goodbye golden leaves

Just the other weekend these colours could be found everywhere, now it's pretty much all gone. Not to be found again for another year or so. Fortunately the greens will be back long before that though, and we do have a lot of fur and pine trees staying green the whole year. Right now this depressing lack of colour makes me seriously wonder what I'm doing this side of the globe, when we've got a place in Durban where the sun is shining and warming and the trees are blossoming. Oh, well, I can always dream of a white christmas and get that wish fulfilled up here ... White is not a colour though, white is even more a lack of colour. So I do my best to keep warm in colourful clothes, it's what you have to do.













I'm gonna go see a few movies at the film festival here in Stockholm, when it starts this weekend, that's also a nice way to escape the dreary weather for a bit. There was a time when I would take a week's leave during the festival and just see movies the whole days, which can be both wonderful and sometimes a bit depressing since everwhere else seemed to be better.

I've said it before though, and will most likely say it again, and again, and again: being two is the best way to keep warm. Being three is even better, and the second person doesn't have to be a spouse, it might just as well be a friend, or a cat even, but preferably a rather big cat, or a bunch of them. I wonder what our South African cats would think about snow?

chinese summer inspiration

On Saturday I finally watched "Lust, caution" by Ang Lee, and I have no excuse why it took me so long. I knew it was gonna be beautifully shot and well directed, as his movies always are, but sometimes I find them a bit too aesthetic, in the way that they don't really move me. Which is not a problem though, I love just looking at all the pretty things, and I'm telling you this particular movie is just an orgy of Chinese beauty! Hairstyles, clothes, makeup, furniture, jewellery, cars, bags, well pretty much every frame is like a painting.



I'm even considering learning how to play mahjong, cos the tiles are so pretty, but I don't really like those kinds of boardgames. I guess I could just get a mahjong game and use it as decoration. Watching this movie made me want to rewatch "In the mood for love", another incredibly beautiful movie completely packed with clothes to die for.



These lovely pictures are postcards I got the other week at Stockhome, a store with some nice kitsch and the odd straight thing for your home on Kungsgatan here in Stockholm. I have yet to decide where in the apartment they should live. With a short vacation coming up next week, I feel quite inspired by them.

Grahamstown, City of Saints, pt. 3: porches

Grahamstown was a very nice town to walk around in, as I've mentioned, and we saw some really beautiful houses along the way. I've never really dreamt of owning a big house, I like living in city flats, and see no reason to have a lot of rooms you're never gonna be in. I would like to have a huge kitchen in the future, that I dream of. At least as big as to fit a table that would comfortably sit 8-10 people, so that I can cook while my family and friends sit and talk and have a drink meanwhile. I wouldn't say no to a small garden as well, preferably secluded. But most of all I dream about having a porch.



I don't know why I dream of a porch, maybe from seeing movies from Maine or the American South or New Orleans, when people always sit on their porches on hot summer nights, in porch swings, drinking ice tea, chatting away into the night. Or old men sit with an old cracked guitar singing the blues. Or old ladies sit in the morning splitting peas for dinner. I guess that's the romantic picture I've got of porches. Apart from them sometimes being very ornamented and pretty as well.



This blue house is the Observatory Museum in Grahamstown. Unfortunately we didn't have time to check it out, but met someone who told us one of the old uses for it: if you were looking for someone you'd go up in the tower and look for them, see which street they were in, and go meet them there. That's how flat and small the city centre of Grahamstown is, it wouldn't be a problem seeing someone from this after all rather small tower.



If I had a porch, I'd get a porch swing first, and some old wicker chairs and paraffin lamps. Then I'd sit there, peel apples for a pie, pet my cats, listen to the crickets, take out the guitar and sing when the sun goes down, sip mint julip (I don't even really know what that is, but it sounds tasty), wave to the neighbours walking by.



That is if the porch isn't infested with ants, or it's got snakes underneath like a friend of mine's, or the evenings bring clouds of mosquitos forcing me to stay inside, or the neighbours are inconsiderate idiots playing bad music too loud and getting too drunk every night. Anything can happen. Even in my dreams I assume the worst so I won't be too disappointed if it happens.



But I'll keep my dream of the perfect porch, something like this one above. So pretty and relaxing by the look of it, with just enough shade for the hot days. With apple, mango, avocado, and lemon trees in the back, sided by some raspberry bushes, and rows of beans, lettuce, tomatoes, herbs and other edible greens, I'll be quite happy. Quite happy indeed.

the weekend trifecta

A good weekend starts with breakfast somewhere they make a mean cappuccino, for example at The Little Italian Place in Pavillion, here in Durban. Their cappuccino is seriously perfect! Or veramente perfetto, as they would put it in the Mother Country of Good Coffee. It will then continue with finding the jacket I got obsessed with in Grahamstown a week ago, in my size at Truworths, and buying it. 550 rand is not the cheapest, and it does feel silly buying a winter jacket when it's 25 degrees outside: but come on, look at it! If that is not a perfect jacket I've never seen one, and I rarely have to be honest. I'm a coat person mostly, I love coats.



In all sizes black and white hounds tooth pattern is one of my absolute favorites though, that was probably the main attraction of it. And the very classic cut, that at least reminds me of a 60's jacket for example Audrey Hepburn could have worn. Absurdly enough I now long for winter again, so I can pretty myself up with this cutie. Not really though, I can't wait for the unpredictability that is Swedish summer! Especially since I missed it last year, I'm very much looking forward to the long bright nights, park coffee drinking, long walks by the water, new potatoes with pickled herring, fresh strawberries and rhubard pie. It'll be nice for sure.



Getting back to the trifecta weekend, the second ingredient was finally getting the second season of Flight of the Conchords, one of my all time favourite comedy series. Back home again after shopping just to putting it on and watching the whole first disc in one go, then saving the second to Sunday, trying to prolong the pleasure. Indeed it was a pleasure, and I loved the documentary that was featured too. I'm a little bit sad that this is it of course, there will be no more Flight of the Conchords, or so they say. Maybe they'll make a comeback to the career they never got in 10 year's time? That would be sweet. I'll wait for that then.



Thirdly, finishing off the trifecta, was baking "hallongrottor" ("raspberry caves") after finally finding a very tasty raspberry jam in the store, and eating most of them fresh. It is the most divine cookie I know, and only has one flaw: it's completely impossible to just eat one.

In my opinion this makes a good weekend without trying too hard.

some calligraphy covers of mine

Since I have put calligraphy as one of the main topics for this blog I thought it was about time I actually did a piece about it, so here goes:

Being a huge fan of calligraphy since my early teens, when a fantastic art teacher introduced it to me, I've been fortunate enough to do a few commercial assignments. Being asked to do cover lettering for Pillow Book by Peter Greenaway has been the most honourable job yet: simpy cos that movie IS calligraphy. It's visually the most beautifully stunning amazing movie ever! In this case I made most of the text for the back- and insides as well, but for Draughtman's Contract, below, it's just the title that's mine. I really like the font for the other text though, so I don't mind.


These dvd covers are from Atlantic Film, a Swedish movie distributor nowadays well known for their beautiful design of covers, as well as doing a lot of excellent classic and art movies. The art direction of these particular covers is made by my older brother, a very talented designer indeed.



This cover is for sure the most widely spread anything I've ever done, with around 150.000 copies hardback, and 30.000 paperback sold in Sweden (have no idea what it's sold in Norway, where they used the same cover). I do work for the publisher, but it was the designer Niklas Lindblad who asked if I wanted to try something since we had a hard time agreeing on a font that would work. With Niklas' genius mind I think it turned out wonderfully, so striking and unusual for a thriller. A little side story: when the book came out, I got another very fun assignment to design a window display in a book store downtown Stockholm. I volunteered cos I've got so much of Chinese things around the house! So I used mainly my own things, and got a few other small things, and it all turned out so well the store kept it for about 2 months instead of the agreed 2 weeks.



These covers are for the two first books in Jasper Fforde's series about Thursday Next, hilarious sort of literary detective stories, with a lot of twists and winks to literary history. My very talented friend Simon Stålenhag did the great art work for them, and I like them a lot.

my "it" girl and nowhere boy

Today I wanted to show my first Chinese girl, who followed me home from an antique shop in Notting Hill, London, 1999, for 5 pounds. I still love her as much as the day I first saw her, and I get so happy every time I look at her. She's got a few sisters on nearby walls, they'll visit another day.

I just came back from a preview screening of Nowhere Boy, the new film about John Lennon. It wasn't a great movie, but I enjoyed it immensely! And what I wouldn't do to get a time warp and head back to the late 50's/early 60's England ... The clothes! The furniture! The music! I'll admit I'd prefer something other than british post war food though, but I'll take the rest any day. I'm really jealous of my mum sometimes, to have lived as a teenager in that era, well late 60's that is. Little did she know back then that her future daughter would hunt vintage stores for the same clothes she'd wear every day. Or fall in love with old Chinese commercial posters.