THE STORM TORN MY OLD FARM

The storm tore through my old farm. My new home. The reed roof needs to be repaired in several places, and a storm in particular can make the damage worse, of course. The dogs were lying crosswise in my big bed and I tried to squeeze in a little here and there between their warm sleeping safe soft bodies. My heart almost breaks with the love for these fur babies. The most loyal, loving individuals who never ever leave my side. And now during the storm they were lying there, spreading safety and love where I was mentally holding the roof in place.

During the week, Malte and I have found a new way to clean his sensitive ears. I have found an antiseptic ear wipe for dogs that doesn't make him howl and cry in discomfort. Nowadays he comes voluntarily and puts his head in my hands, I put my cheek on his head and kiss him and sing to him and slowly gently wipe his ears and he closes his eyes and presses his nose to me as if he is almost in a trance . It is certainly possible to find ways to break scary patterns. We have found ours and it feels as if we are both longing for that morning moment when we get to cuddle a little extra.

We got up early yesterday morning to have plenty of time to snuggle up, drink coffee and walk our two morning rounds. There were two rounds with a flashlight. The darkness was so compact and didn't seem to want to let go. Then I loaded the dogs into the car and drove to Österlen and left them. Back the same way to slide into Sturup's parking garage on two wheels and start the day with a trip to Stockholm. It was time to build Formex.

It is unusual for me to travel up, I who always enter the cart down to Italy. Short route, fell asleep for a while to escape the old man's "nervously joking" jargon about the terrible plane crash in Nepal (as they called Naples) quick taxi ride to the fair and once I was there I had to pinch my arm. Parts of my fantastic crew (Abbe vice president/operational manager  and Lisa creative director) had already done 80% of the work so I could just slide in and put the finishing touches together with them. Pride knows no bounds! What a dream team. Instead, we had plenty of time to plan for the Nordic launch of our new brand Soulsisters in parallel while we hung the exhibition. Everything we do has a detailed plan and now we put the final pieces in place. Meetings over the phone with our talented technical team in Malmö clarified questions about shipping and financial issues and voila... today Wednesday we launch Soulsisters not only officially at Formex but also in the Nordic countries in our own dealer website.

Today, Formex opens the doors for our at least 30th trade fair in Sweden. I've stopped counting. It will be so much fun to meet our customers in real life again and we have a record number of visitor bookings.

Tomorrow evening I fly back to Skåne to change destinations. Italy looms with a number of exciting assignments already on Thursday. We also have a lot of production to complete and I need to be on site to check the dye baths and start the season's next collection release. The season is off to a flying start and we feel enormously humbled by the interest in what we do. After three strange, tough, world-changing years, we take absolutely nothing for granted. We are extremely happy with every success and work insanely hard to maintain a high energy level where we tackle setbacks with fine teamwork to learn how to calmly and quietly take small steps forward when the world brusquely pushes us back. The elixir of the entrepreneur's life, solving problems with joy, excitement  and pumped up muscles.

Love m.