Mandarin Orange Monday: Church Window

 

Mandarin Orange Monday

Mosaic Monday: Watership Down*

Sometimes after a hot day I go for a stroll around the old cemetery nearby where I live. Ooops… Seems I disturbed the whole colony of wild rabbits in the middle of their supper!

* “Watership Down” is the title of a novel by Richard Adams, featuring a group of (anthropomorphised) rabbits escaping the destruction of their warren and seeking a place to establish a new home.

Mosaic Monday

Mosaic/Mandarin Monday: Azaleas

The Azaleas are in full bloom just now in the old cemetery close to where I live. Took the camera for a walk there late Sunday afternoon… There are also red ones and yellow ones, but I made this selction of orange ones for…

Mandarin Orange Monday and Mosaic Monday

Mosaic Monday: White Tulips

“White is the color the human eye sees when it looks at light which contains all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum.” (Wikipedia)

For Mosaic Monday

(Mosaic) Monday 17 December – Bears in Costumes

1. Syria – artist: Sabhia Karden

My home country, the Arabic Republic of Syria, is a country full of hospitable people. In our country, a large number of ethnic groups with a very large number of different ancient religions live together in harmony.

The traces of these diverse ancient cultures are documented in Syria in many ways by the cultural vehicles scripture and image. They are also reflected everywhere in the country's architecture.

 

2. Yemen – artist: Maher Nizar

Women's clothes in Yemen is rich in ornaments with a symbolic character, which issue from their faith and arts, Islamic and Non-Islamic.

 

3. India – artist: Sanjay Sikder

The little bear --- stands for an oppressed woman who feels threatened and is struggling. She fears being deserted, suffers from existential fear. How far can inhumanity go?

 

4. Tadzjikistan – artist: Swetlana Frank

The best day for a Tajik is when visitors arrive, he receives good news, a child is born or a wedding celebrated. The Tajik bear can transform every day into a day like that. He's wearing festive clothes, his colourful silk robe is full of traditional tajik needle- and patchwork. Round the hips the bear is wearing three embroidered shawls. No matter where he meets a stranger or a friend - in the field or on the street - he spreads out one of the shawls as a tablecloth, puts the second one on the ground for his guest to sit on, takes a piece of bread, a handful of dried fruit and some other nibbles from the third one and calls out, "What a day! Let's celebrate! Welcome!"

Monday 10 December – Mosaic Buddy Bears

Spain

Artist: Eusebio Pradas
(Same artist but not same bear as on the BB homepage.)

 

Canada

Artist: Lore Schmidts
(Neither same artist nor same bear as on the BB homepage.)

Mosaic Monday 3 December – United Buddy Bears

USA

Without keeping any exact statistics, I dare say that the United States must be the nation where I have the most blogging buddies.

USA no doubt also has the most unmistakable Buddy Bear in the whole BB exhibition. I don’t think any further introduction of the inspiration for this bear is needed.

The name of the artist is Bill C. Ray. Looking him up, I find that he was born in Alaska, but lives in Berlin, Germany. You can see more of his work here.

In the Buddy Bears exhibition, USA is surrounded by

Uruguay (South America)

Uzbekistan (Central Asia)

Artist: Miu Mau
”The Uzbek bear is a woman called Banu, which means "respectable woman" or "Grand Lady". She is a work of art and a lucky charm at the same time, because it's traditional in Uzbekistan that all the jewellery and works of art in a house also function as protective charms.”

I don’t think I know any bloggers from those countries, but as there are more bears than there are days in December, I thought I might include a couple of “extras” now and then…

---

Linking to Mosaic Monday

Dalecarlian Style Buddy Bear

Street artist painting a Buddy Bear in the shopping mall.

I swear I could hear the Bear say:
- Hey, buddy, you’re tickling me!!!

An exhibition of over 100 Buddy Bears will be coming to town in December, and you’ll be seeing more of them then!

 

If you’re wondering about the pattern on this particular one, it’s obviously inspired by the Swedish Dalecarlian Horses (link goes to an older blog post of mine where I explain about those). And I suspect the artist must be the same man who did this street mural back in the summer:

 

Linking to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House,
Ruby Tuesday 2 and Our World Tuesday

Mosaic Monday: It’s A Dog’s Life

My brother’s dog, enjoying the spring sun (or whatever)

Linked to Mosaic Monday

Easter Collages for Mosaic Monday and Ruby Tuesday

It’s been an indoors Easter weekend! So playing a little with my decorations and various new editing features in Picasa…

Linking to Mosaic Monday and Ruby Tuesday 2

Mosaic Monday: Tulips

Mosaic Monday

Mosaic Monday: Playground

Linking to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House

Delicious Amaryllis

I find no better word for these candy-striped flowers than ‘delicious’!

Mosaic Monday and Ruby Tuesday

An Award and 7 Random Things

Back in the beginning of December, Suzy at Someday, Somewhere  passed on this award to me. Of course it came with a To Do-list:
Pass it on to 15 other people. (15!!!) And tell 7 things about yourself.

All right then… I hereby pass it on generously to all the blogs already listed at the bottom of this blog. Who’s counting? If you like it, pick it up. (Thanks Pauline for the idea of a shortcut…)

Then to the 7 things. As a bonus I’ll tell you that I ‘hate’ unspecified assignments like this, because they tend to make my brain go blank!

Since this is a Picture Book, and not a Story Book, I picked 7 photos from 2011 and made a collage. All that these photos have in common is that they were taken during the last week in the month (different months), and some kind of thought popped into my head as they flashed by on my screen.

1. I’ve never been to a circus (and never really had any longing to).

2. I like ice cream better than having to dress like an Eskimo.

3. I’m fascinated by dreams and dream interpretation.
(That’s a ‘dream catcher’ in the photo.)

4. My first Bible (from my early teens) has a lot of notes in it.

5. I like walking along a beach.

6. It’s been over a decade since I last drove a car.

7. I like fresh pineapple but opening a tin is easier.

 

This post will be linked to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House.

 

Advent Calendar – Monday 5th December 2011

“Never run faster than your guardian angels can fly.”
(source unknown)

 

♥ This post will be linked to Mosaic Monday at Little Red House. ♥

Mosaic Monday: Frosty

Had to go back to October in my photo archives to find some photos with frosty colour. The past weekend has been all storm and rain.

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House.

Mosaic Monday: Reflection Patchwork

I’m still fascinated by those window reflections of water reflections
of trees and sky… (compare last week’s Watery Wednesday).
I kept playing with them in Picasa: cropping, turning
upside-down, putting together again…

♥ ♥ ♥

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House

Mosaic Monday: Beach Find in November

Like a Lake Monster trying to crawl up on land, there it lay…

See more Monday Mosaics at Mary’s Little Red House

Mosaic Monday: Reedmace

Reedmace / Bulrush / Cattail / Typha / (Swedish: Kaveldun)

Until I looked it up in Wikipedia, I had no idea how useful this plant can be. It seems it can be used for food, fuel, medicinal purposes, preventing erosion, purifying poisoned water and more!

Mosaic Monday

Mosaic Monday: Colourful October

No link up yet for Mosaic Monday at Mary’s Little Red House but I’ll go ahead and post mine anyway. All the photos in this collage from our Town Park on 25 October. Magpie in the middle, in case the bird is not familiar to everyone.

The trees are some sort of Japanese cherry blossom. Decorative both in the spring and in the autumn. The leaves covering the trunks are from a different plant climbing up the trees; looks funny this time of year.