Carrot cake for a sunny afternoon

Spring is slowly showing its face here in Copenhagen with a blue sky and warm sunshine. But as a true Nerd Girl, I’m staying indoors with my nose in a book. I'll write more about that book, when I've finished it.

To truly enjoy this lovely season I’ve made a delicious carrot cake, - completely organic, of course.
The thing is that these types of cakes don’t really look al that tasty when you make them. I mean the pastry actually looks like vomit. For a second I had my doubts about the taste of the finished cake.
But luckily it turned out to be a juicy rich flavoured combination of cinnamon and carrot.

Place of the month April:

The oldest bakery in Copenhagen
For this month’s place I’ve selected Sct. Peder’s Bakery. It is the oldest bakery in Copenhagen,dating back to 1652 and is located in the mid-evil part of the city right across from the Sct. Petri church. Ever since I can remember Sct. Perder’s bakery has been making certain day-of-the-week type of pastry. Especially their ‘Wednesday-snails’ are famous – not as in real snails, but as in these: Cinnamon snails are a classic when it comes to real Danish pastry. But the ones they make at Sct. Peder’s Bakery are larger than you normal ‘snail’. They're huge and taste so good. It not only on Wednesdays this bakery is worth a visit, though. A few years ago the interior of this small bakery was redone and it now also has a very small ‘café’, where you can enjoy al the other great types of bread and pastry – like the Thursday chocolate horn.

A skirt for spring

This weekend I finally had the time to make a dress from the fabric I printed on a few weeks back. It’s not completely finished yet as I’m still considering whether or not to put blue ribbon on the pockets.

Celebrating political women

On Sunday - tomorrow- it's the 100 th anniversary for the Danish women’s right to vote and be elected in local elections – an important milestone on the road to women's complete right vote, which came in Denmark in 1915. Tomorrow a huge celebration will take place in the Town Hall square with open air concerts with among others the cool JaConfetti, delicious foods and a lot of interesting debates going on about women in politics. All over town powerful women – not only politicians – are interviewed in public about their different roads to power. I love these type of historical event and I think it's important to recognise the historical perspectives in our democratic development. Without the efforts of historical nerd girls and women a hundred years ago our reality would look completely different.

The very cool Danish artist Katirne Ærtebjerg has put her picture on the poster as you see above. Her artwork can also be seen on her website and she also has a piece at the Danish National Gallery. I really like her imaginary cartoon-like world, it is spooky with fairytale facination. Her heavy brush strokes and the strong colours remind me a bit of O’keefe’s pictures.A special scarf has been designed by Danish designer Susanne Rützou to mark the occasion.
It is inspired by the classical PLO-scarf, but it’s pink and decorated with small women’s symbols and 100-signs. I think it's a cool way of marking this historical event and the design is modern, but perfect for all types of women.
It can be bought tomorrow at the town hall square and then on at Susanne Rützou’s own shop here in Copenhagen.
So all Nerd Girls unite and come to the celebration tomorrow - it will be going on all day!

Summer shoes

Brand new silent sneakers

I finally found a pair of shoes that I like to replace my poor old All-stars. Yeah.. I know that shoe shopping is supposed to an easy thing for a girl, but this Nerd Girl a picky cheapskate- a bad combo in this case. As much as I adore interesting fashion, I also stink at shopping for the specific things I really need. Inspiration usually leaves me, when I know I have to get a specific item and then I just can’t make up my mind. Anyway these are from Bobby Burns and I especially like the pointy shape. They look so friendly and silent, that now I'm sure I can sneak up on anyone, without making a sound.

20s for spring:
Shopping in my search for sneaker-like shoes, it was of course easiere to find many other things I wanted.

Not only in shoe-design, but in fashion and style in general I’m getting more and more inspired by the 1920’s and 30’s. I love Wackerhaus’ style and her loose dresses like this one.

I've been looking at old pictures from the 20s and 30s to see what kind of shoes women wore back then and their are usually very simple, almost a bit boring shoes. But I've found some shoes online that I think fit well into the 20s and 30s style.

From Topshop:

From Asos:

The power of Martha

I will tell you of a performance of Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ I saw last night at Gasværket.
‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ is one of my favourite plays and I saw it a few years back for the first time staring the Danish comedian actress Søs Egelind as Martha. She is most famous for her funny performances in comedy shows, but in that production she proved that she really has an incredible talent for serious acting. In my eyes Egelind’s performance was very overlooked in the world of Danish theatre – she really deserved an award for it, but I think many critics still only see her as a comedian. It is safe to say – without exaggerating – that she gave me one of my greatest theatre-experiences ever. And I’ve been a theatre-goer since I basically could walk. In general that production made such an impression on me that I already had my doubts about going to see a new and different one last night. One’s first great experience of a play is rarely exceeded and I guess that makes me a though critic for this production.
But Albee’s play is such a classic and it will and should be staged again and again – and it deserves to constantly be challenged by new actors and directors. Last nights production has already received a lot of critical praise which ultimately helped to persuade me to go.

And I did enjoy it and I enjoyed the fact that it was very different from the first one I saw. But it still didn’t surpass my first experience at all. In this production Martha was played by the great Danish diva Paprika Steen. She defiantly has the temper and desperation which such a part needs and I think she was the absolute best thing about the whole production. Martha’s inner strengths and weaknesses are vital in the play, but what fascinates me the most is the ‘war’ between Martha and George. Unfortunately, I think that the George here played by Lars Brygmann was too weak to match Paprika’s Martha. All his rage and physic game playing seemed too random and lacked a deep ongoing plotting hatred that I think George has towards Martha.
At Gasværket Martha is sexy and George is the old intellectual – but I failed to really believe their mutual attraction. This amazingly complicated relationship seems only to break out into open war because of the two guests – Honey and Nick – but as I understand it, Martha and George have been at war most of their marriage. In the production at Gasværket it seems as if this war starts and ends that night and thus reducing Honey and Nick to odd comic relief gadgets through out the play.

The stage design was amazing, done by Gasværket's manager Jon Stephensen. With a rotating stage construction and a house with moving walls, George and Martha’s home seems like combination of Pandora’s Box and a fish tank.

The House in my Head

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing a few of Randi & Kartine’s art-installations. These two young Danish artists make the most wonderful houses that trigger your imagination with their surprising movements. They are model houses but with a lot of soul and life inside.
The exposition is shown at Gl. Strand and even though it is very small, it still proves that Randi & Katrine can bring weird and strange ideas to life. Shaped like human heads with the windows as eyes and doors as mouths the houses each have different moving features which adds life and mystery.

There is a playful and theatrical feeling in the exhibition that I don’t think I’ve experienced since I as a child saw pieces by Jean Tinguely – but Randi & Katrine are simpler in their work and leave more to your imagination and this really intrigues me. I hope it will one day be possible to see larger exhibitions with their work.