Shadow Art, Pretty In Pink, and the Anatomy of Socks

 

Sitting in my TV chair by the window, I happened to glance the other way, and my eye caught this shadow, which seemed very appropriate as a celebration of the Autumn Sun...

 It was caused by the sun hitting the vase with leftover leaves from my birthday bouquet, and casting a sharp black shadow of them on the back of my hoodie sweater, draped over the back of a chair. (The thin horizontal lines are also shadows, from the venetian blinds in the window.) 

To go with the pink theme, I'll also throw in this photo of Barbie and Skipper (mainly for Meike, who asked after them in a comment on my previous post). Barbie is enjoying the luxury of wearing a new pink top that I managed to make for her out of the cuff of a sock. (Skipper says magenta doesn't go with her hair colour, so she'll wait for me to wear out something that would suit her better... Her striped top was sewn by my mum in the 1960s.) 

 

Sometimes, and especially when one is blogging in a foreign language, a blog post may take an unexpected turn before it reaches its end. Like, when one can't think of the name for the upper part of a sock, and has to go searching for it... 

Now I want to know if all of you with English as your first language would have been able to name all seven parts of a sock correctly?? 

Pretty In Pink

 

The park in the city centre is at its very prettiest just now, with its cherry blossom trees in their full glory. The trees here are of kind that blooms bit later than many others around town.

 

 

 

 

Pretty in Pink - and Red!

 
I don't have a lot of flowers on my balcony this year; but one of my geraniums, which had pink flowers when I bought it back in spring, has recently surprised me by producing red ones as well, on the same plant. And even stranger (?) - some that are part pink, part red!

 

 

Linking to 

Hello Spring

'Spring is sprung'; and it's been the kind of spring week when I keep running around trying to catch it all on camera, but don't find time to blog; and the next day the photos from yesterday already feel kind of outdated... 

For tonight, I decided to just post these photos of ONE of the several beautiful cherry blossom trees that I've stopped to admire this weekend. This tree grows near a hotel in the city center; and the photos were taken on my way into town on Saturday. Enjoy! :)

 

Pretty in Pink

Photos snapped with my mobile phone today in the Town Park. The cherry blossom trees in this park are of a kind that bloom a bit later than those in some of the other parks around town. I like that, because that means we get to enjoy lovely pink trees for a longer period of time…

I also couldn’t resist these lovely pink tulips covered in raindrops. The rain had stopped when I walked into town (after ten) but it was misty, humid, and very still. And the birds in the trees giving a joyful concert!

---

Linking to:

Reflections in Pink

Flamingoes at the zoo. The kind we have at our zoo here in Borås is the African Greater Flamingo, Phoenicopterus roseus. From the zoo’s website I learn that flamingoes get rather old compared to most birds – while in the wild it is common for them to live at least 30 years, in a zoo they can live to be 80. The oldest one at our zoo is over 40 years old. The grey one I understand to be a young one, though - not yet having attained the pink colour.

…

Weekend Reflections 

Pink Saturday

Mixing and Matching

or: Fifty Shades of Red

Spring this year has been a slow and rather chilly affair; and with no “special occasions” on my agenda, I’ve not been feeling much need or inspiration to go shopping for new clothes – until this week, when Summer decided it was time to make an appearance after all. Then all of a sudden when I opened my wardrobe, it mysteriously turned out to contain almost only winter colours; especially in the tops and cardigans section. Or else odd colours that did not seem to go with anything else I owned…

I’ve probably complained about this before; but it’s an enigma to me what secret world council is behind the changes of fashion colour schemes from one year to another. It doesn’t matter which store you visit, or which brand you look at – setting out to match, for example, a certain shade of pink or red bought two or three years ago often proves to be next to impossible!

However, as it turned out, I had some luck this week (or year) in actually finding some things to match two cherry (?) red items bought last summer.

This is the skirt and top from last year. Actually I did not really buy those two on the same occasion or with the purpose of wearing them together – but they turned out to be of exactly identical dye although different material.

Earlier this spring (as perhaps one or two of you with an eye for these things might remember) I bought a “pink” handbag on sale. This, rather to my surprise, turned out to go better with the cherry red than with other shades of pink in my wardrobe.

And even better with some new items bought this week - a button-less long cardigan, and a cotton blouse:

 

(The back of the cardigan)

Before you faint from the colour shock, perhaps I’d better add that I doubt I’ll ever wear all the red items together (from top to toe). More likely I’ll be mixing them with white, grey, beige, black and/or dark blue.

I also bought this sleeveless long top, and a pair of shoes (flat, soft and comfortable).

 

I think the cardigan will also go quite nicely with this (also sleeveless) dress from last summer, even if the red “belt” on that is a slightly different shade of red:

Now all I need is the right weather to show them off in!

Pretty in Pink

Magnolia tree

 

 

I don't know the name of these.

(I don't think I ever saw the movie Pretty in Pink. The title just came to mind when I tried to think of a heading for this post...)

 

ABC Wednesday: P for Pink

Pretty pink cherry blossom tree

Pink butterfly served on a plate!

Pink Pansies

And while I was putting these pictures together,
an old song started playing in my head…

Scaffold: Lily the Pink

http://youtu.be/u7pHDoJrrz

Did you know (I don’t think I did, or I’d forgotten) that there is an actual story behind these lyrics? Lydia Pinkham (1819 – 1883) was an iconic concocter of a commercially successful herbal-alcoholic "women's tonic" meant to relieve menstrual and menopausal pains. It is reputed to have been her son who came up with the idea, in 1875, of making a family business of the remedy. Lydia initially made the remedy on her stove before its success enabled production to be transferred to a factory. Mass marketed from 1876 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best known patent medicines of the 19th century.

For ABC Wednesday – P

Macro Monday: Cherry Blossom Time

From weather point of view we had an amazing Easter weekend with summer temperatures and all of nature suddenly bursting out in colour all at once. I don’t quite know where to start so why not with the very latest. On a walk this afternoon I passed this little park with half a dozen or more cherry blossom trees all at their most intense. I know the place from before and I decided I had probably better go and have a look today. I’m glad I did!

See more Macro Monday at Lisa’s Chaos

Monday Morning: Splash of Pink, Splash of White…

I think I need to start this week with a real splash of colour for Macro Monday. This is another shot that I took outside a florist’s shop last week. (I always feel a bit sneaky doing that… With my camera I can take home those gorgeous colours without actually buying the expensive bouquets! I did go in and buy a begonia for my window, though. I’ll show that some other day when it does not have to compete with these.)

… … …

Now to a more depressing sight. Yesterday we turned our clocks forward one hour to “summer time” (daylight savings time), and this is how we were rewarded for our efforts:

It snowed all night. This morning the sun was back. But it still looks more like February than what we like to see at the end of March:

I just checked my old blog. We had the first snowfall as early as 21 October. It’s been a long winter, and it’s not over yet.

Saturday Surprise: Pink Punk

  

Ï’m not really very bold when it comes to taking photos of strangers in the street… But sometimes I just can’t resist!

So I used the “shooting from the hip” method we practiced recently in the Friday My Town Shoot Out Challenge (which I take part in from my other blog).

If I had been a more daring reporter (or a very close personal friend), I would gone up to him and asked how long it takes him to do his hair in the morning…?