My inner anarchist

A few days ago, when I was hanging around in the lobby reading the internets, a late arriving girl materialized herself, I showed her the envelope with her name the reception guy left at the reception desk, we chatted a while and, well, since having a bit of company is never a bad idea, we hung around the town next day.

I was in Stockholm two years ago and I happened to see the changing of the royal guards. One bunch of soldiers arrived, another arrived, the leading ones said a few words ("Everything okay?" "Everything okay!" and both bunches left, one off-duty, one to take their positions. Passing the flag occured and maybe there was some fanfare. Apparently, this spectacle became popular so they improved it, throwing in a marching band and some new, exciting choreography. I noticed the marching band going around the Royal Castle on Sunday when I was hanging around the centre but it was Sunday and my first, last and only thought was that maybe some local garrison is keeping the citizens in a friendly mood, thus providing a Sunday promenade concert.

Nope.

So, I was wandering around with K. and we happened to the Royal Castle around midday so I thought it a good idea to go there and watch. The bunch of soldiers that was finishing their shift assembled and looked decorative. To my utmost surprise, some army guy stepped out with a paper, announcing into the loudspeakers: "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm Captain Mikael Larsson (1) welcome to the changing of the Royal Guard, blah, blah, blah, and the Royal Castle is open to the public from twelve to three, as is the Royal Souvenir shop, where you can buy souvenirs from the Royal Castle." I started to laugh. I couldn't help recalling the Dontgonearthe Castle (2) where you could stay overnight, get a tasty meal and tasteful souvenirs, too.
The whole army messing around took an hour, including a few pieces played by the marching band for the pleasure of the tourists so it probably counts also as culture.


Lately, I've been thinking what it is like, to live in a monarchy. Surely, a monarch is trained from childhood to shake hands of fellow potentates in the most socially acceptable way, to get the right attire for the right occasions, to sit for being portrayed on postal stamps (if someone uses them) better than any elected official ever may be. After all, even the most degenerate nobleman manages a language or two and passable table manners with years of care and tutoring. Since in the modern democracies, the head of the state is important mainly for performing various ritual dances, good table manners and using the right fork for the right course are enough; maybe anything else even stands in the way (in places where the president, Commander-in-Chief or Supreme Priest need to sign government documents, it is obviously advisable to teach them how to write their own name). With elected officials, you never know. Maybe they can eat only sandwiches and the concept of silverware is beyond them, they are likely to have hidden agenda and they are rather hard to behead or dethrone otherwise when they are raving mad. Also, bare head looks much worse on stamps than a crowned one.

Of course that I have some vague idea about the functions of the state. After the last few years' political mess, when things worked best in those long months after the general election when there was no goverment, or in days of temporary officials in place of ministers after the government was deposed, it seems to me that the importance of state in general may be a bit overrated. And with the president close to raving mad... Ick.

I'd better go and read something funny.

Added on Saturday, whatsthedate.
I bought a horse-shaped cookie cutter, talked to K. about our glorious traditions of cookies and decorated gingerbread and since K. was to meet W. at the royal castle after that army thing, we went there. We were a bit early so we had a chance to watch the marching band of Royal Navy. The glorious traditions of decorated gingerbread include decorated gingerbread soldier. Nothing said.
I didn't check whether in the Royal Gift Shop, one could get cookie cutters shaped like Princess Victoria but I'll be around for a few more days.


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(1) Name obviously invented and if I got it right, it's by mistake.
(2) Terry Pratchett reference again, what would you expect? Check Carpe jugulum for more.

The Byredo Quest

The other day I ranted about Bal d'Afrique, yet another day I tried Pulp... and since I happen to be in Stockholm, I wanted to get me a souvenir and actually buy Pulp.
Since I'm a smart girl, I checked the Byredo website, found their address and somehow supposed that they have a shop. The address was an office building, with Byredo placed in the 8th floor in the building directory. I asked the Mabel or Caroline in the reception whether they have a shop up there or whether it's only offices, she said Only offices, sorry... and off I went.
Later, I checked the website again, found a 'how to shop' file and they offered only the internet shop.
Serves them right, I'll get it on eBay.
I bought yarn instead at Yllet store, because Yllet has an actual store where you can walk in, ask Will six skeins be enough for a sweater?, and get the yarn packed in a neat paper bag.
Tee hee.

Random observations

It rained in the morning and generally, it was very close to that weather that says Go and jump under the metro train. It was probably the 'very close' thing that made a difference, I felt fine. The weather changed later on, and then again and again and again.

The issue of Scriptores rerum suecicarum was resolved. Nope, the work is not in the catalog. Why should it be, it's on the shelf in the reference section. Only in the main reading room, there are by sheer guess 100 shelf metres of books, how the hell am I supposed to find something without physically going through that? Sigh. The librarian was however helpful. After reassuring that I had checked the catalogs and that the book actually exists and that there are good reasons why it should also exist in this library, he let me have a form filled, said that it may take a few days, "you know, this is one of the difficult searches", and half an hour later, the three volumes of SRS landed on my table. I wonder whether the difficult search was like this:
Librarian, let's call him Bengt: Hey, Lasse, someone wants this Scriptores wtf thing and we should have it here.
Lasse: Well?
Bengt: It's not in the catalogs.
Lasse: And what it is, then?
Bengt: Scriptores Rerum Suecicarum
Lasse: Gee, it's in the reference library there and there, why should it be in the catalog when it's on the shelves. Them studip readers.
Bengt: goes away

I found what I needed and asked the photocopy service to pretty please copy around 150 A3 pages of that. Later on, I dropped at the copy counter again and they had An Issue. Like, to keep it A3 or to shrink the two A3+ pages to one A3. I don't have that bad eyesight but I spend way too much time reading and I want to read, not to labour over the text. I was politely explained that it's gonna be expensive, you know, said My research grant covers it, want pay beforehand? and made a long sigh. I mean, I don't blame the librarians for asking, I wonder what made them ask. In this polite and careful and neat and nice Sweden, someone actually had ordered a heap of copies and never came to pick them, moving away without leaving the address? What about my general trust in humanity?

The other day, I went down the street (Sveagatan, namely, but it's not that important) and sniffed something extremely familiar. Tauleto, damn, I decided after a while. Nope, can't be that one unless someone poured half a bottle on themselves a minute ago. Gotta be this one... well, I lead such internal dialogue deciding that it's extremely unlikely that the smell would be actually Tauleto, it seemed to be filling the entire street. I bitterly regretted then and regret it now that it doesn't have any staying power or it would be a wonderful gourmet-fruity fragrance.
The solution presented itself some time later. I had bought a Lindt and Sprungli chocolate with blueberries that smelled so intensively of blueberries... I carried the gnawed-on bar in the front pocket of my bag. Sigh. Want the smell bottled.

Random observations

It rained in the morning and generally, it was very close to that weather that says Go and jump under the metro train. It was probably the 'very close' thing that made a difference, I felt fine. The weather changed later on, and then again and again and again.

The issue of Scriptores rerum suecicarum was resolved. Nope, the work is not in the catalog. Why should it be, it's on the shelf in the reference section. Only in the main reading room, there are by sheer guess 100 shelf metres of books, how the hell am I supposed to find something without physically going through that? Sigh. The librarian was however helpful. After reassuring that I had checked the catalogs and that the book actually exists and that there are good reasons why it should also exist in this library, he let me have a form filled, said that it may take a few days, "you know, this is one of the difficult searches", and half an hour later, the three volumes of SRS landed on my table. I wonder whether the difficult search was like this:
Librarian, let's call him Bengt: Hey, Lasse, someone wants this Scriptores wtf thing and we should have it here.
Lasse: Well?
Bengt: It's not in the catalogs.
Lasse: And what it is, then?
Bengt: Scriptores Rerum Suecicarum
Lasse: Gee, it's in the reference library there and there, why should it be in the catalog when it's on the shelves. Them studip readers.
Bengt: goes away

I mentioned it at Ravelry where several librarians live. They headdesked, passed it on to their colleagues and I'm afraid that Royal Library became a bit of laughing stock. Eh.

Random observations

I wandered around the town and nothing particular happened. The low sun causes light to reflect in weird ways and swells my eyes, helped by the wind.
I got melancholic (in fact, I was first pissed by the lack of exhibits in the Ostasiatiska Museet and then freaked out by too many people at the Fridrich exhibition in the National Museum) and since the hostel room is otherwise empty and I found a socket there, I connected the lappy and let some music play. A random list of things I find pretty stayed in Winamp since mom wanted 'to listen to something' in Cyprus and then asked me to turn the howling off. Including some selection from Goran Bregovic.


I'm synesthetic ever since. I must have been a difficult child. I don't think I was annoying in the sense of running around, knocking things over and screaming, but just saying weird things. Like, explaining that I like this and that song. And described it in colours and spatial characteristics, not even shape. "Eh, see the kid's creativity, how cute, but, dear, everybody knows that music doesn't have colour." Same about numbers, letters, words, ideas. They don't have shapes, colours, sounds... I don't have early memories of connecting something with smells or tastes but it does work the other way, scents and tastes have their colours.
In winter, among other charity gifts, I got that Best Of of Goran Bregovic and I became aware that without having it formulated, Death gives me an intense feeling of scent.

Forget the pictures, they totally don't go with that, although under the impression of the Caspar David Friedrich exhibition I saw today, I won't make guesses what goes with it better. But... it's cedar and cade, very smoky, and something mineral, I don't know how are the mineral notes rendered in perfumes but imagine Olivier Durbano mineral. Limettes - the candy sweet citrus, and other citruses, pungently sour ones, and something bitter and cruelly adstringent like falling leaves. All of that thrown on the snow - whatever Luca Turin may say, snow does smell... of snow. Or it's my synaesthetic perception of cold, I don't know.

The song recalls me of another thing. Fifteen years ago, on a school skiing trip (someone decided that sports and socializing are good for kids, let they may suffer in any hell of their choice), in January, I got sulky because of what the other gals said or just because, I think that then, my nerves were already on the go, and I just went out to the snow. I was sitting on a tree stump and meditating and being aware of people left behind and the night forest. Thinking of it, it was a perfect time, place and mood to kill myself. I did not so that I could go through all those wonderful arguments with parents, depressions, a neat pneumonia two years later (not related to sitting in the snow and watching the starry sky) and the world may be enriched by my sarcastic remarks.

Some more

There was another knit café (or stitch'n'bitch if you may please) at Marias Garn in Södermalm. That was the first time I didn't get lost while getting up to the surface from the metro.
I found Maria's shop rather easily, first, I checked very well the location on Google Maps, then I made a cross into the mediocre map provided by Stockholmska Something (dunno what exactly L in SL stands for, linjer?) and quite importantly, there was a huge purple and blue skein hanging in place of a banner. I had been told on Thursday that Maria stocks Wood Harmony by Knitpicks and I had wanted to get a set of interchangeables in Florence but didn't manage so today was The Day. I got some yarn, too, and cast on for Laura's scarf. It's a birthday gift, no pictures, she follows the blog.
The weather got lousy and I have a mild suspicion that my last year's SAD may be back. At least when I got off at Gamla Stan to change the metro lines and a train whizzed next to the metro line and I recalled how I had been to Elisabeth's to Linköping and how I'm too much of a chickenshit to even mess around Stockholm itself and even less to go to Vadstena where I'd like to go and where I actually should go... well, within ten minutes, I felt like sitting down to the curb and crying bitterly. The only thing that prevented me from doing it was... the social phobia. People would look funny at me and it would feel too uneasy, you know. Apparently, the whole thing got Uroboros qualities and started biting its own rear.

Knitting apparently has some sort of calming properties, after two hours of messing with the scarf - one day I won't improvise the designs... one distant day, and then I won't be ripping things constantly - I felt just fine. My mood shifts are annoying even to myself.

Falling In Love - Scents And Treats For Fall

We moved to the neighbourhood where I halfway live until nowadays some 15 years ago. Then, people would still sometimes plant potatoes in their front gardens, or at least peppers, those could well use the tiny pieces of earth surrounded by heat-emitting walls and they are expensive vegetables, after all.
Not any more. The neighbourhood became an expensive one, with really filthy rich people moving in, buying the old decaying villas, rebuilding them,with less or even less taste, to modern haciendas with swimming pools and gardens that look rather like countryside after nuclear attack. Soil soaked with selective herbicides so that no dicotyledon plants may ever live in the lawn, mulched pads, not with flowers but with the latest fashion in conifers. I always want to weep seeing such a garden and remembering that only a few years ago, the previous owners had the most impressive neglected rockery where the nice small colourful flowers took undisputed reign and spread everywhere.
There are some pretty old gardens, though, and old tough gardeners; and an occasional young crazyass weirdo who thinks that flowers are perfectly fine, but why not add a tang to the whole composition designed by a leading landscape architect of the town by something that's not only pretty but also edible?
It's been only an apricot tree until last year, when I, upon a whim, bought a pack of tomato seeds. Very late, the tomato plant showed first fruits only in December, after lots of care and persuasion. My mom didn't hesitate to show a certain amount of disdain when I insisted that we need, at least, mint for my mojitos, sage for my saltimboccas (1) and basil just because. And lavender, rosemary and a few others, when we're at that.
In summer, our geriatric dog succumbed to cancer of everything so mom decided to rearrange the garden quite a bit. The dog used to dig holes, uproot plants she didn't like... and such. I used my extreme powers of persuasion and we got rid of one weigelia (I hate hate hate weigelia, it's fugly) and I agreed that I'll do some guerrila gardening and plant the garden variety irises somewhere but not in the garden because mom hates them, and we'll get Iris pumila instead. And, I pressed, wisteria, jasmine, creeper roses (many and then some more) and...
Then I left for Italy and while mom didn't have me nagging behind her back, the irises destined for the unsightly patches of non-lawn down the street, the irises got planted under the trees where they'll die of lack of light (I hope winter comes late and I'll be able to replant them when I'm back from Stockholm, I don't like the regular irises that much but I don't dislike them enough to kill them) and added holly, three damn varieties of ugly prickly holly, two shapeless shrubs of Potentilla fruticosa, with red and orange flowers - I detest the whole potentilla genus if its members grow anywhere else than in the cracks in the sidewalks or somewhere in the wild. The shrubs look like worn-out brooms. And the whole mix is planted without thinking, using the age-approved style of Take a plant and stick it in the soil just somewhere.
Well, things will be dealt with. I at least plagued the whole garden with tulip bulbs, obtained for five cents each at the 'plant and wait for surprise' box at the gardening fair. Such tulips are the coolest.
Now, the tasks are still a few. One is to introduce stealthily an apple tree to the garden. I know which one, there is a sort of apples that smell like cranberries, they are small with bright white flesh and nearly neon pink peel and I'd have to order it from a nursery that specializes in long extinct breeds of plants. No garden is complete without an apple tree.

Not that I'd be such an avid gardener as to have written an almanac, including stories about what sprouts in March or when... idunnowhat. I just mess around. There however are a few seasonal associations (2), the strongest being late autumn.

Sometimes, the days are misty, smoky and grey, with a strange adstringent smell of fallen leaves that rot on the sidewalks, being trampled by the winter boots of passers-by. And some distant childhood memory brings apples to the mix. It's not even that long time ago when the high school at the end of the street had a huge apple orchard. It slowly gave way, bit by bit, to a new annex, then to tennis courts (I've never seen them used for anything) and then the last part was cut down to build a new canteen, the ugliest building in the vicinity. Those 15ish years ago, we'd go and pick apples, being allowed to eat as many as we could, instead of some real sport. I suppose we enjoyed it more than running around... at least I did.
There's something special about fallen and rotting apples. A mixture of awful and divine, they smell apples and rot and mold, you feel the potential for their delicious applines being ruined but still there's a particular and enchanting crushing sound when you step on one such. They get thrown on the compost heap with other garden debris that cannot be burned because it's wet or because there's police within noseshot, it's somehow prohibited to burn garden trash but nobody cares too much... thus autumn smells of rotting leaves and apples and burning rotting leaves.

For some reason, I've always liked apple fragrances. Until the recent yield of Delicious and flankers, there were not that many, in fact, I can think only of All about Eve. I suppose that there are many others but until recently, I wasn't much into perfumery and nothing had hit my nose.
At a certain point, which was a dreary day in late winter, I was in Italy, along with my SAD, generally whiny mood and a bottle of calvados, when it randomly occurred to me that, well, if other people can make perfumes, then why not me, I checked the supplies, made a nice cedary base, wondered for a while, bought more on eBay and within the week, I had the mildly disgusting Eau du Calvados ready.

Natural materials in perfumery are like wine, they need to mature. I needed to brag to someone so I sent a sample to Elena who was politely unimpressed. I let the matter rest, thinking that she may be right that it has no decent top and that I may throw in some bergamote and I halfway forgot it. After one move and several months later, I checked the marmalade jar with the first batch (eh, kitchen industry, anyone dare to whine?) and it.... evolved. It still may need a touch of bergamote, I don't know, after all, the Vieille Reserve flanker is not an abandoned idea.

I got my own autumn scent.

I wore it quite often in summer, it has a certain tart tanginess, after all, it's apples, and the linden blossom gives it a slightly sickening yet enchanting quality (decadence, anyone?). I made it as concrète, dissolved in wax, since my kitchen industrial equipment (3) wouldn't permit much more and I thought that in case it went bad, I could use it as an ointment for cracked heels. I still have to test what it does in an actual autumn and it may include curling up at the fireplace and knitting. Hear around Christmas.



The idea came from the direction of Helg of Perfume Shrine, my half-evil enabler, and the other participants are The Non Blonde, Mais que perfume, Ayala Smelly Blog, Savvy Thinker, Olfactarama, Notes from the Ledge, Ars Aromatica, Mossy Loomings, I smell therefore I am and
Tea Sympathy and Perfume

Note: I'm a stupid blonde so I somehow didn't understand that adding the picture is a part of the whole thing. Fixed now.

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(1) mental note: everybody loves saltimbocca in my family. Gotta persuade mom that it's not a stew with sage and prosciutto, that the point is elsewhere.
(2) only the most inept balcony farmer can remain untouched by seasons changing; if nothing else, in the supermarkets, they tend to have huge advertising campaigns like Spring is here, get yourself some spring plants.
(3) you heard about cottage industry, didn't you. Kitchen industry is similar concept. It's performed in the kitchen with things that naturally appear in kitchen, such as empty marmalade jars or old pots.