Coming to a point..

..when I could not stand the old, grey wallpapers from the 70´s of my studio anymore, I just had a freaky spell at them the other day. To the sound of the cosy stove burning (and Joe Cocker) I frantically started to paint the walls with"feel-good" pictures.

There were tributes to Niki de St Phalle.
Tinguely and Niki
She, her very person, and her poetry and crazy, great art that is like a roller coaster to your mind and makes you constantly feel good!
Her Buddha sculpture in Israel.
Niki: Mistress of the Universe.

And from Niki to Alice - Mistress of the Wonderland - copied from an old story book I bought in an antiquarian bookshop in Harare, Zimbabwe in the 80´s. Alice in this old story book is the spitting image of..
Alice Liddell in a photo of taken by Lewis Carroll himself in 1858.

Design above the little stove.

I am going to add some more Niki´s. Maybe this one?
Sooo lovely - don´t you think?

Or this one?

Or may be all of them?

Exhaused, I later fell asleep on the sofa next to the silky hunting beagle snoring away in the library while the autumn darkness fell over the now completely stripped apple trees outside the windows. It is still unusually warm in Sweden for November, so today I will abandon the paint brushes to collect the last walnuts on the ground as well as the last red winter apples.
AND it is high time to find somebody to lend me a Lagotto dog to sniff up the Gotland truffles of the season!
On the sunny Sunday morning by the way, we had some 50 flounders/flat fish in the net! And had them smoked in my brother-in-law´s homebuilt smokehouse. Delicious!
Last year´s truffle catch.

Sunday morning, sunrise at Sandhamn, the Stockholm archipelago.

Trying out the new panorama application on my IPhone. Worked quite OK despite the fact I was not able to cope with the stitching and adjusting of light the way you do with the panning in Photoshop. But this time I travelled light without a computer so it will just have to do.The boats are now resting ashore for the winter; a few sailingboats were spotted at sea though, and there is a stunning tranquility lingering over the autumn days in the outer archipelago. With all turists gone you spendgood times at the Sandhamn´s wellknown Inn talking at lengths to old friends and all-year-around inhabitants (the natives! :-) of the island - like I was myself some years ago. Nice! But now I am flying off back to Gotland again to the old farm with the redroof and the 10000 apples!
Bye Sandhamn for now!

Childhood memories..

In my summerhouse in Sandhamn in the Stockholm archipelago, I stumbled upon my old song book "Mors lilla Olle" (Mother's little Olle) with its lovely illustrations by Elsa Beskow and just had to share.. EB is placed deep in most Swedish hearts - and definitely in mine!
Had to share with you!

Update!

Happy birthday Lina!

And many happy returns!
I wish you a wonderful day and will see you Sunday for hugs and kisses!

Sunday - going to the auctions

Every other Sunday,

..there is a great auction going on at Smågårde just outside Visby, Gotland. In the summer, it´s crowded with people from the mainland with money in their pockets. But now, in October, we, the natives can make real bargains. Entire farms from the island are often auctioned off - and the quality range from the very exquisite to affordable "wanna-have" bric-a-bracs.
So we went, last Sunday.

My sister made a successful bid for this stereoscopy (see end of this blog comment) from the turn of the last century. (above)

A great gadget with a number of old pictures/photos from the past!
(a bit of burlesque and daring photos too, no doubt!)

Popular auctioneer, Ulf in action. He is a master at creating a jolly ambiance and there are a lot of laughter amidst the efficiency!

However, bidding can be serious stuff..

An impressive 17th century bible for sale. Unfortunately not entirely intact.

Nena and Mia discussing if the pair of binoculars on the table are good enough for birdwatching -
-one of Mia´s great interests.

A pretty hand embroidered bridal footstool.

"Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
"Ce trois pipes!"
(Magritte ref: pipe and passport)

We landed the bid for this old tureen!

I haven´t the slightest .. what this is? Do you?
Nor this.. :-)

A towel rack from the beginning of the 20th century.

Now:
Guess what I brought home? My sister and my friend stuffed my car so full of good I could hardly close the booth! And I? I bought nothing. I am presently busy insulating my little well-over-100-year-old farmstead before the winter. Talking about antiquities!
And those many repairing activities do not exactly cost
" needle money" - as the saying goes in Sweden.
"Rather warm feet,
than hand embroidered sheet!"


Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopic or 3-D imaging) refers to a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by presenting two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. Both of these 2-D offset images are then combined in the brain to give the perception of 3-D depth. Three strategies have been used to accomplish this: have the viewer wear eyeglasses to combine separate images from two offset sources, have the viewer wear eyeglasses to filter offset images from a single source separated to each eye, or have the lightsource split the images directionally into the viewer's eyes (no glasses required; known as Autostereoscopy).
(Wiki)

Tribute to Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

I want to put a ding in the universe..

Life before the computer

Memory was something you lost with age

An application was filed for employment

A program was a radio- or TV show

A cursor used profanity

A keyboard was a piano

A web was made by a spider

A virus meant a runny nose

A CD was a bank account

A hard drive was a tough trip in your car

A mouse pad a place for the mouse to crash

And if you had a 3,5 inch floppy -

you just hoped nobody would find out

(Free interpretation from Funny.com)

"And the White Knight is talking backwards.."

Sunday, I spent decorating a wall in the old section of the house which has not yet been renovated. The fog was rolling outside and I stayed indoors painting Alice! Here she is growing after eating the strange mushroom! The rest of the walls in this corner room beaming with light will be covered with other Wonderland motives. A rabbit or two? An evil off-with-her-head queen of Diamonds?

I remember what we used to call that mushroom back in Berkeley in 68, grooving to Jefferson Airplane´s record: "The white rabbit" - which I have to admit, I still adore:
Grace Slick paying tribute to Alice´s famous trip to Wonderland. (At Woodstock, -69)

White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said;
"Keep YOUR HEAD

Keep your head"

Indian summer..

October is soon upon us and Sweden (at least the southern parts) is really experiencing a great "Indian Summer" with warm and sunny days. Tuesday, I did not leave the boundries of my paradise garden for a moment. The lawns are emerald green, the grass is studded with a variety of apples in all apple colors.
The sun was burning my cheeks while I picked the late, huge,sweet rasberries.

Presently,the kirchen is covered with buckets full of golden apple must and I am trying to make some cider too. What a nice feeling it will be to open a bottle of perfectly ecological must when the winter storms rattle the dark windows!
I will most probably finish them off long before that!
(The bottles that is - not the ratteling windows!)

The old barns are painted in the impressionistic
light of late September..
Some roses are still flowering to the joy of ambitious bees who are flying in for a last sip.

The nasturtium is heading towards the sky - oh, how I love their typical smell that brings back childhood memories..
The pears are just about to ripe and these big ones above tastes delicious,
- warmed by the late early autumn sun.

The small green grapes are full of seeds and growing by a southern wall.
Not much for wine making, really!
(The cider will do just fine!)

The Jerusalem artichokes In the background are almost three meters tall by now and the small lumps will not be dug up from the soil below until the first frost!
Then, we shall make a delicious soup!
(It´s the first season I grow these - cost a small fortune for two plants!)

The dahlias are in now in bloom.

And there is a crimson sky almost every evening. Soon, to soon, the entire garden will turn the same colors, gold, purple, orange and crimson..
I wonder why the Anglo world calls the warm fall days "Indian summer"?
So we consult Wiki as always:
An Indian summer is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs in the autumn. It refers to a period of considerably above normal temperatures, accompanied by dry and hazy conditions, usually after there has been a killing frost. Depending on latitude and elevation, the phenomenon can occur in the Northern Hemisphere between late September and mid November. In Sweden we say "Britt summer" because of the namesday of Britt or Britta that occurrs on the 7th of October.