Thursday 31 January 2008

31 January 2008


Not my picture this time either, but one from an Austrian stationery deliverer.

I love it! I got one at work, and I absolutely love it!


It sits very comfortably in your hand, like scissors. It removes a staple with one swift squeeze - and best of all, it makes no damage at all to the paper you are removing the staple from!


While I was googling for an online picture, I came across what I think is the gadget that this one originated from: surgical skin staple removers. Now, it makes perfect sense that you'd want the removing of staples to make as little as possible and preferrably no damage to the skin, right? So why not apply the same technique to an office tool?


And yes, I confess - I'm an office gadget freak!

Wednesday 30 January 2008

30 January 2008

Click to Mix and Solve
Jigzone dot com is a puzzle site I use practically every day whenever I feel like taking a short break. You can even use a picture of your own to create a puzzle, which is what I've done here.

Tuesday 29 January 2008

29 January 2008


Hedonistic Culinary Temple (Turku market-hall)

Monday 28 January 2008

28 January 2008


Hey, that must be the bike for me (my nom de guerre on the Internet is Titania)! And yes, this is still at Turku Herring Festival!

Sunday 27 January 2008

27 January 2008


Did you buy your wine in a box? No worries, just dress your box up in one of these pretty covers!

Saturday 26 January 2008

26 January 2008


Hand made rocking horse

Friday 25 January 2008

25 January 2008


And a new acquaintance - Romanescu cabbage! Absolutely fascinating in appearance - a bit like cauliflower, but each bouquet is a spiral shaped pyramid...

Thursday 24 January 2008

24 January 2008


This company had beehives all over Finland, location depending on nearby vegetation. They had lingonberry honey, cloudberry honey, blueberry honey... OK, I'll stop drooling now...

Wednesday 23 January 2008

23 January 2008


Oh, and la piéce de récistance - marinated herring!

Tuesday 22 January 2008

22 January 2008


Sea buckthorn products. Beware though - one year, mother and I bought ourselves a bottle each of buckthorn juice. Silly me didn't read the label, poured some juice into a glass and drank it.

Ouch! Ever had your tongue shrivel up and plaster itself into your gum?


When actually bothering to read the label, I found out you take 1/10 of juice and add 9/10 of water...

Monday 21 January 2008

21 January 2008


Chanterelles and lingonberries... *wipes chin*

Sunday 20 January 2008

20 January 2008


Smoked salmon... *drools*

Saturday 19 January 2008

19 January 2008


Oh well, now that I've mentioned the Turku Herring Festival I guess I'd better post some pictures from it...

Now, doesn't this picture make your mouth water?

Friday 18 January 2008

Thursday 17 January 2008

17 January 2008


Yet another thing of beauty that I fell head over heels in love with.


It was last autumn, at the Turku Herring Festival in Finland. A goldsmith had a stand, selling his own series of jewellry.


He told us he had collaborated in creating the series with a designer who had studied old Carelian designs. There were earrings, bracelets, pendants and... rings.


And I bought this ring, made of bronze. When a colleague of mine saw it, she said 'it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings!'.

Wednesday 16 January 2008

16 January 2008




Games at Miniclip.com - Papa Louie
Papa Louie

Help Papa Louie fight the mutant pizzas in over a dozen worlds of Italian cuisine.

Play this free game now!!

Warning! Might be highly addictive!

No, this isn't one of my pictures - it's from a site with loads of fun little games.


Beware though, since I suspect it's from the Miniclip site that Tradedoubler and Doubleclick were downloaded to my laptop. I found and erased them with the help of Spybot.


I also enjoyed playing Sandman, Sushi-Go-Round and Phantom Mansion from the same site - games where you need to think a bit.

Tuesday 15 January 2008

15 January 2008


Railway Nostalgia

Looking around at various railway stations, I've noticed that several of them still haven't been modernised.


But I think I actually prefer the old designs to the modern ones...

Monday 14 January 2008

14 January 2008


Puppy Love

This is my boss's Bichon Frisé puppy Kasper.


He is a very social and playful puppy, but also amazingly friendly. He was chewing on what looked like a piece of dried cow hide and managed to lay it down flat against the floor, unable to bite into it.


So I grabbed the piece of hide to hold it up to him, and he didn't try to protect it, or growl at me, or try to snatch it away from me. I could safely hold up the piece while he was nibbling at it.


This type of dog is said to be rather allergy friendly. I didn't get a reaction while playing and cuddling with him, but then I did wash my hands afterwards, just in case.


Ain't he just the cutest thing?

Sunday 13 January 2008

13 January 2008


This orchid belongs to one of my colleagues and resides in her office. I think it's beautiful.

Saturday 12 January 2008

12 January 2008


Normal sized mannequin in the window of one of the major department stores in Stockholm, as opposed to the far more common slim mannequins.

Friday 11 January 2008

11 January 2008


Longing for spring

Longing for spring, for light, for sunshine and the sight of coltsfoot...

Thursday 10 January 2008

10 January 2008


Another oldie - one of the most interesting weather phenomena I've ever seen. It was absolutely huge - I have not cut away anything in this picture.

What it is? It's a particularly massive cloud casting a shadow into the sky above it.

Wednesday 9 January 2008

9 January 2008


While I was rummaging through old pictures, I came across this one that I had completely forgotten about.

This ghostly face showed up on the screen of my old computer every now and then, and I found it eerie - I checked my computer for any similar image, but never found anything to match it.

Tuesday 8 January 2008

8 January 2007


My eyes - first I tried a colour photo, but it really didn't show my eye colours properly. Then I tried black and white and tried to colour the eyes myself.

When I got my first passport, the police man asked me to look into a lamp and then hummed and muttered about 'blue-grey or maybe green-grey - and then a ring of yellow-brown around the pupil'. Unable to make up his mind, he put in 'eye colour: mixed'.

Monday 7 January 2008

7 January 2008


I've taken a fancy to close ups of flowers, and this is the picture I'm most happy with at the moment - a tulip.

Sunday 6 January 2008

6 January 2008


Madonna del Sasso

This is one of my absolute favourite places in the whole world - the Swiss city Locarno near the Italian border.


Madonna del Sasso is a church as well as a monastery and is situated high up on one of the mountainsides surrounding Locarno - isn't the view breathtaking?

Saturday 5 January 2008

5 January 2008


Somebody had gone through a lot of effort to saw out the man in this road sign - a sign of steel high up enough to require something to step up on in order to reach it.

It amused me every time I walked past it until, one day, it had been replaced with a sign without hole.


As one of my Internet friends said... 'creative vandalism'!

Friday 4 January 2008

4 January 2008


Nefertiti

In 1992, I travelled to Egypt by bus via Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Syria.


After having visited the pyramids and the sphinx at Gize, we visited some souvenir shops.


On seeing this papyrus painting of Nefertiti, I fell head over heels in love with it.

Thursday 3 January 2008

3 Januari 2008


Auroras

I've only seen auroras thrice in my life, and two of them were above Haninge, just south of Stockholm. This is a bit uncommon - usually you see auroras in the north of Sweden.


Unfortunately, I haven't had the right equipment to take a photo, so I tried making my own picture of one of them.


Some time after I had seen this one, I read that sometimes holes in the magnetosphere can be created spontaneously for a short while, only to disappear as suddenly, and no one know how or why.


I imagine that's what happened the evening I saw the aurora above - it was as if the coloured light was streaming out from a point in the middle.

Wednesday 2 January 2008

2 January 2008


This is not one of my own pictures, but a detail from a painting by Swedish artist John Bauer.

I've used it to portrait my online self Titania, whom I've described as 'vague and elf-like'.


Not that I look anything like that in Real Life, it's more about how I feel in Real Life. Unnoticed, ignored or simply viewed as completely harmless.


I have yet to experience having my luggage checked by customs, and I've travelled a lot within Europe.


To see the original painting and other paintings by John Bauer, see Project Runeberg. To read about the artist, visit www.bpib.com for an article in English.

Tuesday 1 January 2008

1 January 2008


This is the winter we didn't have - we had maybe one week of snow and temperatures much above normal.

Sunshine statistics based on December months 1961-1999 showed that Stockholm had less than the normal amount of sunshine in December 2007, only 25 minutes!


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