Thursday 28 February 2013

An abstract collage



Card no 412 – Jane
An abstract collage
Country Card Sent From: USA
Place Card Sender Lives: Rupert, Vermont
Date Received: 22nd February 2013
Distance Travelled:  3,164  miles
Time Taken: 9 days

A handmade card from Jane Davies of Jane Davies Studios in Rupert, Vermont.  Jane is a collage and mixed media artist and has always worked in various formats with diverse materials. This was a thank you card for sending her a card through her local post office which is threatened with closure. The amount of mail though the office affects its assessment in the future. I hope it is saved.  You can visit her site at and see more of her works at Jane Davies Studios.

Finland - an outline



Card no 411 – dodotPC
Finland in words
Country Card Sent From: Finland
Place Card Sender Lives: Helsinki
Date Received: 21st February 2013
Distance Travelled:  1,139  miles
Time Taken: 6 days

There is obviously a series of these country outlines in words because this is the second I have received.  Among the words I had to look up was Koskenkorva which turns out to be  a dry, clear, Finnish white wine.

This was ths stamp.

 

Wednesday 27 February 2013

A summer night in Finland



Card no 410 – Eeva
A summer night in Helsinki
Country Card Sent From: Finland
Place Card Sender Lives: Espoo
Date Received: 21st February 2013
Distance Travelled:  1,145  miles
Time Taken: 3 days

A summer night on Kaivopuisto with Harakka Island in the background.

Kaivopuisto is one of the oldest and best known parks in central Helsinki, Finland, and also a neighbourhood of about 500 inhabitants where the park is located.  To the south, Kaivopuisto borders the Gulf of Finland. To the north is a residential area containing the official private residences of several ambassadors of foreign countries to Finland, including the United States, Estonia, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

Kaivopuisto offers several hectares of parks, both on flat ground, and on cliffs. The park also includes traces of stone fortifications built in the 18th century. Every summer, thousands of Helsinkians come to Kaivopuisto to sunbathe, to have picnics, or to hold sport. The largest hill in the park is a favoured slope for tobogganing during the winter.

The Harakka ("Magpie") island is located off the coast of Helsinki where the peninsula of Helsinki reaches far into the Baltic sea.It is a Nature Centre whose facilities include barracks built by the Russians in 1908. Gardens, old enbankments, rocky fields, seashore meadows and little marshes provide a variety of habitats that allow biodiversity incomparable in the Helsinki archipelago.

Despite the polar bears on the stamp Eeva told me it had been mild this winter - though with plenty of snow,


Tuesday 26 February 2013

Using my Letter Opener for a Special Letter



You may have noticed that my header has changed slightly.  I have added parcels and anything to do with the post because I would like to expand this blog to include a lot of other post-related items. Whether I can afford the time to add all the things I would like to is quite another matter…



There is a certain pleasure in using a particular letter opener to open one’s mail.  And even more so when the mail itself is special.  This opener was made by Dad.  The handle was made by using washers and shaping them.  


The special mail was a letter from JarieLyn in a beautiful envelope.  It arrived today and as well as a postcard she also enclosed the rules of a game I had been asking about.   It came through the letterbox along with three super postcards which will each have their own entry sometime soon.