Postcards for the weekend: Time, clock

This weekend New Year's Eve will take place. In Dutch we name this evening 'Oudejaarsavond', which means 'Old Year's Eve' :-)

'Time' and clocks have a major role in this time of the year, so I am happy that Maria chose 'Time / Clock' for theme for this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend.

The scenes in the two postcards which I like to share here with you are possible any day of the year.



I've send this one to John, who in 2015 had a mail project on the theme 'clocks'. It shows a painting by Marius van Dokkum. The painting speaks for itself, doesn't it?!
Personally I am a fan of the works of this Dutch painter. I learned to know his works thanks to postcards!
Especially his paintings about 'modern times' cause a big smile on my face, as do the 'couples', and some of his 'nostalgia' works ring bellsof recognition, too. I hope you'll enjoy his art, too!

The following postcard I bought in a museum and I've sent in 2015, too. Alas I forgot the name of the photographer, and I didn't write the name when I scanned it. Anyhow I think it an intriguing and nice picture.



See more postcards on 'time' and/or 'clocks' on and via Maria's Postcards for the Week blog.
Wishing a Happy New Year to all of you and your beloved ones!

In: from Kazachstan

This beautiful postcard I received from Assel from Kazachstan. The illustration has been made by Svetlana Popova.

On the back nice stamps, and I learn to say 'Hello' in more languages.
And do you notice the tulips on the round stamp? My country, the Netherlands, is said to be a land of the tulips. However, tulips don't originate from our low country. Their origin is in.. the mountains of Kazachstan! Via Persia, China, Turkey and Antwerp the first tulip finally reached the Netherlands in the end of the 16th century.



Thank you very much, Assel!

Postcards for the weekend: December Holidays

This weekend's 'Postcards for the Weekend' theme is 'December Holidays'.

The reason of my crashed computer appeared to be an amount of dust in the desktop's ventilation system. So thanks to our vacuum cleaner I am able to scan and post postcards and stamps again!

The coming period I have some days off from work so I can spend my free time... writing cards! There is a delay in my outgoing season's greetings mail, despite of the fact that my computer didn't function during the past two weeks (by which I should have had more free time), and despite of the important message on the following card (thank you, John!).



The back side of the card shows matching stamps:



What else one can do in the December holidays? When there is snow, one could take a sleigh :



(Although made in Danmark and sent from Spain, I discovered the Fox speaks a nice season's wish in Dutch!.. Thank you, Eva, for the great card and matching stamps!)

One can buy some food and make some music:



Put on your best dress:



And while there still is no snow in the Netherlands, this pretty christmas penguin-in-snow was sent to me from Malaysia (thank you, Shufen):



On the back a nice stamp showing, among others, the Tapir, one of my all-time favourite animals, so it is always a great addition, even to a christmas card.



See more December Holidays postcards at and via this weekend's 'Postcards for the weekend'.

Postcards for the weekend: Lighthouses

This time the Postcards for the Weekend theme is 'Lighthouses'.

First I have to mention that my computer crashed last week, so I cannot scan and upload new postcards, and don't have access to the postcards and stamps which I uploaded in the past years - I did because lighthouses are favourite theme, too!

So the following postcards I'm posting, thanks to my daughter's laptop, haven't been uploaded now: I picked them from the internet.
The last five I copied from this 'nog meer post' weblog, and the first one from the website of Ravindra, to whom I've sent several lighthouses.

Among them this one, 'Lange Jaap', 'tall Jaap', the lighthouse in the northern part of my province, Noord-Holland, in the city of Den Helder.
I've seen the Lang Jaap from the sea, last year, when I took the boat to the first Wadden Island, Texel.



On his turn Ravindra sent me several postcards from his country, Sri Lanka, among them this lighthouse, named Beruwela:



Ravindra even has a blog dedicated to lighthouses on postcards, and besides that, also one about lighthouses on stamps.


Of course I have to show at least one postcard which Eva has sent me. She is the one who infected me with the 'lighthouse virus' :-)
I had a beautiful one from Spain in mind to share here, but as said, alas I cannot get the analogue postcard in this digital apparatus anymore, at the moment.
This one is a beauty, too. It shows a painting by the famous painter Edward Hopper:



You can see a slightly postal addition in the right upper corner: a postmark.
The next card has received even more postmark ink in front during it's travel, but still is a beautiful one.

It has been sent by John, who has sent me more wonderful lighthouse postcards. This one, also issued as a postage stamp, is the lighthouse at Saint John's point.



Also postcrossers have brightened my day by lighthouse cards.
I'm very happy with this maximum card, showing a lighthouse full of cubes (the first cubed one I had ever seen so far). It is the lighthouse at Casuarina Point WA:



Last but not least, a postcard which made me wonder most. As this lighthouse is located in a country which doesn't have any dirct contact with sea: Switzerland! And the lighthouse is even over 2000 meters above sea level!



See more beautiful postcards and stamps about lughthouses via this link.

Sunday Stamps: 20th century inventions

Today Sunday Stamps theme is '20th century inventions'.

I like stamps which feature technical things, so also this theme makes me happy. Check the wonderful stamps people shared on today's Sunday Stamps blog and the links mentioned there!

On my turn I'd like to share one of my favourite Dutch stamp sheets with you, showing 10 Dutch inventions. The stamp sheet was issued in 2010 for the 100th anniversary of the 'Octrooiwet', the Patent Act, in the Netherlands.



Not all are 20th century inventions. The submarine, invented by Cornelis Drebbel, and the telescope by Hans Lipperhey were early 17th century inventions.
And the LED lamp by Philips and new additions to the solar car by the Solar Team Twente, have been 'born' in our 21st century.

Nevertheless the majority of stamps show 20th century inventions, six in total. The year mentioned is the year in which the patent was granted:
- The artificial kidney, by Willem Kolff in 1948;
- the VacuVin wine saver by Bernd Schneider in 1987;
- the milking robot (or: automated milking) by Van der Lely in 1987;
- improvement of the chainguard (chain case) by Wilhelmine van der Woerd in 1974;
- automated handwriting recognition by TNT Post in 1980, which is used for turning the mail address into a code (you can see the - for mail lovers wellknown - (orange) lines on the stamp);
- the Dyneema fiber, 'strongest fiber' by DSM in 1979.

See more inventions on Sunday Stamps and via the links mentioned there.

Sunday Stamps: Children

Google shows this picture today, 20th of November, because it is the International Children’s (Rights) day. This day marks the anniversary of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

Today's Sunday Stamps theme also is 'Children'.
So I like to share this 'kinderpostzegels' stamp sheet, issued in 2006 for children's welfare, showing the diversity of children in nowadays Netherlands:



You can see more children's welfare stamps and learn about this project at Eva's blog of today (thank you very much, Eva, a nice surprise that you paid attention to these stamps today!).

Besides children's welfare stamps, Dutch Post issues the less well-known 'elderly welfare stamps', in cooperation with the National Foundation for the Elderly.
In 2005 these two stamp sheets have been issued, which I thought matching for today's Sunday Stamps theme.
They are showing pictures from the famous Dutch children's books 'Ot & Sien', issued more than a decade ago and illustrated by Cornelis Jetses. The sheets also show present pictures of children.





See more children's stamps at and via today's Sunday Stamps.

Postcards for the weekend: Books, reading, authors

This weekend the theme of Postcards for the Weekend is a favourite of mine, too: Books, reading, authors!
Also a favourite theme of many postcard lovers, and a lot of postcards have been issued on this theme. See for instance the website of Dutch postcrosser Willemijn, who posted hundreds of postcards on her 'Lezende vrouwen' ('Reading women') site between 2006 and 2012.

The first postcard I like to share here is this illustration by Fiep Westendorp. She became famous by her book illustrations of Jip & Janneke, the children's books by Annie M.G. Schmidt. But Fiep has drawn many other great pictures, among them cartoons about women's lives (in the 50'ies-60'ies and still actual!), and illustrations like this one:



A reading man is shown on this painting. I've sent this card to John in the UK, but alas I forgot to note who the painter and painted are:



From Eva I received this cartoon: 'Compre un libro. Y luego léalo!', in other words: 'Buy a book, and then read it!'
Who of you still has unread books on his/her shelf? (I have..)



To my opinion books preferably should be bought in real bookstores, not online. In order to keep sceneries like this alive:



Painting by Dutch painter Willy Belinfante-Sauerbier (1922-2014). She has made more paintings of reading people and bookstores.


And here a few books I received from Eva, that is, the covers on postcards, not the books itself :-) They are from a serie of Puffin Books postcards:





See more postcards on reading, books and authors at this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend.

Postcards for the weekend: Coffee, tea

This weekend's theme for 'Postcards for the weekend' is 'Coffee, tea, pastries'.

I love to drink coffee on my own, while doing some home or work tasks, or read a book or something like that. Enjoying the relaxed moment and the fact that I'm drinking coffee. With milk, no sugar.

But also coffee and tea can connect people. Not only by drinking together, but even from a distance, by a postcard!

Eva and I have exchanged a lot of postcards about tea or coffee.
Among them this one, a Finnish postcard, sent by Eva to the Netherlands:



More postcards which I received from Eva, showing coffee, you can see here, and here, and here. And see this one! And this, and see this one!.

On my turn I've sent a Finnish postcard from the Netherlands to Eva. I think many of you will know this two happy old ladies, drawn by Inge Löök. Drinking tea in a rather unusual, but surely cosy place:



See more postcards on tea, coffee and/or pastries via Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday Stamps: Fireworks

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Fireworks or Night Views'.



As far as I know Dutch Post has issued only the fireworks stamp you see above. It is from the December 2014 stamp sheet, which contains twenty different 'December' themes.

The main image on the following Spanish New Year's stamp shows a clock and grapes: twelve grapes are eaten at each beat when the clock shows twelve at New Year's Eve midnight. But looking more closely, you can see the fireworks behind the Feliz Año (Happy [New] Year) wish:



From the USA I received several Chinese New Year stamps (thanks to Phillip), and one of these shows the fireworks before they are set off:



Fireworks are also shown on this stamp from China:



See more night views / fireworks at today's Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there.

Postcards for the weekend: Foods of the world

This weekend's theme of Maria's Postcards for the Weekend on her 'Connections to the World-blog' is 'Foods of the world'.

I choose two postcards, one which I received from Spain, and one I still have to send to the sender of the Spanish card :-)

The first dish which comes into my mind when I think typical Spanish food, is paella. By Eva's postcard I learned how to distinguish the different paellas from each other. As you can see by yourself:



Spain is a big country with many more kinds of dishes. Spanish Post (Correos) has issued an interesting stamp serie on food, and Eva was so kind to add a mathcing stamp on the back of the paella card:



I am very happy with the other stamp, too, as I love music (I think I've posted more 'music' on this blog than 'food'?!..). The stamp I think matching to this theme, too, because I think music food for the heart and soul!

The second postcard to share shows a typical Dutch meal, boerenkoolstamppot, stamppot made of boerenkool and potatoes. Many Dutch eat it in winter, but I hardly have seen boerenkool on menus in Dutch restaurants.



See more postcards on food on and via Maria's Postcards for the Weekend!

Postcards for the Weekend: reflections on water

Thanks to a comment from Maria on one of my Sunday Stamps blog posts, I learned to know her great project 'Postcards for the Weekend'.

Usually I don't scan my incoming postcards, except for the few I'm posting on this blog. In contrary, most of my outgoing postcrossing postcards I did scan. If you don't mind that I'm also posting outgoing postcards for weekends (as I don't always have the opportunity to scan my received postcards), I will happily join!

This weekend's theme is 'Reflections on water'.

I've sent this, little reflected, hippopotamus to a hippopotamus loving postcrosser:



And this typical Dutch scenery (well, ice is not so common anymore since years), now is in hands of a postcrosser in Taiwan. The mills you see belong to the windmills of Kinderdijk:



See more reflections in waters at this weekend's blog post and via the links mentioned there.

In: from Morocco

I love birds and I love (living) fish. Eva made my day by sending this card, showing on the back a matching fish stamp, and in front an unusual view: of many birds (but it seems that the sea gulls prefer eatable fish).

The photo also shows part of the 500 years old walls of the city Essaouira. The name 'Essaouira' comes from the Tamazight word 'Tassort' which means (small) wall. The city's former name is 'Mogador'. Nowadays it is a UNESCO world heritage site.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Sunday Stamps: Birds

Sunday 2 October it is Sunday Stamps time again!
The theme is 'Birds', and I think our feathered friends always making a nice theme.

I'd like to show you the stamps on my recent 'chaincard', which has been traveling between the Netherlands, Canada, Thailand and Hong Kong (click to enlarge):



On top you can see my card before the sparrow flew out. And below you can see the influence of a journey over three continents. Apart from some postmark ink, the sparrow arrived rather well!



One of the other chaincard fellows will receive these stamps (I love the puffin and crow stamp!),



See more Birds stamps on and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: Orange

This Sunday's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Orange, yellow'.

The stamp which immediately came into mind, because it shows much yellow and even more orange, is this painting by famous painter Mark Rothko:




Pretty orange backgrounds are shown in the following two stamps, both happen to connect two countries:

The Monaco and Morrocan flag on this joint issue stamp from Morocco, and a lot of orange under the book:



From Thailand, orange behind a mailbox from Myanmar:




Almost monochromatic are these two stamps, issued on a ten stamp sheet in honour of Dutch letter writers:



The man pictured is Leo Vroman (1915-2014), a Dutch-American writer, hematologist (the book I've read is an autobiography, also about blood), poet, illustrator.


Finally a stamp which I like to share, is this one from Spain, showing a dear object. Which raises the question: is it orange or is it yellow?!



See more stamps on this theme on and via this Sunday's Sunday Stamps!