A small obsession with little trees.

I've spent a lot of time staring out of car, train, and aeroplane windows, and it might be my years spent in the middle of Ontario forests with my family nostalgically catching up with me, but I've got hundreds of photos that I took from these cars, trains and aeroplanes of northern European forests. I love the way birch trees look in the snow and clumps pine trees look from the air. I even bought a giant piece of locally woven linen in Tallinn, Estonia last winter after I was inspired by the landscape of wintery Finland as we flew over it and wanted to embroider what I saw. Well, that or the icy water that clogged up the small channel that separates Finland and Estonia. I can't decide so that chunk of fabric remains in a box.

Instead, I've been doing a lot of this.

I sold a couple these before I could even photograph them - my own fault for archival laziness - but, I kind of love the way they're turning out so there'll be many more.

So Much Road

Sometimes so much happens between the posts I make here that I find it a little overwhelming to 'update'. Sometimes I'd rather just go for a bike ride than unload my camera. I've really only done one thing since that September post, but it has left me with a million pictures I need to sort, an apartment to clean, and mountains of laundry. AND, I'm not quite finished.

This last tour had us criss-crossing Germany, in Belgium, The Netherlands, France, The United Kingdom, Norway, Latvia, and Lithuania. Next week we're off to Greece, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, and Hungary. Oh, and we'll be spending part of the first week of December on the island of Madeira. Our schedule has been a little mental, with just enough time in Berlin between trips for a nap in our own bed and a bowl of Aidan's comforting gruel. At this point, I would be wallowing in my fatigue had these last weeks not been very good. [knocking on wood] Also, I'm pretty excited as the rest of our time on the road this year has us going to places we've never been.

Here's just a few pictures from a few of those places...

in order: Kavka - Antwerp, Belgium; Kafe Kult - Munich, Germany; walking around old Nürnberg, Germany; Frappant - Hamburg, Germany; old fort ruins on the Baltic in Liepaja, Latvia; mossy ground swallowing me up in Durbe, Latvia; Durbe, Lativa; Aidan rehearsing with his Latvian band in 400 year old church; a piece of medieval Lithuania outside the cathedral in Vilnius