Year: 2012

To choose a sofa is not simple

bosse, soffa

Bosse Montan on his parents sofa, 1964

To choose a sofa is a big and rather difficult decision.

In my eyes, these are the criteria for it:

• It should primarily be comfortable to both sit and lay in, and, if possible, possible to sleep in if a visitor wants/needs to sleep over.

• It should also suit the room, both in style and in size.

• Its color and fabric should also suit the style fo the room and the rest of your interior decoration.

• The fabric should not be “itchy” (a big no-no to wollen sofas).

• It should be neutral so you could change its appearance fast by changing the pillows in it.

• It is preferable if you can change its’ cover and wash it yourself in the washing-machine. With that goes the availability of exchange covers.

• How much space the armrests take up and if you can use them as pillows when laying down in the sofa, or to put a tray on when sitting in the sofa.

sofa, soffa, mio, mio coffee

My present sofa

When I choose my present sofa, I visited all furniture shops there are/were in the surroundings where I then lived. I sat in a lot of sofas. Tried how it was to get down into, get up from, sit in, lean back in… I returned over and over again to those sofas I found most pleasing and comfortable before I made my choice.

One thing though I had decided before I decided on the model of the sofa. It should be grey. Dark grey. And no patterns. Then you can have any pillows in it of any color and style.

It should also not be too deep. Should be possible to sit in without having extra pillows behind your back to sit comfortably.

And no “itchy” fabrics.

soffa, sofa, mio

My present sofa

Two things I missed:
• how the sitting pillows function when there are 2 seats in a 3-seat sofa compared to 3. I now know that 2 seats in a 3-seat sofa cause you to very often sink down between the 2 sitting pillows when you sit down in the middle of the sofa. You don’t when there are 3 seats in the 3-seater.

• if you could sleep comfortably in the 3-seater or not (without buying a sleeper-sofa which you almost never sit comfortably in) it needs to have a level bottom. Mine slightly leans towards the back when the seating pillows are removed (you won’t roll off the sofa then, but you will roll into the back of it). It would have been better if it didn’t. Apart from that you cannot be a tall person in my present sofa. It is too short for that even though it is not a small sofa.

IKEA has several good sofas to good prices. At the time, when I was about to buy my present sofa, they did not yet have any grey sofas. Those came later. Now they do have grey sofas.

I DO love the EXTORP sofa. There is nothing more comfortable to sit in. Or hang around in. But could it act as guest bed? Maybe. Thing is it looks almost like my present sofa. Difference is that you can get different covers for it, all washable.

I also love the light grey KARLSTAD sofa. Looks smaller than it is. Excellent as a guest bed (according to my friend Ulla who has one with another cover).

And then lately I saw (and test-sat in) the FLY sofa at MIO. I really love that one. It is a bit too long (228 cm) for my room though.

Question is, is my present sofa, a Coffee sofa from MIO, which was quite expensive when I bought it, sellable on BLOCKET (the Swedish equivalent of eBay) to a price that covers a new sofa? I doubt it, as the number of sofas for sale there is huge. I haven’t tested the interest for it there yet though. I still might. I like my present sofa, but it looks a bit too big for the present living room. It was bought for a larger room.

mio, sofa, soffa

My present MIO Coffee sofa (no there is not a stain on the armrest, it is the light).

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, Thoughts, 1 comment

And it keeps on snowing…

snow, skäcklinge äng, winter

White Xmas? Yes. But much too much snow too early.

The snowing doesn’t seem to ever stop…

We get more and more and more snow. All the plowing of the roads and shoveling snow away from the roofs will get very expensive for our housing cooperative. Some of the snow we won’t get rid of until spring when it melts by itself. Like outside my kitchen window (the one with the light in the window, behind the heap of snow) for example.

snow, winter

Where did my bushes go? Do I still have bushes when the snow goes away?

That heap of snow came from the shoveling of the roof. Under it I have (had?) two very small bushes. In the corner there is (was?) a larger bush. Do I still have those by spring? Remains to be seen.

So far the largest heaps of snow somehow have missed the berry-bushes this side of the tree. It just envelopes them, which is actually good for protection. I miss two of them though behind the tree. They are under there somewhere. Just like my flowerbeds.

The roof shovelers and the plowers will be back on duty tomorrow morning to continue. It has to be done. We don’t want our roofs to get damaged.

Today it rained, tomorrow it will be sun and temperatures above 0°C  (so they say – I’ll believe that when I see it), and then it will be cold again and whatever melted will freeze and stick to roofs and roads.

There is also a problem with what to do with all the snow and where to put it. We are running out of places where to put it.

snow, winter

Snow shoveling of the roofs of the carports in action.

Whoever thought that the winter of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 were snowy… that was nothing compared to this winter. It was colder then though.

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Winter is here

winter

Winter is here.

I don’t really like winter. I am a summer person. Love sun and warmth. Dislike snow and cold.

But the first snow can be beautiful. As here when it got stuck, wet and heavy, onto the trees, and then froze as temperature got lower.

Nature looks like a black and white photo.

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Messages on the wall

wall stickers

I am not a big fan of placing message sor words on the walls of your home. But there are nice ones. Like the above. This particular one comes from Adzif. (Note: Site is in French). If I should get one it should be words, not messages.  They also have a lot of other wall stickers, both for adults and children. Most of them really nice ones.

Posted by nini in Design, Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, Thoughts, 2 comments

One can dream, right?

Yes… one can dream.

Of a bedroom with a view like the above.

Or a pool like this outside.

Or simply a house somewhere in beautiful surroundings. Yes?

But it is just a dream.

Posted by nini in Architecture, Thoughts, 0 comments

Obama won! That’s a relief.

barack obama

Image from http://www.obama.com

I am glad that Obama won though I am not a US citizen.

It is good both for the US and for the world.

The alternative would have been horrendous.

I simply do not understand how anybody in their right mind – and especially women – could vote for Mitt Romney. Just don’t get that.

Am I glad that most of my US friends and acquaintances or pro-Obama. There are a few exceptions, but they are far between and … few.

Had I lived in the US I would have voted for Obama.

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

What Not to Wear… or?

Every time I am at the gym (Monday and Friday mornings) and on the treadmill, the TV-show called “What Not to Wear” (warning, the link goes to a page where you cannot turn off the sound of the ads) is on the TLC channel (the show also has a Facebook page). I watch the first 15 minutes when still on the treadmill, before we go on and continue with our regular “circlefys” training and leave the treadmill. So I only see the first 15 minutes. I’ve watched a few episodes at home though because I wanted to know how they proceeded and what advise they gave those women.

The whole idea of the show is that friends and family nominate somebody in their circle that they think need some update of her way of dressing and looking (never saw a man nominated so far, how come?) . Apparently with the goal to catch a man after the update has happened. Then the two TV-hosts go out and secretly film the person, visit her wardrobe at home, and then unannounced catch her at work (or similar) together with her circle of friends and family. She gets offered a creditcard with USD 5000 on it on the condition that they can throw away all her present clothes and she should shop a new wardrobe during their supervision and advise of what to look for. They also get makeup and hair treatment and a complete make-over in the end. And, as with all these shows, present their new looks to their circle of friends of family. Applause.

This show annoys me. A lot. Where is that “Dislike” button.

Do we all have to wear high heals? Or show cleavage? Or introduce dresses into our wardrobes? Or use a type of clothes you do not like? Does that alone make you more confident?

What is wrong with wearing jeans and a T-shirt? Or training shoes? Or fleece jackets? Or hoodies?

I can see that some of the people they present might need som directions in how to dress and what not to wear, but, seriously, what is wrong with wearing jeans and a T-shirt when you go to the grocery store? Or refusing high heals, dresses and showing your cleavage?

It is something wrong with this view on life. All surface. No substance. Will that make you happier? I doubt it. It is SO superficial.

And why are they not making any make-overs of guys? I’ve seen plenty of guys that could need one…

What Not to Wear

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My Workspace

arbetsplats, minikontor

This is my workspace. A corner in the hallway between the entrance and the kitchen. When I moved to this flat three years ago I got one room less than in the previous flat. The work-room disappeared. This corner originally housed a cupboard for cleaning utilities. That I’ve moved into the storage room to free this corner. The biggest problem with this workspace is the lack of space to put all those small things you need all the time when sitting here.

IKEA lately released something really useful. It is called PLUGGIS. White plastic boxes you can hang on the wall. This is the result, which I think works really well.

iphonestand

Shelf for loading your mobile. In this case my iPhone 4S.

One bigger holder, two smaller ones.

Looks much neater, doesn’t it?

The boxes can be rearranged at any time if I find their postion not working for me as they hang on a small strip fixed to the wall. I really like this solution.

(Who is the person on the photo on the wall? Yes, that is me. I think it was taken in 1961, approximately.)

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, Various, 0 comments

The Swedish Countryside

countryside

This is how most imagine the Swedish country side. How it used to look. How it still looks. How it will always look. And it actually looks like this. House to live in to the left, house for the workers in the middle, the barn and cattle house to the right.

Would I want to live in a place like this? No. Definitely no. I am a city person. Can live in suburbia if I have good communications into town. But I would not want to live in the countryside. Would drive me nuts in a couple of days. I enjoy passing by and visiting (for very short periods) though.

countryside

Thing is it looks like this – fields and the woods behind them – not very far from densely populated areas. Like where I live. I can get to places like this in half an hour, not walking particularly fast. Not driving (I don’t drive), walking.

woods, road

And the woods are as nearby too. With their old, almost abandoned roads for transporting timber. With their very high pine trees.

This is however the road to LIDA, a popular recreation area, a one hour walk from where I live. So here you find pick-nick-tables along the road. Looks a bit odd appearing in a glen in the woods along the path. Nice anyway. For a one hour walk we usually don’t bring any picknick. We have coffee and a sandwich and a pice of cake at the restaurant at Lida. That restaurant haven’t sadly enough discovered coffee latte yet.  They are a bit behind in what they offer and the choices are a bit poor. They’ve got very good cakes though. They do offer a warm soup and warm food as well.

Sadly the ferns have begun to turn colors. Autumn will be over us much too soon after a lousy – if you talk about the weather– summer that never really began. If it wasn’t for winter coming after autumn I would enjoy autumn much more. Autumns can be very beautiful.

fern

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Neighborly woes

As the warm season is coming to an end and all new builds and additions outside get more or less finished, then comes the neighborly woes and complaints. My neighborhood has row-houses (80 of them) and flats in two-story buildings (64 of them). I live in a ground-floor flat with direct access to the outside from my outside place. At the back of the row-houses it is popular to build decks. In recent years these have gradually grown. Not always to the content of the neighbor. The above is a typical example.

They enlarged the old deck to go a bit further out. I can understand why as they previously were tucked away in the corner of the house between the wall and the neighbor on the other side. By doing so the next neighbor felt very overlooked as they hadn’t been that before and sent us an email complaining about it. So we (the housing-cooperative) asked the ones with the enlarged deck to build a partition at their end, towards the neighbor, so next neighbor wouldn’t feel so overlooked.

And so they did… Only problem being the partition landed in the middle of the window to their living room.  Length of deck being what it was as the neighbor previously had complained that they thought it was too big and they wanted to leave some space in between them and the neighbor.

Yes. They are close to each other. And the position of the partition was awkward  for those with the new deck. So they asked for permission to enlarge the deck in width with approximately 40 cm to not have to have the partition in the middle of their window. We gave the permission to do so provided they  leave the gutter free.

The neighbor yesterday sent a new email complaining that they didn’t want that kind of partition, felt like a wall, became too dark… and again complaining about the size of the deck. Fact is the deck isn’t any bigger than other decks in the neighborhood. (Yes, we do have rules but over the years nobody has followed the rules).

I think the neighbor simply wants them to crawl back behind the corner so they don’t have to see them at all. That won’t happen. What the neighbor wants, they write, is some kind of transparent partition… (Which they won’t get as any putting up of glass walls on outside additions on decks need permissions from the municipality and that is a bit complicated). How would that protect against overlooking?

Haven’t answered the complaining neighbor yet, but I will later today. Have to think about how to answer them as diplomatically as possible.
Thing is the one with the enlarged deck has tried to talk to them over time when building the deck to no avail. No matter what they have suggested the complaining neighbor has not been ready to compromise.
We won’t tell the co-operative people with the enlarged deck to go tear it down.

Neighbors are not easy to have to deal with… ah well.

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

9/11 already 11 years ago

For my US friends 9/11 is an entirely other story than for me – even though I DO remember that particular day also for what happened to the World Trade Center in NY. We watched that on the TV in the office and got absolutely no work done that day.

But there are also other things connected to that date.

Today it is 11 years since my website was born. That it became September 11th was a coincidence. That is the date it first went live. I had ordered and paid the domain just a couple of days before and uploaded the site the day before.

I really need to rebuild my site and modernize it. Problem is to find the time for it. Waiting for the winter for all outside jobs to stop interfering (I love outside jobs and tend to prioritize those to doing website rebuilding). I really HAVE to rebuild the entire site and get rid of the table-based layout, build a new menu-system, new look and feel, and change the small images to larger images. When the site initially was built, bandwidth was poor for most people and browser speed was a laugh in how slow it was. Small images was a must to provide a reasonable fast loading of pages. So not today. Needs new thinking.

But I will NOT build a mobile-ready site. No way. At least not now.

Tedy Knitel

Tedy, Tel Aviv, summer 1991.

Today it is also 11 years since Tedy died of a heart attack. Wonder who he would have been if he would have been around today.

I will always miss him. He was the love of my life.

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Into the Wilderness

wilderness, weeds

This is the area behind the row houses in my housing cooperative that we call “The Wilderness”. It is impossible to enter there without high rubberboots, longarmed jacket and long trousers as the entire area is owergrown by various weeds like stinging nettles, lupins, mugwort and other weeds.

There are even some appletrees in there. The apples don’t look good for eating though. This is on the edge of the wilderness. Here the cut grass ends.

This is the other end of the wilderness, where those living here have actually cleaned away the weeds until where the next plot starts. Could be a nice place. Presently it is only good for the roe deer who love it. And the weeds spread into the row house gardens. Who also have to look out at it.

Should we convert this into a park? Some of us wants that. Some don’t (reasoning we then also have to take care of it). I am one of those who wants to clean up the area and do something useful of it. It could be a very nice commons. Grass, a path, some benches, some light, some grown-up outdoor gym… Just dreaming. I’d rather have that than a very expensive fiber-net installation.

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, Thoughts, 0 comments

The past is gone at last

The past is now more or less gone from our housing cooperatives’ premises.

I’ve spent a couple of afternoons there the last couple of weeks and painted the walls in a light grey color. The orange is finally gone. Above and below only the edges were painted and around the windows.

Then the walls got their paint as well.

After a second coat of paint, Birgitta and I assembled the furniture and put some pictures on the wall and put the curtains back up again.

And this was the result. Compare it to this. Sofa, chairs and coffee-table are all from IKEA. Sofa and chairs are EKTORP, table is VEJMON in oak (which doesn’t seem to exist at IKEA in the US). The sofa still need some cushions.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, Thoughts, 0 comments

Hollyhocks

hollyhocks

Hollyhocks

I love hollyhocks. Always wanted to have some. Couldn’t until I got a flower bed.

Last year I bought two, unknown colors. Planted them. I knew they wouldn’t have flowers the first year and that I had to wait til this year. This kind is supposed to be perennial. We will see next year if they are…

I also picked hollyhock seeds at a place we visited last year and put them into the earth as well. Not knowing if they would become something or not. At least one did.

This is the result this year.

The first one. Growing fast, getting higher and higher.

The bumblebees love the flowers of the hollyhock and spin around inside them like crazy. Almost fighting for them if more than one bumblebee wants the same flower.

The second hollyhock. Another shade of cerise than the first one.

And to my surprise I got a third one…

hollyhock

The third hollyhock is pale pink.

The third one is probably from the seeds I sowed. Before the flower opened I thought this was the same plant as the cerise one behind it, but it isn’t.

Early in spring all of them had a kind of decease that affected the leaves so they are all bare at the bottoms, no leaves there. What I could find out it was some kind of “rust”. I have removed the leaves with the decease and because of all the rains I think it is now gone.

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Those were the days

club pråmen

June 4th 1961. Herbert, Bosse, Bellman, Clarence and on the railing Janne B.

Those were the days…

Got reminded about them when Bosse (2nd man standing from left) suddenly wanted to be friends on FaceBook.

This photo is from Club Pråmen, a boat that was a jazzclub and located at Alvik, Stockholm. Spent many evenings and nights there at the time with that gang.

We were also active at the time in the League agains Nuclear Weapons and in the picture below we had a brake in the march to Ursvik (Sweden) in 1961.

Those were the days…

Sitting up, my then best friend Ninna, myself and to the right of me is Bosse. Laying down in fisherman’s sweater is Janne B.

And this is Bosse today (or quite lately, I borrowed the image from his FaceBook page). Some age gracefully.

Bo Carlsson

 

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 1 comment