This & That

 

Autumn equinox this week, and in nature, autumn colours are also taking over more and more here now. (The photo above + the next four following below are from today.)

 

Fly Agaric

At home, I took in one of my two pelargoniums (geraniums) from the balcony yesterday - and will probably soon be taking in the other one too. (In the photo below you see them both!) Just now the weather is still rather mild and cloudy/rainy - but next time we get a clear sky, frosty nights may also be just round the corner...

 

On Monday I walked into town with my mind set on looking for an autumn/winter skirt. Found it in the first shop I stepped into! It looks/feels like suede, but is actually made from synthetic recycled fabric - so is also lighter than it looks. And the plum colour matches well with several other items in my wardrobe. 

 

To continue the discussion from my Monday post about The Little House on the Prairie, today (getting back in from my walk in the afternoon) I decided to start over with episode 3 of the new Netflix series (which I left unfinished back in July, to dive into the books instead...)  Alas, I have to say I still just don't take to it! It's not just the "story"... the characters/actors just don't feel "right" to me either... 

It struck me that this was a lot like how I also felt last winter after having watched the new TV version of the Forsytes - and then ended up not only re-reading that series of books, but also seeking out the old b&w TV series on YouTube, and watching that in full!

... So now I went looking for the old Little House series on YouTube as well...  I watched the first half hour of the very first long pilot episode - and immediately felt "at home" (lol)... Remains to be seen whether that will lead me to continue to re-watch more of the old series on YouTube rather than continue on the Netflix version!!

Little House on the Prairie (TV vs Books)

 

Some time back in July I started watching the new Little House on the Prairie series on Netflix. I watched a couple of episodes but felt confused about the differences compared to the old series from 1974 with/by Michael Landon, which I must have watched several times over in the past, on various TV channels. This disturbed me, so I only got through maybe three episodes.

It struck me that I've never actually read the original books that both series are based on, though (by Laura Ingalls Wilder). So I went looking for those on my "talking books" library app, where I also managed to find them - the first four in English, the rest in Swedish translation. So that whole series was what I spent most of my "reading by listening" time on throughout the month of August, and into September. 

Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie
On the Banks of Plum Creek
By the Shores of Silver Lake
The Long Winter
Little Town on the Prairie
These Happy Golden Years
The First Four Years 

It did not take me very long to realise that actually the 1974 TV series (with/by Michael Landon) took a lot of liberties with the original story too ...

 

... like having the family settling at one place and remaining there through most of the series; rather than starting over in new places several times (and each time building a new house!) - as I now learned from the books that they actually did... 

I have not yet started over with the Netflix version - but I think I may be ready to try it now, with less preconceptions in my head of the 1974 TV series representing "the truth"... ;)

Curious to know if anyone else among my blogging friends have seen it, and if so, what you thought?

 

The Big Cats Dance Party - (Book Review)

 

The Big Cats Dance Party 
by Alexander McCall Smith
No. 27 in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series
Audio book narrated by Chipo Chung

 In this latest installment in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi both take on a case involving an elephant sanctuary quite a long way from Gabarone; and Mma Ramotswe's husband J.L.B. Matekoni decides to accompany them on the journey. This leaves Charlie, junior mechanic at J.L.B. Matekoni's garage + part time "trainee detective", in sole charge of the Detective Agency for a while. While Mma Makutsi is (of course) sceptical of his ability to cope with that responsibility, Mma Ramotswe decides that it's time Charlie gets the chance to prove himself.

The result, not surprisingly, is a bit "so-so"... While Charlie does manage to be helpful in one case,  he also finds himself in trouble when he gets involved in the planning of a concert together with two musicians (going by the names of Lion and Leopard)...

All in all, Alexander McCall has once again managed to concoct an enjoyable story, also well suited to listen to as audio book; narrated by Chipo Chung - who I think is new as narrator of these books. I looked her up, and she's a Zimbabwean acrtress based in London. 

One Thing Leads to Another...

 

At least two readers asked about the background picture behind my Barbie dolls in yesterday's post. (Currently the top right in the collage above.) The short answer is that it's a print on a cork trivet - i.e. if you like, you can put a hot pan or pot on it.

The somewhat longer answer is that the artist behind the image is an old friend of mine, Lena, nowadays living on the west coast of Sweden (where she also grew up). Since her "retirement" (as teacher of young children), she's nowadays busier than ever as a full time artist. Besides painting new originals, she has also had many of her images turned into prints, trays, coasters, trivets, postcards etc to sell to tourists during her summer exhibitions in various towns and villages along the coast. Back in August 2023, my brother and I visited her exhibition at Smögen. Then I also purchased an original by her which now hangs in my hall, by the entrance to my living room. If you click on the Smögen link you'll see photos both from the kind of environment that typically inspires her, the exhibition we visited, the painting which I bought on that occasion, and a photo of Lena and me together. 

A year later she also published a picture book with some of her paintings (which I bought from her), and which I now from time to time have on display (on a small easel) in my home as well. Over the years I've also bought various trays, coasters, trivets, postcards etc from her - some to keep, others to give away. And I often use her images as background on the shelf where my Barbie dolls sit. (Not outdoors weather just now, I imagine them having a "picture window"...!)

Lena also has a website, but I'm afraid it's all in Swedish. 

 

 

On Request...

In a comment to my post Early Autumn Colours, Meike (Librarian) wondered whether Barbie and Skipper have also already changed into "autumn clothes"? The answer is yes! :)

Having sorted through my own wardrobes this week - taking some summer clothes down to the basement for winter storage, and bringing some winter items up instead - I did also find it a good time to dress the dolls for somewhat chillier days. So just now they're in the outfits above (and have been given a battery tealight to brighten up the darker evenings).

For readers who may not know/remember them from earlier posts, the story is that for five decades or more, all my old Barbie(&co) dolls were packed away in a box; first in my parent's attic, and then in my own storage. In 2023 I finally decided to donate them to a charity shop - but in the process of organising that, I arrived at the compromise to keep two (with a selection of clothes for each, most of them made by my mum in the 1960s). 

And since then, these two have been on display on a shelf in my living room instead - and changing outfits now and then, according to season. I suspect I've probably shown their entire wardrobes by now - but I did choose items that can be combined in various ways. In the photo above, all clothes were sewn by my mum, except Barbie's pink top (which I actually made myself a year or two ago, from the cuff of a sock).   

Moody Skies for Skywatch Friday

Wednesday 16 September, 19:06

 

Wednesday 16 September, 19:26

The two photos were taken only 20 minutes apart the same evening (from my balcony). 

We're in a period of quickly shifting weather this week. Today after lunch the sun was shining, and I decided to go for a short walk to the nearest small convenience shop, just to buy some fresh fruit. When I got out of there, the sky still had a lot of blue in it...

 ... and I reckoned I'd be able to prolong the walk back home a little bit without getting wet. That was a mistake, though! Five minutes later the rain was pouring down. I was wearing my new rain jacket, so stayed dry on my top half - but before I got back home, my jeans from a bit above the knees and down were dripping wet - and I had to wring my socks out, and fill my shoes with crumpled pages from an old newspaper to dry (so far unknown how long that may take!) 

 Linking to Skywatch Friday 

Early Autumn Colours

 

The counting of the votes from the recent Swedish election has been finished, resulting in the left-wing "red+green" opposition winning by 176 vs 173 (members of parliament) over our old "right-wing" government. 

The old government will continue as transition government until a new one has been sorted out. It remains to be seen if that will happen before the trees have lost all their leaves, though - as there are disagreements to sort out among the four parties on the winning "side" as well. So speculations are still running high as to whether they'll succeed or not. And no doubt this will continue to dominate all our newscasts for quite a while yet.

▲Crab apple tree in my neighbourhood▼

  

 

 

Autumn colours in a flower bed in the cemetery 

 

 
Another project that is still only in the phase of Chaos rather than Progress is the transformation of the old football field to a "park"...

 

Post Election (Still Counting...)

 

Our polling stations closed at 8 pm last night. Most votes have been counted but some remain, and all will be re-counted one more time before we get the final figures - which won't be until Wednesday night or even Thursday. 

So far it points to the Social Democrats getting the first chance of forming a new government together with (or supported by) three smaller parties - but as all of the parties "on that side" (center/green/left) aren't 100% "best buddies" either, that is likely to take some diplomacy and negotiating in itself. I'm hoping they will be able to reach some kind of compromise in the end - but forming a new government is probably (again) going to take time. 

The photo above (and below) is of a horse chestnut tree in the cemetery that I passed on my walk today. The  chestnuts are still enclosed in green and spiky shells - only a very few have yet fallen to the ground and opened up.

 Horse chestnuts are not edible. In Britain I know they're called "conkers" and are used in a game by the same name - played by two players.  With a conker threaded onto a piece of string they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks. 

How my brain came to associate horse chestnuts with politics I leave to my readers to figure out for yourselves... ;)

Blogger Issue

Sidebar blog list not updating

Blogger seems to have stopped updating my sidebar widget of blogs that I follow ('Places to Visit') - and I've noted that the same seems to apply to similar lists on some friends' blogs. The widget no longer seems to be updating to show the latest posts (so that it now looks like no one has been posting for at least 5-6 days, even if in reality they have). I've tried looking for tips on how to fix this, but those tips I've found seem to be old, and what I've dared try so far (like updating all "http" to "https" in blog addresses) hasn't helped. And it's the same whichever browser I use. So just wondering if anyone else among my fellow bloggers has looked into this more recently and found more helpful into? 

Editing at 13:53 to add: Instead of perhaps just messing up my old blog list I tried to start a new one. I just added a few blogs, but those don't show the latest posts either. So for now I assume the fault must lie deeper, and with Blogger... 

 

14:45 - Adding an alphabetical blog list with just titles; but keeping the old one for now to see if the updating problem perhaps sorts itself out at some point.

 

Making these notes more for myself than for anyone else, really! ;)

Pre-Election Saturday

Waking up fairly cough-free this morning, I decided to try and get myself into town for a couple of errands that I didn't feel up for earlier in the week. I took the bus part of the way there, but then walked back.

With the election coming up tomorrow, there were quite a lot of people about in the main square, as all the political parties have information booths up (no doubt they've been there all week). There's also a portable cabin for early voting, and today there was a long queue of people waiting to make use of that. 

Reports in the media say we've already broken previous records this year when it comes to the number of people preferring to vote early - and I made my contribution to that myself back on Monday. (I didn't have to go into town for that, as I could do it at a place closer to home.) 

 

These flags across a shopping street in the city centre are part of the past summer's art biennial. I did not stop to try and figure out the symbolism - and just as well that I didn't, as I'd never have succeeded...  Looking it up now on the Art Museum's Instagram page:

"Michelle Eistrup’s series of flags along Stora Brogatan draws on the heritage of Bakongo culture from Central Africa, which spread across the Americas due to the transatlantic slave trade. The flags form a “dictionary” of Bakongo gestures and evoke diasporic knowledge systems. They are organized into four sections, which represent the parallel cycles of the sun and of human life — sunrise and spiritual awakening, noon and maturity, sunset and decline, midnight and regeneration." 

On my way home, I walked through a corner of the city park, and noted that there are autumn colours to be seen in some of the trees now.

 

One of my favourite sculptures - I don't recall its name now, but I think it's been there since one of our first art biennials. For me as "Narnian" (referring to my blog name) it always makes me think of ancient mythological portals between worlds... 

Linking to Weekend Street/Reflection #294

RIP - King Harald V of Norway

 9 September, 2026

King Harald V of Norway, born 21 February 1937, passed away on Friday 28 August 2026, 89 years old. The funeral was held at the Oslo Cathedral on 9th September; and was broadcasted live also here in Sweden. Members of the Swedish royal family were attending as well. I watched most of it, and snapped some photos off my TV screen... 

The Swedish crown princess Victoria (goddaughter to king Harald) read a prayer at the ceremony in the cathedral, and our king Carl XVI Gustaf (himself 80 years old now) as well as the Danish king Frederik X walked on foot behind the coffin together with the new king Haakon of Norway (son of the old king), in quite a long procession through the streets of Oslo, to the old kings' final resting place.  

 

Walking behind the coffin: 

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, 
King Haakon VIII of Norway, 
King Frederik X of Denmark

More details can be found in a separate Wiki article: Death and state funeral of Harald V 

 

Flush in a Flash

My cold (cf my Monday post) has probably kept running a pretty normal course, but especially the coughing has been tiresome. (Still is, even if that too is getting better now.) 

On Tuesday I had the laundry room booked for the afternoon. I was in luck and could start an hour early (11 instead of 12) and didn't have to run more than two loads, but that still felt enough. In the evening I also had to start preparing for ... 

AI generated image

 

... Wednesday, when we (tenants) had been forewarned that plumbers were coming to high pressure flush all the drains in our building, one flat at a time; and for that we were asked to remove anything that might make their access to drains and pipes etc difficult. In the kitchen, this meant not only removing stuff on top of (and in) the sink, but also emptying the cupboard underneath, where I keep various bins, bags and boxes for waste and recycling. And in the bathroom, anything under and close to the wash basin, and near the drain in the shower (which isn't glass-enclosed, only has a curtain). I did not really expect them to find much problem with my drains - but as I couldn't recall this procedure having been done before while I've lived here, I wasn't quite sure how much "mess" to expect... So I pretty much emptied the whole bathroom. (Universal truth: One never really realises how much stuff one keeps in small spaces until one has to move it somewhere else...) 

As I live in the middle of the building (with 18 flats altogether) I knew they weren't likely to start with me; but as I had no idea how fast or slow the procedure would be, I still preferred to be up and dressed and "ready" before 8 on Wednesday (which was their starting time). They did come to me before noon, and as there was no real problem here, the flushing procedure as such was over in "no time at all"... 

... But after they (he) left, for me still remained the job to put things back in place... And as it's rare to have every nook and cranny of the bathroom that empty, I did take advantage of that for a more thorough than usual cleaning of that room before putting "stuff" back. Like behind pipes - of which there are a lot more in reality than in the AI image above... (AI did  well with the Wisteria pattern on my shower curtain, though!) 

All in all, combined with the remnants of my cold, enough "work" for me to feel rather exhausted afterwards...

... Although it can't really have taken me as long as it felt, because I know I then spent most of the afternoon watching the funeral of the Norwegian King Harald on TV. (I took some photos off my TV screen of that, but out of respect I think I'll put those in a separate post!)

Foggy Head, Foggy Future

 

I'll let this foggy photo from Sunday morning represent two different things. 

First, the fact that over the past week the inside of my head has been feeling rather foggy as well; as during the previous weekend I managed to contract a cold, involving all the usual ingredients, from a sore throat and headaches to running nose and a barking cough. No point in trying to pin down exactly where I might have caught it from, as last weekend, with my brother here, we spent three days visiting several different restaurants, shops, museums - and public restrooms...

Second, the foggy view may also represent the fact that we have a general election coming up in Sweden next Sunday. As usual (every four years) we have three elections at the same time: National (parliament), regional and local. So both national and local media lately have been full of political debates, and little else - and that will continue for a while yet!

In our parliament we currently have eight parties, divided into two opposing "blocks". The previous election result four years ago took a long time to sort out and ended in a right-wing government. We're probably in for a similar situation once again this time - i.e. that it may again take time to sort out the results, and who is willing to cooperate with whom, to form a new government.   

While nursing myself through the various foggy stages of cold symptoms this week I've also personally spent a bit of time looking at "vote compasses" online.  I actually did five of them (three national, one local and one regional). As they all came out rather alike for me, I decided yesterday that I'm not likely to change my mind, but might as well go and vote early (which we're allowed to do). I've made use of that a few times in later years, to avoid the queues on the final election day; and did so again today. It's still a week of "wait and see" ahead until votes are counted - and even longer until we have a new government sorted. But at least for my own part I won't have to worry about whether it will be raining or not on Sunday...

If anyone would like more details about the election as such, see Wikipedia: 2026 Swedish general election

Chasing the Rainbow

Last night when I looked out of my living room window, around 19:40, the sky to the south-west had strange colour - and when I stepped out on the balcony for a closer look, to the east I could also see part of an impressive rainbow (and even a double one).

The first photo taken with my phone, 
the second one with my Sony camera shortly after.

As I could only see part of the rainbow from my balcony, I decided to go outside to check if I could see more. 

Alas I found that the high fence around the old football field (about to turned into a park and just now partly dug up)  didn't make it easy to take photos from the ground either...

But by walking a bit further to the left, and finding a wider hole in the fence, I managed to get a wider view - but still couldn't fit the whole rainbow into the same photo. 

But at the cloud-free other end of the wide bow, the sky was blue!

Back up on my balcony a while later, looking west rather than east, with the evening sun hitting the clouds in the sky, it was a strange (and even somewhat ominous) shade of glowing pinkish orange:

 Linking to Skywatch Friday 

Textile Art Exhibitions

Sunday 30th August turned out rainy, so we (my brother and I) decided to abandon the idea of another excursion into the countryside, and instead visited the Art Museum and the Textile Museum in town; which were both still showing exhibitions of textile art connected to the past summer's Art Biennial. (I did not get round to visiting either museum on my own during the summer.) To further enhance the holiday feeling we also had lunch at the restaurant in the same building as the Art Museum.

Kulturhuset = Cultural Centre; with art museum, library, theatre and café
(My own photo from July 2024)

  

 

From our table in the restaurant/café we could look out on the nearby Gustav Adolf Church from 1906. (The yellow tables are outdoors, and you can see why we preferred to stay indoors on this day...)

Me sitting in the grand foyer in between café (left), library (behind you), theatre (right) and art museum (entrance in the background).

 

 

Don't ask me what the textile "work of art" behind me is supposed to symbolise - I have no idea!  

 

 On the upper floor, a selection of objects from the museum's own collections are on display. This sculpture was one I could not recall having seen before: A tiled stove lying down - and serving as tunnel for a small car with lights lit. (Again, I have no answer to "why"... The best I can come up with is something to do with climate - but if you have a better suggestion, feel free to share!)

 

(My own photo from August 2021)

 From the Art Museum we went on to the Textile Museum, incorporated in the Textile Fashion Center, together with schools and businesses related to textile industry as well.

 

The official poster for the art biennial

 

 

 

From the big exhibition hall at the Textile Museum

Somehow I managed to forget to bring my phone with me on that day. The colour photos above were  taken by my brother; while the two black&white ones are my own, from the past. (Edited to b&w to tune in with the grey weather we were having now.) 

PS. In three of the photos I'm wearing the green rain jacket that I bought the same weekend.