Here’s a wonderful 50s hat I bought at Holmens marknad a few weeks ago for 55 kr! It’s got a hole on top of the head, velvet & pearls in the front and a weird velvet bow thingie in the back aswell. I’ve been wanting to wear more & more black lately.
And the purse I got the day before yesterday. 80 kr & so good! It has room for large books and has a longer strap than my other black purse so that I can actually use both arms for other things while carrying it which I couldn’t before and has driven me crazy with the old one.
Another hat picture. Anton said it was star trek-esque, yay!
When Ulrika moved out she gave me a bunch of really nice things that she didn’t wanna bring with her… (Thank you!!) Among them were Urtekram’s aloe vera tooth paste. I’ve only used it for two days but I think it works really good and I am glad it doesn’t have flouride in it. It feels a bit strange at first to use a tooth paste that doesn’t make your mouth taste like menthol but the teeth feels clean and all good. The price for it is ca 37 kronor according to my google search and I am totally going to switch over to this full time once I’ve used up my old one.
Urtekram (click here to go to their website) is a danish company that has been making ecological & organic products since 1972. Their products are not tested on animals which is a big plus aswell. And the factories are run with no use of oil, and only wind power! And so on… they are pretty great.
The other week, before I got the tooth paste, I also decided it was time for me to try a new shampoo brand. I bought this one at a Life Store (Life is a health store chain in Sweden) because it was the only Urtekram shampoo available and I’ve heard much good about them before. And it’s been really really good to my hair! Not that the hair was bad before but it stays clean & not greasy for at least one day longer with this shampoo. Which I love since my hair takes a long long time to dry, looks shit if blow dried and I don’t wanna leave the house with it wet. I think it also curls a bit more now but that could be my imagnation. The shampoo was like 70 kronor if I remember correctly which is ca 700% more expensive than my last shampoo, the Coop X-tra… but that’s ok.
I don’t want to sound overly preachy, and I know I am not eating the absolute optimal diet myself though I think I can say it’s better than most peoples’ (vegan, hardly anything ready-made, no caffeine, no sugar, hardly any cocoa, hardly any palm oil if I can avoid it). What I could do better is to eat more locally produced, organic and seasonal, and grow more of my own food. And probably other things, because there is so much I do not know yet. I do think that it is my duty to inform myself about what is going on in the world and try to make it better, not worse. And what is absolutely the worst in my opinion is the destruction of environment and the inhumanity of production that comes with industrial meat production. I don’t want to tell people to go diehard vegan but I don’t think it is justified to let anyone suffer through that kind of treatment nor let the environment take what meat and dairy production does to it. (Links are to reports from FAO and members of the European parliament.) There are so many other alternatives, and yes, with that I even I might mean including locally produced meat if that has to be the alternative for other people than myself. Cause I can’t say for sure what is the best alternative ever and I think that everyone should research that for themselves. But then you have to actually do your research and not just go for any company commercials because they’ve crammed the word sustainable into them…
And with that being said,here are some documentaries on food production that I think one should have seen to be able to make up one’s mind about what to do.
1. Earthlings
(Thanks Rebecka for reminding me about this one, it meant a lot to me when I watched it the first time) And it is very depressing, and informative, and important.
2. Our Daily Bread
Our Daily Bread is very beautifully filmed. It has no narration or interviews, it’s just a lot of scenarios from different types of production of food. I read on wikipedia that the director’s goal was just what I was trying to say before, to provide a realistic view of modern society’s food production to let the viewers form their own opinion on it.
3. Food, INC
I haven’t seen all of Food, INC yet but since it was up for an Oscar and is very relevant right now so I am cheating and adding it to this list anyway! Frej has seen it and says it was a bit “too american” but good…
4. Bullshit
Vandana Shiva is awesome! I walked past her in a stair when I was in Copenhagen during COP15, I was like 20 cm away from her and totally star struck.
I’d also recommend “The World According to Monsanto” about GMO plants but I couldn’t find a trailer for that one. If you click the link you will go straight to it on YouTube where the whole documentary is available anyway! Oh and Bananas* is worth your time aswell! And so is The Dark Side of Chocolate. A lot of these documentaries are available for streaming directly on youtube, google videos or their own websites since it’s material that is relevant to be spread! There are probably a few more I have to recommend, but I don’t have my externa hard drive where I’m at right now and can’t check my list of documentaries.
And here’s list I found with the “top 10 Documentary Food Films” of which I’ve seen some and want to see pretty much all of the others!
Hi Karin, I have a question for you. A really long while ago I think you wrote in your blog you stopped using regular hairdye and shampoo (I hope I remember that right!) Could you tell me (or make a blog post) about what you do with your hair? Your hair always looks fantastic but I bet you use an eco-friendly way to care for it, and not lots of products :) Do you use shampoo, or something else? Henna for hairdye? (and mixed with what?) I hope you can answer my question :) – Basje
You are correct! I do not use regular hair dye, because I am very allergic to it. I am not allergic to bleach, hence I kept bleaching my hair for a long while after I stopped using dye. Then I shaved my head & grew it out, after a while I got bored and started with henna instead. As it grew out I also experimented for a long while with not using shampoo at all, and instead washing my hair with only a conditioner & rinsing it in cold water. This really makes your hair look better, especially if you have curly hair. Also you have to wash your hair more seldom because it gets less greasy that way. You have to use a brand of conditioner without certain chemicals in them, so I’d recommend you to google “conditioner only method” or something like that because I found out on the swedish site Lockig.se (under: hårvård – vacker utan schampo) and both conditioner brands and ingredients can differ from country to country.
And that is the best method to clean your hair that I know.
However, nowadays I’ve got some dreads in the back of my head & don’t want to use conditioner so now I’m back to shampoo.. I buy Coop X-tra shampo because a) it has very few ingredients in it, and I believe that most shampoos have lots of crap in them to make your hair addicted to buying more of the same shampoo, and conditioner, and product, and so on & b) because it is like 9 kr and lasts 4-5 months. So that might nog be the most eco friendly alternative out there since I am not sure if the ingredients are biodegradable, but it works very well on my hair and I’m kinda scared to switch. If I do I will write about it!
I rinse out the shampoo in cold water which I think makes the hair look a lot better. I never use any products at all and I don’t heat up my hair with curling irons or the like. And I rarely tease it either, only sometimes if I really want big hair.
Another trick is to dry your hair with a kitchen towel instead of a regular one that is kinda ungentle on the hair.
I think that is it!
I am quite sad that my hair refuses to grow longer now though! In my dream world I have knee lenght hair.
On tuesday I decided that I was to try and not drink caffeine, first I decided it was until I noticed I wasn’t tired without it anymore and then I changed it to a caffeine free month, and after that I don’t know. I might start drinking green tea only instead of the black tea, and I’d save a lot of money in school if I didn’t drink coffee. Maybe I’ll skip tea alltogether since I’m not particularly fond of green tea. Or I will just go back to my old ways.. but I think you always have to try to go without your addictions for some time and check it out.
Anyone who knows me and how much tea I drink will know how hard this is for me! It’s interesting though. First I was very tired, got mild headaches and so on. Now I’m in a general state of boredom and not energetic at all, for example I haven’t been writing anything here because I haven’t felt like it & I have skipped a lecture without reason which I normally never do either… I drink about three or four cups of black tea in this size a day…
The picture is from 2007, and taken by Becka in my old kitchen in Råslätt.
This week is also boring because Frej is in Umeå for 10 days visiting friends, and I miss him! Even if we’ve been together for a long time now (2 years soon which is pretty weird, doesn’t feel like that!) I start to miss him after like two days tops. He will be home again on tuesday. I’ve been staying at his apartment watering his flowers, eating all his food and streaming movies on his fast internet. And studying. The course I am taking now is in sustainable development’s history and current context and we have no litterature, only reports and PDF files which is quite frustrating… now I’m going to stop whining and drink some wine instead.
Ps good news; my camera returned to life again after having rested for a week. Maybe it just needs to do that sometimes, I can live with that! Don’t want to get a new one.
If, for instance, the subject’s nose is slightly crooked – so slightly, in fact, that it escapes ordinary observation – the flaw is promptly detected by the instrument and corrective makeup is applied by an experienced operator.
Oh yes I was also going to post this that I found through the always good Effekt magazine blog. Annie Leonard from the Story of Stuffis back with the Story of Bottled Water. It’s informative, easy to get and relevant to everybody just as the Story of Stuff was, so I’d recommend you to watch it! And yes I do think that it’s always bad to focus on just one product when the entire production system is crazy but I think that 1) it’s important to recognize that water is going to be a huge issue in the future and that a lot of countries including the USA already have water shortages in large areas and 2) that you can just apply this way of thinking to heaps of other products aswell…
Knitted collar - thrifted at Saronkyrkan 60s crochet jacket – bought from a friend years ago 70s black simple dress – thrifted somewhere, don’t remember Stripey stockings in orange and see through – thrifted at Ungdomshjälpen Boots – 2nd hand from Myrorna in Skärholmen
A few weeks ago I ordered some eye shadows from Fyrinnae & I got them the other day.
This is my face this morning after having put the eyshadow on Friday morning, gone for a very windy two hour walk in the little mountains by Utby, then getting drunk and staying drunk until late and being lazy, going to sleep with the make up on & lenses in & sleeping for ca 10 hours. So I guess they’re pretty durable… at least with a primer! Haven’t tried without.
After having freshened up the rest of the make up!
My camera is from ca 2001 and is slowly giving up on me alltogether. (I broke my previous camera by kicking it to the ground acidentally and my parents gave me their even older one) This one will not alwaysactually take a picture just because it says it did which is terribly annoying, and sometimes the cam won’t read the memory card, sometimes the computer won’t. I need to prepare myself for the day when it will no longer work at all! So I need your advice…My plan is of course to buy a second hand camera on an auction site or whatever. But I have no idea on is I should buy a really good one, or just a fairly cheap one.
I have never been interested in being a “good” photographer, it’s not my thing… But it would be good for the website for example, to be able to provide actual quality images of the clothes I’m selling instead of 2001-grainy-ones. (Although I do think I take fairly good pictures for using such an old camera!) And of course it WOULD be fun to learn photography a bit better and generally take nicer photos for this blog and for life and memories and so on… But does that mean I have to buy a huge digital system camera? It would be hard to carry a big cam like that everywhere and I’d be really scared to break it. I do bring my camera with me every day otherwise, in case something fun happens. Advice, anyone? What camera should I be looking for? I am clueless with technical things!
I have another problem too which is that I only photograph Frej… haha.
Yesterday I bought my first nailpolish in years and years! This will be my first & only one I guess… I really hate nailpolish, I think it’s fairly nice looking but it’s just way too annoying that it always flakes so fast and then you have to remove it all and redo it or look crappy. And I absolutely always fuck up a nail while waiting for it to dry too. You’d think that in the 100ish years (I actually have no idea how long nailpolish has been around but at least I know it existed in the 20s) it has existed they would have been able to invent something that stuck on your nails until it was removed… So up until now I’ve stuck to borrowing from friends amd then whining to them about how annyoing it is and that they shouldn’t have lended it to me…
Oh well I bought one now anyway. It’s from FACE Stockholm.
I also don’t like that the ingredients in nailpolish are pretty sucky and that you have to use chemicals to remove it. Now I googled it though, and found at at least two environmentally friendly nailpolish removers:Priti Soy Based Polish Remover and ECO-Easy remover. I might try one of them if I don’t stick to my old habit of having nails that look good for two days and then flaky ones for a month until it goes away by itself… Damn seductive nailpolish luring me in to buying it!!! I already can’t really enjoy it because I know it will cause me trouble! But at least I like looking at my fingers on the keyboard now, haha.
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..
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