These are a few of my…you know the drill.

[mrissa]

It is time for some favorite things. I’ll start, and you join in.

1. Cloudberries.

2. Best-aunts who smuggle jars of cloudberries into unrelated gifts.

3. My ice cream lady.

4. Introducing my ice cream lady to the concept of cloudberries, because cool people and cool things should meet from time to time.

5. I do actually like crisp apple streudels. The song was pretty on-point there.

6. Clean sheets.

7. The library.

8. Transparent coping mechanisms that actually work.

9. Ambers, the fossilized tree resins.

10. Ambers, my niece and my friend.

11. Snow.

12. Trees. No, really, all of them. I like trees. I have taken to declaring myself a tree whenever anybody has a personality quiz on social media. Jo helped me figure out that I don’t have a totem animal, I have trees, and so then I answered a totem animal quiz with “I’m a tree,” and now I am answering “Which Hobbit character are you?” and “What is your Myers-Briggs?” and “Which heavy metal band are you?” with “I’m a tree,” because hey, it worked the first time. Probably this will stop amusing me at some point. But this is not yet that point.

Now you.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Comments

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

1. double-sided sticky things, for making cards and plunking scraps into journals

2. the point in making caramels when I add the butter-cream mixture to the sugar-syrup in the pan and things go gloriously whooshy and bubbling-upwise

3. soft t-shirts

4. the insouciance of my doggie as she takes her time getting off the couch she knows she shouldn't be sleeping on...

5. ...paired with her tail-chasing hysteria thirty minutes later because a squirrel or kitten outside she can't even really see is TAUNTING her with its mere existence.

6. being asked for a rewrite

7. bbq

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

Tiny adorable sleepy-but-cheerful Morgan-voice.

The enthusiasm with which this child attacks breakfast.

Peanut butter.

Tea.

Taking a walk early in the morning when it is quiet and misty.

Singing Christmas carols.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am also a breakfast-attacker. I sympathize.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

What do cloudberries taste like?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They are a seeded berry in the same family as raspberries and blackberries, but with a richer, warmer, less sharp taste.

They go very well with cream or vanilla ice cream (angelsuppa--angel soup) and even better if you add very dark chocolate chips to that. You can probably get them at Ikea if you're interested, although their price is a bit high at the moment since last year's cloudberry harvest was completely horrible and the U.S. (including m-e!) had to do without them all last year.

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Coffee. Really dark, strong coffee, and lots of it, especially first thing in the morning.

Storytelling podcasts, like The Moth or Tobolowsky Files.

Playing with the puppy (who is also a tree, since that's her name).

The feeling of accomplishment that comes with having not only started a letter but also having finished it, addressed and stamped it, and having it ready to mail. It's as good as getting letters.

That moment when I've just finished an ever-repeating chore: surveying a vacuumed or mopped floor, an empty basket that previously held freshly folded laundry, all the dishes being clean...

Going to bed early with a good book and a cup of peppermint tea.

[carbonel]

1. Things to spin (on the spinning wheel) that behave as they ought. There are so many different ways for things to behave: the blue-faced Leicester wool that just slips through my fingers like butter; the bombyx silk that is slippery and shiny but doesn't pull back because there's just enough loft in it; the Suffolk rolags that first taught me to spin long draw; and the camel down that requires a real leap of faith to spin as long draw, because there's no micromanaging camel down -- either it works or it doesn't.

2. Dark chocolate peppermint bark. And Dairy Queen's peppermint chocolate Blizzard of the Month, which is much the same flavor with a different but lovely texture.

3. My mother, who sent me the best ever birthday card -- it pretty much said "you go your own way, but you turned out great, and we love you." Which is what I've always wanted to hear from my parents.

4. Being able to breathe through my nose at night. Yay successful surgery. Also APAP machines; using them is not one of my favorite things, but not having sleep apnea is.

5. Sunsets and sunrises and other interesting sky phenomena. Pretty skies are truly one of my favorite things.

6. Chocolate chip brownies and chocolate swirl blondies and just about anything with ginger in it. I need to do some baking.

7. Being able to download ebooks from the library, and bonus favorite of not having to worry about overdue fees.

[vcmw]

1) Making cookies. The rosettes and the gingersnaps came out just right this year.
2) Books... and sometimes repairing them with bone folders and polyvinyl acetate and all that.
3) Beads.
4) Letters. With or without stickers, sealing wax, or marginal doodles. I got one from an old college friend in Germany this year, which was excellent.
5) My gram (who is not a thing but is my favorite and we always talk on Sunday)
6) Ice when it freezes on reeds and grass at the edge of a waterfall as if the whole hill were decorated in glass ornaments.
7) Tiny brick alleys with unexpected ornamental windows or grates or things that open up between buildings in some city corners.
8) Rosemary olive oil bread with big grains of salt sprinkled over the slash on top.
9) Coffee with friends by the lake
10) Catching temporary exhibits at museums with family members accidentally and getting to be amazed at things we never would have imagined before.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Trees, oh yes.

Cold weather.

Dogs.

Christmas lights.

Watching little kids play.

Sunsets and sunrise.

Rain.

Joy.

Music.

Good food in good company (especially if I did not have to cook the meal or clean after it)

Someone I don't know having read a book of mine, and liked it. (Hey, it could happen!)

Travel

[redbird]

It does happen: or at least, I think I count for this, and I very much liked Inda and the rest of that sequence.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You just made my month. Heck, the entire season!

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

1) The vanilla metal poundcake I made on Friday and people's reactions to it. I am so proud!

2) My mother's Christmases. She puts everything together and it all works out beautifully-- tons of decorations, her Santas up in the great room, cookies, and general happiness that her kids are home.

3) Dichroic glass.

4) Walking alone in the snow in the dark, hearing the quiet hiss, hearing the quiet, just being alone in the snow in the dark.

I don't know what sort of thing I might be. We might be different trees, but even then I'm not sure.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Vanilla metal poundcake?

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Benjamin Wolfe on Making Light posted the recipe and then sent some to Seanan McGuire, who tweeted that he murdered Madagascar and that the poundcake was vanilla metal. So I declared it to be vanilla metal poundcake. It is quite good, very dense, and includes a lot of vanilla.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Once I finish processing my Poland photos, I need to put together a gallery of the ambers and send it to you.

Because whoa. Poland does amber well.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

They are our Baltic siblings, to be sure.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Chocolate chip cookies when they're right fresh out of the oven.

Books filled with IWantToReadItosity. (Brust's Vlad books. Harry Potter. Early Heinlein. Early Niven. YMMV.)

A really well-played hand of bridge or game of chess.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

1. Being able to curl up on a cold winter's evening with a classic mystery novel on audiobook read by a good narrator and a cup of tea. (Most recently, Gladys Mitchell's _The Saltmarsh Murders_ and chai, respectively.)

2. Long walks.

3. Live music. Primarily but not exclusively of the loud and raucous variety. 2013 was the year I decided to get off my butt and go see more live music performances, and I'm so glad I did.

4. Smoked paprika. (I tried fresh roasted chestnuts yesterday for the first time, and my immediate thought was, "These would be really great with some smoked paprika.")

5. Being able to listen to BBC Radio 4 via the internet.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Puppy kisses.
Nancy's Can-Can routine of histrionic kicking when she's excited about something -- like when I walk into the room!
The gas stations in Oregon.
Pantone colors.
Finishing knitting something (it's so rare, like once every four years).
Tea.

[pameladean]

Crows.

The Minnesota River Valley.

Dragonfly larvae.

Google Sky Map.

Good decaffeinated black tea.

Ames Farm honey.

Saffron's long, long plumb-bob tail, which must be carried in a question-mark shape lest it get too far behind the rest of her.

Rereading books.

Chickadees.

P.

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Maple sugar candy. Strings of little lights. Getting packages in the mail. Baking cookies, also home-baked cookies. Snow (obviously). Christmas songs you can put oomph into singing. Going grocery shopping with one of my roommates and both of us simultaneously deciding we need a crate of clementines in our life. Tucked-away corners where I can be entirely alone.

[blue-hat-guru.livejournal.com]

Books

creativity

mathematics

the current ability to have an incredible amount of the information humans have ever gathered findable from my chair

good insulation

better late than never?

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Trees are good. (I have an american chestnut!! Yay!) Also feeder birds, and the fact that my trumpet honeysuckle seems to be prepared to bloom all the way through winter for a second year running. (It's listed as "semi-evergreen" but doesn't seem fazed by 10 degrees below freezing.)

Thai iced tea, pad see you, & sticky rice w/ beans for dessert; also sharing beans & the watered down dregs of the tea with the baby. (Also the glutinous rice flour balls with the sesame seeds & maybe sweet bean paste in the middle, but those would have involved going somewhere else for birthday dinner.)

Tea-- peppermint, constant comment, black current, jasmine green, cocoa chai without cinnamon...

Ridiculous loud and happy humming noises from the baby when she's eating.

Peek-a-boo games with shrieks of delight.

Fancy architectural alphabet blocks with mouse columns and things. (also sitting on the floor playing with toddler toys & getting climbed over.)

Holiday lights. The string kind, not the inflatable snowman & wire yard ornament kind.

Lush house plants.

Sleep. (both mine, & the advent of an 8pm baby bedtime rather than the 11pm one we had up until daylight savings)

Good edits or beta feedback where someone asks the right question and you figure out what it was you wanted to fix but couldn't quite pinpoint.

[thomasbull.livejournal.com]

1. The music video for "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

2. Always Mackenzie by Kate Constable

3. This blog

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you!