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!

A little musical interlude...

Line Renaud: "Le Hully Gully"

Even though winter over here has mostly been everything i could possibly wish it to be, so far, freezing cold and dry; i constantly find myself dreaming of swaying palmtrees and oppressive heat, or maybe just a gentle, warm breeze... oh, and those gorgeous french dancers, in their trunks wouldn't be unwelcome either,
a pity they must all be in their 70s by now.

I adore these scopitones, precursors of the music video. Apparently these machines, invented in France in the second half of the 1950s, were made out of parts from discarded flying machines, a sort of jukebox. How i'd love to have one! -thankfully you can get several videos assembled on dvd's here. -or you can find tons to watch on youtube...


Hope to be back soon with posts, as i've said a hundred times before.
See you soon ...if you're still here.

Ulriksdal Palace

Ulriksdal Palace, seen from the lake.

After a mild december it's now been incredibly cold for almost a full month and the snow, though it hasn't been that much of it, has actually stayed! It's heavenly!

I just meant to post a series of photos from my walk last saturday when i went out to the royal estate of Ulriksdal, expressly to capture the white, frosty gorgeousness. But can't leave out writing just a little about it's history.

Scroll down to see more pictures and to read about the theatre.




In the early 17th centry Ulriksdal belonged to Jacob de la Gardie, a nobleman of french bourgeois descent, it was then named Jacobsdahl. Jacob's son Magnus Gabriel was a favourite of Queen Christina (util he eventually fell from grace) as well as one of the walthiest and most powerful men in Sweden. He had his father's estate turned into a magnificent baroque compound with magnificent gardens, -if we're to believe, the often rather exaggerated, engravings of the time.


In the 1680s it was taken over by the crown and renamed Ulriksdal, after a prince who died in infancy.










The court theatre, called "the Confidence", was originally built in the 1670s as a stable, but in the 1750s it was turned into a theatre by Queen Louisa Ulrica, sister of Frederic the great of Prussia.

Sadly the theatre, -just like the one at Drottningholm, was abandoned at the death of her son, Gustav III in 1792, -and in the 1860s the building was brutally turned into a hideous neo-renaissance style hunting lodge, by king Carl XV.

It's name "the confidence" comes from the dining room, with it's "Table volante" -where the table could be lowered down to the cellar and there dressed and set, so that the Royal family could dine in private. -all of this and the original 18th century-fixtures were all covered or simply demolished in the 1860s.

Luckily the theatre was "rediscovered" in the 1970s by the opera singer Kjerstin Dellert, who happened to live nearby. The building was in a terrible state, and unlike Drottningholm, next to nothing remained. Dellert found sponsors and started a complete restoration of the theatre, had the salon and it's adjoining suite of elegant rooms all turned back to their former beauty.


View through one of the windows of the dining room.Adorable houses nearby

(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.

A little winter after all.

At last i've gotten that slight, proper snow mayhem i have pined for for so long!
I only hope it stays a while before spring breaks out. Last saturday saw a feeble dusting of snow and during the night it snowed as though someone had ripped up a giant duvet...and on Sunday it was just picture-perfect! Though it's already getting warmer and yet again there's that dreary, dripping sound and huge lumps of snow dropping from the trees...but yesterday surpassed all my wildest dreams.


I can't believe it's been more than a month since last time i wrote, i really meant to wright more often but just haven't been able to post any of those several drafts i've typed down...i have literally all the time in the world and am still unable to make the most of my hours. How do people with proper jobs, relations and families and all that keep from going under?

Pictures taken yesterday in my parent's garden, around my home and out at Djurgården, where i had to go just to capture this magical winter-land! And for a little splash of colour i have to post this scrumptious Hermés scarf i shot at NK department store the other day.

Lamentation.

Now temperatures have risen again, so that it snowed almost all of yesterday and that it's snowing richly today, is neither here nor there when it all melts away before it reaches the ground. The ice that had spread out across riddarfjärden is now slowly melting away. Allover is that depressing, dripping sound from drainpipes. I can't stand this!

The feeling of winter is now completely gone again, it has been replaced by this tepid humidity. The honeysuckle on the balcony might be budding soon - wich i would love if this was in may and not the middle of january...now it's just saddening.

It looked like the water on riddarfjärden would freeze as it's done as long as i can remember -then it would turn into this huge open space where you can walk for several kilometres, not last year though, or the years before that -the last time was in the winter of 2005 wich was remarkably cold. As it looks this winter might turn out to be just as mild and dreary as it was last year - just like five months of march, wich is really the dingiest, dullest month of all.

It is just as depressing as a summer that completely rains away -or that has no rain at all...
We have had mild winters before, but nothing like this. This just feels like the end of the world. I so miss that exhilarating feeling of walking in this magical, pristine winterland, over frozen waters, the brightness of the snow, the frost crystals on the windows.


Illustrations by Johann Heinrich Füssli and myself

Drottningholm

Yesterday Moa and i went out to Drottningholm, the royal palace with it’s vast gardens. -a place i love and will be writing a lot more about in the futue... I was delighted to discover the lakes and ponds in the english park frozen and turned into huge ice skating-rinks – a shame i can’t skate. Hardly any snow yet though, wich would have made things all the more beautiful.
We walked around on the ice, out on small islets normally inaccessible, everything was just as it should be in winter except for the shortage of snow, i had almost forgotten what it was like as last winter was horrible and just rained away - wich felt like a bad sign as i have been worrying and obsessing over all the talk of climate change of recent years…but we’ve had mild winters before so maybe it’s not all that bad...i remember some ten years ago when two friends of mine, both born in late december, foolishly they decided to celebrate their fifteenth birthday with a picnic at Drottningholm, and it was rainy and muddy; the ground was like walking on a soaking wet sponge.


Speaking of Drottningholm i found these clips that some sweetheart has had the kindness of posting on youtube that are part of a lovely documentary on ”dance’s past” from 1979, instigated, written and narrated by Dame Margot Fonteyn.
Here she gives a little tour of the well-preserved court theatre at Drottningholm, and it’s absolutely charming! The whole documentary is really worth watching, unfortunately they've disabled embedding of the clips so you have to follow these links:1 (13) and
2 (14)
-the part with Drottningholm starts in clip 1 (13) with a lovely little animation at about 3:23 and continues in clip 2 (14).