This christmas

With both my parents gone, and a dysfunctional, to say the least, relation with my remaining family i have, for the first time ever, celebrated christmas with friends. But i still had to have a little, but dense enough to house an entire family of squirrels without my dog knowing it, tree for my home, as i always have. Back in the days when we had a summer house in the archipelago my mother and i used to go out there and get trees right from the surrounding woods. Now those days feel both incredibly long ago, yet as if it was just last year. Such a strange feeling.
Now her portrait hangs there overlooking my little tree.

On christmas eve i was invited by one of my oldest friends to spend the evening with her, her sister, their mother and one of her oldest friends. I was assigned to do the meatballs, which are a staple on the traditional christmas table, and of course made them just the way my mother did.
So it was the nicest christmas in a long time. Next year i hope to be with my half sister and niece in Pennsylvania as i had originally hoped for this one.

As for the weather it's just been warm and humid, without a trace of frost, and that really pisses me off. I demand cold now!

I hope you have all had a pleasant christmas, and wish you a happy new year!

December will be magic again... i hope

Now it has been an awful long hiatus again; i've simply felt too blank and overwrought most of the time. Now i'm back to whine about the weather again; this autumn was unusually warm, and after the two last winters being all they should have been with snow and mostly cheek-pinching cold, this december has been hopelessly warm and damp with merely a little frost and absolutely no snow. Today has been grey and rainy and i wonder when and if this will turn. This is sweden, mind you! -and yesteday was able to eat a wild strawberry from my own balcony, as much as i love wild strawberries that only adds to my distress. I really don't like this at all and desperately hope that december, at least the remainder of it, will be magic again!

Kate Bush: "December will be magic again", Christmas special from 1980:

The Belated Halloween Bash

Last saturday, on all saints' day, i transformed my little apartment into a haunted house and gave a nice, intimate little belated halloween party. Me and my two co-hostesses served the guests quesadillas, beetroot cake with blood red icing and roman punch. Sadly i never had the time, energy, funds or imagination to put together any kind of costume. But it was a fun night all the same.







On the balcony i placed a banshee, or someting, i made of some cardboard, bamboo sticks and two yards of tulle.

Happy Halloween!

A drawing i did this morning based on Thomas Gainsborough's iconic portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, from 1787. Simply done to wish all of my readers, who still are still around, a Happy Halloween!

(A belated) Happy New Year!

Hello again! I'm just going to start breaking the silence by wishing you a Happy New Year and by posting a series of photos from my own new year's eve celebrations.
I and a couple of friends spent the evening in my apartment and cooked a delicious vietnamese dinner, -since i got Ghillie Basan's fantastic book "The food and cooking of Vietnam and Cambodia" i've become quite obsessed, also a longing for warm and exotic places...in spite of the fact that i've been pining for razor sharp cold and now gotten it -it's a staggering 5 degrees F outside and the cold has been staying for several weeks now...i can't stop myself from simply dreaming myself away to the far east.

However...the day before i met my friend K downtown to go to the asian markets where we got all we needed -like two old ladies we had both brought our own little baskets, and then on the afternoon of new year's eve we all sat down around my dining table and made spring and summerrolls, wonton dumplings, and a crisp green papaya salad, everything took the whole evening to prepare as i only have a tiny kitchenette with little space for a good mise-en-place.

At the stroke of midnight we crowded on my balcony to see the fireworks.