Year: 2013

My first digital camera

fuji finepix 6800 zoom

This was my very first digital camera. A Fuji FinePix 6800 zoom. Designed by Porsche.  I still think it is beautiful. And pleasant to touch. I waited quite some time before abandoning my old, trusty Pentax Super A for a digital camera. Bought the Pentax Super A in 1985 just before Janne and I went to the Former Soviet Union and travelled the Trans Siberian railway – I then needed a camera with both manual and automatic controls for fast shooting in conditions where you were not supposed to shoot at all….

The first years the digital cameras were around the resolution was just really bad in digital cameras (we had one from Apple at work which was really lousy). But when the Fuji FinePix 600 zoom came out, I bought it.

It was expensive. But I loved it. And it took really good pictures (though was very slow). I almost lost it on the greek island of Skiathos in 2002. It fell out of my backpack on a hike where we climbed a hill. Luckily, I found it, when backtracking where we had been.

On the greek island of Naxos in 2007 I thought it would be gone for ever. I tripped on some stonesteps and the camera fell on to the stones. And died. I thought. But it wasn’t dead after all. When recharged and battery in and out it came to life again. That year it started being problematic though (often sudden death at not so good moments) so just the day before I left for Paros and Naxos I bought my 2nd digital camera. As I didn’t have time to investigate models it happened to become an Olympus My700 all weather camera.

olympus my700

I never liked that Olympus, except for the very small size (the reviews of it were good though). Takes good pictures if the light conditions are good. Extremely difficult to take pictures with in sunny weather as it doesn’t have a see-through lens, only the backside display. Often feels like taking pictures blindly.

Later bought a Canon G9 – which I really, really loved. I dropped it to the floor once and the display got damaged. Had it repaired and it was back in business again. In spring 2013 it started having problems with the zoom. You could only zoom out fully once. Then it stuck. And you had to restart the camera to get zooming back again. Not fun if you were aiming on a bird you didn’t want to disturb by getting closer… So I started looking for a replacement.

canon g9

Nowadays (since July 2013) I use a Canon G15.  Which I really, really love too. A camera for me needs to be small and possible to put in your pocket. Still, needs to be able to do all kinds of setting in it and have all kinds of controls.

canon g15

Still have the old cameras laying around collecting dust. Like my old Pentax Super A which I still think is very good. The only one missing is an even older Pentax which I gave to Armand once he was visiting here as he didn’t have a camera. He later lost that at some airport…

But once having started shooting digital there is no way back to non-digital. So they all collect dust. As do all my lenses and other stuff belonging to them. Wonder if there is a second hand market for them…

pentax super a

Posted by nini in Nerdish, 0 comments

New door curtain

doorcurtain

Finally made a new door-curtain for the entrance hall yesterday. Cloth comes from IKEAs temporary Chinese products which they sold in the autumn. Cotton. Same pattern on both sides of cloth, which is unusual for a printed pattern. I like the pattern and the colors, but it is not as wide as my other door-curtains (I vary them) as the width of the cloth was only 112 cms. Suddenly the wall to the left of it shows. Never does with the other ones. Looks a bit empty. Should I put something onto that wall maybe?

I have a door curtain to get less sounds from outside in and the other way around. And to not have to look at a brown door. Brown is the wrong color in this hallway. I really do not like brown as a color.

If this rather thin cloth is of any help with keeping sounds out or in I don’t know. It is also good to have when opening the door. Visitors do not see all the way in immediately, but only if I let them in.halldraperi2013_1

I have just as much cloth left as it came in a 5 meter long piece. Make pillow-cases for the livingroom pillows maybe? And a cover for the pillow in the chair there.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, 0 comments

A very green winter

kitchenwindow

Last year at this time there were huge heaps of snow outside this window and on the lawn. Not this year. This is a so called green winter. Not that I mind. I actually prefer green winters. Even though I know that the flowerbeds and such are much better off if they are covered in snow. The snow protects next years bulbs and flowers from frost. There WAS snow a couple of weeks ago. But it only lasted a few days.

krokus, crocus

It is not supposed to look like this. These are my crocus that are supposed to come up in spring… Picture was shot on December 22nd. As was this one of the honeysuckle.

honeysuckle. kaprifol

Not supposed to look like this in December. But the amaryllis is. Have never seen any with such short stems though. First flowers (below) opened up just in time for Xmas. There are more to come.

amaryllis

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Two days before Xmas

adventsstake, fjärde advent

Today, two days before Xmas, it is warm and windy outside, no snow, and on radio and TV it is all about Xmas. Outside is almost sunny.

skinkmacka

Have eaten the first “skinkmacka” (sandwich with cooked ham à la Xmas) on “vörtbröd” that I made yesterday.

It was delicious.

vörtbröd

The inside of the bread.

vörtbröd

Straight from the oven. Yes it is supposed to be brown.

If Armand had still been alive, today would have been his 75th birthday.

Posted by nini in Food and Recipes, Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

In my living room

livingroom, xmasdecorations, candleholders

On the low bookcase in my livingroom I’ve added yet another “candlehouse”. Building a village… kind of. The candle-holder in the middle have gotten seasonal red decoration. And that is about it for Xmas-decorations on that bookcase.

From another angle it looks like this. More candles… It is candle season. Here you also see windowlights which are only there over the Xmas-season. Door to my outside place just behind the chair.

vardagsrum, ljusbricka, livingroom, candles

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, 0 comments

Once a year

lampa, lamp, brass. mässing

Once a year this brass lamp comes down when the Xmas lights go up. It normally lives in the living room window. Bought this handmade brass lamp in East Jerusalem years ago. I am not a person who loves bling and shiny things, but this lamp I love.

Once a year I polish this brass lamp. Every time I wish it would be easier to clean and polish. It never is. It is now done, for this year.

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

The First Snow Has Fallen

snow

Snow

At approximately 10:50 AM today the first snow fell. And a lot of it. Ground got white where the grass grows.

snow

Snow

At 11:58 AM the sun was shining and it had stopped snowing.

snow

Snow

At 14:20 PM (half an hour before sunset) it was still white outside. And all day they have warned about the storm “Sven” on the radio which is supposed to be approaching and give us more snow over night. Remains to be seen…

By the way: I hate snow. I much prefer “green” winters. Winter and snow is not my kind of climate. I hope it all melts as fast as it can. Last year it didn’t. It stayed from the first snow all the time until the end of April. It was a very long winter last year.

 

 

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

Baklava and other not so swedish stuff

baklava

Baklava

Suddenly the local Lidl store in Tumba sold baklava. I bought 2 boxes with the above content. After having tasted it I went back and bought two more boxes. They were delicious. Love it.

It wasn’t all that long ago that baklava was hard to come by in Sweden. I learned to love it first in Israel, then in Greece. Just a few years ago you could only get it in MIddle Eastern shops where they on Fridays had some local house-wife bake it and sell it in the local shop. That was the situation when I lived in Vårby Gård. Then they appeared at the lebanese restaurant at the food court in Skärholmen. And now Lidl has them. Progress.

It has to my delight become so much easier to find mediterranean and middle eastern food stuffs nowadays. When I moved back to Sweden (from Israel) in 1974 it was even hard to find aubergine and squash. Not now. They today are found among the regular veggies in any supermarket. That’s good.

Baklava, or kadaifi, or kunafa… all very similar sweet things, name depending on which part around the Mediterranean they come from. Delicious with coffee, or with a glass of red wine (yes they really are). I have a few recipes in Swedish here for making them yourself. (Want me to translate them? Just ask, or use Google translate. My old site there doesn’t work as supposed to so Google Translate might not work directly on the page, but I plan to remake the pages any time soon now).

Posted by nini in Food and Recipes, Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

The autumn feeling is strong

rudbeckia

Rudbeckia

The autumn feeling is strong this time of the year. So far the autumn has mainly been quite warm and comparably dry (though it rained heavily this morning). The plants are partly gone, partly still there. The pink and white rudbeckias are now a seed-factory…  Still have to spread the seeds to other places outside to get more of them.

mangold

Mangold

honeysuckle

Honeysuckle

Still have some mangold left (still eatable? I normally use it instead of salad/as salad), and the honeysuckle is still blooming at the beginning of November. It always does bloom a second time in the autumn, but this is exceptionally late.

Then there is the Hylotelephium telephium (“kärleksört” in Swedish), which now is as beautiful as it gets. It is always late in blooming, and the bumble bees (who love it) are long gone to sleep over winter (if they sleep… I don’t know what bumble bees do in winter).

kärleksört, hylotelephium telephium,

Hylotelephium telephium

And the hollyhock (Alcea Rosea or “stockros” in Swedish) has baby plants that hopefully will survive the winter and bloom next year. They only do that on the second year from seeds. It is not perennial. The seeds that are now baby plants came from the hollyhocks I had last year. So I don’t really know which color these ones will be. Pink or dark cerise.

hollyhock, alcea rosea, stockros

Hollyhock in November

Soon it will all probably be covered in snow. Unless we get a so called “green winter”. That would be the first then since I moved here. Snow is good cover and protection for the plants over winter, but I’d rather be without it. I hate snow. It is only pretty in picture, not in real life.

 

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

Gone now

pillowcase, embroidery

I embroidered this one above once upon a time in school. Long ago… Remember hating to have to do these embroideries. I never had the patience for embroidery. Always felt like a waste of time. It was compulsory in school though. This is the last to be seen of this pillowcase. The material was really on its last legs (not to mention how dirty it was and how much it smelled…) and I’ve now thrown it out.

Kind of like the design and the colors of this one above though.

There were two of this kind of pillows. The one below is the second one. Also gone now. Only the photos of these two pillowcases remain. And the actual pillows which are downfilled. They made a trip into the washingmachine first, to test if it was at all possible to get them clean and get the smell out of them. They were really dirty. Washing them worked well even though it took several days before they were dry.

pillowcase, embroidery

I sometimes wonder why one keeps these old things from way back and why it is so difficult to throw them out…

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Need of order…

mess

This is how it looks like under my nose presently.

Really need to do something about it. All those notes… all of them with something I need to do something about.

Another day…

Posted by nini in Thoughts, Various, 0 comments

Carpet for free

carpet

I recently got a new carpet. For free. This one above.

Got it from one of my neighbors who was about to throw it out as he had tired of it.

It is thick, 100% wool, good quality, clean and colorful and not a fault with it. It is also the same size as my previous carpet in the livingroom and even the same make and origin. They both came from Ikea. His was bought in the Netherlands, mine – which is blue with little colorful camels on – in Sweden. I’ve put my blue one in storage and do not intend to throw it out or get rid of it. I like both carpets. But, for the dark season that starts now, this colorful one brings warmth and joy to the room, where otherwise black, grey and white dominates.

Love it.

carpet

 

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

Some re-organizing

expedit bookcase

This is my old Expedit bookcase. This is how it looked in 2011 and until last week. Except the lamp on it is long gone, it broke when it fell to the floor one day. The ficus plant is also gone – it died after the long winter we had last year – too little light.

Then last week I thought I’d do some reorganizing in the bedroom. And I put the old Expedit in another direction and moved it from under the window to beside the sliding door. Like this.

expedit bookcase

Much better.

The chest of drawers (Malm from Ikea) – which previously was at the place where the Expedit is now move to – was moved to under the window instead.

chest of drawers, Malm

The two smaller ones are supposed to be used as bedside tables but my present bedroom isn’t wide enough for that (the previous one was). Until now they have been one on top of the other, like a really high chest of drawers. Presently (temporarily) they are now beside each other again.

I will again put the smaller ones on top of each other, then move them to the right of the bigger chest of drawers, and add a small Expedit in shiny white to the left of it. It is almost the same height as the Malm 3-drawer chest . Just have to buy it first. I’ll do that today.

Then the flowers will come up a bit and get some more light over winter. The pallet to the left is already moved to another place.

The old iMac is for use of older software that won’t work in newer OS-versions, and for watching DVDs from bed.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, 0 comments

Not without my pallets

pallet, ikea

The kitchen pallet

I love pallets.

I also need pallets to reach things high up as I am not all that tall.
I have a variety of pallets.

The white one above is from Ikea, very light. (Bekväm, SEK149). Step up and down on it several times a day in the kitchen. For a very long time the white one was out of stock. I waited and waited for it to get available and it finally did.

pallet

Pallet in the living room

This black pallet lives in the living room. To reach the top of the bookcases. I’ve had it since I was a kid. It got its black lacker paint decades ago. It is small and unobtrusive.

pallet

The pallet in the bedroom.

This is the first model of the Ikea pallet. It is heavy. Not that easy to move around as todays’ model that I have in the kitchen. At the time this one only came in natural wood, no paint. Painted it years ago as I wanted a black one. Used to reach the top of the bookcases in the bedroom and the top shelves in the wardrobes.

pallet

The foot pallet.

This one also comes from Ikea. Discontinued years ago. I’ve always loved its form and look. Mainly used as a foot pallet. Easy to move around as it weighs next to nothing. And to pile those clothes on that are to get ironed.

pallet

The grey pallet with clothes for ironing on it.

The grey pallet to the left with clothes for ironing on it and some other stuff for mending. The flower arrangement is temporary. Had to get those pelargonias inside as the nights are getting cold. The olive tree to the left of the pelargonias recently moved here from the kitchen and has to be cut down. The old iMac is the first ever model with Intel inside. Very old but works just fine. Only used for very old applications that cannot be used on more recent system versions. And to watch DVDs on from bed.

pallet

The pallet on the way out to the outside place.

Then there is this one. Just inside in the living room on the way out to the outside place. All kinds of things land on it that are on the way outside. (Disregard the training equipment… ). This pallet is also an old Ikea pallet. Also discontinued. Used to come in a high variant as well. Ikea sold it for many years but not any longer. Can of course also be used to sit on if you remove all the junk on it. (The bag of peanuts is for the birds outside. Special bird-peanuts).

pallet

The pallet used as a pedestal.

This high pallet I use as a pedestal under the big monstera in the living room. This pallet also comes from Ikea and is no longer sold. (Disregard the training bicycle in front of it).

That makes six (6) pallets. Couldn’t do without any of them… I love my pallets.

PS. I forgot one. The one that lives in the bathroom but is used in the garden when having to work on something in a flowerbed or similar. This one:

pall_badrum

Of course an Ikea pallet. Have had it for some years which you can see on the anti-slip dots on the top that are grey. On todays model they are dark-blue-black.

So, that makes seven (7) pallets.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, 0 comments

The Mosquito Shocker

mosquito shocker, pelargonia

Mosquito Shocker pelargonia. Foto: Nini Tjäder 2013

It has grown big and wide the mosquito shocker pelargonia. Thinking about how to save it for next year – if at all possible. Saving pelargonias over winter, indoors, is always a problem and doesn’t always work. It is too warm inside and winters get too dark. With this one, which was three very tiny plants in May, I also need to reduce its size before moving it inside. I don’t have that much space inside and there are other pelargonias that I also want to save for next year. It is the wrong season to cut this down now, but I have no choice. Will have to reduce it in size. It never got any flowers by the way though the warm and sunny summer we have had should have been ideal for pelargonias. Googling it, it is supposed to get small lilac flowers. It will soon be too cold for pelargonias outside so I doubt there will be any flowers this year.

Posted by nini in Garden and Nature, 0 comments