Telemark Travelogue My lovely and talented wife writes a ton of blog posts in the course of her duties as the editor of the Sons of Norway's Viking magazine. Today she posted about a family trip we took last August to the gorgeous Telemark region of southern Norway.

Check out Amy's reflections on renting from Rent-A-Wreck, eating the best ice cream in Norway, and more: Travel Lessons from Telemark  ¶ 4:10 PM 0 comments

  NORTHFIELD.ORG: A Shining Beacon Since the Dark Days of 1992 Notable events of 1992

• George H.W. Bush vomits in the lap of the Japanese prime minister
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer sentenced to life in prison
• Rodney King beating leads to six days of rioting in Los Angeles
• Prince Charles and Princess Diana announce their separation
• Kurt Cobain marries Courtney Love
• Marisa Tomei wins an Academy Award for a supporting role in My Cousin Vinny
• Nick Nolte named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive
• Northfield Free-Net (later to become Northfield Citizens Online) launches an online bulletin board system that will one day become Northfield.org

(I spent six years on the board of Northfield Citizens Online. Happy birthday Northfield.org ... see you at the party!)

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  I'm so Crafty. A few years ago my kids and I learned how to make felted balls at a Scandinavian midsummer event in Minneapolis. This fall my 10-year-old son and I made a bunch of felted heart ornaments for a story that my wife was doing for Viking magazine. (She's the editor.) The November issue just arrived in the mail, and our hearts ended up on the cover! Here's how we made them:

Wet-Felted Heart Ornaments


To make this project, all you need is wool roving (available at yarn stores or online), dish soap, and hot water. A felting needle is helpful, but not necessary

1. Start out by wrapping a bit of roving into a tight ball about the size of a marble, then continue to add looser layers of roving, alternating the direction in which you wrap, until you have a ball that's about 1/3 larger than the heart you want to end up with.
2. Soak the ball in a bowl of water--which should be as hot as possible without being uncomfortable--and put a few drops of soap on the wool.
3. Roll the ball between your hands, very lightly at first, then increasing pressure until the ball starts to take shape. Dip the ball in the water whenever it starts to get dry, and keep rolling until the ball starts to feel firm.
4. Felted balls make a lovely ornament on their own, but if you want to shape them further, this is the stage to do it. To make a heart, flatten the ball between your hands and use your fingers to start forming the heart shape.
5. You can shape the heart entirely by hand, working the wool as you would a lump of not-very-malleable clay, and using your fingernails to make the crease in the top, but it's easier if you have a felting needle. If you have a needle, just stab the wool repeatedly in a line at the top of the flattened ball until you have a deep crease. You can use the needle to shape the pointy end at the bottom of the heart, but I've found that it's just as easy to use my hands to rub the bottom of the ball into a conical shape.
6. When your ball has transformed into a satisfying heart shape, it's time to finish it by rinsing it in cold water. When all the soap has been rinsed out, squeeze the heart in a towel and make any final tweaks to its shape. You can run a loop of thread or embroidery floss through the top of the heart if you want to hang them on a tree.

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  The Beatles in Northfield In the process of making a poster for a local Beatles tribute show, I had a little fun with the lads from Liverpool. Here they are making the long walk from Abbey Road to Division Street....





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  Dig these Posters I've been making a ton of gig posters lately. The Bratlanders play at least a couple times a month, plus my friend Jim has a way of talking me into making posters for his band, The Mad Ripple, and then there's my friend Rich at The Contented Cow who I really can't say no to, and...you get the idea. So I figured it was time to put all my favorites in one online place for easy viewing. Thus, my latest website: Dig and be Doug: "Posters that Don't Suck."

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  Going Local I wrote this for the member newsletter of my local food co-op over a year ago, but seeing as it's Earth Day and all, I thought it was a good time to repost it.

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[View this as a PDF]

Before I begin, I feel like I should make a disclaimer statement: This article is not meant to prescribe a “correct” way to eat, shop, or live. It’s just my own story of how local food ties into a larger “fully local” life for me.

When my wife and I moved our family to Northfield from Minneapolis seven years ago, neither of us had very strong ties to the community. We’d both gone to college here and had friends and family nearby, but there was nothing as solid as a job that brought us to town. Our main reason for relocating was a desire for the simple pleasures that a smaller community could provide: things such as walking to the library, having face-to-face conversations with store owners, and sending our kids to the same school as the other kids on the block.
Read more »  ¶ 2:37 PM 0 comments

  Giant Rock: 2011 CD Mix

Giant Rock, a boulder in the Mojave Desert

One of the things that adds a good deal of pleasure to my life is the CD Club I'm in with 11 other guys here in Northfield. Each of us is assigned a month (mine is February), and each guy picks a night in that month to share his mix while we all drink beer around a bonfire (in the warmer months) or at a local pub. Last night was the release party for my 2011 mix.

Every year (this is my fourth annual mix) I'm surprised by what ends up on my CD--this time I'm including a couple bands that I don't even really like--but the songs are all really working for me right now. This year's mix has two defining characteristics: every song has been released in the past year, and every song rocks pretty hard.

Here's the track listing:
Read more »  ¶ 2:42 PM 0 comments

  Beardsy I started a tumblr blog. Or tumblelog, to use the proper buzzword. It's all about beards. Check it out.

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  Epic Frost Northfield woke up yesterday to a magical coating of hoarfrost. Even the icicles were wearing thick, feathery blankets of tiny ice crystals. Along with everyone else in town who owns a camera, I took some photos.

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  Piano for Pyros Last night a piano was burned in the center of the Carleton College campus. It was a beautiful thing: a roaring wind-fed blaze lighting up a circle of maybe three hundred students (along with a few scattered codgers like myself). As the fire consumed the piano (really just a big, wooden box) more of the internal structure was revealed. About an hour into the event, as the keyboard fell into the ashes, the vertical strings and metal frame resembled a pair of harps leaning against each other.

The spectacle was a performance of a 1968 "composition for piano" by artist Annea Lockwood, who spoke beforehand to perhaps half the crowd, which is all that could fit in the packed lecture room where she answered questions and provided a context for the piece.

I wouldn't have expected it, but it turned out to be a big media event (with much more coverage than Scarlett Johanssen's visit last year). My photos and videos of the performance are most easily accessible from this post on Northfield.org.  ¶ 5:03 PM 0 comments

  'Stachetastic My boy and I stopped into a bagel shop the other morning for some fresh salt bagels (a.k.a. "Food of the Gods"). The enthusiastic young man working behind the counter greeted me thusly: "I really like your moustache! ...When I saw you come through the door, I thought: 'I wanna make bagels for that guy!' "  ¶ 10:43 AM 0 comments

  Not Blogging Wow...nine months since my last post. I was going to just delete this experiment in personal blogging, but now that I'm no longer on the board of Northfield.org, I might actually want my own public place to share things that are longer than 140 characters.

But don't expect much.  ¶ 4:10 PM 0 comments

  Tassavatar A few weeks ago my colleage, the renowned über-blogger Christopher Tassava, saw my little pixel avatar and asked if I could make one of him. I was excited by the challenge, but it was a lot harder than making a self-portrait (with a beard and glasses, I don't need many other details to compose my face). Last week Christopher posted the results of my labors on his blog.

Unlike the other members of his family, there aren't really any good photos of him online, so I had him send me some shots to work from. Here are the comparisons of the photo and pixel versions, side-by-side.  ¶ 4:13 PM 0 comments

  "Disconnected at Carleton College"
A student brought a movie camera into last week's premiere of the new student documentary Disconnected and blogged about it the other day. I was less than thrilled to see that his 76-second video begins with ten seconds of me looking for a place to sit.  ¶ 2:49 PM 0 comments

  Quidditch at Carleton Reason #137 why I love Carleton: This weekend the students held the first-ever muggle quidditch tournament. I shot a few pictures and a short video clip of the action.

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  Siberia? It's been a pretty miserable spring, weather-wise. But we did have a tantalizing break in the gloom last week, during which I snapped a shot of my front yard and its lovely carpet of Siberian Squill.

How fitting that a plant native to a notoriously intemperate region does so well here.

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  Not "cherry"... My first grader handed me one of his fruit snax after breakfast today. I thought he was offering me a flavor he didn't like, so I popped it in my mouth. I guess it wasn't the taste he was rejecting, but the fact that he'd dropped it on the floor. He had a horrified look on his face when he shouted: "I said it's HAIRY!"  ¶ 4:24 PM 0 comments

  It's finally spring, no thanks to the Bratlanders... OK, I'm ready to admit when I've made a mistake. You can blame me for the fact that there's still snow on the ground in April.

Back in February, my bandmates and I thought it would be a great idea to launch a Defeat of Groundhog Day campaign. Leaving the length of the winter season up to the whims of a woodchuck is a bad idea, so why not put a stop to it...right?

Who knew that the power of the mighty groundhog is not to be trifled with?!

In an attempt to win public forgiveness, we're playing a free show at Northfield's Tavern Lounge tomorrow night. We promise to do our darndest to make it feel like a hot summer night!   ¶ 12:27 PM 0 comments