Welcome to this bilingual (Swedish-English) group blog by family members living on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, "the pond". Our interests range from the scientific to the eclectic, including gourmet food, horses, art and literature, computers, species in nature, history and iron, and photography. Three generations are posting here.
A little less than a year ago I was visiting Washington DC and took a few hours to visit some of the amazing museums they have here. Here is just some quick snapshots of some great art and design I saw, for your enjoyment:
Neil Jenney's 'Coat and Coated', Corcoran Gallery. This is a self-referential piece of art.
John Garret's 'Mixed media', Renwick Gallery. Metal quilting...
Darryl and Karen Arawjo's 'Nest of Fifteen' handmade baskets, Renwick Gallery.
Larry Fuente's 'Game Fish', made from toy pieces mostly, Renwick Gallery.
This cute video was made singlehandedly by our neighbor girl with a camera, sofa, and some toys - isn't it wonderful? It has music, so make sure you have the sound on. I love the Moomins, or Mumintroll as we call them in Swedish. Thanks EL!
Sometimes as a parent you´ll get annoyed with all the little pieces lying around, but fact is that a Lego session can chase away both thoughts of work on a Sunday morning and breakfast hunger.
I did these cars with my boys this morning, and we have raced them too. They work fine after some adjustments. And the sound when rummaging for Lego in a plastic box is still the same as when I was a kid. Some things don´t change. :-)
So, an advice for annoyed parents; Get down and play instead!
Kaptain Kobold on Flickr is putting together great little scenes of historic scientists using LEGO. Here is The Evolution of Humans, with Darwin to the right representing humans (I think). Click on the photo to see more.
This is THE board game we grew up with in my family, and the one my mom played as a kid too in the 1950s. It has everything you want and is by now not only tradition in the family but a must. This summer we played it several times during our visit from the US.
The story is simple, as are the rules, and still, no game is the same. The captain of the pirate ship has died but before he did, he hid the treasure on a pirate island in one of nine possible places. He ripped the island map into nine pieces, ate the piece where the treasure is, and handed the other eight pieces out to his six surviving pirates on his death bed. The survivors immediately set off for the island, each in its own boat, to shoot each other, get the map pieces, and then dig up the treasure and leave the rest behind. Nobody dies, if you get shot you just have to wait three turns, and there is no way of telling who will win, since you can easily steal the treasure from each other after it is dug up.
Players scheme, alone and with others, run in the wrong direction to fool the pursuers, shoot with the cannon to stop an escaping pirate that has the treasure, and you might fall into rivers or down cliffs if you are unlucky. Once the poor treasure drifted to sea on the escape raft, all alone, since the pirate that had it had gotten shot and fallen into the water off the raft. In that game, nobody won.
It is a classic game, and it is so well made and can't be bought anymore. The game board is printed paper but has fabric where it folds, and the six figures are heavy lead die cast (I think) and hand-painted (see photo above). They all have special names - it is the Chinaman with his yellow coat and hat and one gun in each direction ("Tjo-Pang"), the red-coated tall and skinny "Markisen" with two piccadillos aristocratically aimed for an imminent duel, the muscular African-American man named "Hannibal", a black and white man that looks like a lunatic ("The Rat from Marseille"), the fat, bare-bellied white "Svullo" with green pants, and the black-dressed "Kapten Hook-up" that shoots up in the air. They are all designed so you can hang the little metal treasure chest on them if they are on the run. Today's games are either electronic or plastic. Sigh.
Fredrik in Sweden decided to remake the gameboard into 3-D with styrofoam. Check it out, it is great, and they have a little film trailer on Youtube of the final version (see below). (Game rules in Swedish here). It is strange, but there is very little information about this game on the internet.
When LA saw this he said: "Wow, that is the combination of my two favorite things in the world, sushi and LEGO!" This is great stuff. (thanks PP for the link to more)
When I saw your post about Grand Prix and the nice-looking racing car stamp I started to think about Flåkrypa Grand Prix and the amazing car Il Tempo Gigante. It is a animated film, produced in Norway.
The car itself is an amazing thing, and on a webshop I found this model, that you can drive by remote. I can feel the “ha-begär” (LS, translate…) rise, at least for my kids and certain other members of the family. In Norway they have built a truesized model of this imaginary car from the film, which is still present somewhere.
I feel there is much more to say, and invite all other bloggers to add on to this post.
This is a creation that I created called 'Ebon army battlepack' using LDD (lego digital designer) and has 3 foot soldiers, a metal colossus and a ballista that fires. I designed this set so that if bought in multitudes of 10 or more, an army could be created (hence the name 'Ebon army battlepack'). It takes a few weeks for it to upload itself into the gallery, so you won't be seeing it in your toy shelves any time soon. It costs USD 12.61 or if you're from sweden it costs SEK 124.93 ( which is cheap compared to some items in the gallery that can cost over a $1,000.00!
Edit: The is now up for sale and can be found here.
LA showed me this cool website on Lego.com where you download free software to build your own digital LEGO creation, upload it to a gallery, and you can then order the pieces if you like. I know, they just want to sell more LEGO, but it is quite creative. The great thing is that everybody else can see your designs. I poked around a bit, and there are lots of homemade Lego train designs, including a water tank , UP Northern # 833 (only 442 pieces, $77 to order) and "8-wide 0-6-0 switcher assemble", a streamlined Hudson, etc. But it also looks like you can download the building instructions for free, hear that, EH?
Tänk vad många tankar man kan tänka på varsin sida av den stora pölen Atlanten. Det här är en gruppblogg av tre generationer i en samtida svensk-amerikansk familj. Konst, musik, natur, film, mat, trädgård, och en massa annat är våra huvudintressen. Välkomna! (Kontakta oss/Contact us: vilseskog at gmail period com)
