around christmas time, 2010

i love snow. i love winter, i love the cold, i love ice, i love frost. i love to spend christmas in orsa with my family and i love coming back to göteborg and see that there's still lots of snow on the ground. here are my impressions from the christmas past and from my visit to vänersborg and suss and daniel's new flat that i made just after christmas.
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the red wooden house with white details. my real home. surrounded by snow. can't get more idyllic than this.
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a sprig of fir with a red bow, snowed on.
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the sun is about to set over my home village.
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an advent star in a downstairs window
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a white amaryllis
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oranges in the fruit bowl
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the beautiful bubbles and the reflection of a candle in the amaryllis vase
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a pretty bauble
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mum's creation: a crown candle holder from an old tin.
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a nativity set like no other
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the chudiyan i wore on my wrist on christmas eve
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can't get too many pictures of these
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a patriarch asleep. my grandfather, aged ninetytwo.
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the old chapel in the village of stackmora on christmas morning.
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my youngest sisters dancing in the kitchen.
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in vänersborg, outside suss and daniel's flat.
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taking a walk with suss.
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down by the churchyard, going towards the lake.
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frost on the fence
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i'm not the only one overusing my camera today.
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an art nouveau tree.
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the sun making reflexes everywhere
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in the direction of the cross, that's where we're going.
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'i hail you, cross, the only hope' (actually, suss is taking a picture, not reverently hailing the cross. but what kind of a symbol would that make?!)
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white, glittering branches against an intensely blue sky. this sight always gives me a feeling of jubilation and wild triumph - if that makes any sense to you?
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allow me to be ridiculously lyrical on a day like this: 'the trees sing his praises and the sky adds the harmony'
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another cross. we pass it when we look for a clear path leading towards the lake.
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we turn down along lake vänern. someone has ploughed up a road over the ice.
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by the shore of vänern
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some more of vänern
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the slowly sinking afternoon sun and all those frostglazed branches - oooooh!
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even the dirty smoke from the factories look good today.
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some seeds on a tree, dressed in a white fur coat.
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the steam from the swimming pool
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'i still heed the good advice from a childhood long ago - never lick frosty doorknobs and never eat yellow snow' (there has to be an end to all that beauty, just to keep our feet on the ground.
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the angel band on susi's shelf.
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part of the cross stitch nativity scene made by susi's mother
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part of another cross stitched picture by suss' mother.
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one real and one painted counterpart to the embroidered instrument
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the bouzouki and the banjo
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instrument still life
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two of many squeezeboxes in this home.
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my favourite: the blinged organetto
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blondie, the newest melodeon in the house.
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the gypsy octave mandolin - we are now good friends
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the concertina
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one of daniel's guitars, 'faster aina' (aunt aina). it's renovated and hand decorated by a man called tord hjulström.
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remains of a year in ireland
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the smurfs
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the happy cat tea set in the vitrine



france, summer 2010

the past summer, my parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary by inviting the whole famille (with the exception of the dog) to france, to a house they had rented in a small village between bordeaux and la rochelle. we had a lovely week together and i guess all of us took heaps of pictures. i'll post some of mine here. sadly i never took a picture of mum and dad's gift from us, though. for many years of their life together they have played a loud and enthusiastic game of chinese checkers around bedtime (i sometimes think that's their secret recepy for a lasting good relationship), so we had bought a chinese checkers board and painted it in a personal manner for them.
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mum outside the house where we stayed.
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some nice ironwork outside a window.
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same window, same ironwork.
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a street in the small town near which we lived. my youngest sister, dressed in white, in the middle of the picture.
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a carouselle in la rochelle. i wasn't feeling well on our day in la rochelle, but i enjoyed just watching the slow carouselle for a while, from the shade under a big tree, and i loved the taste of the violet ice cream that me and my sister bought.
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a piece of the menu sheet from a small creperie where we had lunch.
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my glass of poison green menthe á l'eau at the same creperie.
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french letterslots, item1.
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french letterslots, item 2
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french letterslots, item3
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iron swirls on a door
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some exotic french graffitti on an exotic french wall. what does it mean?
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'billy i love you' - and i didn't even write it myself! cute.
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two sweet flowers in the little town of cognac - one is the big, pinkish thing, the other is my oldest sister, in the far background.
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a chocolaterie! and a dragon! two of my favourite things...
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my secret romance while we were in cognac: the tour bus driver. a very one-sided romance, i'm afraid. i was waiting for my brothers and sisters, he was waiting for his load of tourists. i saw him outside the bus and fell in love with his beautiful nose, then he went back into the bus again and just try getting a good picture of a pretty nose through a bus window twenty metres away! 'cher monsieur le chauffeur, j'espére que vous ne me trouve pas effronté - mais vraiment, votre nez est irrésistible! /anna malena' (dear mister bus driver, i hope that you do not find me too bold - but really, your nose is irresistible!)
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another pretty sight while i was waiting in cognac: on a grey street, surrounded by grey houses, under a momantarily grey sky, these bright yellow shoes showed up.
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on a small square in cognac. my brother and one of my sisters.
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wooden details on a half-timbered house.
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more woodwork on the same house.
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another half-timbered house - but this house has a dragon!
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look at that perfectly broken window. wonder if those are hard to replace?
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a mysterious architectural detail. what are those things in the relief?
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a nice little piece of wall and roof
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and outside the church, in a small basin for collecting rainwater, someone had left a proof of our commersialised era.
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nice window, in it's way, i guess. but why are the 'petals' of the rosette not three-parted? everyone knows that rosette windows look best with three-parted petals!
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don't ask me what kind of tree this is, i'm no good at trees (though i can sometimes recognise a tree from a really long distance - if it is a larch). but i loved the colours and the way the sunlight sifted down through the leaves, so i took four photos of it.
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'...and then we had lunch and i had a menthe à l'eau and the crêpes were greatand mine had cheese and ham on it. and then we went home. the end' see, i can't be that old after all, i still know how to write like a first grader!



a walk on timoleague graveyard

this project has been waiting for more than a year to be finished and when i started the blast and confound site i knew i would post it on here as soon as i got it finished - and that wasn't until now. first, i couldn't find the usb unit with my originals, then i didn't have the time or the energy, then i just didn't know how - but in the end, i figured the only way to get it done was to just sit down and do it now, no more excuses.
the pictures were taken during my visit to ireland one and a half year ago, on a rainy day when my friends took me on an outing i will never forget...
 the cemetary in timoleague (tigh mollíg) is a very special place. my hat's off to the pople of timoleague who didn't just let the old abbey ruin become another spot of historical interest, like so many old abbey ruins, but who used it for a purpose that seems so logical and perfectly suited to the place once you've seen the result - to bury and remember their dead. they didn't just use the grounds around the ruin, there are graves in what used to be the rooms inside the monastery building and the strange thing is that this seems so natural and so respectful towards both the old ruin and the new graves. all in all, it's a beautiful and a fascinating place to walk around in and i hope my slideshow gives a reasonably fair picture of what it's like.
i suppose there should have been irish music to accompany the slideshow and that was my intention when i set out to make it - but when i had picked the pictures i wanted and placed them in the order i liked, this shetland fiddle air just started playing in my head and i knew it was the only possible choice.

(i don't recommend seeing this in full screen. while the pics look lovely in full screen when i preview it on my own computer, they're pixxelled to pieces whenever i try to upload it on the web. this makes me saddder than i can express, but i haven't been able to fix it :-()

my killer bambi

i've been planning for long to take some good photos of one of the coolest bags in my collection - the killer bambi bag. originally it was made with this tiny pocket inside, clearly only meant for a child's trinkets. i took out the old pocket and made a whole new lining, big enough to hold all my ordinary handbag stuff. then i blinged it up with a studded necklace and arrow earrings, bought in a goth style store and made a nametag with a white deerhead and crossbones and "killer bambi" written on the opposite side. last i gave it a tiny nose piercing - see that little ring on the closeup?

wire work sessions at camp

these collages were made to brag about the fantastic crosses that we make at the incredibly cool bible camp for youth that my church runs. camp is held some way outside göteborg, on the countryside close to the coast and a couple of nights a week i leave göteborg and go out to have a wireworking session at camp. we work in small groups, five teenagers, two ordinary leaders and then me, who try my best to help and encourage everyone. i taught the same technique last year and after camp was over i really regretted not taking pictures of the result, so this year i'm going to catch every single cross on photo!
this is from the fourth session. for once i could just relax and enjoy the journey out to camp, i was in good time as i set out and the weather was perfect, sunny and warm but not too hot. i've added a little pic of the house where we sit at the sessions and a plat4e of pasta salad because that's what we get for our midsession supper break.
the third session - and i couldn't make it out to camp that evening. so the two other leaders (they stay out at camp all the time and they've attended all the wire work sessions, but none of them is an experienced wire worker) had to do all the teaching. i think they did great and the result is very creative.
the result of the second session! i've made this set with a dark background since it got very late and very dark before i got home that night - the bus never showed up when i was going home...
ihere's the first batch! i've added some pics of wire and tools and a big rain cloud since it rained through most of that first session.

playing with the camera

i sometimes play around with the camera and with photoshop just for fun and last time i did, i came up with some pics i really liked so i'm posting them here.
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i like the dusty and dark texture of these pics. when i started playing i didn't have a plan, but then i got the idea of wearing one of my newly made necklaces and making it the only spot of colour in the pic - it turned out wonderful, like an old coloured postcard.
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i kept playing with the idea of one single spot of colour and took this portrait - dusty and dark, but with a piece of the frame and wall showing and a colourful paper serpentine hanging on the frame.
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i put a door ajar to add a small strip of light and i toned the resulting pic with a hint of cyan in photoshop. don't know what it looks like, really, but i liked it.
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i took some pictures with both sides of the frame showing and this was the best of them. i toned it a little, red and not cyan this time. this one too looks a little like a coloured postcard from the early twentieth century but the piece of serpentine and the almost neon-like light from the half-open door says something else.
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to show a potentioal viewer that this is a series of self portraits i took some pictures where the camera was clearly visible and i took them from a slightly different angle so that you see a bit of the poster tacked to the door. this way the picture looks a lot less enchanted and mysterious and a lot more like what it really is - me in my small and untidy hallway, playing with my camera :-).

barcelona, april and may -09

my family went to barcelona this spring to celebrate my mother's sixtieth birthday. it was my second visit to barcelona and the art nouveau buildings by gaudî and the modernist lot felt like old friends that i was happy to see again. i tend to easily make friends with houses and i enjoy the beauty of architectural details a lot, so the pictures will be very centred on buildings and parts of buildings.

 
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this painting hang on the wall of the downtown flat we rented. it's... hmm... interesting ;-). mum thought it might be a miró reproduction, i thought i recognised it as a picasso reproduction, but after a visit to the picasso museum i saw the painting i'd been thinking of and realised i was wrong. my guess now is that someone's thrown picasso and miró in a mixer and out came this. i named it "the madonna with the little jockey cap".

casa míla (la pedrera)

here's one of my good friends among houses. it was drawn by one of my architectural heroes, antoni gaudí, during the art nouveu/jugend/stile floreale/modernisme era and it's of course unique. the chimneys on the roof look a bit like warriors in helmets and they're called "the guards".
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the building is on passeig de gracá, "grace street". that's probably why the letters over the top left window spell "gratia" - the latin word for grace.
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a view of the front. i love the curves of the balconies!
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i took these pics while we were in the long line of tourists at the entrance of the house and i think they describe the character of the place better than any full front view. in gaudí's world you don't get many straight lines or right angles. the pillars look a bit like pieces of coral, the big glass doors look like they're framed with brown seaweed and the metalwork of the balconies look like dried up seaweed on the beach.
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the walls and ceiling of the entrance hall are beautifully painted. i think the colours are picked out to go with the sea/underwater theme and one spot of the wall and ceiling has a seaweed motif, but this spot shows a woman with long flowing art nouveau hair, a horse and some sort of male figure. i wonder where they came from and what they're doing here?
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the house is built around a sort of atrium, so parts of the hall are actually inb open air. i stand under the roofed part looking out and up the walls facing the atrium taking this picture.
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another view out and up the atrium walls. it's a bit like taking a pic from the bottom of a well.
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this one is taken from the outside, through a window. it shows the ceiling of one of the rooms that are not open for tourists - the ceiling looks like sand dunes, shaped by wind and water.
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the battery of my camera went out while we were still in the first room of the flats open to the public, so this is the only tolerably focussed picture i have of the interior details. it's part of the stucco work in the ceiling of a living room. farewell, la pedrera!
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part of the sidewalks of passeig de gracía, the stretch between casa míla and casa batlló, is paved with tiles like these, drawn by antoni gaudí.
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sunlight sifting through the branches of the trees above, creating patterns on the pattern...
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a wall altar. i'm fascinated by wall altars, they're very exotic to a swede and they don't seem to look the same in ireland, italy and spain where i've seen them.
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the rooftops, towers and spires of houses in barcelona really are something out of the ordinary. this is from the lleo morera house by lluis domènech i montaner, another barcelona modernist just like gaudí.
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the same cupole a bit later in the day, when it lies in shade. i didn't like the pic just after i'd taken it and was going to delete it but didn't - now it's among my favourites from this trip.
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lamppost on passeig de gracá.
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lamppost in the gothic quarters.
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more of those barcelona rooftops...
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... and some more again.

parc güell

this park, designed by antoni gaudí, is one of my favourite places in the world. if it wasn't for tourists like me crowding the park all through tourist season, the people of barcelona would have a perfect place to go for some moments of rest and reflection or some relaxed socializing with friends. but i'm grateful to the municipality of barcelona for sharing this with us tourists as well and giving me the opportunity to come back home loaded with pictures like these!
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detail of one of the entrance buildings. looks like a gingerbread house with frosting and non stop, doesn't it?
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arches under one of the viaducts.
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columns with bird's nest's on top along the viaduct.
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lute player performing under the vaults of a viaduct. there's music going on in many places of the park, the first time i was there i heard a really fantastic flamenco guitarrist and this lute player wasn't bad either. i have no idea what an expert would say about the girl who played chinese hammered dulcimer, but she made a good impression on me!
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a gatepost greeting us in latin at the entrance to one of the houses in the park.
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detail of  one of the houses.
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the sea serpent bench of the terrace. here's where the crowd goes to sit down and i wonder how those pigeons survive the constant chatter ;-)... look at the little gargoyle heads for leading off the rain water - cute aren't they?

the colonnade - a declaration of love

under the terrace lies the heart of the park. it's amazing to me how these two places can be so close and so different! the terrace in good weather is full of people laughing and talking, there's a sort of party feeling about it. the colonnade under the terrace is a place where people seem to go a bit quiet and reflective - a little bit like going into a big church. there are musicians here too, but the music played here just seem to add to the atmosphere. i have heaps of photos from the colonnade, both times that i visited it i walked around like spellbound, just clicking off one shoot after another. i'll post my colonnade pics without individual descriptions, just to show you my impression of the place.
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part of the stone wall that frames the place in front of the colonnade, the stairs down to the main entrance and the place just in front of the entrance houses. i really like the contrast between the craggy, rocky outside and the sleek and shiny mosaic inside of the wall.
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mosaic on the wall.
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more mosaic from the wall.
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some more mosaic from the wall. but this is the last one of these pics, i promise! and it's farewell to the parc güell for this time.
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the lleo morera house on passeig de gracía.
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the moric-looking entrance to a house in the gothic quartes.
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the beautiful hotel building one end of passeig de gracía,
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part of the tower and facade of casa batlló, the second of gaudí's buildings on passeig de gracía.
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more of casa batlló, with focus on the characteristic balconies.
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casa batlló once again - just look at how the lines curve, it's a feast for the eye!
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a window on casa batlló.
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architectural detail #1: a tiny little dragon. cute as a button if you ask me.
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architectural detal #2: an eagle.
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architectural detail #3: a nest of doves or swallows.
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architectural detail #4: a possessive-looking bird. i wouldn't mess with this guy!
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architectural detail #5: spiraling volutes on a pillarhead.
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architectural detail #6: three mackintosh roses on a pillar. an irresistible photo motif for me since this type of roses (popularly called mackintosh roses after art nouveau architect/artist charles rennie mackintosh) are so typical of art nouveau and i'm a huge fan of art nouveau. i'm also a huge fan of ornaments based on three, like the triquetra knot or the triskell or the classic tri-pass (three joint and partly overlapping circles) of church windows. and i can't help it that i overdosed on a book of ornamentics when i was a kid and was marked for life, it's just like obelix falling into the magic potion kettle, you know...
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and look! here's another pattern based on three - a sort of simplified triskell on a pillar.
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architectural detail #7: a really pretty sort of doorknob.
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a new example of the rooftops, towers and spires of barcelona town. c &a is housed in this building as you can see...
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this is a personal favourite pic from this trip for two reasons: 1. because on my strolls through the gothic quarters, surrounded by the spanish language (or rather, the spanish languages, everything is written in both catalan and castilliano) which is very exotic to me, i suddenly stumbled on a swedish word. "vildsvin" is the name of this taverna and "vildsvin" is swedish for wild boar. i still don't know if this has anything to do with the swedish word though, or if it's just a coincidence. one of the little mysteries that spice up my life. 2. because, as the alert viewer will have noticed already, there is a sign from an opposite store reflected in the window of the vildsvin taverna - and that's the desigual store where i bought my desigual tee :-).
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it's time to reveal one of my secret obsessions: cranes. i really do love the sight of them, i'm not joking. i think they look graceful and efficient at the same time and i dream of going up in one - though i'd probably panic and swoon, i'm scared of heights. in any case i think this picture of a crane is rather nice.
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from the olympic village. i saw this perfectly round ball of concrete (i think) poised on the edge of a building and had to catch it on photo. it looks like some gigantic child is dangerously close to losing their bathing ball!
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before we said bye bye barcelona, the whole family went out for dinner together and i took this photo for rememberance. that's from left my second youngest and my youngest sister, my dad and mum, my oldest sister and my big brother. he's holding my handbag, a poison yellow lunchbox type bag, that gets to represent me in the pic.

Ireland in may -08

i'm a celt wannabe and have always wanted to see ireland - in may of 2008 i finally got to realise that dream; i went to the little town of clonakilty in county cork to visit my friend susi and her husband daniel. i loved it!

clonakilty - en vy på kvällen

 
a view over clonakilty (cloch na gcoillte with the gaelic spelling), taken during a pleasant evening walk.

hickey

a typical little store in downtown clonakilty.

homer!

this, good gentlefolk, is homer simpson, doing his piece of pr-work for clonakilty paint centre. note that he's wearing a santa suit under his clothes - could it be that homer simpson is santa claus?!

posten

my favourite house in clonakilty: the post office. it's housed in an old church - so much more picturesque than my post office at home...

pubskyltar

a typical irish view: small street with plenty of pub signs...

an teach beag in the evening

an teach beag - the little house. well, it sure isn't big... this is the pub where the best folk music sessions in clonakilty are held and the generous people there graciously allowed me and susi to sing "ye jacobites by name"

utanför biblioteket

the sign outside the library of clonakilty. i just had to take a pic, it's a long step from göteborg city library.

shamrocks igen

like a true turist on the emerald isle i took a photo of some shamrock. this grew outside my friends' house.

for sale in shandon

this is in the city of cork. on the steep set of stairs up towards shandon there was a house for sale - i daydreamed of buying it.

more church door!

some fancy iron work on a church door. i take billions of pictures like this when i travel - i love ornaments.

cork at its best

cork at it's best....

a house in shandon

i wonder what it would be like to live in a house with flowers growing out of it! this house was found on a back street in shandon, cork.

lite skyltar

signs in two languages - these found in cove (cobh with the gaelic spelling)

vägbrunn

celtic knotwork! i love celtic knotwork patterns and sketched several of these while i was there. the word "uisce" means water. originally "whisky" comes from "uisce beaugh" - a gaelic word meaning "the water of life". that is, if my scottish friends haven't misled me!

tusenskönor i cobh

daisies found growing on a stone wall high above the station in cove.

statyn i kennedy park

the statue in kennedy park, cove.

the jeanie johnson

the jeanie johnston at anchor in cove. cove is also known as queenstown and it was an immigrant's port and also the last stop of the titanic.

det snygga glaset

i have thirty something pictures of this glass: from bantry, from cork, from clonakilty, from cove. told ya i was wacky! it's glass in doors and it's ornamented with knotwork.

girl's night out

my "old gang" don't see as much of eachother these days as we should, but we do keep in touch and when we get together we have fun. these pics were taken when we celebrated joss who had recently got her psychology degree.

sarting at top left: sandropard at the greek restaurant where we had dinner; anna malena at the same place; joss,sandropard and suss at the viewpoint we took joss to to show that the world (well, at least the town) was now at her feet and where we crowned her with a very unique tiara, made by me and sandropard; same people plus myself at the same place; joss with her tiara, at the greek restaurant.

we went on from the restaurant to a small independent theatre, where there was something going on - we were entertained by these nutheads and their improvisations for half an hour, then we got to hear some really beautiful music excellently performed - which of course none of us filmed. that's life!