Bye Bye, November

“Fifty shades of brown” …  (from a walk last week)

The time stamp on this photo says 11:16 a.m. The sun is like me; struggling to get out of bed in the morning this time of year…

Winter Contrasts

Since last week, we’ve been from sunny cold weather, to milder temperatures with 2-3 days of intense snowfall, followed by thaw and slush, which in turn has now frozen again to knobbly ice…

Friday: Snowfall (photo zoomed in from my balcony).

Monday: Thawing and very foggy. I know it’s foggy when the skyscraper I usually see the top of from my kitchen window is gone from my horizon… I was tempted to go out into the big empty snowy football field nearby to try to capture the mysterious sense of “another world”.

The playground was spookily empty too (late morning of the Monday when kids go back to school after the Christmas holiday)

Today we were back to crisp and clear and sunny, presenting quite the opposite kind of photo challeges (backlighting and lens flare).

Linking to:

Through My Lens

Our World Tuesday

Outdoor Wednesday

Early Autumn Colours

Butterflies: Small Tortoiseshell, Common Brimstone and Red Admiral.

Rowan berries turning red.

The first leaves dropping to the ground.

That special light.

Autumn market in town (last weekend in September).

Through My Lens #9

Outdoor Wednesday

Friday My Town – Sights of Autumn

 

Blue Eagle (Outdoor Wednesday)

The House of Knowledge sculpture by Jaume Plensa (at Textile Fashion Center, Borås since 2014) has got a new companion across the street to talk to now – an eagle painted this past weekend by street artist DALeast.

Outdoor Wednesday

Along the Canal – Trollhättan (7)

The sky cleared up again in the evening of our rainy day in Trollhättan, and we were able to go for a leisurely stroll along the canal at sunset.

That white thing you see sticking up on the other side of the canal we had seen up close earlier in the day. Some kind of water gate:

Linking to: Outdoor Wednesday

Old Cotton Mill

The cotton mill at Sjuntorp near Trollhättan was the second mechanical cotton spinning mill to be built in Sweden, back in 1831. Accoding to a Swedish Wiki article about it, the factory had its heyday in the 1940’s, when it employed about 1200 people. I’m not sure how many workers there were in my childhood back in the 1960’s; but I do know they were still employing new people then, as several of my classmates had parents working there, and some of them came moving here from other countries in Europe (mostly Finland).

I think it was in the 1970’s that the situation for the textile industriy deteriorated, and many textile mills all over the country had to close down (with production being moved abroad, where labour was/is cheaper).

Nowadays the factory premises here seem to be shared by a variety of businesses – and only one of them a small textile company.

In my childhood, across the road from the factory there was a grocery shop and a post office; and I think also a kiosk in the square in front of the factory entrance. Now there’s a pizza house and that seems to be It. (The car parked in front looks like it might have been cruising around the village ever since the Kiosk times, though.)

No pizza places back in the 1960’s – but at the end of the village where we lived back then, there were two more grocery shops (one co-op and one private), plus a butcher’s, a bakery, a watchmaker’s shop, a newspaper kiosk, a community centre with a cinema (Sunday matinés), and even a police station. (Nowadays there’s one grocery shop.)

Neat big old wooden house close to the factory.

Peaceful view looking the other way along the river.

Old fire-station (1930).

This quirky house half way up the hill was built around 1900 as Memorial to a deceased factory director (whose widow donated the money); and to serve as community centre for the factory workers back then, with dining hall, reading rooms etc. Nowadays it’s a B&B (but we did not stay there).

Back in my childhood, to me the factory was just a factory was just a factory (repetition intended!)… I never gave it much thought. Nowadays though, when I look at old industrial buildings like this from a century or more ago, I’m struck by how much pride and optimism is shown in the details of the architecture; with lots of purely decorative details in the brickwork, frames of door and windows, chimneys and towers etc. (Compare for example that flat pizza house building…)

…

Outdoor Wednesday

Outdoor Wednesday - Alingsås (4)

Not far from the centre of Alingsås we find Nolhaga, a big estate once aquired by Jonas Alströmer (see my first post about Alingsås) in 1725. The present manor house (a bit pretentiously called "slott"=palace) was built a bit later though (by another owner), around 1780. Since the 1920's the estate belongs to the town, and serves as public recreation park.
 
Here are some more views from around the park:

Tidy allotments

"Fishing Villa"

Note the shape of the weather vane on the tower!

Sheep

Pigs

Mini pigs (for mini kids)

 

Ducks

More ducks

Meandering river with fountains, bridges and water lilies

Parking for boats