Mother's Day postponed...

Since the post office has lost my package to my mother, containing her Mother's Day gift, even though I sent it on wednesday, the Mother's Day blog has been moved until tomorrow or to when the package has turned up. In Sweden, Mother's Day is the last Sunday of May. Anyway...

Grattis på Mors Dag Mamma!!

So the replacement topic is "I Care A Lot". I was chosen a while back to participate in the jewellery exhibition about the middle east, and it is not just being exhibited in lots of places all over the world, there is also an internet exhibition! There you can, from the comfort of your own home, have a good look at all the pieces and read as much of the statements as you can take. Take special notice of Hannah Joris, Beatrice Brovia and Adam Grinovich, they are school-mates of mine. And don't forget My pice ether!

Extinct pet

I got a dog, but I really wanted a dinosaur...

Crazy Zauberball Citron

My Citron is done! Well, it has been done a while, but today the wether was very suitable for pictures on the deck, I just love the blue-greens against the dry grey. It was a very fast and fun knit to do, the ruffles in the scarf and at the end makes it interesting, as does the colour changes. Though in the end ruffle, there is 540 stitches per row, and it is a bit trying, but it comes out great. The yarn is a Crazy Zauberball that is usually for socks, but this was a way better use. I used one whole ball, 100 g but it ran out the last 20 cm of the bind off and I had to use a different yarn. It is soft and nice with a bit of a halo. 

Gravity

Li Wei

Walks

This is the kind of thing I see on my walks during the day, I love it out here. They were not there last week. 

And on our evening walk, just now, I found a Lilac in the hedge! We own our very own lilac! True, I really wanted a blue-purple one but there is plenty of space to plant some of those later.
We had a deep discussion about "hedge versus fence", and "will the neighbour be offended". Our property has a hedge towards the road and a white picket fence towards one of the neighbours, but is open on two sides towards the second neighbour, our property used to be his lawn. We are starting to feel the need for knowing what is his and what is ours, since his property surrounds us. He has lots of old cars and caravans on his lawn, and I was thinking more in the line of a vegetable patch, a green house and some more flowery bushes.

Gifts from far away.

Celestial Seasonings and actual Belgian Chocolate! The orange tipped one contains speculoos, which I have developed a real taste for, not as much as for chocolate though.
Don't you just love the name speculoos, it tastes as it sounds because it sticks to the roof of your mouth.
I had such a great evening!

Konstfacks Spring Exhibition

Today, everyone, I want you to do somehting.
Are you living in Sweden?
Are you anywhere close to Stockholm?
Do you have an interest in art, design, new tendencies or even just like to be amazed or entertained?
If you have answered yes to these questions, I want you to go and visit Konstfacks Spring Exhibition. Even if I am not in it this year, a lot of my dear friends are, and I know where good work comes from. Go and have a look!! You have until this sunday!

Bags...

DIY Bag Lover is a fun page, if you'd like to make your own customised bag. Click on the link to get lots and lots more bag ideas. But... maybe I should not ad another crafty hobby to my list. ;)

Pride and Prejudice.... and Zombies... and Darth Vader

I had to have this book, and my very nice husband bought if for me for my birthday. It sounded really interesting, I am a BIG Jane Austen fan, and I was wondering how anyone could make this mix work. When I started reading I realize that this author, at least, could not. It was totally hollow, this writer writes for the words on the surface, not as Austen, the meanings beneath the surface. It seems just like the author, Seth Grahame-Smith, took Jane's book simply as it was and took out some of her well contemplated sentences and put in some badly written zombies and gore, and that is exactly what he did, as he states in the preface. One of the things that bugs me is that the zombies has no purpose, why is England in the early 19th century swarming with zombies?! That is the mark of a bad story, the bad guy has no motive for being mean. Look at Darth Vader, he has a great motive, at least if you see all six movies. So, to sum up, the zombie parts are badly written and the Austen parts are cut out, and I was really mad for about half the book. Then I started thinking in a new way, actually enjoying the zombie parts for what they were, fun! It was really fun to start imaging Elisabeth and Darcy fighting bloody battles with zombies that were after fresh brains, but could be fooled with cauliflower. I also liked the parts where Darcy fuzzes over his chestnut mane of hair, and the part where he gives Elisabeth his "balls". Another advantage of rewriting a book is that you can punish the not so sympathetic characters in an all new and horrible way.
Read it and have fun, but don't expect a Jane Austen book.

Umbrella

I bought this beautiful umbrella in Gothenburg at the little botanical souvenir shop in the botanical gardens. When I lived there, I went by these umbrellas a number of times and always though "well, maybe next time", but now when I am not close by any more, it was very easy to pick one up and buy it.
I seem to have become a bit of an umbrella collector. Apart from this one, I also have a totally see-through one, like the kind you see in movies from NewYork, that I picked up at Beyond Retro, a fantastic second hand shop here in Stockholm, perfect for when the sun shines through the rain.
I should have the green tartan one I bought in Scotland on our honeymoon, but I could not get in with me on the plane, or even in the gate area actually.
But I did carry the SUNbrella I acquired in Taiwan, on all the planes all the way from Taipei airport through Bangkok and Amsterdam to Stockholm, It has a protective uv filter on the inside and is for carrying around your own shade, necessary for a Swede in Taipei, who faints in degrees above 30.
I bought a silvery one when I worked mainly with silver, one that looks like a grandmother silk scarf and one that was very collapsable but turned out to be totally useless.

Smells

Do you know in the winter when nothing smells of anything, at best you can smell if it is going to snow or rain. I usually end my days with smelling the outside, I open a window (when we lived in an apartment) or a door and stick my nose out if it is cold, or all of me if it is warm, and just smell for a while. And now the world smells, it smells of life, this is the best smell in the world. Which hopefully will be enhanced when the jasmine blooms.
When we lived in Gothenburg, our apartment was close to a really big park, Slotskogen (directly translated: the castle forest), and early in the morning, before I went to sleep, I would go out on the balcony and the smell of dew in Slotskogen would come wafting in over the city.
In the southern suburb of Stockholm, the smells were scarce, it smelled of dust, Stockholm is a dry place, at least compared to Gothenburg which is situated on the west coast, there it always smells of the sea, the sun or the more likely the rain. In the suburb we took nightly walks away from the concrete apartment houses into the area with one-family houses with gardens, sometimes just for the smell of it. But here in the country it smells!
Now I am going to ad to the wonderful tradition, of smelling the outside in my garden, with walking barefoot in the grass.

Garden life

Life with a garden. And, phew, the mower started, the grass was aspiring to reach our knees. Summer just arrived from one day to the next, it is up to 26 degrees Celsius and everything is growing.
Also we finally sad hello to the neighbour and had a nice chat. He is one of the natives of this island, a nice farming, welding sailor who swears allot, has a well behaved dog and a caravan on his lawn.

Driving through Sweden

Somewhere a few minutes from Gothenburg, with a six hour drive ahead of me, I decided to take ALLOT of pictures of everything "Swedish". Probably a view of this country seldom seen. No censuring, no editing, all the pictures are there, just as the camera saw them, I usually saw something else, or at least the picture in my head had better lighting and colours.
So I had to get a YouTube account, I suppose it was inevitable, bear with me it is my first attempt at some kind of a movie ever. And, also... I wanted a sound track, but what goes with Gothenburg, Stockholm and everything in between? Maybe I'll figure it out later.
Later is here, now featuring: Soundtrack!

The world is green

This is what I found when I got home. I put my tomatoes and runner-beans in the sink and filled it with water so they would not perish while I was in Gothenburg, neglecting them, and they practically exploded! And that goes for the garden as well, our hedge, which was see-through when we left is now a compact green mass with lots of white flowers! The grass needs cutting, and all the other stuff growing in the grass, the trees have leaves and the jasmine too. It seems we left in early brown spring and came back in full green summer, and the smell, the smell of the country and all the plants and greens is intoxicating, this is why we moved!
After driving (well riding along) all the way from Gothenburg to Stockholm, I am exhausted, more about the trip home tomorrow, and also after passing Borås twice, maybe some thoughts about Pinocchio in the near future.

Garden beasts

We had a well deserved quiet day today. We started with a lovely visit with my cousin, where we met pretty little Lily for the first time, she was sleeping the whole time but I'm sure she knows us by our voices by now.
Then we were off to met my parents and sister with kids at Botaniska Trädgården, a beautiful botanical garden, for a walk among the beautiful flowers and the strange beasts that inhabited the playground.
And as Novotel, the hotel we are staying at, used to be a porter brewery, we ended the day in the hotel bar, drinking a 4 year old porter with chocolate and having an interesting discussion about art.

A room filled with grass

It is scary to stand there at your own opening, in a room filled with grass, what if nobody comes, what if nobody wants to see my jewellery. Thankfully lots of people came, family and friends, and friends friends. I got some beautiful flowers including one rhubarb plant!
I am exhausted, but very pleased with my first exhibition.
Thanks everyone who came and also you who plan to come.

Opening Tomorrow!

It is not everyday you build a table out of grass! That is how I spent the day, building my exhibition at Two Little Birds gallery, with great help from my husband, mom and dad.  

Tomorrow the exhibition opens! At 1 pm., or 13.00 for the Swedes, who are most important, because they can actually come.  

Remember and Dream 

Jewellery exhibition

Opens 1 pm

at Two Little Birds 

Andra långgatan 5

15 May - 4 June

Welcome everyone!

Harbor

Pictures form my walk in the Gothenburg harbor this morning. The area is called Klippan, (the rock, directly translated) a place which comes alive in the summer with, cafes, boats and cultural events.

Gothenburg is a place full of history, my history, my ancestors...

Göteborg

After a long, shaky drive, we have arrived in Gothenburg. Our car is really too small for that kind of journey, we drive a Toyota Aygo. Well, we arrived a few hours ago, but spent some time happily catching up with my parents. I'm having trouble getting the computer to understand that I'd like the pictures form the camera, so for today, borrowed pictures of Gothenburg's beautiful, green Älvsborgsbron. And this is also where our hotel is, just east of the big bridge, I can se it from my window, also overlooking a small marina. I'm looking forward to the best part of staying at a hotel tomorrow, the breakfast. Though I am one of those people who really cant eat in the morning, my stomach needs a few hours to adapt to awake-ed-ness, I still enjoy very much that someone els did  all the work and I don't have to clean up afterwards, also endless amounts of tea at my fingertips.

Treasures at the hardware store

As a artist it is my responsibility to, when presented with such unimaginable, wonderful, pink treasures, at the hardware store, put them in my basket and promptly buy them.
Can you believe it, gardening gloves and bricklayer's string!
I am having a pink phase, the first one of my life, it is quite glorious.
I wonder how that string looks like if I knit it?

Also, look at the sun, the sun is back, we had our lunch on the deck, it was a wonderful 16 degrees. Tomorrow we leave for Gothenburg, the town I grow up in, and also the town of  Two Little Birds gallery who is exhibiting my work, starting this Saturday. I'll do my best to continue blogging during the journey, it should not be a problem. The problem, rather, is that we have to buy 4x2 meters of AstroTurf on the way down.

Two strange buildings of the world

Above: Edificio Mirador, Madrid, Spain. 

Below: Stone House, Guimaraes, Portugal.

50 strange buildings of the world.

These were my favourites. 

Lego verses Nature

Go have a look.

Potato bag surprise

This is what I get for trying to make potato and leek soup!