Var inte rädd för mörkret

I'm working on making a nice little bag and right now I'm almost done with the liner. The bag will be quite colorful but the inside will be all black. Once again I felt black was a little too boring and once again my glow-in-the-dark obsession took hold. So I painted the words to a poem that often gets stuck in my mind across the whole liner in such a way that hopefully the text will spiral down "into the depths of the bag" and light up the darkness. The poem that I used is about how light can't exist without the dark. This, I hope, sort-of plays with the thought of the darkness inside the bag.

Var inte rädd för mörkret
av Erik Blomberg (1894 - 1965)

Var inte rädd för mörkret,
ty ljuset vilar där.
Vi ser ju inga stjärnor,
där intet mörker är.

I ljusa irisringen
du bär en mörk pupill,
ty mörkt är allt,
som ljuset med bävan längtar till.

Var inte rädd för mörkret,
ty ljuset vilar där,
var inte rädd för mörkret,
som ljusets hjärta bär.

quick transl:

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
by Erik Blomberg (1894 - 1965)

Don't be afraid of the dark,
because that's where the light rests.
We see of course no stars
where there isn't any light

In the light circle of the iris
you carry a dark pupil,
because dark is everything,
that the light yearns for.

Don't be afraid of the dark,
because that's where the light rests,
don't be afraid of the dark,
for it carries the light's heart.

hair thingy

Tomorrow there's a big dinner at school and I figured that since I'll be wearing all black I need some color somewhere to avoid the boring-black trap. So I made a hair creation which ended up as a great success!

glow-in-the-dark nails

I've gotten a glow-in-the-dark obsession. Not even my nails could escape. I was doing a regular french manicure and my bottle of glow-in-the-dark textile paint was standing a little too close to me. so the white tips ended up being glow-in-the-dark

Jabberwocky art

I felt my wall needed some art so I made some.
puffy/glow-in-the-dark textile paint on cloth.

the white stuff glows in the dark =)

working on the matching.

I found some earrings to match my necklace (and the ring I found before).

svenskt tenn = bag!

Whenever my aunt comes to visit we always go to her favorite store: Svenskt Tenn. When I was younger I could never understand what she liked about it. It had all this really ugly furniture and strange cloth which never really managed to impress me. My strongest memory from these visits is from when they had a sale on pillows with Josef Frank designs and my aunt got down on her hands and knees so that she could reach the pillows farthest in on the bottom shelf. She actually crawled around on the floor in public just so that she could get the pillow with the ugliest birds on. I just didn't get it.

But as the years have passed my aunt's taste has rubbed off. Now I (and as it turns out, the rest of Sweden as well) worship Josef Frank almost just as much as my aunt. I haven't gotten to the crawling-on-the-ground-for-pillows stage yet, but it's coming. Right now my focus is bags, but being a poor student I can't afford one. "No problem though," I thought. "I can just make one! I'll find some cheap Josef Frank-imitation cloth and the rest should be easy!" But I was oh so wrong. I found the cloth no problem, IKEA has started selling a wonderful group of cloths that have the whole Josef Frank-feel at very low prices. But the frame is impossible to find! The hobby shops here in Sweden only sell small frames, so my project will have to be put on ice for a while...

New Year's outfit: sweater

I've found the sweater for my creation. just have to choose color. probably black...

music. maskinen.

Just found a swedish hip&hop(?) group called Maskinen.
Don't know what I think about them yet, still trying them out. They made that horrible song "Alla som inte dansar är våldtäcksmän" (trans: All the people who aren't dancing rape people) but they seem pretty cool. For example, they want to do a concert in a blimp above a square in Stockholm.
crazy....

pärlfiskarna

or Les pêcheurs de perles is the origional title.
it's an opera by Georges Bizet (who also wrote Carmen)
Folkoperan in Stockholm is running it right now and WOW it is wonderful! It might also be because I haven't seen opera in such a long time that any opera at all is wonderful for me, but it really touched me. I cried once over the breaking of the friendship between Nadir and Zurga and I had tears in my eyes the remainder of the time. High D was hit I think and it didn't even sound high. The soprano, Elin Rombo, was great. Not one of the greates singers of all time, but she had amazing feeling. She knew how to manipulate the audience. So did the other main characters, played by Carl Unander-Scharin and Jeremy Carpenter. The tenor Carl was a little weak, but had a great voice. They all had great voices. AND were good actors.
speaking of actors, they had 3 young actors who acted out Zurga, Nadir and Leila when they were young. they were given such small tools, only looks and small small body movements, but they used it well. Names to remember: Sandra Bergman, Viktor Bodelius, and Max Kvissberg. (I could swear I've heard the Kvissberg name before... just don't know from where...)

and the music, the music!!
wow, that I've never heard anything from this opera before. It has it all: climaxes, terror, love, tantalizing melodies, agitating drums, you name it. High C, relatively interesting recitatives, great broad choir sound... wow.

my only problem was the storyline. As in it's a great storyline, but if you read the description that Folkoperan has written I don't really feel that they managed to convey what they wrote that they were going to convey... but they did manage to convey the friendship and the love. Especially the friendship really got to me, and it will stay with me for quite some time.

outfits for new years and christmas

It's soon Christmas, and after that comes New Year's.
Now I don't really mind what I wear. I mean, I like to dive into the world of style and fashion but I'm too poor and actually not interested enough (yet?) to actually wear things like that. With one and a half exceptions: New Year's and a little Christmas. Since Christmas is spent with my family that outfit usually isn't that spaced out, but New Year's. Well up until now I've always spent it with my family, but now...

well I guess it all started with my wonderful clutch i bought before... A new plan has started forming in my mind: I'll use this clutch every New Year's and try to create an outfit to match it.
here is my design for this year:


I'll probably have leg warmers over my heels and not the glitter on. (inspired a little by Jimmy Choo for H&M and Madonna I think...)
the biggest challenge is going to be to find those earrings....