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"...

 

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 

Shadow Shot Sunday

 

...Another cold and sunny day...

Shadow Shot Sunday 2 

Ruby Tuesday – Alingsås (3)

Café Storken (‘The Stork Café’), Alingsås

This is the where we had lunch on the first day of our trip. As I mentioned in my first post about Alingsås, this little town is quite famous for its many cafés - about one per 1000 inhabitants.

According to a tourist brochure I picked up, the bakery and café traditions here can be traced all the way back to the industrial revolution in the 1700s. When women were employed in the textile manufacture, they no longer had so much time to bake and cook at home.

Anyway I doubt we could have stumbled across a more charming place than this little backyard café in (and outside) a classic old red wooden building. I think to most Swedes this kind of scenery more or less sums up the “essence” of Swedish summer…

Linking to
Ruby Tuesday
Our World Tuesday

Hopscotch & Roses

Scanning through recent photos for the colour red (for Friday My Town), these are what I came up with – from a short walk last weekend.

Actually what caught my eye in the playground was not really the locomotive (I’ve seen it before!), but the hopscotch course drawn in the sand. I’m not sure I’ve seen one of those since back in my own childhood!

And a rose, of course, “is a rose is a rose is a rose”…¹
even if it might smell as sweet by any other name.²
(It’s “ros” in Swedish too, though.)

¹ Gertrude Stein
² Shakespeare

FMTSO: The Colour Red

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!