My allmoge cupboard

Allmoge konst means peasant art. Lately (sort of, it's been for years) it's become popular again in the new whitewashed french country type of style all over pictures on my facebook, but I really like that original brightly coloured version..

So that day when I walked by the charity shop and saw a little pink 60's cupboard for 2 pounds I had the same thought as some of my girlfriends has when they see an emotionally crippled man: I want to fix it!

Luckily its way easier to pick up a random cupboard off the street, take it home and fix it up into something you actually want to have in your home! Just a little wallpaint sample, some acrylic paints and some inspiration.

I must say, I think I did really well, especially considering the early 60's is one of the least charming eras to work with! Even though it does kind of look a little bit like an evil octopus on the front there.

 

In a way I think painting this peasant art is a little like a mix between dressmaking and genealogy.  It's an artistic expression.. a reaching out for a past and a belonging that I can only barely touch, one that seems to always slip trough my fingers. So I keep reaching. 

Keep creating.

Happy 1st of May!

Today is 1st of May and in true Scandinavian style it's a celebration.

The celebration of the last day of April and the first day of May has two reasons:  First one is that the last of April was, in the old farmers calender, the first day of spring. So on Valborgsmässoafton (as it is still called) the farmers let their animals out on the fields and had a bit of a feast with a fire (cause it wouldn't be a feast without some driving away of evil spirits!) and mead and things made out of eggs because..that was the good stuff in the olden days..?. I'm assuming with other farmers now..not the animals.. And that's still what people do. Minus the cows and the eggs.

Secondly, the first of May is the workers day so everyone has that day off. Apparently that's because of a massacre in America in the late 19th century. Did not know that. But it's also the students day and even if I never actually wore my white students cap after graduation day..the first of may to me is socialist demonstrations and white caps. And candy strings.

So yeah, mead season started a bit early this year, about two weeks ago when I felt like it. A little alcoholic this years batch I must say! still, it's pretty much the only place where raisins are acceptable. In mead. 

Other then mead, for a 1st of May celebration, you need balloons and some other decorations.. and this year I thought I would try making struvor. Now, I have never made struvor before but I have seen them been made and thought..that seems fairly easy. So I wanted to give it a go. With a slightly horrified expression on his face my husband asked if I know anything about handling boiling oil.. "No but I'll wing it, how hard can it be" may not have been THE most calming answer to that but he was eventually swayed.. ("I have read about it on the internet, actually!") 

It may look like 10 oddly shaped flying spaghetti monsters because let's face it, internet is a sucky teacher, but they do actually taste amazingly good..!

The masks doesn't actually make a lot of sense..for some reason I just thought it would be a fun thing to do. Like a new tradition. I quite like masks and dressing up as animals for some reason.. Not in a sexy-halloween-kitty kind of way, more like that scene in the Shining. You know the one. 

Also it was a lot of fun to do! easy to find patterns, very child friendly, doesn't take a lot of time, I definitely recommend doing animal masks out of felt and elastic if one has easily bored kids around but don't want to pretend to be interested in scooby doo!

And even if spring already came to England long ago I wish you a happy Valborg and a cosy 1st of May from all of us.

Recipe for struvor

2  eggs 

1 eggwhite

1 teaspoon vanillasugar

1dl sugar

1½ dl milk

3½ dl flour

Whisk eggs and sugar, pour milk in then flour. Heath up oil to 180 degrees and pour the struv mixture into an icing bag. Cut a hole and make struvor in the boiling oil. Let cool on paper and sprinkle with icing sugar.

VALET! (the election)

"Hur går valet? :D"

How is the election going? asks my mocking sister with a smiley face. I'm starting to suspect that she finds my easily fueled enthusiasm amusing! It is though, I'm seriously excited. Last year I watched the Swedish election with popcorn til midnight. I may have cried a little when the social democrats and the greens won. It was just so glorious. 

Gustav Fridolin, the Green arrow of Swedish politics!

Anyway! Now in may it's the British elections. Even if its not quite as close to my heart I bet it will be, it will after all affect me way more in real life. I even did a test to see how I should vote and my closest match was the Greens, then the Scottish national party and then Sinn fein which I had to google and is apparently an Irish left party. So far so good.

I don't know why really..is it fear of being criticised or judged?..or just tradition?. but people are never very keen on sharing what they will vote for. Maybe it is that it divides people in such a clear way? Like when I was sitting on a bench with my friend watching our kids play and I said SNP has some good ideas and she gave me a look as if I had just said "I keep your grand parents in my cellar" and said..."well...i suppose that's SOME peoples cup of tea.".  Now I wonder if social welfare isn't her cup of tea. And what kind of tea does she drink?

But either way, here is my voting list!

It's a short list, it's green and labour, partly cause I can't vote for someone who's face annoys me and partly because I'm not PURE EVIL. And partly because there is no left party in England. If there was that's where I'd be but there isn't. So that starts me off on the semi-leftist candidate!

Labour. 

Firstly, everyone has to check this out: Ed Milibands teen fanclub :D

Ok now I can continue. Thing is, here in England you vote for people not parties (takes some getting used to) so I cant actually vote for Ed Miliband anyway, I can only vote for this guy:

So exciting after all that blue and purple trash I've been getting lately!

That is seriously the nicest face I've gotten on a political leaflet this year! If I voted with my eyes, I'd vote labour. But I wont. There's nothing wrong with labour, I'm just not...a labour person. Labour is the English equivalent of Sweden's social democrats after all..and I am, how ever good and even tempered that is, just not a university educated middle class young rebel who would like to make a difference but not so much as to ruin the chances of one day buying a house for my 2.5 kids and settle down. That's a labour person. He is cute though, you know..comparatively! But he is also working in a bank and grew up in conservative Maidstone and lives in South London..iish, you would need at least 3 nurse wifes to balance that out..!

Green.

After being slightly seduced by the mili-fans and so on I decided to check out the green party online because apparently Maidstone isn't interested in you know, nature, enough to get leaflets. I though, if there is a bald middleaged man on their front page leaning forward I'm voting labour! But there isn't. Her name is Hanna and of course I'll be voting green. I'm not for voting "tactically" because I want to be better then that even if I make no difference in this system anyway. Actually that makes me vote un-tactically even more! You should vote for someone who would understand you and this is my closest match..just like I knew it would be.

In a way I think one should choose these things with a mixture of back ground and personal preference. If we made a difference that it. I strongly believe that voting has become a spectacle, even more so here then in my native Scandinavia..and whatever you vote for, the one with the most money will win.

 But it is a fun spectacle. 

Ps. I just found out Vänsterpartiets Jonas Sjöstedt has a blog! just gonna put that here for any swedish speakers in the room...

Why I am fucking terrified of wearing this t-shirt. A tale of silence.

2.15 PM

A few days ago I saw this while doing what I do most afternoons..wasting my life on the internet (no really, the internet is fine, its facebook that's the evil bit.), and I thought I'd really like that on a t-shirt! I'm usually not a fan of t-shirts but if has a purpose I suppose I am..

But truth is I was scared just thinking that thought. All trough the process of cutting out the letters and sponge painting my pattern I was scared. And now that I have it on me ready to go out I am fucking terrified. 

I stood in front of my mirror putting mascara on..will this make me feminine enough for this? Do I look good enough to be excused? Harmless enough..? Maybe I should put a scarf on to make it less aggressive?

I don't think the simple question of "why can't women too rule the world?" is aggressive really. I don't think asking to be or acting as if you are equal to the people around me is aggressive. I'm the kind of person who would happily drink my wine/water/oddly alcoholic mead out of a "male tears" mug in my own home with my son and my husband because here we are all equal and "misandry" is ridiculous because in the end I'm just levelling the playing field..but not out there. Out there I walk the thin line between submissive and aggressive. Social rules that's deeply engrained into me since childhood to not make them angry. Them. The real people. The men.

It must be hard for a man to understand the fear that underpins our lives. But imagine you broke into your bosses house, raped his kids and stole his car and then printed that on a t-shirt and showed up to work wearing it. That's the level of fear I'm feeling right now.

It's just a question. But women have been killed for less.

Fingers crossed!

4.20 PM

So yeah, nothing happened. No one even noticed me rushing trough the school grounds wearing a "man-hating" t-shirt. And I think this is the real fear, not so much what actually happens but the constant threat of what COULD happen. We all get them.. the threats. "I could rape you right now but I wont." said the guy sitting next to me in the dark. "First I own you and then your boyfriend takes you over" said my dad when I was 17. "If you leave me I will search you out and kill you"... I could go on and on but most will know what I mean: a lifetime of threats will silence you. Especially when you know that IF something happends no one will save you but you will be blamed for it instead. "If you didn't want to be abused then don't dress that way".

So I suppose I was not really scared of really getting hurt. But of all the what if 's. Because I have my own blame written all over my chest. Literally.

Cause it just doesn't feel like a night out if no one is sizing you up!

New ideas.

Months ago I started making some dolls for my Lus to play with but because of everything being so upside down lately they had to kind of hang around faceless for a while.. So two days ago I asked him if I could make him a wartime house for them? He said no. No wartime it is then.. so here's my new idea:

Hopefully he wont reject this with the same lack of enthusiasm.

Easter Greatings!

Back from the 40's

It's been at least a months silence... Truth is, I've been on a blog-vacation. In a way I've also been on a vacation from my life but that sounds more fun then it actually is, I've been in the 1940's. 

See, I've always wanted to do that thing when you try to live in a different era for a while (not forever,that would be terrible) and I suppose the 40's is the one that is the easiest to recreate but still feels very different. So all of February I spent as a wartime house wife in stockings while trying to make victory rolls and cooking weird shit! But I'll let the blog, although still unfinished so tune in for updates, speak for me from now on:

http://wartimelife.co.uk/

Who knows..maybe next time I'll be a medieval peasant.