° A new year's wreath °

Hi guys!

Here is me again! I haven't written for ages but yesterday and today I made up myself to create a door wreath. And finally I did it! :) I should say it's not a lot of technics or skills (although I made a few mistakes, but hey, it's my first one!), but I needed much time to make kind of pattern in my mind before finishing, 'cause I didn't know what my wreath would look like till I finished. I had no drawings, just some pictures for inspiration from the internet. All the stuff I used I have from the nearest forest and from flea markets :)

I pined the small pieces of the pine branches with special pins, then added pine cones with a glue pistol and on the next day (but just because I had no time yesterday) I added some deco.

° just a Sunday post °

I enjoy watching birds and squirrels out of my window and sometimes I'm even happy to take photos of them :) But the squirrels are too quick for our camera..

° An autumn garden °

We were into a rainy season for a few weeks, but yesterday the rain finally stopped and I had a chance to finish various jobs there. I'm going to show you what our garden looks like in the autumn. I know It doesn't look so much like autumn, because the trees are still green. Hehe!
I actually planned to plant my hyazinths in the garden, but saw that they have already sprouted!! *facepalm* So I had to take them home in the pots :) It must have been too warm for them in the basement.
The lavender plants were my longest unfinished project -____- I bought them in the end of June and one them died at once. I was so sad that I just put them aside and forgot. But yesterday I decided to plant the other five finally out. It took me not more than 5 min. OMG I'm lazy :D So now some other dwellers in my garden got new neighbours ^____^ E.g. the bambus-tree got two at once, tw more went into the neighbourhood of an old stump where I recently planted an small ivy. And the last one found his new home new other herbals: mint and melisse.
And the last thing I planned to do yesterday was to fill the flowerbed for winter plants which I bought recently. And yes, we have strawberries as well. Don't know if they like it in our garden and will bring fruits next year, we'll see.. :) I like my winter bed very much, I wish I had a larger one, 'cause there are so many plants to buy! :D
Here are some photos to support my words ^_____^

° a harvest post °

So... the summer (and even the Indian summer) is over :( Last week I was wearing balerinas, but now you can walk only in rubber boots or trekking shoes. It's raining and raining and raining. The sky is grey, I haven't seen the sun since the weekend where I was lucky (and smart) to take photos of the rest of the cards, but unfortunately not all of them. Heh! I decicded to take my time and continue working on my Swedish. Wanna seen my progress? :D

According to the title the post should be about harvesting, and it's actually what we were doing on the weekend together with my husband's friend. We found really nice mushrooms in the forest nearby. Most of them were of this kind. After I have googled it, I got confused, 'cause I was actually sure that we picked up these mushrooms! *facepalm* Anyway we got many of them :D But not only mushrooms, we picked up a few kilo apples from the trees near the field there and took some hazelnut and walnuts from the forest. Hehe! So what's our harvesting was look like! The nuts-photo was done on the weekend, so don't be surprised that the sun is shining - it'not -____-

Le jour française!

After I got today's post I decided that today is a French day, cause the two of three cards are from France. Well, France is not a rare country but let's agree, not a very frequent one. And in my mailbox a totally rare one :D More over not the quantity but the quality counts! I already got a couple cards from France in winter, but they were either in envelopes or boring (or actually both!) and the today's card are absolutely great! Both with great views and with stamps! On the mountain-card you can even see the Mont Blanc *_____* Merci beaucoup to the senders!
And the 3rd card is from Austria also up to my wish-list - with beautiful Alpine flowers! <3

And as I'm now involved in many stamps-swaps, I finally started to sort my piles of stamps which I always bring from flea-markets and get from different friends. What you can see in the photo is a really small part of it :D

Weekend Post!

The latest update for the incoming cards is here! Today I got 6 beautiful cards. 5 of them are from my group in the Offers&Requests RR and that one from Canada came in an envelope in the stamps swap on swap-bot. I don't know if the sender looked through my PC-profile where it stands in the wish-list that I collect Did-you-know? cards, but this way or another she included this very card into the swap ^_____^

Asterix & Obelix stamps

Yesterday I sent my numerous cards in my group 751 on the postcrossing forum. Here are some photos. The quality leaves much to be desired because... (see the post below) :(

Some jewellery stuff *____*

As I promised my dear penpal friend, I was to show my earrings from Nepal. But as was taking them for the photo, I thought I would make some more photos of my blings, hehe! For this purpose I took only those which have to do with ethnics. As it has been only raining this week and I haven't seen the sun since the Monday, I gave up the idea to make proper photos, sorry!

The Yggdrasil (world-tree) set. The pendant looks much finer & more beautiful than the earrings. It was a gift from my husband <3

New Postcards!

I love it to receive favourites on the forum ^_____^ And the people there are absolutely amazing, caring and just adorable! Thank you all!

My Succulent garden *______*

a garden guest

Many postcards!

Weeeeell.... I haven't posted the latest cards for a long time for now, but I finally got them to take photos! Here they are:

Cross-stitched miniatures

I've finished a couple of minuatures last week. The Snusmumrik one I have already showed here, now it's also ready! ^_____^ The light-house will be used later in an ATC-swap.

We're having a totally strange weather this summer: either it's a hot period up to +40 °C or it's rainy and chilly and rainy like it's already autumn. And this week the weather makes it even better: one day summer, one day autumn, one day summer, one day autumn.. Today it's autumn :D

I'm home, though I need to go to post to mail a couple of cards and pick up the envelope I got. That's why I decided to cope with my swaps. Today I start designing my prayer flag ^___^ I actually already know what will be on it but I still don't have a sketch. And I surely have to finish stitching the miniature lighthouse and do some household.

A succuent's blossom

Some of the tiny balls didn't survive :( And I expect a couple more to die but one of them is blossoming now. I have no idea why... Is it a sign that the plant will pass away -_____- ?

A garden flower post

These soft and tiny lobelias are my first flowers that blossomed in our garden :) I love them totally, though I thought there must have been more blossoms, but we'll see ;)

Succulents

Today is Sunday and there's no post :) That's why I decided to show you my new plants. These are tiny succulents. I also bought a nice glass-house for them and added some stones. Hope they will do well here. And if sooo, I'm going to buy more of them, 'cause there are really many sorts of them and put them in another glass-house (which is even more interesting than this one) ^_____^

Saturday post

Today I've got 4 cards. One of them is from my university friend ^_____^ So happy to get post from her! The card from Myanmar reached me really quickly in two weeks only! It's my 1st one from Myanmar! Hope to get one more in the future, hehe! And the card with the Eiffel Tower is not from France but from Taiwan.. heh..

New cards to my collection!

Soooo! I'm here again with my new cards :) After given up the official postcrossing, I just can't stop getting the cards I like :D The only exception is that official from Turkey, the front is ok, but there are no stamps on the back side only a postal stempel :( So here are my new ones:

My find from the fleamarket

Wow-wow-wow! I came across a beautiful cards-set from Hungary (and of course I bought it :D )! It looks like a small book and is from the Soviet time. What I like most about the set is when you tear off a card, there stays a small pattern and you can still know which one it was. But my set is complete :) and frankly speaking I would hardly send it out >____<

New postcards!

I haven't posted for a long time. Here are my latest cards ^_____^ from the site, forum and private. And I should tell you the unofficial postcrossing on the forum is SOOOO much better then the official one!! I have never got so many cards I love in a month :) Only that one from Holland was kind of disappointment, cause the sender haven't even made an effort to cut it properly, and that when I usually tolerate calender cards or other cut-out kind of cards...

Krishna & Lel'

Hello everyone!

The thing I'm going to talk about is really notable. I think I came across this fact about 1.5 years ago, but it was the postcrossing that gave me an impulse to write a note. Yesterday while checking somebody's favourites I found a beautiful Russian painting (the card was immediately added to my favourites :) named "Lel'" by V.D. Lipitzkiy (1975) ("Лель" Липицкого) and it was like a strike or a dejavu, because there is a rather similar card there already in my favourites, but from a totally different faraway Asian country named India. In the other picture are also 6 persons (1 mal and 5 females), he is also playing a flute and the girls are caught away by the music. These persons are Krishna and gopis. It's a pity I don't know the name of the Indian author.

So is it just a coincidence? Or is there a ancient connection. I have been researching in this field too much to even allow a thought about it's being a random fact :) Let's look at both Lel' and Krishna! The name of Krishna is known in the whole world I believe. But even Russians and generally Slavic people know not much about their heathen god Lel'.

Who is Lel'? (Unfortunately there is no Wiki-translation into English)
As I already mentioned Lel' is a Slavic god. He was one of two Lada's sons (This trio also has an analogy in the Greek mythology). Lel' is responsible for love, love plays, marriage, relationship. He is usually depicted playing a flute with one or more girls enjoying the music. His beloved's name is Rada. Her name is also sometimes Lada, but then she is not his mother. This difference in Lada-Rada is nothing special as a r-l shift is common in the history of the Indoeuropean languages. Some scolars even claim his name being later ethymologically connected with the word "hallelujah", but it seems to me to be somehow controversial.
A famous scolar and researcher of the Slavic mythology Rybakov writes that there was no god names Lel' but a female one named Lelya which was the symbol of love and fertility. Maybe that's why Wiki says that Lel's existance is generally disputable, though the name comes more than once (in its male image) in Pushkin's and Ostrovskiy's (in his "Snow White" Lel' is distinctly depicted as a cowherd and cowherd were sacred in the heathen Slavic tradition) works and in innumerable folklore pieces.
Well there's not much about him/her, but a big argument about its gender. Though its existance is a fact.

In comparison to the Slavic god Krishna have been always popular and don't tend to be forgotten. There are a couple of reasons to it. Wiki e.g. offers information about Krishna in numerous languages from all continents. He is being worshipped all over the world as a supreme avatar of Lord Vishnu (the Sustainer of the Universe). The 10th canto of Śrīmad Bhāgavatam is fully dedicated to Krishna - his life from the the impregnation till his end is described there. By the way he also has a brother (and a sister). Krishna gave us the song of songs with the absolute wisdome - Bhagavatgita. We see that Krishna is really more significant, he has many roles and many names, but the name "Krishna" itself means "bliss of the existance", "an attractive essence", "all-attractive", "the essence of knowledge and bliss". As we see such words as "attractive" and "bliss" have a notional link to Lel' as a god of love. And what a surprise in this role Krishna is depicted on our postcard! According to Śrīmad Bhāgavatam he was about 16 y.o. as he took the part of a cowherd who is the love himself and the love of all the gopis (cowherd-girls), his flute-music was making them leave all their duties to follow and dance with him. His sweethart's name is Radha. What a coincinence!
And one more very notable piece of information as a prove that the coincidence is excluded. This dance with Krishna was not just a leisure time, it is a highly divine and intimate relationship with God and is claimed to be the highest goal of human existence. This play is called "lila"!

  

Well I knew I was kinda discovering America, but I never knew that one of my favourite painters has such an astonishing work. It was painted in 1935 by Nicolas Roerich and it called "Krishna-Lel" ("Кришна-Лель, Н.К. Рерих"). Enjoy! :)

Space eternity

 

My garden life

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky to get a garden from our neighbour!
That's why we dug the ground on a small place so that we could plant there. We are not experienced in gardening _at all_ :D but it was curious to give it a try. Now the potatoes, beans and some herbs already germinated and I also transplanted basil, melissa and mint from the pots in the garden. Hehe! And they are doing well there! Now I'm waiting for two sorts of celery and three sorts of onion to germinate. I also have flowers in my garden just for decoration ^_____^

 

Postcards news

So here are my latest postcards got in tags ^______^
Well it is really better to join the tags than to take part in the official postcrossing where you get wish-list cards only occasionally!

Indian sweet dish

It took me really long to cope with my first cooking experience with the Indian kitchen :D
But as I got the next letter from my Indian pen-friend, I thought the time has come - I'll do it!
The recipe came also from my pen-friend (Thank you Aparna! ^____^)

This is gajar ka halva from carrots, milk and nuts (actually there are more ingredients). I tried it warm and cold, and I love both :)

P.S. And I know, the book about Indian mythology fits very nice in the picture! :)