Hi hi!
We are home in Gothenburg again and it's starting to feel really good after, hm, five or so hours. I always feel sad when I leave Österlen but the long drive home is a good way to make me long for our apartment.
And now we know how it feels to be married in Gothenburg too!
It's really great to be back home again actually and the autumn air is definitely breezing in right as we speak, and that is a GOOD thing. Gosh, I love autumn. I feel so energized!

Well, this was a lot of babbling for what was supposed to be a non babbling post.
Here's a Two Two Two for you:

Two dramatic skies:
One that comes with angel choir sound and one that looks rather sinister over "our" tree.

Two date nights with David:
One from a few days before we got married and one from our little honeymoon a few days after we got married.

Two of me:
One under our tree wearing a vintage skirt, my wedding pocket watch and a jacket i bought really cheap at T.K Max in Glasgow and one balancing on wobbly stones wearing my latest thrift find, the over sized cardigan.

And here's another little text in swedish. About autumn arriving.

You can read it google translated here. It works quite nicely today, if somewhat twisted in time and space.

Tjingeling for now!
/Lotta

We're having the laziest, loveliest honeymoon ever. Doing nothing but lovely things and calling eachother husband and wife in as many ways as our launguage skills make possible.
Like every time we are here I get the urge to write so I've been doing a bit of that too. Writing comes in waves for me. For quite a long time I've been writing less and taking photos more. That's just how it is and I need to do what I am passionate about whatever it happens to be in that moment.
But lately I've been longing to write so I'm trying to embrace that now.

Here's a little text I wrote about our honeymoon picnic by the beach the other day. It's in swedish but google translate made quite a good work of parts of it, if just a bit surreal. (apparently it doesn't know about whiny thermoses, egg sandwiches and sun warmed forts.)

/Lotta

Hello hello hello to this wonderful day!
It's lottalosten.com's birthday and not only that, it's the FIFTH one so that calls for extra celebrations, doesn't it!? Well, I sure think so!
For this entire week lottalosten.com will be packed with great giveaways, discounts and fun blog posts.

When I first started lottalosten.com I was so new to this kind of thing. I had been making jewelry for a couple of years and was beginning to feel like word of mouth was not enough to put my jewelry out there. I didn't really plan to use the site for blogging but I added a diary part to the first page for small updates on what was going on in my life. The remainder of june 2008 I made exactly 8 entries, most of them about technical issues but already at the end of that month I realised that I want to do more of this blogging thing! July had 9 entries and I started to write longer texts. I found that I loved to write about my everyday adventures and even though I had no comment section under each post at that time people wrote to me in my guestbook when they thought something was funny or pretty. That really boosted me a lot. In august I think you could say I really had it going.
I bought a small camera and fell in love with taking photos of things I noticed on walks through rugged parts of Gothenburg and my interst in photography grew rapidly.
Since then lottalosten.com has changed a lot but at the same time I feel like it's here for the exact same reasons I made it in the first place.
I have started blogging in english and even though I sometimes miss the freedom of being able to twist and turn a language I know in and out I actually really love to get to know the english language in the same way as swedish. I'm getting more confident in my writing and I love that this page has readers all over the world. Isn't that amazing!

I've spent so much time here and I've loved every second of it. Some months have been more quiet than others and I don't blog every single day as I did in the beginning. There's many reasons for that probably but one of them is that I now spend more time on making sure that the posts are good. I take lots of photos and I want them to look lovely before posting. I guess you could say that it's more work for the posts you see today than the ones I made in the beginning.
I love lottalosten.com so much, I don't think you can understand just how much. It's a safe haven, a playpen, a work space, a home, a channel for all the artistique sides of me and a place where nobody but me can decide what's right or wrong. I'm the boss of lottlalosten.com. I'm the best friend of lottalosten.com. And I intend to keep this place forever (and ever and ever and ever...)

So this marks the start of the festivities. Make sure to pop in every day this week as I have the intention of bringing you lots of celebration fun.

I am so very very happy to have readers that keep coming back here to see what I've been up to lately. I hope you like this part of cyber space and feel welcome, because you truly are!
Thank you, thank you and welcome both new and old readers.
And don't be afraid to say Hi or Wow or :-) (or whatever you feel like) in the comments because I love to hear from you and I can't bite over the internet (not that I would bite in real life either, not without asking first at least).

Hello, hello!
As promised, I'm back today with a huge post with photos from my two and a half hour walk in Pollok Park in Glasgow.
It was such amazing light everywhere in the park and the leaves were amazingly green. It's hard to understand when you look at theses photos that I havent enhanced the green colour in any of them. In some of them I have even lowered the saturation for a more dramatic effect, but you will understand soon why I feel I need to explain that I have NOT enhanced the green in any photo. It was like I had stepped into a world where green had exploded everywhere and made babies with the light so that everything bathed in a wonderful glowing greenness.
When I was a little girl I used to love to find hidden places, build forts and decide that a especially beautiful glade was my personal kingdom.
This place gave me that exact feeling. I just wanted to stay there forever.
I hope that this post can give you a little bit of that joy and freedom that I felt walking around in Pollok Park.

The entrance from afar. I didn't know at all what awaited me.

I stepped into a fairytale forest.

The forest ground was covered in blue flowers.

I reached an opening with a large pond.

The water was like a dark mirror.

This dog seemed to love this place almost as much as I did. And you see the mirror effect...

...the world is upside down!

Gosh, could the mood be more like a fairytale!? I don't think so. I could sit with my face in my hands staring for hours on end into this photo on my computer screen. I want to be able to zap myself there and just lay there where the light is hitting the ground and just breath and look up into the tree tops.

This large tree had a carpet of blue flowers surrounding it. It was impossible to capture the entire tree in one photo because I had to leave the path and climb a little hill to reach it and then you got too close to it. Doesn't it look like somebody sprinkled flowers at the base of the tree? Or maybe all these blue flowers just couldnt resist the power of the tree and flew across the forrest to gather around the tree?
Yeah, it makes my head spin with fairytale ideas.

A secret Rhododendron path. Love how the ground is covered with petals.

A rhododendron tree!

I have now added a rhododendron tree to my list of Flower trees i need to have in my garden when I grow up (other trees included on the list: magnolia, cherry, lilacs, jasmin...).

Some very large rhododendron bushes.
I might need one or two of these in my imaginary garden as well...

Walked past Pollok House.

Said hello to some cows.

A bundle of calf.

Every road should have trees on each side.
If I become President of the World that is one of the things I would make happen. It could be my slogan.
Vote for Lotta Losten. "Every road should have trees on each side."

I found a tree with weird and beautiful bark. Such amazing patterns!

I made a new friend who let me come really close before he took off.

A large uprooted tree. The swedish word for this is Rotvälta. I think it is my favourite swedish word at the moment. Sounds so folk tale-ish. Rotvälta. Rrrrrrotvälta. ROTVÄLTA!

Turned right on a small hidden path and saw this. Oh my gosh. That light!

Walked closer. The green light drew me in, it was impossible to resist.

Ah. Sigh.
I don't think I can describe the feeling this place gave me. I think this must be how religious people feel when they walk into an especially beautiful church and they feel peace and freedom and connection to something larger than yourself. Trees have always been really special for me. I cried when our landlord fell some trees in our garden when I was a kid. A few days ago I heard from my mother that they recently had to take down the two really old and huge trees that was left in their garden. They were completely empty inside. It felt like somebody I knew closely had died.
It's just that powerful to me.
And as sad as I can be to see a tree being taken down, I can be immensely happy to be surrounded with trees like these. They make me all bubbly with laughter.

Put the camera on the ground and turned on the timer and then I ran back and forth to take self portraits because I had to see myself from the outside in all this green light. It felt like I needed to see how small I was in comparison to the trees. I am very small.

Eventually I had to drag myself away from the green path. Spotted a clearing through the drapes of branches and leaves.

Put the camera on the ground again. Focused on a branch, apparently. Made a camera stand of sticks and stones for the next picture.

Lurking behind a tree.

Hugging a tree.

Running through the forrest like my life depended on it.
Haha, I love this effect! It really looks like I'm super fast. I tell you, I was not.

Drawn by the light, gazing into the future?

And I'm gone.

I left the park and it felt like I had traveled through time and space.
In august I will return to Scotland and I will bring David with me. I need to show him this place then. The trees will probably not be as spring green by then but I can't wait to be back!
Until then: I will stare at these photos for hours. Some of them might even look lovely as large prints, don't you think?

A weird feeling just hit me. I almost forgot I was in my apartment with the city just outside the window. Traveled through space and time to Pollok Park.
Soon I will need to switch my mind back to Gothenburg time again though, because I have theatre rehearsals in less than an hour!