Sunday morning with cats and breakfast

The sun is shining again and it looks as if it's going to be a lovely late summer day today, after a misty and wet late night/early morning. The only reason why I know that it was very misty (my guess is that the visibility was about 50-75 meters about 5 a.m.) is that one of my cats decided it was time for his breakfast, and dry kibbles was not on his menu this morning. While feeding him I looked out and noticed that it wasn't possible to see very far, and the roof window in the kitchen was covered with moisture. I went back to bed (I don't do mornings ;) ) and slept for a few more hours, and all three cats came to snuggle in bed with me after their early breakfast.

I got up at 9 a.m. and made me a breakfast from yesterdays shopping. I chopped some olives, both green and black, a couple of marinated garlic cloves, a piri piri that was used as a filling in one of the olives, a finely chopped de-seeded tomato and some cheese cut into small cubes (as the cheeses were semi-soft and not suitable for grating). I fried the olives, garlic and tomato in a frying pan, stirred in two eggs and the cheeses, seasoned with black pepper, and made it into something resembling scrambled eggs. The taste was very good, but it didn't look too much. I will make it again, but I won't stir the eggs into the olive/tomato mix next time, I will instead make an omelet and add the olive/tomato mix and cheese on top of the omelette, or make the scrambled eggs with cheese and serve the olive/tomato mix on the side.

Now it's time to get up after my after-breakfast rest and start doing housework, I've been working all summer and the house cleaning have been neglected. As usually I have divided my summer vacation into two parts, I had two weeks off before Midsummer and three weeks now in late August/early September. I hope the weather will continue to be fine these weeks, and that there will be time for mushroom hunting and walks in the forest. If not, well, I have also lots of indoor activities to spend time on, especially when I get all those cross stitch kits I've bought.

Street Market and City Festival

Today the weather is sunny and quite warm to be in the end of August and it's perfect for this weekend's City Festival with outdoor concerts and lots of other events (many of them for kids and teens) going on downtown. I checked the program but there wasn't anything I felt that I absolutely *had* to go and see, so I decided to skip the festival activities.

The International Street Market is also visiting our city this week (Wednesday - Saturday), they are selling mostly different foods from different countries, although there are some other stuff too. I went to the market today and I have to say I bought a bit too much food: cheeses from France and England, chutney and lemon curd from England, pastries from France, Italy and Austria and olives from Italy and Greece. There were also different dishes to try, but as I'm a vegetarian there were not much for me, the only things I saw was a Thai noodle dish and a potato dish, and of course sweet things such as crêpes and waffles.

I also bought two cubes of Savon de Marseille (soap) and a small bottle of lavender oil. I love the olive oil soap, it's mild and doesn't dry the skin, and it can also be used for laundry and in home-made detergents, here are a few tips: http://www.savon-de-marseille.ca/tips.html Lavender is one of my favourites when it comes to essential oils, and I find it very versatile. I use it in a diffuser, add to detergents, a few drops on the vacuum filter, in the dryer and so on.

I passed the Farmer's Market on my way home, but didn't buy anything today, as I was already loaded with bags. The Farmer's Market is open every Saturday until October 5th on the outer courtyard beside the castle, so I have time to get there and shop locally produced foods and flowers.

August Full Blue Moon and new stitching stash

Today I worked "half-night", from 5 p.m. until 1.30 a.m., and on my way home in the middle of the night I noticed that it was a Full Moon, and this August Moon it's not only the Full Sturgeon Moon/the Full Red Moon/the Green Corn Moon/the Grain Moon, but it's also a Full Blue Moon, the third Full Moon in a season. The night sky was almost clear and the moon was up high and spread its light, a lovely sight to see. It was a little bit chilly to cycle home this late, even if it's still summer warm during the days, the nights are beginning to get chilly, and you can feel that autumn is on its way.

I wonder if it was the Full Moon's fault that I had a shopping spree yesterday and bought some new cross stitch stash, as I do have enough stash in the cupboard for a long time of stitching. I bought all four of Janlynn's Seasonal Cat Samplers, I've been planning to sew something seasonal for some time and when I found the cat samplers I knew that I wanted to do them. I haven't decided which one to start with, the Autumn or the Winter Cat Sampler, as I also bought Coeur de Muguet (Heart Lily of the Valley) by Madame La Fée, which is what I will begin stitching as soon as I get it. It's something I've been thinking of stitching since my mother passed away in May 2008. There was a vase with a bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley on a table in her flat when I arrived there while she was at the hospital. She died just a few past midnight on the Sunday that was Mother's Day in Sweden. I decided then and there that I would stitch something with lilies-of-the-valley as a memory of her, but it's first now I feel that I'm ready to do that. I found the heart pattern already shortly after my mother's death in a French cross stitch shop and I liked it, but I also searched for other motives with lilies-of-the-valley, there are a few patterns I also liked, but I've finally decided that the Coeur de Muguet is the one I want to stitch.

2013 - A year of abdications

2013 seems to be a year of abdications, first it was a pope, Benedict XVI, who resign the papacy on February 28, two months later it was a queen, Beatrix of the Netherlands, on April 30, and two months after that an emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, on June 25, and finally today on July 3, a king, Albert II of Belgium, informed that he will abdicate on July 21, and we are only halfway through the year.

In 1848, the king of France, the king of Bavaria and the emperor of Austria had to abdicate after revolutions in their countries, and in 1918, after the end of the first World War several European monarchs lost their crowns, the emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and the emperor-king Karl I & IV of Austria-Hungary the best known of them, as the Russian tsar Nikolai II had abdicated in 1917. All those abdications were results of conflicts, and those monarchs were forced to leave their thrones, while the abdications this year happens because the monarchs wish to step down.

New books and a tablet

I went shopping Thursday for a new tablet, my old e-book reader/tablet have given up, so I decided it was time to get a new one. I already have an e-book reader but as it's not possible to use it for surfing the web, and as I want to be able to do that as well as reading books and magazines on it (as well as all the other things one can do with a tablet today) I bought a 9,4'' tablet, the screen large enough for reading PDFs and magazines. It's not from one of the major brands, but as far as I can judge it's a good one and suits my needs.

I also bought some books, as well as joined a reading circle in one of our local bookstores. The membership is for 12 months and during that year you can read up to 52 new books, and as most of the new books for the year 2013/2014 won't arrive to the bookshops until September, I can use the summer months to read books that were in the reading circle last year, as well as all the new ones too. The first book I choose was "Torka aldrig tårar utan handskar: 1. Kärleken" (Never dry tears without gloves: 1. Love) by Jonas Gardell. It's a novel about the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Sweden, the gay community and how people with HIV/AIDS were treated by the society and health care system during the first years.

I also bought two other books by Jonas Gardell, they are non-fiction, "Om Gud" and "Om Jesus" (About God and About Jesus), a biography about the five daughters of king Gustav Vasa of Sweden, and a book by Torkel Klingberg, "Den översvämmade hjärnan" (The Overflowing Brain) a book about the brain and the working memory in our modern society. The author is a cognitive neuroscientist and as I have studied cognitive science it will be interesting to read that book.

Most books I buy today are non-fiction, when it comes to fiction I mostly buy e-books instead, as they don't need any storage in the physical world, just a few kB on a hard disk drive.

Where is spring?

It's almost mid-April but it looks like it will take time before spring will arrive here, as when I ended work this morning I was met by snowflakes and cold winds, it felt more like early March instead of April. There are still some patches of snow left, where the sun doesn't reach it during the day, and as the temperature still gets below 0 degrees Centigrade many nights, it looks like it will take one or two more weeks until all the snow is gone. The winter of 2009/2010 we had a lot of snow here, more than 70 cm, and it took time for the snow to melt away, I remember seeing the last patch of snow on May first, on the north side of a building, but this winter we haven't had that much snow but it still lingers as both March and April have been unusually cold this year.

I'm tired of snow and cold weather by now, and just hope that spring will come soon with warm and sunny days, with flowers, green leaves and green grass. 

Villa Muramaris

I just read in the paper that the Villa Muramaris outside Visby on the island of Gotland have burned down, in a possible arson. The house was a listed building in Sweden for its cultural and historical value, it was built in 1915-1917 as a summer home by Johnny and Ellen Roosval, he a professor in art history, she a painter, sculptor and musician. The house was built in an Italian style surrounded by a baroque garden. One of the main features in the house was an open fireplace in lime stone, made by Ellen Roosval, I hope it have survived the fire, as well as some of the sculptures in the art collection also survived. The present owner hopes to be able to rebuild the house.

I visited the house and garden several times while I lived in Visby, the house was lovely, situated near the sea and surrounded by a formal garden with statues made by Ellen Roosval. Near Muramaris is another artists' home, Brucebo, built around 1906 by the Canadian painter William Blair Bruce and his Swedish wife, the sculptor Carolina Benedicks-Bruce. Muramaris borders to the nature reserve Brucebo, with its protected bird sanctuary Skansudd.