Sunday Stamps: 'U' is for uil and uurwerk

This Sunday is the last day of 2017, and the day of Sunday Stamps' letter 'U'. Which is pronounced in Dutch totally different from the English (and German, Spanish) 'U'.

Together with the letter 'i' it becomes 'ui', and the pronouncation of this combination becomes even more weird for non-native speakers.
By the way, the Dutch letters 'u' and 'ui' are words in themselves: 'u' means the formal 'you' (like Usted in Spanish, Sie in German and Vous in French). And an 'ui' is an onion.

I couldn't find stamps about onions, and I wouldn't know how to depict the word 'u', so I choose the words 'uil' and 'uurwerk' for today.

The Uil is a bird which you'll know as an owl.

I received this owl stamp from Taiwan:



And a postcard showing this stamp:



And one owl stamp from Hong Kong:



And I found a personalized stamp showing an owl on the website of Dutch photographer and postcard seller Arnold Voordewind. This owl stamp alas is not available anymore as a stamp, but the postcard is:




As said, this is the last day of the year 2017. Oh, how time flies, don't you think so, too?

The older Dutch word for 'horloge' (watch) / 'klok' (clock) is 'uurwerk', literally: 'hour work', almost like the English word 'clockwork'.
Nowadays we think the 'uurwerk' is the inside of the clock or watch.
John has sent me this beautiful stamp (I love technical things) showing such inside:



And I replied with this Russian stamp sheet which I happened to have found for his clock postcard project:



To prevent the stamp sheet from folding, I had put a folded card around it, showing a painting by Marius van Dokkum:



As you can see, at this moment it is time to watch the time. If you are living east from Europe the New Year already has started at the moment that I am posting this blog. And if you are living west from me, you'll have to have a little more patience. Here in the Netherlands there is only two hours left for the New Year to start. And it is celeberated with 'vuurwerk' (fireworks), which rhymes :-)
So I am happy to show this combination of stamps - and a matching postmark - of vuurwerk together with the uurwerk:




To all of you and your loved ones a Happy, Joyful New Year!
Looking forward to seeing all of you again in 2018!

And don't forget to check Sunday Stamps to find more stamps on the letter 'u'!

Postcards for the Weekend: Markets

This weekend the theme of Postcards for the Weekend is 'markets'.



This pretty water colour painting of a market in Hong Kong has been painted by Shen Ping, and was sent to me by Natalie from Hong Kong.




This postcard is from a box with - newly printed - old postcards from the city of Utrecht, in the center of the Netherlands. The original photo has been taken more than 100 years ago. At first sight it doesn't look like a market like we know nowadays in our country, but when looking closer you can see that indeed there is merchandise: animals. The note says 'Kippenmarkt', which means 'chicken market'.

See more markets, from all-over the world, at and via Maria's Postcards for the Weekend blog.

Sunday stamps: 'E' is for 'Ei'

In Dutch, the word 'ei' (which means 'egg') is pronounced exactly the same as the Dutch letter combination 'ij'. I tried to find a similar sound in English but I failed. Fortunately the online translator this time says it rather correct (click the loud speaker below of the word 'ei' at this link). Do you know words in English with the same sound?

Stamps about eieren (= ei plural) are rare, as far as I know. So I was very lucky when Eva sent me this special one from Spain:



And suddenly I remembered having received an other egg stamp, already two years ago, from Natalie from Hong Kong:



See more stamps on the letter 'E' at and via Sunday stamps!

Sunday stamps: 'A' is for 'Aap'

From last Sunday until 25 Sundays later, the Sunday Stamps are dedicated to the alphabet.
As it is easier for me to find a complete pictoral / stamps alphabet in my native language than in English, I thought to combine my to-be-shown stamps with a small course in Dutch language. Twenty-six nouns only, you might have learned after the coming half year.

So the letter 'A' does stand for... Monkey! In Dutch the word is 'aap', the pronounciation of which I cannot explain to non-native speakers. Even translate.google.com has difficulties explaining: its sound (click the speaker under the word in this site) does not sound native into my ears.
Anyway, we have been lucky that the aap also is part of the Chinese Zodiac. Thus many stamps have been issued on this theme. Above the very first Chinese Zodiac Dutch PostNL has ever issued: a year of the monkey (jaar van de aap) stamp sheet in 2016.

From Hong Kong I received this beautiful matching combination of postcard, stamp and postmark.



FinnBadger sent me this wonderful stamp and postmark from the USA. It took me some time to find the aap on the stamp, maybe you can spot him/her sooner?



Here he/she is:



This stamp arrived from Malaysia:



This apenmasker (monkey mask) like picture appeared on a Canadian stamp:



And three different apen ('aap' plural) stamps traveled from Japan. The first two seem to have had some trouble during their journey, but the two of them make one complete picture. From 1968:



From 1992:



A definite stamp (I think, not a zodiac one), received in / probably from 2016:



From Taiwan I received various zodiac stamps in one mail. First I thought to cut out the aap from this picture, but the postmark is worth sharing, too:



See what 'A' stamps our colleague stamp lovers have chosen for this Sunday at and via Sunday Stamps!

Postcards for the Weekend: Bridges

This weekend's Postcards for the Weekend theme is 'Bridges'.

As some of you know, bridges are one of my favourite themes. They connect people, cities and sometimes even countries. No surprise that I posted several bridge stamps and postcards before.

First I'll take you to Asia, the continent I've never been to myself. Thanks to postcrossing and to instagram friends I 'traveled' virtually to beautiful places, by receiving and enjoying pretty postcards.

This postcard I received from a Postcrosser from China. The back of this card doesn't say where this bridge is located. The sender lives in Wuhan, so maybe this beautiful, quiet looking place might be in this area.



From my instagram friend Jael I received this postcard from Singapore. All attention, of both the artists and us, card watchers, goes to the Merlion, but looking close, you can see a bridge on the right. It's one of the bridges over the Singapore River.



This bridge I drew - as a postcard - for a mail art project in Indonesia. It is the Kahayan bridge in Palangkaraya, Borneo. I chose to draw it because the mail art project was in honour of the 60th anniversary of this Indonesian city.



From Asia to Europe.

In Venice there is a lot of water, and fortunately there are bridges, too. Most famous I think the Bridge of Sighs, but the bridge I received thanks to Rio is a more innocent one:



On the back side she added a matching stamp and postmark, showing a larger bridge from Venice:



From John I received a nice postcard showing maybe one of the most well-known bridges:



I replied by this postcard, which to my surprise was available in a local store, here in the Netherlands:



I don't know if it is a good or bad habit, but at least it made and makes me happy: when visiting familiar cities (among them Nijmegen, the city where I grew up, and Murcia in Spain, which is the home city of my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew) I sometimes send postcards to myself. Not that many, so far maybe 7 or so, but to my surprise the majority of the postcards show bridges.

Here you can see two bridges over the Rio Segura in Murcia:



This is the Railway bridge over the river Waal in Nijmegen:



The same bridge you can see in the very back of the photo on bottom on this card:



The two other bridges are the Waalbrug (my favourite bridge as it reminds me of my former 'home'), and a pedestrian bridge, which is new to me.


As a 'dessert' here are some stamps:

A bridge in a winter scene in Finland:



And bridges from Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia and the Netherlands, gathered in one chaincard about this theme:



The stamp bottom left shows a newly built bridge over the forementioined river Waal.

See more bridges at and via this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday stamps: Roosters, Chickens

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Roosters, or Chickens'.

I was very happy and lucky that Dutch PostNL issued a serie of ten chicken stamps two months ago:



On 28th of January 2017, the Chinese Year of the Monkey turned into the Year of the Rooster. To my surprise Dutch Post had issued a Year of the Monkey stamp sheet (in August 2016, while the Year already was half a year old).
And in November 2016 there was this announcement of the coming change of the year, by this stamp sheet:



The text under 2016 and 2017 says: "Farewell Year of the Monkey" and "Welcome Year of the Rooster".

And in the end of January 2017 the Year of the Rooster stamp sheet has been issued:



You read it well: I was not only happy, but also lucky for these issues by Dutch PostNL! What is the case? Via Instagram I learned to know stamp loving people from almost all-over the world, and various people are joining so-called 'chaincard' projects. This way you form a group of 4 to 6 (sometimes more) people, mostly around a chosen theme. Via the private, so-called 'direct message' option of Instagram you can exchange addresses. Each person starts to send a postcard, with stamps matching the chosen theme. Consequently you send the next received cards to always-the-same member of this tiny group. And after having traveled via all countries of the participants, in the end your own card returns, with stamps from all of the participating countries.

Thanks to the Year of the Rooster, and to mail companies in several countries who issued 'Year of the Rooster' stamps, many chaincards are exchanged on this theme.

I couldn't resist to participate in some of them. This way several rooster stamps have been landed in my place, which I have forwarded to the next participants. For instance, from and to Hong Kong:



From and to Japan:



From and to Korea (in real some of the dark lines are shining like gold):



From and to Singapore:



Not only Asian mail companies issued Year of the Rooster stamps. Also, for instance, Ukraine:



And here you see a Canadian and USA stamp, to which I added the Dutch one:



All of the above stamps are from other people's postcards so they just were in transit at my place (and fortunately my scanner did work :-) ). Hopefully they will arrive soon and safely to the owners.

Meanwhile the first of my own chaincards returned home! To which, besides the Dutch and Singaporean stamps, also Year of the Rooster stamps from Taiwan and Thailand have been added. And the last sender, Komimi from Taiwan, was so kind to decorate my card with a few more nice birds:



The front side of the postcard (which I chose beacuse there is a Rooster in this famous English song):



See more Rooster and/or Chicken stamps at and via today's Sunday Stamps.

Sunday stamps: Winter white

This Sunday stamps' theme is 'Winter white'.
How coincidentally: the first snow in my city arrived in the night of Friday to Saturday. In the west of the Netherlands however almost all snow has gone. In the east and south of our country the snow will last for at least this Sunday, but by the expected temperatures of over zero degrees Celsius it soon will be over.

'Winter white' makes me think of large winter landscapes. However, I don't have a lot of stamps showing this. Only the one above from Germany does, so I am happy to show it here.

But 'white', 'snow', shows up in several other stamps. Or not:
The following stamp immediately makes us think of snow, while in fact no snow is visible, on this Nijntje-(Miffy)-on-a-sleigh stamp:



In contrary to winter landscape stamps, single snowman stamps have passed through my hands already three times, thanks to so-called chaincards. After receiving, before forwarding, I scanned them. I hope my own card will return in the coming weeks or months, but at least I can show you the following stamps.

The most surprising ones to my opinion are these from Indonesia. Surprising because snow is the last thing which comes into my mind when thinking of Indonesia. A quick search on the internet however, learned that there is snow on the high mountains in Papua.



Also Hong Kong Post has issued a stamp showing a snowman:



In Russia there is more snow, and note the typical (?) hats these Russian snowmen wear:







These Dutch snowmen I added to the chaincards, two are from December stamps series (2012 and 2014 respectively), and the flying snowman showed up on a 'kinderpostzegel', children's welfare stamp sheet in 1983:





Here a regularly received stamp, from the United Kingdom:



And a regularly sent one, from the 2013 December stamp sheet, designed by Sieb Posthuma (1960-2014):



Finally there is a snowman on the most recent December stamp sheet, which, in a way, brings us back to a 'winter landscape' (-:



See more winter white stamps on this Sunday's Sunday Stamps blog, and follow the links mentioned there!