Dear Photo Diary | Random creativity

Dear photo diary is a photography dumping ground of randomness, a catch up of my photography habit, a colorfest for people in need. Today (and most of the time) I’m featuring random creativity that has occurred around here. It’s what makes me happy, catches my eye, things I want to document and save for old age. That sort of thing. I hope you like it.

Dear Photo Diary

I feel like my creativity is in hibernation so to find these random photos from the past two months makes me happy. They are evidence that I have made at least… something.

One day I cut up this thrift find. It is a spiral bound book for the desk, filled with positivity messages and rainbows. I threw away the over-the-top cheery messages and saved most of the little cute rainbow illustrations. Then I doodled a little girl, and called her Fly Girl:

Note to self: I need to draw and doodle more.

I ordered this holographic magenta pink binder (A6 size) even though I don’t know for what or when I’ll start using it. I just craved the color of it. I was searching high and low for this exact one in the B6 size for my Stalogy diary but haven’t found one yet, sadly.

The ring binder was only attached at one end, but I don’t mind because I am going to remove the ring binder mechanism anyway and use it as a notebook cover. I don’t even own a six hole punch so I wasn’t worried about it. But isn’t it cute?

Hedwig is not happy with the order of my book shelves:

BTW, I’m never going to get too old for toys.

I own way too many unread books for my liking – but still I have been reading from the library. This is a previous pile of books ready to be returned. I read all but the bottom one, because I couldn’t get into it:

I thoroughly enjoyed Belittled Women (YA) by Amanda Sellet, A werewolf’s guide by Sarah Hawley, A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (that I read in Swedish: Ett spöke i strupen) and the funny romance of Not so Meet Cute by Meghan Quinn. This month I’ve finished two books in one cover (along with a mid-day snack) and that was Claire Keegan’s short stories Foster and Small things like these.

Started another embroidery series of the seasons. This is snippets of “winter”:

I’ll show more of the “seasons series” as the embroidery progresses. Then just because I wanted to include this scarf or handkerchief, here it is:

I thrifted it a long time ago, but photographed as I did the laundry recently.

I don’t know where to use it (yet) or why I bought it, but I think it is cute. I wonder who the illustrator was, where it came from originally and where that kid is going with the flowers. Maybe to greet his dad, as today is Father’s Day in Sweden.

Last weekend it was All Saint’s Day here in Sweden. We “celebrate” by going to the cemetery and light candles on the graves of our dead, to commemorate and remember them. It is a serene, calm and beautiful tradition – totally opposite of what Halloween is about. When it is cold and pitch dark outside the thousands of candles together say something beautiful about us all, I think.

Above photos are from the memorial grove, what we in Sweden call minneslund. The place to go if the person is not buried at a cemetery close to you or with a gravestone (ashes are commonly scattered here). I lit my candle here for morfar, mormor, farfar, farmor, mom’s dad, and everyone else who is no longer with us. I miss you guys, and love you always.

Dear photo diary, thanks for listening. To not end on a sad note, here’s some more happy craft times:

In tomorrow’s blog post, I’ll talk more about this embroidery and the stitching that was started during the summer on the balcony (seen in the above photo). I’ll see you then, same space, same url. xo /Hanna

* You might also enjoy previous entries into my Dear Photo Diary

This post is part of NaBloPoMo where I write 30 blog posts in November. Thanks for reading and leaving me a comment, it encourages me to keep going. To follow along subscribe to blog posts via email or RSS. I also have a sweet Substack Newsletter about art, craft and creativity that you might want to sign up for so that we can keep in touch in the future. I’d love that. On instagram I’m @ihannas and on YouTube Studio iHanna. Take care and stay creative friends.

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