Year: 2014

The White Amaryllis Alfresco

amaryllis

The Bulb on November 4th, 2014 Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

This is a story in pictures of my white amaryllis Alfresco.

It is now on its last, third, stem, and its last flower has opened up today. It reached 90 cm in height and has been growing since November 4th when I awoke the roots of the bulb. It will live a few days yet, but in principal its life is done. I’ve enjoyed it. It is the most beautiful amaryllis I have ever had.

Click on any image to see a larger version.

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

A Big Decorative Bottle

bottle, beerbottle

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Went into the Salvation Army shop in Skärholmen (Myrorna) the other day to donate some old clothes for reuse.  My eyes fell on this bottle. I love glass bottles in various colors. So I bought it. SEK75. Recently, every time I go into that shop I come out with something costing SEK75… Last time it was the menora. Now this big, brown bottle.

bottle, beerbottle

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

It has this old fashioned closure of porcelain with a rubber ring between the cover and the bottle. The rubber is old and dried and needs changing.

bottle, beerbottle, Södertälje Bryggeri

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

The bottle comes from Södertälje Brewery. The brewery was active 1896-1956. The bottle probably contained beer or near-beer (svagdricka in Swedish). I think the bottle can contain around 3 liters of fluid. Need to measure that.

Compare the size to a regular wine bottle beside it.

bottle, beerbottle

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

I bought it because I find decorative. It is now placed on top of one of my cupboards in the livingroom, in a group.

bottle, beerbottle

Photo. ©nini.tjader.2014

There is one kind of big bottle that I am still looking for. That is a damejeanne. Preferably in green glass. I had one when I lived in Tel Aviv. Tedy brought it home from Egypt when the October war was over. Unfortunately I couldn’t bring it with me to Sweden when I moved back here.

 

Posted by nini in Thoughts, 0 comments

Wrinkled Linen

linen, bed. bedroom, bedlinen

Image borrowed from the internet.

For some time now wrinkled linen, or rather bed-linen, has been and still is THE thing to have. And you see it everywhere in blogs and sites about interior design. As soon as there is an article about bedrooms, there it is again, the wrinkled linen.

linen, bedlinen, bed, bedroom

Image borrowed from the internet.

I am sorry, but I think it looks awful… Looks like you have forgotten to make up the bed when leaving it. And forgot to put on a bed-spread too.

linen, bedlinen, bed, bedroom

Image borrowed from the internet.

When I was a child we had linen bedlinen at home. It wasn’t wrinkled though. It was starched and mangled. Smooth and nice. Not wrinkled…

linen, bedlinen, bed, bedroom

Image borrowed from the internet.

I really do not like this wrinkled linen that is seen just everywhere.

I actually like linen. But then it has to be ironed or mangled and is nicest as curtains or table-cloths. Linen in clothes has the same problem as those wrinkled bedlinen. It gets wrinkled only by looking at it…

No thank you. I will never feel any love for wrinkled linen. In my eyes it is just plain ugly.

linen, bedlinen, bed, bedroom

Image borrowed from the internet.

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

I won a table lamp!

I almost never win anything in competitions I participate in. But this time I did, to my great surprise! Yippee! I’m finally a winner.

I participated in a very simple Xmas-count-down-competition at one of the interior design blogs I read daily, Husligheter.

The win is from Belysningsdesign and is a table-lamp called History. It is 30cm high including the glass cup and can be dimmed. I love its form. Don’t know though if I will get the brass or the chrome model. Doesn’t really matter. I love its expression and form. The table-lamp comes from Markslöjd and is one of the lamps in the series History.

Looking forward to receiving it and find a good place for it.

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

Inherited Hackefors dinnerware for sale

[SOLD ON SUNDAY 28th December, 2014 for SEK600 on Blocket.se]

I have this inherited old dinnerware that takes up too much space in my kitchen cupboards.

dinnerware, hackefors

I have long intend to put this inherited dinnerware onto blocket.se and sell it to create more space in my kitchen cupboards. I am aware that these kind of things do not sell for enormous amounts of money, but … The dinnerwware is from the Hackefors factory and was made some time in the first half of the previous century. Highest bidder that comes and relieves me from it will get it. It is in very good condition. A few pieces are missing, but not many.

dinnerware, hackefors

They are white with a golden edge on each item and a golden and black symbol at the middle of each one.

Anybody interested? Contact me via the comments and give me an offer. You have to be in Sweden and you have to come pick it up at my home in Botkyrka.

Here are some of the pieces in more detail. Click the image to see it larger. Contact me for sizes and numbers of each item. There is only 2 tea-cups left but six saucers to those.

[SOLD ON SUNDAY 28th December, 2014 for SEK600 on Blocket.se]

Posted by nini in Ceramics, Old stuff, Various, 0 comments

Three walls of four done

bedroomwalls, bedroom, wallpaint

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Three walls out of four are now painted and done. The painting didn’t take all that much time. The moving around with the furniture and emptying bookcases took much more time.

bedroom, bedroomwalls, wallpaint

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

(Disregard the junk around and on the chest of drawers here. Work still going on in the room.)

I still need to paint the fourth wall behind the three wardrobes an the sliding door. Just pausing with that for a couple of days as it is all almost invisible areas. When done with that I need to fix a couple of dark-blue spots that happened to land in the ceiling… and a couple of spots along the ceiling where the wall-paper tore when I removed the protection tape.

bedroom, bedroomwalls, wallpaint

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

When done with the wall behind the bed, I also finally mounted both the white boxes to get a kind of bedside table. Works fine. The boxes look as if they are of different sizes on the photo below. They are not. They are the same size. Camera making them look like that.

bedroom, bedroom walls, wallpaint, boxes

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

I am happy with the dark-blue walls. Makes the room calm. and I am finally (soon) rid of the military-green wallpaper which I’ve really disliked since I moved in five years ago. Dark walls is THE thing presently.

The iPhone in there is my oldest 3G iPhone. Only use it as a wake-up clock.

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

Fell in love…

Extravaganza Fruit Platter

Picture borrowed from the internet

The other day my eyes fellon this fruit-platter from Mateus. The Extravaganza fruit-platter. I normally do not like things this wildly decorated. I am more for sleek un-ornamented designs. But this one, I fell in love with.

I wouldn’t mind getting it as a present… I will, however, not be able to afford buying it myself. The price is SEK 1640 at the NK department store. It is available in several other colors as well, but it is this dark blue one I fell in love with.

 

Posted by nini in Ceramics, decoration, Design, Furniture and Decoration, 0 comments

The Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair

wishbonechair, hans wegner

Image borrowed from the internet.

Some chairs become classics. This one for instance. The Wishbone Chair by Hans Wegner. A Danish creation. Its lines are beautiful. It is often called the Y-chair, but its name is the wishbone chair.

Text below from the Carl Hansen & Søn website:

“The Wishbone Chair is perhaps Wegner’s most celebrated work. A light, attractive and comfortable dining chair with the characteristic Y-shaped back. The chair is a triumph of craftsmanship with a simple design and clean lines. Despite the chair’s straightforward appearance it takes more than 100 steps to make one. Amongst other things, the hand-woven seat consists of more than 120 meters of paper cord. Hans J. Wegner designed the Wishbone chair for Carl Hansen & Søn in 1949 and it has been in continuous production since 1950.”

Make sure you watch the video on their site about how the chair is done. Interesting watch. I didn’t for instance know that the material of the seats are paper-cords, hand-woven.

You still see this chair everywhere. Mainly used as a dining-chair. Comes in various colors (and there are lots of replicas out there too). It lives on.

wishbonechair, hans wegner

Image borrowed from the internet.

(Every time I see the the name “Wishbone Chair”, I think of a book by Tad Williams called “The Dragonbone Chair”, which has nothing whatsoever to do with this chair…).

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

Two pallets/stools

pallets, pallet, poke-stool

The poke-stool at the Modea.com site.

I love pallets/stools.

These caught my eye recently. They are smart, colorful, decorative. The above ones are expensive though. USD 689 for a set of three. Called poke-stool. A link from the modea.com site takes me to this place where they apparently can be bought and mor information is given. But I love the visual impression of them. And the smart way to put them together.

pallets, pallet, ikea

IKEA, Ryssby stool.

ryssby--pall__0322597_PH121740_S4

Ryssby stool from Ikea.

Then there are the Ikea RYSSBY pallets/stools. Temporary collection. So far un-available at my closest Ikea. SEK349/USD59. Available in red, green, black and natural wood. If they ever become “available”… I’d love to have one, in black or red. (As if I didn’t have enough pallets already…).

pallet, stool, ryssby, ikea

All RYSSBY images are from IKEAs websites.

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

Colorful sofas…

pink sofa

Colorful sofas make me cringe.
They are hard on the eyes and hard to combine with other things in the rooms.

pink sofaI wouldn’t be able to live with a pink sofa in the living room.
You see them more and more often nowadays. Seems people are longing for color in their interior design. Nothing wrong with that, but on a sofa itself?

orange sofa

An orange sofa (and green carpet and yellow chair…) would make me want to turn the other way and walk out of that room.

orange sofa

The above is more acceptable, but still… an orange sofa? Then the entire room, including carpet, walls, pillows, pictures on the walls, need to be very neutral.

yellow sofa

Then, how about a yellow sofa? Same problem there even though the above picture is quite nice. But that is only because everything else in the room is either grey or black or woodsy. I know yellow sofas are the thing presently in interior design, but that doesn’t make them any easier to live with in the long run. Does it?

yellowsofa_1

They light up the space, yes. But…

yellow sofa

How about a red sofa then?

red sofa

Almost acceptable. Provided everything else in the room is very neutral like in the above picture.

green sofa

How about a green sofa then? No, thanks. Depends on the green color though. There is green and there is green… Some greens are easier to live with than others. And again, depends on which other colors there are in the room.

green sofa

Dark or lightblue sofas are OK as I see it.
The best colors though are grey or white. Goes with anything and everything.  You can change the entire room without having to change the sofa if you have a grey or white sofa. Choose any color of pillows, carpet, pictures on the wall, wallpaper, paint on the walls, lamps etc. They are all fine. Grey or white sofas makes the interior design flexible and is the easiest choice.

beige interior

Some choose a beige-greyish-brown color palette. I find that extremely boring. It is as if whoever choose those colors just wants to be on the safe side and not offend anybody.

josef frank sofa

How about patterned sofas, big flowery things etc.? They can be nice, but most are hideous (at least the ones with flower-patterns) and they too limit the choices for other colors/items for the interior design of your room. Not all patterned sofas are designed by Josef Frank as the above one.

These are just examples. There are more sofa-colors that are difficult to live with in the long run (certain shades of violet for instance).

Just remember that a sofa is a piece of furniture that you will probably live with for many years to come. You have to love that color for all those years and not tire of it. Of course. If you have unlimited means you can switch sofas as often as you like and/or get tired of its color, but most of us are stuck with the sofa we choose for several years before we can buy a new one. The sofa also, of course, needs to be comfortable to sit or slouch in… You don’t buy a sofa just for eye-candy, do you?

All images are borrowed from the internet from picture Google search.

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

Problem with disappearing tabs in Google Chrome

chrome

My present version of Google Chrome.

If you are like me and have a lot of active default windows in your browser, and this browser is Google Chrome of the latest version, then you might run into the same problem as I did the other day after some updates. Google Chrome updates automatically in the background.

My default pinned windows.

My default pinned windows.

I have 49 default windows pinned to the screen, which is a 24″ iMac, and set in Preferences to be my startup pages. Might seem like a lot, but those are the ones I check in on every day.

Tab-less browserwindow

Tab-less browserwindow

If you open yet another browserwindow, and the screen isn’t wide enough to show the latest one, you won’t see its tab on screen. It looks as if it doesn’t have any tab.

Screen Shot 2014-11-22 at 10.18.10

It does have a tab though if you drag at the rightmost edge of the browserwindows.

Screen Shot 2014-11-22 at 10.18.38

Disappeared tabs.

If you then drag again at the rightmost edge of the browser-window,  ALL TABS DISAPPEAR.

The same thing happen if you restart Google Chrome with a browser-window  that is wider than your screen. It starts up with just the first, active tab. No other tabs are visible. First time I experienced that I almost panicked.

The first time that happened to me, I though something was broken in Google Chrome and did all kinds of error-solving actions, like restarting the browser, restarting the Mac, resetting Google Chrome to its default and rebuilt the tabs and re-pinned them… Nothing helped.

Screen Shot 2014-11-22 at 10.18.55

Restored browserwindow.

Then I chanced to resize the browser-window… and there they were again, all my pinned tabs.

Easy solution but not obvious. I have so far not found any other way to do it. If anybody knows another way, tell me please.

For a while there I thought I’d have to switch to another browser than Google Chrome (Firefox? Safari?), but there is no longer any need for it now that I know what Chrome does to the tabs.

PS. I have now documented (screenshot of the prefs in Google Chrome) all urls to all my active windows, just in case they would REALLY disappear and I’d have to start from scratch, in Google Chrome, or another browser.

Posted by nini in Nerdish, Various, Web HTML CSS, 14 comments

Finally got it up

grundtal, ikea, toolbar, kitchen

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

This is GRUNDTAL from Ikea. I’ve had it for quite some time, laying around, collecting dust in the kitchen. I even bought a special drill to make the holes on the wall in the tiles (as the measures for the rail and the tiles do not add up to be able to make the holes between the tiles).

The other day, I finally made the 4 holes and put it up. Feels good. Yet another JDI (Jus Do It) task now done. This is the shortest model of the rail. Cheap. Useful. You get rid of the brushes and such from behind the tap, which makes it so much easier to keep it clean there. Need to find a new bottle-brush though. I really do not want it to be pink…

Posted by nini in ordermaking, Various, 0 comments

Little boxes

Image from ELLOS

Image from ELLOS

Due to the lack of space in the bedroom, I am always looking for storage solutions close to the bed as there isn’t enough space for a bedside table. I’ve tried various solutions. It would be nice to be able to put a glass of water within reach of the bed.

Presently I have one small white box on the wall beside the headboard. I have two of those boxes but presently only use one of them. When I – soon – paint the entire wall, I will move the headboard slightly to the right, and the bed-lamps as well. Then I will move this box down a bit and then place the second one even lower. That will be the closest to a bedside table I will get.

bedroomwall

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Those little boxes I have, I got from ELLOS. They have sold them for a couple of years by now. Still cost only SEK149 a piece. They also come in black.

There are similar ones out there. From MONTANA for instance… A totally different price though…€231. Comes in white, black or brown.

box, montana

Box from Montana. Image from Ambient Direct.

The difference? The MONTANA box is a bit deeper and it has a backside toward the wall. The ELLOS box has no backside. It was this picture though that made me think of how to place the two boxes from ELLOS which I already have. One at the height of the bed, the second one higher up, in line with the top of the head-board, so a glass and pitcher can be placed there.

To be continued.

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

Office-chairs, part VIII

officechair

Roberget from Ikea Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Finally! On Monday Ikea had 4 Roberget office-chairs in stock (SEK799/USD 89.99). Now one of them is mine. It is turquoise, to get some color into the office-corner in my flat. It was not un-problematic to get it home as I didn’t have access to a car and had to transport it on the busses. Legs and wheels were not mounted of course. I made it home with the chair.

offichair

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Finally I sit comfortably with the right back-support. It is supposed to come in dark grey too, but so far Ikea has not had that one in stock. I prefer the turquoise one though.

I love the form of this metal-chair. The thoughts of the designers about it as stated on Ikea’s pages is:

Designers thought
“When we designed ROBERGET swivel chair we wanted it to be as strikingly good-looking as it is comfortable. We were inspired by public spaces and workspaces of the 1880s to the 1920s. Places like farms, factories, schools and hospitals. By combining color, shapes and finish we were able to balance a vintage feeling with a distinctive modern twist. The chair will look great not only at your desk – but anywhere in your home.”
Designers Lycke von Schantz and Marcus Arvonen

I think they have succeded.

officechair

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

It is a bit cold though and needs something to sit on. It got my black sheep-skin for warmth and softness. Feels good.

officechair

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Remains to get rid of the Skruvsta chair which is not a comfortable office-chair unless you only sit there for 5-10 minutes… Thought it was comfortable when I bought it and it is a nice enough chair, but… Anybody interested in buying it? Contact me.

Posted by nini in Furniture and Decoration, Interior Design, 8 comments

Round, white table-lamps

tablelamp

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

I’ve long had a crush on round, white table-lamps. I got the above one many years ago from Åhléns for about SEK 249 a piece. I have two. No, they do not sell them today, but they had them for quite a long time. At the end of the selling-period they also added a larger model. I always liked the small one best. Smooth and round, slightly oval, mat surface.

tablelamp

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Sometimes, like above, I place them on the window-sill, sometimes on a table. They both got updated with a LED lamp a couple of days ago.

tablelamp, windowlamp

Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

Friend Ulla also always liked my lamps. But doesn’t want to pay a fortune to get a similar one. A “fortune” is anything above SEK 500 both in hers and my eyes.

There are similar lamps around for a higher price than what I paid for mine. Lately they seem to have started to pop up at several companies.

Globall, tablelamp, flos

Globall by Flos

Globall by Flos is one of them. Not new, has been around for quite some time. Comes in various sizes and models. Not cheap… Sold by several retailers around the world.

flos, globall, tablelamp

Flos mini globall

The above is the smallest. Flos mini globall. What I remember of them from seeing them in stores the Globall lamps are a bit more shiny than the other ones mentioned on this page.

One of the newer ones is the MIMO S LED lamp which is sold by Nordic Design Collective below. A nice thing is that it can be run by batteries, no cable. Gives you freedom to place it anywhere.

mimosled, tablelamp

Mimo S LED

Love it. But it is more expensive than I would like to pay for a smallish lamp, SEK 1195. Not as round as the others but round enough. Not as expensive as the Globall and/or the Iitala lamp below though.

iitala, iitalakuukuna, kuukuna

Iitala Kuukana

Another new one on the market is Iitala Kuukuna above. Even more expensive… SEK 2.799. Some more information here.

I am sure that there are more similar lamps out there. It has a pretty basic form… But why do they have to be so expensive as soon as they get a designer label on them? My original ones had the perfect price…

PS 2014-11-15
I found “my” lamp on the internet. Or at least it looks like my lamp and has the more reasonable price too. Here http://www.wohnzimmer.se/se/produkter/lampor/bordlampor/ it is. It comes in three sizes. 15, 23 or 27 cm diameter. The largest presently in stock, the smaller ones 4-6 weeks delivery.

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