Sunday Stamps: Green

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Green'.

The first stamp I'd like to share with you I don't own myself. Thanks to the internet I found an image and I am happy to show it today, because it is such a matching stamp!
Today not only is a 'green' themed Sunday Stamps day, but today also is the start of the Persian New Year: Now ruz or Norooz.
For this celebration, people arrange 'haft seen', a tabletop with 7 items which start with the letter 's'. One of the items is Sabzi, which literally means both 'green' and 'vegetable'.
This stamp shows Sabzi: the green sprouts of, for example, wheat or lentils, bound together by a red ribbon.



(I think the tulip is optional, I have never seen it in real/on pictures so far.)

For anyone who is celebrating this New Year: Happy Norooz!


I happened to have joined a chaincard project themed 'green' via Instagram recently.
The postcard started its journey in the Netherlands and after a short stop in Taiwan (ROC), Japan and Italy it returned with these stamps containing the colour green:



Austria issued this stamp for the 20th anniversary of the Alps Adriatic Philately:



Much green you can see in this stamp - one of my favourites - from Japan:



'Green' of course also has to do with environment friendly issues.

These environment friendly themed stamps are from Spain:



The following five are from a 'green' ('groen', environment friendly) ten stamp sheet from the Netherlands:



'Het nieuwe werken, groene winst' means 'the new way of working, green (environmental) profit'. The laptop represents working-at-home, in order to decrease car use and traffic.

Some of the other stamps, of which the one top right says 'groene post, een goed bericht', which mean 'green mail, a good (positive) message':



More about this stamp serie (in Dutch, but I think the non-Dutch speakers will enjoy the pictures, too) on this site and about the design process by Gesina Roters on this site.
Other 'Green' stamps (among them the 'denk groen', 'think green', stamp sheet you can find on this site.

See more stamps on the theme 'Green' on the Sunday Stamps blog and the links under the blog post.

Sunday stamps: Sporting events

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is: Sporting events.
Personally spoken, I'm not that much interested in sports, and am hardly watching sporting events on television. The only exceptions are the trainings and matches my kids are attending (I'm getting very enthusiast then), and every now and then sports attract my attention spontaneously in an other way. For instance when it has to do with nice stamps (which pokes up my enthusiasm, too)!

The stamps I want to share with you today are about some - to my opinion - very tough, hard sports.

The Volvo Ocean Race I didn't know until recently, due to this stamp sheet I learned about this sailing event:



The sailors sail around the world in about nine months. Nine months!
In June 2015 they had a pit stop in the Dutch city Den Haag (The Hague). This stamp sheet has been issued for this occasion by the Dutch Post in May 2015.

An other international sporting event which 'touched' the Netherlands for a few days is the famous bicycle race, the Tour de France.
The previous weekend, on 4 July 2015, the Tour started in the Dutch city Utrecht, the cyclists riding individual time trials in the first stage. And exactly one week ago the second stage started, from Utrecht in the center of our country, via the harbour city Rotterdam to Neeltje Jans in the south west of the Netherlands.
The Dutch Post issued a special 'postset' on these two days, existing of three postcards and this stamp sheet:



The Dutch Post has issued a stamp sheet on the Tour de France before. Five years ago, on 4 July 2010, the Tour de France started in Rotterdam, and the Post - then the predecessor of PostNL, TNT Post - issued this stamp sheet, which showed alle stages of the tour in that year, and cyclists!



From summer to winter, from international to a national sporting event, from the south west of the Netherlands to the north east: the Elfstedentocht, the Eleven Cities Tour. It is an ice skating event on natural ice, in the northern province Friesland (Frisia, Fryslân).
The good thing is that it is a real challenge: almost 200 kilometers skating! But the sad thing, at least for the skaters and organizers, is that it depends on the weather if this event will take place.
Every year the Elfstedentocht-fans are hoping for a rigorous winter, for severe frost.
Alas most of the winters in the Netherlands aren't cold enough for a sufficient amount of days. The first Elfstedentocht was in 1909. And the most recent Elfstedentocht was in 1997, so 18 years ago. That was the 15th Elfstedentocht in 106 years!..
On 2 January 2013 the Dutch PostNL issued this stamp sheet, in honour of Reinier Paping, the winner of the harsh (hardest) tour in 1963:



Check Sunday Stamps and the links under that post, to see more stamps on sporting events!

Sunday stamps: Olympic stamps

Deze zondag zijn de Olympische Spelen onderwerp van Sunday Stamps.
In 1992 werden bovenstaande postzegels uitgegeven, ter waarde van 80 guldencent per zegel. Zoals je ziet heb ik er twee gebruikt, en ik was eerlijk gezegd vergeten welke sporten op de ontbrekende postzegels zijn afgebeeld. Gelukkig is het complete vel terug te vinden op deze site. En het oorspronkelijke ontwerp, dat heel anders is, staat hier
Meer Nederlandse sportzegels vind je, met ook een commentaar op bovenstaande zegels, op het Postzegelblog.

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Olympic Games'. The stamps sheet above was issued in 1992. The stamps were 0.80 gulden cents each. As you see, I've used two of these. I had forgotten which sports were pictured on the missing ones, but fortunately the complete sheet you can see on this website (which is quite different from the original design which you can see here).
More Dutch sports stamps are gathered here.



Hierboven een meer recent vel, uitgegeven in 2012, ter ere van tien Nederlandse Olympische gouden medaille winnaars.
Above you see a more recent stamp sheet, issued in 2012, in honour of 10 Olympic gold medal winners from the Netherlands.

Hieronder een Olympische postzegel uit Wit-Rusland, die achterop een van m'n Postcrossing kaarten zat:
Below a stamp from Belarus, which I found on the back of one of my received Postcrossing postcards:



En ik kocht ooit een partij postzegels om te gebruiken voor mail art. Ook hiertussen zitten verschillende Olympische postzegels, uit uiteenlopende landen:

And some time ago I bought stamps to use for mail art. Among these stamps also some Olympic stamps, from various countries: