Our digital paths have crossed a couple of times over the years, chiefly through Tina’s blog Three Drops of Sunshine, back in the day when I frequented Facebook.

I am delighted to introduce Tina Csomo as the guest on this podcast episode.

“Me being placed in the wrong Season is kind of like trying to jump across a river and I’m aonly making it alf way”

Tina is a self-declared “obnoxious but responsible dog mom”, and in addition to the story of how she became a “dog mom”, you will enjoy listening when she tells the story of her colour analysis Season journey, from Light Summer to Bright Winter.

You will also hear Tina’s take on how to handle the voices of Facebook friends, specifically get invaluable advice on how to find a healthy Facebook group to join!

Also, we touch on the unexpected consequence of losing a loved one. The dog is only part of it.

Tina’s family has a history of enjoying goofy hats, and here is a photo of Tina’s mom wearing one of them:

Tina loves her car almost as much as she loves her dog Bear. Here is a photo of both of them:

How to connect with Tina

Tina has a nicely curated Pinterest page, which you can find here.

Find Tina’s blog Three Drops of Sunshine here. It has been dormant for a while, but she says she has plans to resurrect it.

Links to resources that are mentioned in the episode

Anna Lazarska is now welcoming students who want to become 12 Season Sci-Art based personal colour analysts in Europe. You can find information on this here.

If you are interested in training as a personal colour analyst in the US, look up Cate Linden or Christine Scaman of 12 Blueprints.

Eckhart Tolle is a mindfulness teacher and his book The Power of Now is excellent, and the book Guardians of Being is about the way animals help us stay in the present.

Bernice Kentner’s book that Tina talks about is this one: Color Me A Season

How to connect with me

You can find me on Substack, or on my website Nordic Simplicity.

Do you know someone that I should interview on my podcast? Please let me know!

PS: Did you know that if you tap the heart (that shows you like the post), re-stack (that’s the recycle symbol below) or write a comment, it not only makes me giddy with happiness, but also helps others to see this post?

Nordic Simplicity is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and a jar of pickled herring ideas for dressing with Scandinavian ease, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

What you get when you subscribe to Nordic Simplicity:

* Scandi style, simplified and ready to implement.

* Weird and sometimes true facts about living in Norway.

* Interiors the Scandi Hygge way, without having to move to a cabin in the woods.

* Tips on how to use colour to look like you just returned from a fresh, brisk, invigorating walk, even though all you did was shuffle over to your coffee maker and back.

What you don’t get when you subscribe to Nordic Simplicity:

* A litter of Norwegian Forest Cat kittens delivered at your doorstep. (You wish, right?)

* Trendy fashion tips involving über skinny models looking like they are ready to drop dead from boredom.

* Tips on how to do wing-tip eyeliner.

Keturah graciously accepted the challenge of being a guest on my podcast, after submitting images for an ROOTD post (this one if you’re curious, and I hope you are, because it’s lovely).

And what fun we had, talking about how Keturah reinvented herself with the help of a stylist who guided her through the process of finding her style and her colours. we also explored knitting, libraries and TV series.

Knit designers Keturah talks about

Kathleen Dames is the designer behind the shawl that Keturah wears in the ROOTD post. The design is called Brassaï and you can find it here on Ravelry. The shawl pattern can also be purchased directly from the designer here.

Shawl Yarns

These are the yarns Keturah used for her shawl: Brown Sheep Wildfoote sock yarn in Blue Blood Red SY-80 and Goldenrod SY-45.Claudia Hand Painted Yarns in "Blue Terracotta". It is a coral base with splashes of warm soft blue, deeper coral, mustard/gold, and brown.

The shawl looks completely different in other colours. Here is the image of the shawl from Kathleen Dames’ Ravelry pattern page:

And this is what it looks like in the colours Keturah picked:

Keturah also talks of Elizabeth Zimmermann. All of her patterns, archived newsletters, books, DVDs, etc., are for sale at Schoolhouse Press. 

Stephen West of Westknits has fabulous shawls, that require a certain degree of knitting skill but are very distinctive.

Cotton blend yarns 

We also talked about knitting with cotton yarn. I don’t care for knitting with cotton, but Keturah mentioned a cotton blend yarn that is super soft, and if you are curious about that, it’s Knit Picks Comfy, 75% cotton, 25% microfiber. It’s available in multiple weights and as Keturah mentions in our chat, it gets softer and softer with each wash. And as an added bonus is easy on knitter’s hands. Another cotton blend yarn is Holst Garn Coast, 55% Merino lambswool, 45% cotton,a light fingering weight yarn. You can easily use 2 or more strands for heavier gauge knitting. Extremely soft, even suitable for babies.

Knit designers that Jorunn talks about

The Norwegian knit designer Lene Tøsti that has exquisitely feminine knitting patters. You can find her patterns here on Ravelry.

If you like feminine cardigans, you can also check out the knit design of Kate Davies.

Reading tip about Scandinavian lifestyle

The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell (this book was one of the books that Fiona Moss recommended during our chat in this podcast episode)

Keturah’s favourite TV series

Frasier! British TV series: Lovejoy, As Time Goes On (the one that Keturah mistakenly called "You Must Remember When" in the show-- oops!), and Pie In The Sky. Star Trek.

Jorunn’s favourite TV series

Downton Abbey, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Atypical, Love on The Spectrum

How to connect with Keturah:

You can find Keturah on Substack as Flora’s Flat

Keturah is on Ravelry as livevintageously, and you can also find her on Instagram as woolhensjoy for knitting, hens, baking, and life joys, and as darkautumndarling for Dark Autumn Seasonal colour explorations!

How to connect with Nordic Simplicity:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

Write a DM to me here on Substack or click here to write me an email.

Are you a one book at a time reader, or a multiple books at the same time reader?

This is one of the topics we pondered.

Come join Lisbeth and me as we ask each other this and other questions, and we talk about books, our shared fascination for castles and ruins, and and we both agree about what is the truest luxury.

Lisbeth also shared some thoughts around what she calls “the many faces we have throughout time” (such a beautiful sentence that I had to make it into the headline for this podcast episode), one face as a child, one as an adult, as a spouse, and then when we are retired, how to reconcile ourselves with the face of that phase in our life. And also, we talked about how we all need to feel useful.

And you get to learn a Swedish word: Fika!

Lisbeth reads

Faust by Goethe

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

No Angel by Penny Vincenzi

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

Marie Antoinette’s Head by Will Bashor

The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham

Jorunn reads

Beartown triology by Frederik Backman

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (and will soon read Elizabeth and Her German Garden)

The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury. In the podcast recording, I mistakenly called this book “the lost prince” but that is an entirely different novel, The Lost King of France is about the young son of Marie Antoinette.

And of course we talked about food

Regarding the Spätzle we talk about (the ultimate comfort food if you ask me), here is a link to a recipe for Käsespätzle. Which is Spätsle with cheese, for those moments when the mouthwatering, melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness of plain Spätzle isn’t enough. It’s like macaroni and cheese, but better... And if it sounds daunting because you don’t have a Spätzle maker, look up this link for some really handy tips on how to make Spätsle without one.

How to connect with Lisbeth

Her blog is called The Content Reader and you can also find her here on Substack.

This podcast episode is free, so please share it with others who might enjoy listening!

You don’t want to miss this episode if you would like to get inside tips on how to use dye to tweak the colours of natural fibres. Tiffany Henschel is my guest in this podcast episode, and I am in awe of how she performs miracles with dye, on delicate fibres like merino wool and silk, and she shares her inside tips in this conversation.

Tiffany uses Jacquard dye for delicate fabrics like wool and silk. For other fabrics, there is Rit dye, and also the ever popular dye that you can use in the washing machine, Dylon.

Tiffany is a True Autumn. In our conversaiton we talk about how to consider the original colour of a garment when dyeing it.

Another of Tiffany’s tips is to repurpose fabric belts as headbands:

Books that have made an impression on Tiffany

M L Longworth - A Provençal Mystery series, mystery books set in Provence

Quiet by Susan Cain

Mindset by Carol Dweck

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Evening loungewear

This was such an exciting topic that I have devoted a whole special post to it in great detail, available on July 5 for all paid subscribers!

Books that have made an impression on Jorunn

An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears

My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal

How to connect with Tiffany

Tiffany is on Instagram. Look her up there, her Insta ID is @tiffanyhenschel. Click your way into to Tiffany’s style board on Pinterest, which she talks about in the podcast episode.

How to connect with me:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

Write a DM to me here on Substack or click here to write me an email

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A conversation with Jenny Cundy, born in England, now living in rural south-west France.

Listen to Jenny tell how she met her husband Bob Cundy and became his assistant as they traveled the world creating documentaries as freelance film photographers and how they ended up settling in a small, remote village in France.

Bob passed on a few years ago but Jenny still lives in the old farmhouse that she and her husband restored, where she leads a busy life dividing her time between her large garden, her tiny pond with two frogs, costume sewing for the local English theatre and she is always ready to lend a helping hand to friends.

She recently decided to take up painting again, something she hasn’t done a lot of since photography became her career. And it is never too late, she has started taking painting classes.

Our conversation moves between reminiscing and talking about books we have read and what we both love to cook.

And clothes. For a fashion aficionado, she is very down to earth (I think gardening does that to people).

Her favourite accessory is scarves. And she always wear a curated collection of interesting bangles and bracelets.

I couldn’t resist asking for a selfie with Jenny before I left, displaying our matching sun hats in her sun-drenched courtyard:

Perfumes

We discovered a mutual love of luxurious scents, and discussed our different taste in perfumes.

Jenny’s favourites: Guerlain Mitsuko (the vintage edition), Guerlain Shalimar

Jorunn’s favourite: Frederic Malle Superstitious

Books

Jenny recently finished River Kings by Kat Jarman. In the same vein, she recommends The Ancient Paths about the Celts by Graham Robb.

She is presently reading Night and Day by Virginia Woolf.

After we turned off the recording, we returned to the topic of Virginia Woolf and Jenny talked about Virginia Wolf’s book Flush - A Biography, which is about the beloved dog of Elisabeth Barrett Browning. Barrett Browning loved her dog so much. Here is her poem called To Flush, My Dog. I hereby add Virginia Woolf’s book about Flush to my reading list, and thank Jenny for her time, it was such a wonderful conversation!

Connect with Jenny via her photos

To see some of Jenny’s food and people photos, they are available here.

How to connect with me:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Thank you for listening. This post is public so feel free to share it with someone who might be interested in quiet conversations about books, rescue chickens and other things that makes life worth living.

Subscribe to Nordic Simplicity, to dress like you mean it, feel like yourself and find out why cat sniffing and gardening is better than shopping for clothes:

“We didn’t mean to have five cats, but we do”.

My kind of woman.

Cate Linden may be known to you as a colour analyst, style coach, and she also recently started training other colour analysts. Listen to our conversation where we explore the lesser known sides of Cate Linden.

Cate and I go way back. We met in New York at a colour analyst conference more than a decade ago, and we have kept in touch ever since, and together we publish videos on YouTube with colour analysis related content. Besides both of us being colour analysts, we have several things in common, among them is a love of cats, but it turned out during this conversation, as with most other deep conversations, that there were several things that we did not know about each other.

Enthusiastic polyhobbyist

Cate has many hobbies, and we found that the best phrase for this condition is “enthusiastic polyhobbyist”.

Amateur = someone who does what they love

What we also talked about is how wonderful it is to do something just because you love doing it, whether or not you are good at it! What a pleasure it is to look at these joyful paintings that Cate has made. They sparkle with creativity and colour, just as she sparkles in this photo of her.

By the way: We did not make up the phrase “enthusiastic polyhobbyist”. At comes from the movie The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, with Benedict Cumberbatch as the exentric painter.

And: Wain painted cats. Lots of cats. A coincidence? I think not.

Books and poets that have made an impression on Cate

The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler 

Lessons on Expulsion by Erika L. Sánchez

The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Grilled Cajun Shrimp

Ingredients:

2 lbs raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

For the shrimp:

Cayenne pepper

Black pepper

Salt

Tabasco or Crystal

Worcestershire

Fresh parsley, minced

For the butter sauce:

2 sticks butter

Juice of 2 lemons

2 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced

Cayenne pepper to taste

2 tsp salt

1/4 cup white vinegar

4-5 dashes worcestershire sauce

4-5 dashes hot sauce (Tabasco or Crystal)

1 tsp fresh black pepper

Directions:

Sprinkle seasonings onto the shrimp and rub them in with your fingers. 

For the sauce, melt the butter in a medium saucepan and add the remaining ingredients. Taste and adjust seasonings accordingly. Let the butter cool slightly (you don’t want to cook the shrimp), then pour the mixture onto the shrimp (an 8x8 dish works well for this). 

When ready to grill, thread the shrimp onto pre-soaked wooden skewers and grill for 2 minutes on each side, basting generously with the butter sauce as they cook. 

Excellent served with grilled vegetables or a salad.

How to connect with Cate:

You can follow Cate on Instagram (highly recommended) and for style coaching and colour analysis, you can find information and get in touch with her on her website.

How to connect with me:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

Write a DM to me here on Substack or click here to write me an email.

I am not only interviewing strangers. Sometimes it is lovely to sit down with a friend and listen to her story too. This is Sigrid. She is one of the coolest people I know:

My friend Sigrid Fangel who lives in the same town and we spent the better part of an hour chatting at my kitchen table.

But before we sat down, she lured me into the sea with her.

What we talked about

Sigrid is an avid chillswimmer, she swims in the sea all year. As I am fascinated by the weirdness of this strange sport, I asked if I could join her. And before you could spell goosebumps, I was swimming around in seawater, learning how to breathe calmly even though the water is only 10 degrees (Celcius, not Fahrenheit). And I survived, and grudgingly had to admit that it was strangely invigorating and I might actually do it again with her. Chillswimming will not dethrone my favourite hobbies of drinking wine and reading a book while looking out at sea, but interestingly enough it did not scare me from doing it again.

We also talked about being scared and doing it anyway, and about anxiety, and about finding your own style by just becoming yourself, and of course we talked about chickens. As one does.

The darker side of Norwegian culture

Janteloven - The Law of Jante, the unwritten Scandinavian societal norm. The Author Aksel Sandemose wrote about a fictional town called Jante, and the rules of conduct according to the Law of Jante are:

* You're not to think you are anything special

* You're not to think you are as good as we are

* You're not to think you are smarter than we are

* You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are

* You're not to think you know more than we do

* You're not to think you are more important than we are

* You're not to think you are good at anything

* You're not to laugh at us

* You're not to think anyone cares about you

* You're not to think you can teach us anything

It’s basically a crash course in How To Acquire Impostor Syndrome. This is a part of Norwegian culture that we are not particularly proud of……

Books we talked about

Unquiet by Linn Ullmann

The eighth life (for Brilka) by Nino Haratischwili

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

On The Calculation Of Volume by Solvej Balle

In this episode, my guest is Fiona Moss, whom I met when she came to Oslo for a colour analysis appointment, and we discovered we just had so much to talk about so I ended up inviting her to be a guest on my podcast, so we could continue our conversation on Zoom.

Rescue chickens

Fiona lives in England, and she loves animals. Among other fascinating topics, she introduced me to the concept of “rescue chickens”, which I have never heard of before she told me about it:

Obviously, a rescue chicken is a hen that has been rescued from an egg farm to live out the rest of her her life in pleasant surroundings instead of being put down when she is not laying enough eggs. A marvelous idea. Fiona has told me that she gets new rescue chickens, she nurses them back to health, and slowly introduces them to life in the green grass of her spacious garden, teaching them to live as a chicken should live, not in crowded conditions with 24-hour lighting. I will let you listen to her tell about it. it absolutely makes me want to adopt a rescue chicken or three. Look it up! The website of BHWT, the organisation that she gets her rescue chickens from, is this one.

For the love of vintage Scandi items

Fiona has an Etsy shop called WhatFionaLoves and you can find that here. The images are so beautiful, and if you love Scandinavian home decor it will have you drooling.

Books that have made an impression on Fiona

The books she talk about in our “fireside chat” are these ones:

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson

The Year of Living Danishly, by Helen Russell

Heiða A Shepherd at the Edge of the World, by Steinunn Sigurðardóttir

Later in our conversation we talk about books that inform/entertain/inspire/comfort me, and Fiona mentions the author Michael Morpurgo.

Books that I mention in this episode

Some of the books that I mention are: River Kings, by Kat Jarman. All That remains, by Sue Black. The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer. Seaside Donkey, by Hannah Engelkamp. Shackleton’s Forgotten Expedition, by Beau Riffenburgh.

Enjoy listening to Fiona and check out her Etsy shop and the books she mentions. I have already decided to add all three books to my summer reading list.

How to connect with Fiona:

This is her on Substack, and this is the WhatFionaLoves Etsy Shop. You can also find her on LinkedIn.

How to connect with me:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

Write a DM to me here on Substack or click here to write me an email.

This podcast episode is a conversation with Michelle Adams. We had all kinds of internet problems while recording, which involved Michelle having to migrate through various rooms in her house in order to get a stable signal that allowed us to talk without the Zoom connection freezing, or the sound breaking up. Thankfully, Michelle has the patience of an angel, and I got to use this recording as a very useful practice in editing. I managed to edit away the worst stakkato noises of where the sound started breaking up, but the sound quality definitely leaves something to be desired here and there. Any disturbance in sound quality is entirely a result of my lacking ability as a sound engineer.

Michelle is what she calls a woman “of a certain age”. And one of the things we touch on in the chat is how old do you have to be to be “of a certain age”?

We also talk about books (of course), and also discussed parakeets, cockatiels and chickens as pets (as one does), and chatted about being introvert and how lovely it is to interact with the resident dog and other wallflowers instead of circulating in the crowd engaging in small talk.

We also talked about why I became a colour analyst, and we debated what Michelle shall bring on an Alaskan cruise. Sadly I will not fit in her suitcase.

Michelle reads a lot on Substack and here are her favourites:

Living Small - Laura Fenton

Southern Voice - Beth Yarbrough

Wildhood Wanted - Kristi Keller

Four Corners of the Southwest - Jan Spell

Nordic Simplicity (of course) - Jorunn Hernes

What Michelle is reading right now:

Inspire (NLT) Bible: The Bible for Creative Journaling from Tyndale Publishers

Books that have made a lasting impression on Michelle:

East of Eden- John Steinbeck

The Cask of Amontillado- Edgar Allan Poe

Macbeth- William Shakespeare

We talked about being introvert and here is the system she mentions:

Florence Littauer, who writes about 4 primary personality types: Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, and Melancholy. Her book is Personality Plus.

How to connect with Michelle

Michelle has her own substack! You can find it here.

How to connect with me:

You can find more content from me and lots of stuff about simple and efficient dressing with Scandinavian simplicity here.

Would you like to be a guest on my podcast?

Write a DM to me here on Substack or click here to write me an email.

There are advantages to living in a country with a great health care system, even though they press your already flat breast into a hitherto unknown state of flatness.