Renovation dream..

 I have come to the stage in working with my old house my dreams start looking a bit like this:

Maybe it is high time to take a little break and sit back with a good book or a relaxing knitting for a little while now!

This great animation is made by Elina Minn at Thuru.

Here is another great,artistic music video worth your while from Thuru:

The festive season..

..is drawing closer. It´s been unbelievably greyish in Sweden lately. Grey skies are covering the country like a big compact lid!The period of the"cosy-indoors-lighting-up-candles" is here!  For me, the old, lovely well-wishing cards and paintings made by Jenny Nyström are closely connected to the festive season. And a "feel good" mood filled of the security of the traditions of the old days. (Yeah. I know that can be discussed!) Pretty, sentimental, and old fashioned - her fairytale poatcards and paper wallcovering strips will always be loved by the Swedes. We Swedes grew up with her pictures. And we love them..

Jenny Eugenia Nyström (born June 13 or June 15, 1854 in Kalmar, Sweden; died January 17, 1946 in Stockholm) was a painter and illustrator of children’s books, but is mainly known as the person who created the Swedes’ image of the “jultomte” on numerous Christmas cards and magazine covers, thus linking the Swedish version of Santa Claus to the gnomes of Scandinavian folklore.

(The info on Jenny Nyström is from Wikipedia)

An Easter Greeting card with a "gnom" or tomte decked out in his X-mas outfits!

  

Her father was a school teacher and piano teacher, and also the cantor of the Kalmar Castle Church. When Jenny Nyström was eight years old, the family moved to Gothenburg, where her father had found a better paying teaching job.

  

In 1865 she started in the Gothenburg art school Göteborgs Musei-, Rit- och Målarskola, today known as Konsthögskolan Valand, and in 1873 she was admitted to the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where she studied for eight years. Thanks to a scholarship, this was followed by studies in Paris 1882-1886, at Académie Colarossi and Académie Julian.

 

While in Paris, she discovered the booming postcard market, and tried to persuade the Swedish publishing house Bonnier to start producing postcards, but they declined. She, however, eventually became Sweden’s most productive postcard artist.
(This publishing house later did another giant blunder, when they rejected Astrid Lindgren´s first book on Pippi Longstocking..)

(I pasted my face to her X-mas card a few years ago to mail as a personal greeting! I hope this action is statute-barred by now!)

 

In 1887, at the age of 33, she married the medical student Daniel Stoopendaal, brother of fellow artists Ferdinand Stoopendaal. Wilhelm Johan Stoopendaal, Georg Stoopendaal and Ebba Stoopendaal. Due to tuberculosis Daniel was never able to finish his studies and take up his intended profession. It was instead up to Jenny to support herself, her husband and their son through her artistry, while Daniel handled her business affairs. He died in 1927.

 

In 1933 her son, Curt Nyström Stoopendahl, followed in her footsteps and also became a popular postcard and poster artist, staying very close to his mother’s artistic style. Even his signature, “Curt Nyström”, looked like his mother’s. Likewise, her brother-in-law, Georg Stoopendaal (1866-1953), already in the beginning of the 19th century found postcards to be a good source of income, contrary to his more serious paintings, and his Christmas cards are also clearly inspired by Jenny Nyström's.

 

See more of her lovely postcard greetings here.

Acquiring a new piece of land..

For sometime I have known that a patch of land somewhere out there in the vast fields surrounding my house was included in the purchase of the farm. With the help of a GPS, me, my sister and brother-in-law managed to find it last summer:
My little patch  was totally integrated in a huge cultivated field a long way off!

Now. Who was the owner of  the field? Who was cultivating my little piece of land? Yesterday I finally found out! By chance! It was owned by my next door neighbour!

And last night we had coffee at my house and made a deal!

So today, I got a long strip of land in flush with my little road to the left of the garden as a parcelling agreement on my field patch that he´s been using for years. It was a "handshake" deal - doing it for real would have been a time consuming and costly land registration exercise.

My new "land" has cherry trees and was earlier used for growing potatoes.

After serving some homebaked cookies (and a sherry!) he agreed in addition to plow the ground for me in spring! :-)

So now I know where I will start my new vegetable garden in the spring!

Happy, happy!!
I will have tomatoes, and carrots and cabbage and beans and...

Homemade limonchello..

Today I finally got around to make my own limonchello, which will have matured into its full flavor well before Xmas.(If there is anything left by then!)

It is made from lemon zest (traditionally from the Sorrento lemon in Southern Italy, though most lemons will produce satisfactory limoncello), alcohol, water, and sugar. It is light to bright yellow in color, sweet and lemony, but not sour since it contains no lemon juice.

The recipe I used (which also contains vanilla sugar) is from Sardinia, mailed to me by my friend Helmut who lives there:
 "Peel the skin of 5 lemons without the white underneath (it is bitter!) cut them in little peaces into the jar 0.5 l of alcohol 95 %
(if not available you can use vodka - 1 liter, but in this case skip the water)

0.5 l water, 300 g sugar, 1 packet of vanilla sugar about 10 g

Put all into the bottle and then close firmly

for ten days. Every morning or so, shake the bottle so the sugar is melting good
- after that filter, chill it icy cold and enjoy!"

. I also started a liquour Benedictine made in a very easy manner:

Pour some vodka - or brännvin as we use in Sweden - with a little sugar into a jug and clean an orange well and pierce it all around. Have it hang above the alcohol filled jug for some time. Be surprised how soon it starts to take on the original taste of a real Benedictine!

This trick I learned here from the native Gotlanders!

The real stuff!

It is easy! And I love it. So will you I hope.
Try it out and enjoy!

Learn a few useful Swedish expressions!

The first snow fell today in Gotland..

The radiators are turned up, the last apples are picked and stored and the gloves and winter stuff are fetched from the attic. The "rat-man" came and placed the rat traps. It was high time! Oh, am I happy to have a warm house thanks to the new installation of the air/waterpump. (Now, I just have to pay the bill!)Ha!

New blog log?

   

Getting tired of the old logo I tried to make some new ones yesterday.

Well..I don´t really know..

   These are others I made a long time ago..

Or this - oh, I already featured this logo with the old typewriter
I photographed on a hotel in Pisa acouple of years ago..

And this one with the archipelago theme I made in the days when the island of Sandhamn was the only topic on the blog agenda and "from-the-days-of-just-Swedish-texts" ..

As was this.. a bit pretentious, I think.. and never published. Thanks god.

Another one from the Swedish speaking days..made from a pic of

the sweetpeas in my sister´s beautiful garden.
Well. I don´t know. Maybe I will stick to the old one for a while more..

Returning to Gotland..

 ..I find the cherry tree outside my window shedding her yellow leaves. Is a bit like the feeling of a grand old lady changing gracefully into her winter wardrobe.

 

This is how she looked in May, 6 months back. Dressed up for summer in her prettiest pastel outfit! Cherry fragrance behind her both earlobes! Full of "cherry-berry-summer" expectations."

Stockholm, October.

Two pictures through my lens trying out an artistic twist..

A treat or a threat to human witches?

 It is all a matter of semantics!

 

Grinning for a few moments more..and one might soon lose one´s green nose!

 

Todays philosophical conclusion:
Hold back your broad grin for a bit if you happens to be sweet, orange and delicious!
Happy Halloween!