cat cavalcade

ztina sezincote, bluetortietabby colourpoint british shorthair

An overall awesome day with some ingredients being a brisk walk & talk, followed by a fun and eye-opening mini-lecture and then finally I got to try the new camera. Test subjects were obvious.


sigrid, blacktortiespotted, the grand dame of the herd, grandmother, 10,5 years old

zigne shandy, redspotted

ågot alnwick, bluetortiespotted, the littlest one

I think the results were alright for a first session. Lots of new stuff to learn and improve, it's going to be fun fun fun.

Over all this shone a benevolent sun.
A great beginning to the weekend,
I wish you a lovely one!

prosit has a new lens

In this bag hides something that makes me all ditty with delight. A brand new camera.

The old DSLR has served me well over these past five and a half years, well at least over the first four ones, the crazy amount of several hundred thousand photos taken has taken its toll and deterioration over the last year or so has been significant. It simply doesn't work flawlessly as it used to. But I'm grateful for all those photos, all that patience, any weather condition, sandy beaches, rain, snow, ice, humidity and the odd occasion of smashing into a wall, falling down some stairs (in the company by yours truly).

One of my goal's last year, before health issues hit, was to get a new camera, my dream camera. But revenues alas never allowed. And now it's impossible to be without a proper working tool like a decent camera so it was time to get one, if not the dream camera, but a darn good one just the same. And as usual, it's not the brand nor the flashy, expensive camera that makes a great photographer.  It's not the the tool you use to create, it's how you use the tool you got. The only thing a decent camera won't provide is talent. Which of course is true with pretty much anything in life. Besides, I'm not technically skilled enough to make the most of the finer details of dream camera, and I probably never will be interested in that part of photography (as in life). Thus I'm sure I and Prosit will be more than pleased with our new working friend, and to be honest, it's quite nice to save a whole lot of money by buying a great camera and not the dream camera. Even if it's nice to dream, a dream about the dream camera, there are many other dreams that are much more important, for me, to go after at this moment in time.

Prosit has a new lens. And think it's quite dreamy.

sun square stockholm

A year ago it was the Aday day, ten moments in a life captured (of which one ended up in the grand book). If it had been this year, this would have been one of the photos taken from my camera. Sun worshipping in Stockholm. The sunchairs in this square are permanent, I think it's a lovely idea and this time of the year it's most always full when the sun shines.

Off-season it holds the promise of warmer, lighter days to come.



Do you have any public art in your city that's both nice to look at and offers good use?

anneko organic greeting cards

Stumbled over these lovely greeting cards at Växplats Nybyn during the weekend. Lovely design, recycled paper, soy based inks and organic pigments the greeting cards come with a seed band which you can plant, the little cute gift-tags are in themselves seed cards with meadow mix flower seeds which you can plant.

I've seen similar seed cards in Etsy shops before, but never with this lovely, colourful design on the cards. Looking at the website, which does give a mixed message concerning the origin of the cards, I think the designer is Swedish, lives in Australia but also has a summer studio in Sweden. I'm guessing the cards are printed in both Sweden and Australia, for different markets.

Be as that may, great idea, sweet recyclable cards from Swedish design company Anneko, which will bring happiness in many ways to the reciever.

glasses, glasses

It's been two years since I last had my eyes and sight checked, not that I've noticed any significant deterioration (touch wood) but it's good to have it done anyway. Some of the glasses are a bit worn too (now that I never use contacts anymore) and it would be nice to get one or two new pairs. I still love my dotty pair and if I get a new pair I really want them to be in the same style, only another colour and/or pattern. I think my favourite optician smarteyes has had a grand assortment - alongside really pleasant staff and service and of course unbeatable prices - but admittedly I was rather disappointed when I popped by the other day to check out their current models (haven't booked an appointment with the optician yet, just wanted to check what's on offer). Unfortunately this time I found most of them rather bland and boring, not really what I was looking for. The retro style-section was very small, the lack of cool patterns obvious - cow pattern glasses where art thou?

There's also a current ad campaign featuring a Swedish artist showing off glasses from smarteyes and one of those models are simply adorable, oversized Harry Potter-style. Obviously I wanted to try them on, but was met with a "hm, I don't know, perhaps we haven't got the delivery just yet, but our other glasses in that style you can find there and there..." from the staff. And no, no other glasses where in that style. I suspect those glasses in the ad campaign will never be sold in the shops, only featured in the campaign. Nuisance.

After looking around the shop, trying out lots of frames, discarding 95% of them as boring, unflattering, wrong or ugly I ended up with two possible pairs in this section above. Can you guess which pairs?

two kinds of cookies and some thoughts

The weekend was long and rather glorious, lots of sun, summerish weather, it involved garden visits, fika moments, good food, flower shopping, window shopping (I do have plans for this year's tax refund), a bit of work and oh, and I finally, finally sold the old, supersized desk that I inherited from my father. The garden shed is now liberatingly somewhat airy and someone else will have lots of good use with that imposing, too large desk.

You know the liberating feeling of getting rid of old stuff, having more space, actually getting paid for that old stuff and thinking surely there must more old stuff I can sell? Oh I got it.

A befitting round off to the lovely weekend was a bit of baking. I made two types of cookies - again from the sweet cakes bakebook - one lemon/coconut, one chocolate sunflower/pumpkinseed. Admittedly not sure I'll make them again since they turned out a bit dry and flavourless, plus I rarely think the amount of work put into tiny cookies are worth the end result. There are so much more rewarding things to bake, I think.



But they look cute. And taste alright, if not spectacular. Plus have the bobbaloo stamp of approval, so they can't be all bad.

So, how did you spend the lovely long Ascension weekend?
Sun basking, relaxing, cookie-baking or something completely different but no less grand?

garden bird lights

Got surprised with this awesome bird lighting chain the other day. Something I had spotted at why-I-don't-like-IKEA a while back and quite enjoyed - as I adore lighting chains, but have far to few of them - solar powered and quirky. Solvinden (the name of the lighting chain) means "the sun wind".

It works brilliantly I have to say, around 10 pm, when dusk calls, the bird starts lighting up in bright orange in quite a delightful way. Each chain unfortunately only holds 5 birds so I can see how quite a few more chains would make a larger impact. Love how you can make the sun work for you, in simple ways. Of course this is just a wee little, silly thing, I would love to make less of a carbon footprint with more use of sunpower in the bigger scheme of things. But for now, I am pleased that summer evenings in garden will be lightened up by orange sun birds.

What kind of lights do you have in your garden?

under the lilacs a little loaf rests

The lilacs, a white one, sweet scented, obtained.

The remains, of the sweetest little loaf tyke in the whole wide world, put to rest under the lilacs, white, sweet scented.



The place, by tykes of another kind, inspected and kindly walked upon.

I like the notion that the cats feel this is a perfect spot to have a rest, curiously inspect the ongoings in the neighbouring garden, that little loaf will always be part of that.

Forever missed,
but now resting under a sweet scented, white lilacs.
A little loaf named Malte.

cherry blossom stockholm 2013

Since this past week has been stunningly glorious and sunny, a row of rather decent summer days really, the magical time of the year when the cherry blossoms are in bloom came quickly.



As usual I'm no great fan of hoards of people when I want to enjoy something, thus an early morning (I can't stand early mornings, but granted, you get to see places and spaces finally people free then) was perfect to visit those magical trees in Kungsträdgården (King's Garden).



The light, oh that pink light, absolutely amazing and perfect. Pink really is such a sweet, kind, magic, calming, enchanting and lovely colour in every way.




Bobbaloo excitement moment and shoe per diem moment.





I thought I'd posted a plethora of Stockholm cherry blossom pictures every year, but I can just find this post from 2009 now. A pity, it would have been nice to be able to look back in pink, even if it certainly isn't easy to be creative with these cherry blossom photos anymore, those trees and branches have been photographed in every angle imaginable by pretty much everyone imaginable I'd say.





Do you have any cherry blossom trees in you neighbourhood/city?
Are people as delightedly crazy about them as they obviously are here?

wordless wednesday