COUNTING TREES, A GIFT LIST OF DECEMBER

These streets and views in different weather became very familiar to me during November, a month in a residency in Reykjavík. My Travelogue grew in wind, in snowy days and in sunshine and frost pinching nose. With dear new friends and so many shared teacups and cakes, songs of ravens. The lighthouse was twinkling, the Aurora Borealis danced on the sky. Swimming water was warm, the mountains snowy. The paintings were done with the support from Arts Promotion Centre Finland.

If you are looking something to give to your dearest, these are some items available with my illustrations:
Breathe and Be, A Book About Mindfulness Poems illustrated book, also available here
Blue Skies umbrella
Red Cap Cards stationary
In Flight temporary tattoos
Mon Herbier herbarium book
Casa di fiaba illustrated book
L'ours et le soleil illustrated book
Spring Allotment poster
Garden of A Moon Gazer poster
Dandelion Fields Box of Labels
Dandelion Fields Notecards

Kisses, warmth, long walks and snowy peaks!

SEA ADVENTURES

An archipelago, a home island. Next to seventy or eighty volcanoes, above and below the sea.

Once one of those volcanoes started to erupt during night time.

That volcano in sunset.

Between the main island and home island, a little escape island. During summer also about eight million puffins nesting around.

The home island, so pretty, on so dangerous grounds.

But so pretty and calm. Windy too. I like wind. It is a weather that you feel.

Home island.

The blues.

The good-byes.

And the quickly changing weather. Waves.

♥

SOUNDS OF WATER

A little spring trip. Seven years and I haven´t been there. Oh, so beautiful it still was. The sounds of water in its all forms. So much sun, so strong wind, so warm sunshine (hello new freckles!), so perfect when swimming in hot turquoise water while it gently snows. The beautiful language that rolls nicely in mouth, makes to smile.

A second home, so much missed.

And now, it is finally starting to look a bit more green here. Today a small herb garden was planted to the balcony, still thinking of ice, ocean ship travels, mountain tops. 

How are you and the season around you?

Sunset bird songs.

(Some photos also at Instagram.)

DREAMY SUMMER NIGHT VIEWS

The first spring rain, always forgetting how wonderful it smells and feels. How it is soft and silent, a happy one. How it feels to fall asleep with the melody of it. First spring rain, a mood of a kind. A mood for being comforted. 


The sound made me dreaming of the views that I saw from my homes some years ago, in Iceland. The bright summer night light. The open sky. Humming streets. Birch leaves in wind. Landings and taking offs of the domestic aircraft. An old woman with a scarf around her head, collecting all the bottles. Neighbor kid in a tiger mood.


What do you see from your window?


Weekend of biking in spring rain, balcony naps, reading, baking. Eating with friends. Listening to Faroese language. Summer plans with strawberry tastes and lime. Planting herbs.


Never setting sun, it feels almost like it already.


Have a good beginning for the new week!

SPRING IS COMING

Hello dear March,

Welcome spring and little adventures. The sunlight was so warm today, the sound of running water so refreshing. How can it always surprise. There have been many smiles, stories about a sea captain father, living in a circus wagon, long walks and waving to a train. Friends on a coffee outdoors, views from a sight tower and an open balcony door.

Eleven Morning Frost Meadow -prints left. Apple Blossom Meadow is back in the shop. Thank you so much once again for your orders ♥.

Happy beginning of March!

OTHER HOME

A little bit of adventurous landscapes for this grey Thursday. Paths in wind, in sounds of silence. Homes from the past.

Dreamy greetings!

(Photos from Iceland from 2004 and 2005. It is seven years today that I first time landed in Iceland. What a wonderful journey it became.)

WINDY WIND

Dear all,

The sky and the lake wear the same gray dress today. Wind is collecting the summer greens and hurries them to go hiding. Slowly, but visibly more and more every day. 300 km away from here there were many more yellow leaves during the weekend. Still bicycled with Mum to our summerhouse and swam. A theater play about sea and an island welcomed the earlier dark evenings.

While searching more wool for the colder days, I remembered that I have used wool for other things than clothes too. A small exhibition done in Reykjavík with a small group in 2005. Lovely ladies of handicraft shops gave us bags of small balls of wool. With them we built our own wind with a girl called Nadia. With some red wool I drew a girl so big that she did not completely fit inside. Her hems in the wind. There was a parade outside while we worked. We were locked inside and could only see a bit of the trumpets and drums marching on the street through a window. Later a friend that I had not yet met took a picture of another friend visiting the exhibition. The last picture I found from an old email and it was taken by Þórarinn.

Cold fingers of the autumn are searching their way inside this house. Time to close the balcony door and say bon voyage to the sun traveling further, to the other side. Eager about the new season, the new colors, the new scents and sounds.

Have a calm new week with colors of rowan berries and rose hips (their tastes too).

Hearts, from me to you.

(Third picture by Þórarinn.)

PARTLY CLOUDY

A lighthouse that appeared while the darkness came. A spring storm was arriving and we were stuck in black sand. Just watching the blinks of the lighthouse over the bay of sea.

Hiking in highlands middle of two glaciers. Wondering if those landscapes still exist after the eruption last year. The warmest day of that summer, bare feet on the softest moss. The coldest water of a glacier spring, tasted so good.

Up in the North in sunset going to see birds nesting by the sea. Partly cloudy six years ago in three different places in Iceland, partly cloudy also today.

More calm winds to the other side of the world, please.

P.s. Thank you so much everyone for your precious words in the last post. I will keep the idea about making the patterns into textiles in my mind. Hearts to everyone!

COLOR YELLOW, TUESDAY ADVENTURES

It is the sound of water and the color changes of it that I miss during winters when everything is frozen. A rainbow, or a small sector of it, was seen before sunset on Friday above all the snow.

These photos are from Iceland from the years 2004 and 2005. The weekend and its smiling faces made me to travel back to the treasure island Iceland in my thoughts while listening stories from other places, from other views, from other adventurers. I think that the girl in these pictures is a bit smaller than the girl behind the keyboard, but the adventurer has been always the same. And the anticipator of the spring.

The yellow scarf was crocheted while waiting for the spring. The jacket was sewn during one weekend while being sure that the spring was already knocking on the door. Knocking on the door were also two of my traveler brothers from India and Germany when they always surprised me by calling that they will be behind my door in an hour or so. So they were and we had long walks to a mountain with a small waterfall or by the sea on black sand beach. The next mornings they always visited at my work in the kindergarten and the children were happy to have new horses to play with.

Morning break greetings with color green and yellow to your Tuesday.

RAIN OF GREEN

Just a small reminder (to myself) that under all those puffy blankets of starry snow, green things do happen. Just a bit later.

Greetings from happy drawing hands,

♡

1. Reykjavík, 2007 (Happily walking home with a bagful of nice comics from the best library.)

2. Þórsmörk, 2004 (The hottest day of that summer, glaciers were melting so quickly and we were a bit worried if we get over a river.)

3. Hveragerði, 2004 (Walked as long as the hot and cold rivers were combining the water perfect to swim. Ate pie laying on the grass.)

BLANKETS AND WINTER´S SEA

Dear Thursday,

Some snow and snow clouds that I collected from my older journeys for you. Feel soft inside them! I keep my hands busy, did not have the time to go to buy a Name Day flower today. But tomorrow. Stepping from the arctic weather inside a flower shop feels like entering a rain forest. Tomorrow I can imagine the wild animals laughing up in the trees of colors.

Evening greetings of soft piano tunes and lullabying snow covers,

Anna Emilia

(The painting is for a poem called Alda Aldanna, by S. The photos are taken in Iceland the year 2004

and 2005 while climbing Upsafjall in Dalvík and from airplane while flying over Vatnajökull.)

PATHS TO WONDER, TALK, AND SEE, OR TO BE SILENT

Good morning dear all of you,

This morning is very cold. Nose is frozen. Autumn is for walks with a hot cup of coffee or tea in hands. With my dear friend we have done that a lot the last years, in different countries with wonderful views on the way. Cats, birds, trees, ponds, parks, forests, hills, sleeping beaches snoring. Villages, gardens, farms, business streets. Dogs and markets. Always sketchbooks in our bags with some provisions. To walk I could forever.

These pictures are from Reykjavík in 2006. A bright orange coffee house was our living room, hot pots with old men boiling in them like soups in the swimming pools for the evenings or early mornings.

Maybe I am a bit too early with the autumn, it is still August. At least two layers of long sleeves can be finally tried on in the early mornings. The sky is also changing its palette to a bit colder tones.

Have a walk, a long one today!

Hearts,

Anna Emilia