As Adam said, we're back in Grand Marais this week. It's not really a vacation this time around, we've got tons to get done. I'm teaching my Intro to Etsy class tomorrow night, and there's been much to do in getting ready for that. Am I ready? Oh heck no. But by tomorrow night I'll get as ready as I can.
I had an interview on WTIP yesterday morning. I used to do quite a bit of radio when we lived up here, but no matter, I still had a completely nonverbal moment on the air. Covered it pretty well by telling the story of how my extremely accomplished sports announcer father-in-law said after his first game: "I can't believe all the words I've forgotten." That lightened the mood a bit, and I was able to get most of the info out fairly coherently. We even had a caller with a question, which means that someone was listening!
But the big one was that I did a photo shoot, fashion style, with my good friend Stephan Hoglund and the lovely Lindsay Berglund. I've talked about Stephan before. Like many creative people, he's got several talents. He's a fantastic jeweler, and also a wonderful fashion photographer. This latter talent is a bit difficult to pull off in the middle of the wilderness, but somehow he manages to make great pictures of lovely people in beautiful things. (IF YOU ARE A DESIGNER AND YOU WANT GREAT PHOTOS FOR LESS THAN YOU WOULD PAY IN THE CITY CONTACT STEPHAN!)
Lindsay Berglund may in fact be the toughest woman I have ever met. And that's saying something because I know some tough women. She runs a natural dairy farm, Lakeview Natural Dairy. She pushing cows around, takes no guff from a crabby bull, and deals with pigs and chickens. Holy cats I don't know how she does it. She also manages to be one of the most statuesque, tall, thin, beautiful women I've seen. She's got all that model stuff, without the diets, without the ridiculous workouts, without all the bullshit (just nosy neighbors!). It turns out that pushing cows around actually tones you quite well. Oh and did I mention that she does all of this in pretty much full makeup? Man, I can't even manage that and I work from 3-7 in the afternoon. She works from like 4:00 am to 11:00 pm every day!
So Lindsay can have a few hours off in the mid-afternoon, which just happens to be the worst time of day to shoot, but art comes from dealing with limitations, and we went for it. We treked through cow pastures, Lindsay in lovely dress and heels, having no problem with mud. At one point she saw that one of her cows had a little problem and she went over barbed wire in said dress to help the cow. I can't wait to get the pictures of that!
We also had the most unbelievably blackflies. They were terrible. I had coated myself in various bug dopes, but Lindsay didn't care as she deals with them daily. I would expect that usually she's able to swat them away. This time she had to sit there and let it happen. Both Lindsay and Stephan had blood on their faces and ears after a while. Thank heavens for Photoshop!
I definitely will be posting some of the raw photos so y'all can see just what they went through. It's amazing.
I don't have the photos yet. Stephan's still working his little magic on them. Can't wait to share! (Emily)
Other: www.moesewco.etsy.com
