Monday, January 26, 2015

Crooked Lines

When you think about it, you really don't have to travel far to get an interesting picture. I rarely shoot anything in my home, but one day I realized, right then and there, that the lines from this view - at the top of my attic stair case - are actually quite interesting.

Maybe I should challenge myself to do this kind of thing more often - to shoot something interesting at home. It's so easy to become blind to what is this close at hand - in search for exotic subjects - but what's close by can be just as intriguing. Even if it is just the a shot of a worn down stair case.

If you have sharp eyes, you'll notice that there are numbers over the door; "1935 18/12". That's the date the house was finally "christened", though a traditional Swedish attic party. The feast is held after the roof is finished, and the house can be lived in for the first time. I really love that you can still find little details like that in our home. A lot has been torn out, renovated and replaced, but some small details will continue to be persevered, and cherished.

/MrsHjort 

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Towards the Light

Finally the days are getting brighter again, and even though this picture is not taken in Sweden, or even recently, it sort of describes how I feel right now. It's like waking up from a long deep sleep to discover that although things still are kind of dark, a faint light beckons.

Last Friday it was light when I headed off to work! And the Sun shone too! It hasn't been sunny in forever! I really hope the sun stays for a while, the weather lately has been so depressing - snow, thaw, rain, snow, thaw, storm, snow, thaw and so on in a never ending cycle.

The three things I hate the most about winter is the cold, the darkness, and the lack of color outside, in that order. It's nice to know that spring is on its way. It may not be here for a month or two yet, but "hope" is returning :). Soon... soon...

/MrsHjort

Monday, January 19, 2015

Wired Wrong

As a teacher, my brain sometimes feels like this photo to the right - riddled with things to remember, tasks do and general nerdy information. They say that teachers interact with the most people a day, compared to all other professions, and believe me, after a Monday (which is my busiest day) it can take its toll. The cables that are usually in order have disconnected and found new partners willy-nilly. I can almost hear the bathtub on the ground floor of my house whispering my name, the perfect cure for a wired wrong brain.

/MrsHjort

Friday, January 16, 2015

Idle Winter Walks

So... it took me a while to do this. I promised to go out shooting a while back, and well, what can I say... Winter break became just that for me. I haven't been that lazy for a long time, which has been really nice! After that I went back to work again, but I fell ill for a week, and let me tell you, I haven't felt that ill for long time either. Then came a really busy week catching up, and now I'm finally ready to write a few lines, which, of course, isn't that hard or time consuming when I think about it.

It's kind of silly really, I mean, I shot these weeks ago but I guess I got the writer's cramp, if there is such a thing. Or maybe that's just an excuse and it's just pure idleness... So here I am, writing a more rambling post then I've done in a long time, about nothing. Haha, I should probably remedy that.

Okay, so about that walk... We live quite colse to a creek. Mr and I have a lot of inside jokes about that creek. you see, it's in the middle of town, but the green area it's in has never been well looked after, or managed in any thought through manner what so ever. Basically, it's more of a swamp than a creek. Anyway, the inside joke is that the reason for the municipality's idleness is that there is some kind of endangered creeper living there, like "the fuzzy legged swamp fly", or "the foul smelling snot beetle". I know, I know, we're pretty nerdy, but hey, why keep on wasting a lovely area like that? It could be a lovely park if they just did something about it.

For comparison, I can tell you that the municipality built a culture center a few years back, even though we already have those, in abundance! In fact, some have even been closed down! This new one cost the tax payers several hundred million crowns to build (not including redevelopments due to bad projections), and it has never even brought any profit (quite the opposite in fact)! Things like that really grinds my gears. Getting the creek cleaned up would have been both less expensive, and it would have made a lot more people happier. But hey, lets let those "flappy winged stink gnats" live in peace.

/MrsHjort

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Oxeye Daisy - December's Snowfake Obsidian

My, my, my! What a ride It's been! I've finally made the whole year, I'm so happy considering 2013's fiasco when I was so close! My 2014 calendar is finished! Wihoooo!

This sorry little flower was all I could find outside this month, and I really didn't want to "cheat" by buying something in the store and putting it outside. I wanted my "precious flowers" calendar to be authentic, with "real" flowers that you actually can find outside at that particular time of year.

I've worried for this month ever since the start, and I was very happy to find something that was at least a little bit alive this month. So, sad droopy daisy it was, and I have to say, that even though this isn't the strongest one in the bunch, I think it makes up for its shabbiness with "soul". Haha, it's so typical me, to get attached to things like this, but I think it has a certain grace to it. It may singing its last note, but it's gloriously white, covered with "tears" and wonderfully curly. A ray of hope midst the boring browns of winter :).

/MrsHjort

My Father, a Tribute to a Kind Man

This blog post is going to be longer than usual, and even so, how can one summarize one's feelings and memories of a person within the p...