Stockholm

Our hotel, the Elite Marina Tower in Nacka

Having a Swedish beer with a fabulous view of the city at Mosebacke

Dinner and a game of pétanque at Boule e Berså in Nacka by the canal

We arrived in Stockholm in style-by steamship! Our hotel is located on the waterfront in an historical building dating back from 1890. It used to be the largest steam-driven (can you sense a pattern here?) mill in Scandinavia. Stockholm feels like a half scale city, you can literally walk everywhere. Also people are very helpful and friendly. The weather is sunny, rainy, warm, breezy, cloudy, basically, it's like the Pacific Northwest. You know what they say at home: "If you don't like the weather, wait another 20 minutes?" That's the weather here. Layering is the answer.

Mariefred and Gripsholms Slott

We arrived in Mariefred by steam train and we left by steamship. Another historic little town on the shore of Lake Malären, home of Gripsholm Castle, one of the Royal Palaces. The castle was built in 1537 by Gustav Vasa (and what a cool name!). There is texture all over this castle, they did not leave an inch unpainted or uncovered with some type of material, from wallpaper to silk to wood inlay, a feast for the eyes, but sometimes a little overwhelming. They were not afraid to mix patterns, that's for sure. We left for Stockholm on the coal-fired steamship Mariefred, a 3.5 hour trip through the archipelago with dinner in the cozy little dining room. The steamship was built in 1903 for the Stockholm-Mariefred route and has been sailing this route every year since then!

Sigtuna, the first town of Sweden.

Yes, it's raining and it's cool and we love it! Sigtuna is Sweden's first town, established in 970 by King Erik Segersäll. The main street remains pretty much the same as it was 1000 years ago. Lots of old wooden houses. Not a lot of tourists in this little town and the locals are almost surprised to see us there. Maybe it gets busier when the weather gets better, looks like they are having a cool summer this year.

We decided to take a boat to Skokloster Slott, a beautiful castle from the 1600s on the shores of lake Mälaren.

This unfinished room was going to be a large banquet hall but has remained a building site since the 1600s. It's unusual to be able to witness this stage of construction in an old castle.

Here's an old map of the Americas. North America was still mainly undiscovered at that time, Washington state is not even on this map!

Intricate metallic wall covering in one of the rooms. Amazing textures and fabric and wallpaper everywhere, more on that later.

The tree lined alley leading to the castle.

And every castle had their own church, of course!

A workshop with Lotta Jansdotter

Photo credit for all images: Christoph Haiderer

Here's more pictures from the Afar magazine article. Our days will be spent exploring the island, sketching and learning how to translate nature into patterns. Then we'll transfer our designs onto paper and fabric using 3 different printing techniques. There will be a field trip to a local artisan's studio and a visit to Mariehamn (Åland's capital). And plenty of time to hike, swim, kayak or take a sauna since we are looking at 18 hours of daylight at this time of year. Most of the food is made onsite or harvested from the island; homemade bread, fresh veggies and freshly caught fish!

The Åland archipelago is a 6 hour ferry ride from Stockholm and actually belongs to Finland but people speak mostly Swedish, which is fine with me since I am fluent in both Finnish and Swedish, NOT!

A Dream Come True

Silverskär, once a family farm, now a four-star hotel, is where the workshop takes place.

The stunning archipelago of Åland lies between Sweden and Finland and is made up of over 6000 islands and skerries.

In a few weeks, I will be in Åland taking a 5 days textile workshop with Lotta Jansdotter, yes pinch me! I still can't believe it. When I saw the article in the December issue of Afar magazine, I tried to register but it was instantly sold out. So I put my name on the waiting list for future workshops and then kind of forgot about it until I got an email in March saying there was a cancellation and would I be interested? I basically fell off my chair and of course I jumped on it, what an opportunity! Travel to an exotic destination in Scandinavia (my favorite part of the world) and do a textile workshop (my other passion) with Lotta Jansdotter, are you kidding me? It's like they created this specifically for me!
It wasn't hard to convince my husband to tag along and change our planned anniversary trip in the fall to a summer trip instead. Then we decided to stop in Iceland on the way back. So exciting! I will keep posting our adventures on this blog as often as possible…

Studies in Black and White

Sometimes I go into my studio but I don't really want to work on a real painting, I just want to play around with textures and the best way to do that is to just work in black and white. And because I work on cheap paper, I can just use pieces of these exercises in other paintings as collage because the whole idea is to experiment and work with shape, line, texture, contrast, pattern, scale and layering. 

Pluton

Here's another one of my little print makeovers. I named this one "Pluton" inspired by a cutout from an old french astronomy book that belonged to my dad. I use it a lot for collage because it was already ripped apart and stained, so no guilt and I learn something from it everyday! This little excerpt says: "Nous ne savons que fort peu de choses sur cette planète, dont la découverte remonte seulement à 1930. Elle apparaît, dans une lunette, comme une étoile de magnitude 15, de coloration jaunâtre." I think this book is from the 50's, so a little dated. Poor Pluto is not even a planet anymore...

Original print I used as a background for the Pluton painting. I liked it too but it doesn't exist anymore, just like Pluto is not a planet anymore!