With the exception of like half a box of After Eight on New Years eve because I really felt like stuffing myself, abunch of pieces of christmas toffees and two semlas the other day, I haven’t eaten sugar since mid August. When you don’t eat sugar it takes like a week or two before the want for it goes away. After that you never really feel like having it at all and do not miss it. At least that’s what it’s been like for me. So it’s an easy habit to break really, if you can just stand the urge for the first couple of weeks.
The hard parts so far have been pretty much none, I’d say. I have not been super purist and refused sugars in foods, and of course I eat fruit sugars so it’s not hard socially (definitely harder than being vegan though! people are pushier about wanting you to eat sugar from my experience. And swedish fika is so social, way more social than animal consumption)
An interesting thing is that what used to not taste like sugar, such as smoothies, start to taste really fantastical when your taste buds aren’t numbed by ordinary sugar all the time. And another good thing is that you never ever miss it once it’s out of your system, the times I have eaten sugar in the past after quitting have only been after social pushing, not because I couldn’t resist the sugar urge.
How to not eat sugar:
1. Decide you don’t want it.
2. When you feel like sugar make a smoothie with berries, soy milk & banana instead.
3. Stick to it (haha, easy to say) Don’t cheat too often or you’ll get hooked. (though cheat sometimes or life’d be boring)
1. Man That You Fear - Marilyn Manson
2. Crazy Love – Marianne Faithfull
3. Revolver – Mark Lanegan & Isobel Campbell
4. Helicopter Heart - Gry & FM Einheit
5. Marble House - the Knife
6. We Float – PJ Harvey
7. It’s Only the End of the World – Black Box Recorder
8. Electric Blue – the Cranberries
9. Sometimes It Hurts – Tindersticks
(Don’t listen to this one if you’re not in the mood for sad songs!)
Ok people, this is me trying to get a bit more organized. +++ is a category for everything that I like or that is great or interesting but that I kind of usually neglect to post here because I don’t like making a post with just a sentence and a link to a site that I think is good or whatever… I’ll try to summarize it all in one post every week instead. Hope you like!
+++ Best thing of this week is definitely that I’m going to Adina in Stockholm on Thursday! <3 We haven’t seen eachother in like six months, maybe more. But now I have time and money to get to stay from Thursday to Sunday & we’re going to cook and eat lots of food! Yay!Eating rules, Adina rules, both together = awesome!! And Lisis & Naomi and her flatmate are throwing a party aswell! Looking forward to this weekend a lot!
+++ I cleaned the flat yesterday and this morning and am now plotting how to decorate the hallway further since it’s kinda sad looking with no place to hang your jackets and coat. Am also fantasizing about amazing wallpapers or painting a mural in the living room!
+++ Started watching old episodes of Criminal Minds here. Great distraction from life & I can iron things while I’m watching. I’ve gotten a little obsessed with ironing since I got my board back, and think I will sew more now aswell!
+++ Saw Johanna today after class and walked around town with her, went to the lovely Lotta of vintage shop Drömma, had sushi, I got litterature for my new course in global development studies & now I’m at Frejs place drinking tea and am supposed to read a Hettne book & mend my coat. All in all a very good day!
“We wanted to confront people with the meaning and logical conclusion of the promise of endless economic growth. We used a hamster to illustrate what would happen if there were no limits to growth because they double in size each week before reaching maturity at around 6 weeks. But if a hamster grew at the same rate until its first birthday, wed be looking at a nine billion tonne hamster, which ate more than a years worth of world maize production every day. There are reasons in nature, why things dont grow indefinitely. As things are in nature, sooner or later, so they must be in the economy. As economic growth rises, we are pushing the planet ever closer to, and beyond some very real environmental limits. With every doubling in the global economy we use the equivalent in resources of all of the previous doublings combined.”
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+++ Resan till Melonia (the Journey to Melonia) is one of the sweetest films I’ve seen in a long time. I have seen it when I was a child aswell but only once I think, because I only remembered small details. Now Becka, Miranda and I re-watched it this weekend and it’s such a beautiful movie with animations by Per Åhlin & the voices of some of my favourite people including Hans Alfredson and Allan Edwall. (and Robyn!)
Plot from Wikipedia:
“The beautiful paradise island Melonia is inhabited by the sorcerer Prospero with his daughter Miranda, the albatross Ariel, the good-natured vegetable-faced gardener Caliban and William the dog-nosed poet. They live a generally peaceful life, except for Caliban who has to work hard with the garden. A few miles away lies the dark island Plutonia, where the greedy industrialists Slug and Slagg rule. Once as green and flourishing as Melonia, Plutonia is now percieved as hell on earth, where children are forced to, under slave conditions, build weapons and tools of war, which Slug and Slagg believe is the way of the future. With Plutonia’s resources nearly exhausted, Slug and Slagg turn their gaze on the unexploited Melonia, scheming to take it over with a gigantic drill…”
Gotta love environmentalist, anti capitalist movies for kids!
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+++ Oh and you can win a free copy of Naomi Nowaks beautiful book Graylight here!
I have plenty of really old patterns that I thought I’d share with you on the blog for free because I want to keep the old pattern books but I know I won’t make the things in a long time, if ever, and that made me feel a bit greedy! I might translate them into english if someone asks for it specifically but for now I’ll leave them in the language they were from the beginning. I don’t know all the english crocheting terms and whatnot so that’s why I won’t translate them unless someone really wants me to.
Here’s a magically pretty 20s-30s dress that is supposed to be crocheted in white with black details, though I think it’d look lovely in for example powder blue & creme instead.
In Reaby we watched Resan till Melonia & drank tea, Becka and I made heaps of sushi and ate it all in 15 minutes tops. Becka played GTA and I read books, we slept in a big bed and Miranda told me to be quiet. She is two years and knows the entire alphabet; if you point at the letters she will tell you which one is which! I don’t know any other kids but I still think that is very cool.
Miranda and Becka
Josef
Now I’m going to try to be useful again. Being sick sucks and is very frustrating, I always want to do something useful or I get super restless. My parents drove my ironing board here this afternoon so I think I’ll iron a lot of things which I haven’t been able to do at my place for like… a year. Frej has gone manic with the shoe polish and is now fixing all my boots and bags, perfect!
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilyofthevalley/4298546610/” title=”josef by ++ Lily of the Valley ++, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4298546610_c277835e03_o.jpg” width=”750″ height=”1000″ alt=”josef” /></a>
Sorry it’s been quiet here the last couple of days – I went to Jönköping on wednesday evening to be in an interview on P4 Jönköping, visit Becka who turned 25 today and Carin to sneak around town with. After that my parents & I were supposed to have a hang out day in Göteborg together but I got pretty sick instead and now Frej and I are watching movies & trying to be a bit useful with ironing things and polishing shoes.
Two pictures I’ve taken from the radio’s website where you can also listen to parts of the interview which was with the girl in the picture; Astrid who runs a little yarn shop with a knitting café by Torpa in Jönköping, me and two hosts. We were talking about DIY, consumption in general and creating… also we embroided patches for a patchwork quilt they’re making in the studio.
In the wonderful collective Trafikken in Copenhagen.
One of the best websites on the internet is in my opinion CouchSurfing.org That is partially because I’m pretty poor, but it’s just such a good idea to let people share room in their apartments to other travellers for free; It is the cheapest, friendliest and just nicest way to travel or to get to know fun people from all over the world. So simple; you just sign up with what your couch is like and how many people you can host, if they can smoke, if you have pets etc and then if someone needs your couch they will ask you and you can answer yes or no.
I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone who isn’t a total loner or control freak or a murderer or something. Since you always give out little recommendations about the people you’ve had staying with you or that you have been staying with, travellers can check in to see what have beeen said about the people before and make up their minds about if they want to contact the hosts or not. And the other way around of course. We’ve had a bunch of people staying here at our collective now and it’s been pretty wonderful. I got to know a great french guy called Elie a few months ago, we hung out and drank a lot of beer for a few days and I showed him the wonders of Andra Långgatan.
Frej and I also got floor space in the collective Trafikken when we were in Copenhagen, met lots and lots of other super interesting and fun travellers, like Ted from USA who introduced me to the insane dog book I was reading in the picture, or Stina who apparantly knew my friend Annali because everything is connected.. there were environmental scientists and high school students and researchers and everything great!
I really do think that people should at least give it a chance or three to see if it’s their thing! But I don’t get why it wouldn’t be because meeting locals is the best way to travel ever & hosting people is a lot of fun and you get to feel nice!
If you don’t have any friends on there to recommend you and get you started you can also get your identification verified. That also gives you some other advantages that I don’t know that much about since I haven’t done it myself.
GO JOIN!
And if you’re already on there, please share your stories!
More pictures of dress & new shoes. Today I’ve exercised with my friend Anna! My aim is to be strong & awesome. Then I got back home, made food, started procrastinating a thing I am supposed to finish writing, put on some make up, changed into the leopard leggings because I adore them, took pictures, cleaned up, drank a lot of tea.
First; the pine cone hat!
The eyeshadow is eyedust from make up store, the name is Celebration and it’s black with some glitter in it. Frej gave it to me because he didn’t use it anymore. I can’t make it stay in my face, I look like King Diamond after a while… Guess I’ve got to go get some of that eyeshadow primer I don’t want to buy… if noone has some diy trick for making powder eyeshadow stay on? Evelyn suggested vaseline but I don’t think she had tried it and I don’t have any at home anyway.
Quick post, have to go to and start my new course at uni! I bought both the dress and the shoes at the second hand store Börsen at Första Långgatan yesterday! The lady in the store made me promise to have much fun in the dress.
Hat - got it at christmas, used to be my grandmother’s sister’s hat I think. It has a golden pine cone! 50s brocade dress – bought at Börsen Two belts – Found heaps of them deadstock once Two different kinds of 50s-60s stockings because I felt like it - thrifted Patent leather pumps - bought at Börsen
My friend Björn and I were talking about Sonic on MSN today. Best game ever. The game for which my mother messed up her thumbs so that she couldn’t play anymore & the game which I obsessively played until I could go through the entire first zone with the tv screen shut down to dark mode when I was a kid.
i'm Karin, I'm 23 & live in Göteborg in Sweden. (grew up in Jönköping.) I run an online vintage shop called Lily of the Valley.
I like antique things, I buy way too many books with the last cash I own, I am interested in body modification, art, knowledge and Frej. I am a vegan and pretty involved in environmental issues. I've studied human ecology and CSR, going on to environmental revisioning this fall..
The first time you comment here, I will have to approve the comment, after that it will get published instantly. It's just a precaution since I get a lot of spam comments.
