Leaving Mörtfors for a place a little bit bigger, but only for a week!
Happy New Year!!!

A friend gave me this folkloristic link. Elisabeth linked to Emy Little today as well.
Katastrofala omslag
Christmas catalogs from 1940-1988 on WishbookWeb

Since moving to the countryside I´m often in the mood for baking bread. The book Annas mat by Anna Bergenström is my favourite for both baking and cooking. You can´t find it in the shops any longer, except from here, I think. This Everyday Bread-recipe is the best! It´s so easy, you don´t work the dough more than in the bowl and the bread tastes perfect. I bake it twice a week, I double the ingredients and I often make French rolls by putting the dough on the baking-plate using two spoons.

EVERYDAY BREAD (doubled from the book)
1 paket jäst/1 parcel of yeast
2 tsk salt/2 teaspoons of salt
1-2 msk honung/1-2 tablespoons of honey
8 dl ljummet vatten/8 deciliter of tepid water
mjöl tills degen är lagom fast/flour (about 16-18 deciliter)
Jag blandar olika mjölsorter och häller i t ex linfrön eller solrosfrön efter humör/ I mix different kinds of flour and ad linseed or sunflower seeds depending on my mood and what is in the spence.

Mix yeast, salt and honey. Add some tepid water, stir and add the rest of the water. Add flour. Mix the dough, cover the bowl and let it stand for 1 - 2 hours. Share the dough into two and just tip the dough over to a surface and let it stand for 20 min. Bake it off in an owen at 250°C (480°F) for 15 min, lower the temp to 125°C (250°F) and bake the bread ready for 40-45 min. Or use two spoons to make small breads directly to the surface, bake off but for shorter time than above.


Breadbaking on a higher level, Pain de Martin.

Christmas Eve. The faithful, wooden Santa Claus Noppe keeps an eye on us. Hope you´ll all have a nice day today. Wherever you are.

Stopping by the office on a Saturday to wipe away the mess on my worktable left from yesterday. Extra long and extra intense workdays for three weeks finally made all the things on my work list go away before Christmas holiday, but also resulted in too little sleep, a cold, and a very messy studio. Now; looking forward to some calm days, one or two new ideas and a fresh new start at work in early January.
Wishing you all the best!

HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS! GOD JUL!

Brilliant ideas make me happy! Inventions which are silly and imaginative at the same time really light up the day! The new Reebok shoe Easytone has 3 built-in rubber balls in each sole that will make it more difficult to keep your balance! Isn´t that great! I´m cocky today and dare to say that this revolutionary invention almost would have fit into my list of own ones!

From the top, beautiful wallpaper from Sturekatten, Stockholm. A small elf guarding a staircase in Vasastan. And the last pic shows my parceled contribution to a show in Toronto, called Cut to the Drummer. The exhibition and the drumming event will take place on February 5 in Steam Whistley Brewing. Show is curated by Bepo & Mimi.

Will show you more later!

The traditional Lucia parade takes place tonight at school, one day in advance. Have a very nice weekend!

Starving for colours. Going away for a meeting. Snow outside!

Picturebox
Wu Wing Yee
Betsy Walton

Last year at this time Jakob was spending his days on Oden heading for the Antarctic while the kids and I stayed at home, thinking about penguins. This is a report (in Swedish) I wrote about our weekday expedition:

N 57° 31' 25.61"
E 16° 27' 28.91"

Sydostlig svag bris
-4°C
På smulfronten inget nytt
Tvätthög enorm, med risk för kalvning
Sikt halvklar till måttlig
Fordonsstatus god

Idag skall prover tas längst ner i handväskan eftersom förhoppning finns om upptäckten av en helt ny och ännu outforskad biotop.

Encelliga fotosyntetiserande organismer har siktats i grönsaksfacket i kylskåpet, och överlevnadsdräkten är framplockad inför expeditionen.

Samt;
ett nytt virus har uppmärksammats i luftvägarna och i näsans slemhinna hos en av de två små forskarassistenterna, vilket dessvärre resulterat i några ineffektiva nätter vad gäller vila och uppsamlandet av energi. Ingen skada skedd dock, forskarteamet väntas kunna ta igen förlorad cellmolykiär kemosyntes inom de närmsta dagarna.

Slut på rapport.
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Är du konstnär och intresserad av att följa med Oden nästa år? Läs om Polarforskningssekreteriatets konstnärsprogram här.

Time for some Christmas spirit? And a link to a short film based on a comic strip by Steven Appelby. A Traditional Christmas at Small Birds Singing. Behind the scenes here.

A comment to this link of Joanna Goddard, found on Camilla Engmans blog yesterday. 70´s rockstars at home with their parents. Such a nice photo project! (Mother in my illustration says, THEN and NOW:
Mommy´s sweet little Torsten!) Click on the pics for a little bit bigger size.

Bookmark the LIFE photo archive!

A quick hello from my yellow drawing pad. Thinking about the fact that I really need to do some exercise; walk, run, go somewhere bodybuilding (well, maybe not).

And some talented illustrators
Catell Ronca
Ray Fenwick
Harriet Russell
Ellie Curtis

The old fashioned theme continues when 5 are making cheese for Christmas. Milk from this cow. Recipe for a another kind of cheese, one that doesn´t need to be nursed for three weeks is this Torsåkerost. By the way... the whey is perfect when baking bread.

A time machine trip back to the early 1900s Mörtfors when commercial life really flourished. Some of the activities you could find here back then; a general store, a market gardener, a bus company,
a mill, a furniture factory, a match factory, a car-rapair garage,
a lemonade manufacturer, a chocolate factory(!), a medical doctor,
a pharmacy, a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a dentist (me and Jakob have our work space in the old dentist reception now), a bakery and not to forget the bathing resort with the Guesthouse! (About 150 summer visitors came to Mörtfors each summer for the health spa, the food and the surroundings.) AND during a short period Mörtfors even housed a small-scale breeding of silver fox!

In Mörtfors today you´ll find an artist, a textile artist, a painter and carpenter, the Guesthouse, journalists and experts of EU, salmon-trout breeding, a small boat line, a florist´s shop and 2 happy illustrators among some other sole traders (whose work I can´t manage to explain about in English.) Links to pages in Swedish here. Pictures are from Mörtfors homepage.

Och TACK till alla i Mörtfors som kom och firade med oss på kontoret i fredags!!!

A walk from home and around Kappemålagöl. AND I forgot to mention yesterday that a very nice musical surprice during the Monday night August gala was this man performing!!! (The clip from 1966, together with Lill.) Pure happiness!

Jakob´s book The Legend of Sally Jones won the Augustprice for children´s books on the gala yesterday in Stockholm!!! We are very happy!!! Read about Sally Jones in English here.

Come on, isn´t it time for a change? I have linked to this site earlier; Females in front. The amount of signatures is rising!

Morgonanekdot (in Swedish): En främmande man hälsade glatt på mig utanför kontoret i morse, med orden "Hej på dig, Tomtemor!" Har fortfarande inte bestämt mig för om jag ska ta det som en komplimang...

A problem of mine: I´m too restless. I think impatience is a disease. If only I could work faster. If only the week had more days, the days more hours and if the hours could last just a little bit longer...

Other possible problems: Unsure about what to wear for Christmas? Don´t know what to name your dog? Desperately want to be an Elf? (Last link found on LFTEC.)

Top pic: Nilssons Konditori in Oskarshamn.
Some of their recipes in this magazine. Page 13 to 19.

The (completely empty) humour-notebook I found at Shalom Second Hand. Somehow, it looked a little bit sad...

And leafs. Everywhere.