate the merits of both theories
7. After 40 minutes of cold, slippery, pitch black, completely enjoyable treachery up Kjærlighetstunellen, the Love Tunnel, we pass through a bright square of light, the opening flanked by a man brushing cymbals and a woman strumming a guitar and singing a pleasant song. Just beyond them is a table with complimentary strawberries. I take one and bite into it staring out from the top of this mountain at the wild seascape dotted with pancake islands
8. Waiting for our ferry back to the main island, we stand in the midst of a rowdy singalong to classic American pop songs, led by a feisty red-haired Norwegian woman and a red-nosed seafaring man wearing a kilt
9. Bergen: We see a sad lost baby seagull reunite with its mom, then a couple hours later, we run into Erlend Øye at a bar – hundreds of miles from Træna and days after the festival has ended. I signal to him with the festival band still around my wrist, we talk about Træna magic for a little bit and he departs

I’m leaving out a lot, but this is just my blob. Please peruse the flickr for many, many more charmingly captioned photos and a brief video attempt (higher quality here). Til next time!

I’m going on an extended visit to Norway (+Iceland) with Drew, where I will digest many stories, sights and sounds for exhuberant regurgitation on my return. I will also take a thousand pictures. Sorry for not blobbin’ in three months, I’ve been thinking only of the sea eagle.

Click to embiggen!

I may be mommy-ing it up down in Park Slope day-to-day, but I think the G train owes me a special caboose or something due to the time I spend commuting for friendship to the upper and northeasterly limits of this borough. One of the more special ways I falsely claim residency on the North Side has been to participate in my pal Kristen’s collaboration-fueled mini-magazine The Bushwick Review. It’s a really wonderful mash-up of visuals and words, created by people within Bushwick and far without, that Kristen has thoughtfully compiled into three editions so far. Issue #2 has just come out; the third drops this summer! I’m so happy and honored to have been part of each one.

The spiffy wraparound cover Kristen designed for Issue #2, which has geographical tendencies

For the first Bushwick Review I wrote a weirdo three-letter-words-only story about a dead mouse. This time I thought I’d be a little more traditional and write in normal English about the time my llama farmer mom befriended a turkey. I decided the best way to illustrate this simple personal tale would be to pick up a pencil and actually draw a turkey by hand (OK, referencing shutterstock) using all those skills I thought I’d forgotten from high school art class. It was nice to massage some rusty brain muscles and I’m happy with how it came out.

For full text click here.

But enough about me – please do check out the other 70-some-odd pages if you can by buying a copy. It’s filled with creative pursuits of all sorts from the minds of some of my very best friends plus friendly strangers. I’m told it’s currently occupying shelves at the St. Mark’s Bookshop in the East Village and Desert Island in Williamsburg, and on its way to more fine booksellers quite soon. If you’re outside of the NYC area, you can always order one online!

Also I added some new-ish work to the infographics and FOB pages!

Shown here approximately life-size are the custom rubber stamps I made as x-mas presents for some of my very best pals. It took some work to achieve this most pleasing result. First I formulated the most suitable imaginary nickname for each pal. The next step was to lovingly design them each into a one-inch square of appropriate typography, a mix of machine- and hand-made. Then I took the designs to Casey Rubber Stamps, one of my most favorite places in the universe, and two days later I had the stamps in my hands. I actually jumped up and down at how well they came out. I then picked out some corresponding ink pads while listening to Mr. Casey and his intern squabble about the necessity of the most miscellaneous objects collecting dust in his tiny store, paid for my goods, and was on my way.

Last week the names you see above and I convened at a fancy restaurant on a snowy evening and I finally got to hand out the stamps. They were a success all around! It filled me with happiness. Our waiter let me have a blank guest check so I could gather all the marks in their assigned colors to take home with me (and post on my blob). In the meantime I hope all their owners have been stamping everything in sight!

According to this beautiful and useful calendar I purchased in Brighton Beach, it is ЯНВАРЬ and my blob has been silent since НОЯБРЬ. But I have a fancy scanner now. Hold onto your butts!

A doodle I made in honor of Bill Murray and Bill Murray Appreciation Day on dribbble (thanks to Dan Fierman and GQ Magazine for the words). I’ve been uploading some works-in-progress and such over there that haven’t necessarily made their way over to this site, so do feel free to take a peek if you are so inclined!

One pleasant Sunday a few weeks ago a big bunch of my friends and I escaped our urban surroundings in favor of my parents’ llama farm. We took the llamas on a walk through nature, bobbed for apples, built scarecrows, and ate massive amounts of food. Click the photos to see them larger on flickr and check out the rest of the set!

Here is a Swedish robot pronouncing sjuk. And six other sj- words for you to enjoy: