Sunday Stamps: New Year

This week, on 16 February, the Chinese New Year will start: the year of the Dog.

That means, we'll say goodbye to the Year of the Rooster..
Dutch PostNL issued a stamp sheet on which you can see this change. 'Vaarwel jaar van de Haan' means 'goodbye / farewell to the year of the rooster', and 'welkom jaar van de hond' means 'welcome year of the dog':



Via Instagram I got to know several mail loving people from all over the world. And some of them are starting a so-called 'chaincard' themed 'Year of the Dog'. We are just about to start, so I haven't received any of the stamps yet, but some of them showed the stamps they'll going to use already in the instagram groups, and I like to share the print-screens of these stamp pictures with you!

On alphabetic order:

From Australia / Christmas Island:



From China:





From Indonesia:



From Japan:



From Korea:





From Malaysia:





From Singapore:



From Taiwan:



From Thailand:



On my turn, I'll add the Dutch Year of the Dog stamp to their cards. Dutch PostNL officially will issue this stamp sheet on 16 February, but to my surprise my order arrived already last week :-)



See more stamps of this coming New Year at and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: 'Y' is for ijsbeer, ijs and ijsvogel

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is the letter Y.

In Dutch we name it 'Griekse IJ', or i-grec, literally 'Greek Y', as it origins from the Greek alphabet's letter Ypsilon or upsilon.
Words in Dutch starting with a 'y' are known internationally, like yak, yoghurt and yoga. Be it that the pronounciatin of the Dutch 'g' in these words is different from the English, Spanish, French and German pronounciation (the Dutch 'g' sounds like the Spanish 'j'). The word 'year' in Dutch is 'jaar', so yearly events and anniversaries won't count for my blog post on the letter of today :-)

Of course I couldn't find stamps on yoghurt, yak, yoga. But in Dutch we can 'cheat' a little, without cheating: when naming the 'Y' in the alphabet we pronounce it like the 'IJ'. The ij is used and pronounced as a vowel, and there are several words starting with this 'ij'.
Like ijs, which means both icecream and ice.

From a Finnish postcrosser I received this snowy and icy stamp. It must be so ijskoud - cold as ice - there, that rivers freeze into ijs:



In the Netherlands there is the ijsvogel, literally 'ice bird', though in English he and she are named 'kingfisher'. Arnold Voordewind, a Dutch phographer, took this beautiful photo and turned it into this stamp:



From FinnBadger I received this wonderful stamp from the United Nations, showing an ijsbeer ('beer' pronounced as 'bear'; the English 'beer' in Dutch is 'bier').
In English this animal is named 'polar bear', though in Dutch it is simply an ijsbeer:



Despite of the name 'ijsbeer' the environment of the ijsbeer is lacking ijs / ice more and more. Climate change, global warming, these facts are a serious thing. And does not only make the ijsberen cry, but also us, humans, in the end will have to face the bad sides of our over-use of natural sources...

This beautiful stamp sheet shows the sad reality and the sadness of the ijsbeer:



I received this wonderful sheet by surprise from Virna from Indonesia - thank you so much!


More stamps on the letter 'Y' (and maybe an other 'IJ'?) you can find at and via Sunday Stamps.

Postcards for the Weekend: Winter scenes

This weekend's Connections to the World theme is 'Winter scenes'.
At the moment it is cloudy, here in the Netherlands. Sometimes rainy, and when going outside one could think it to be not only winter, but also autumn or spring. In the start of last December there were some days full of snow, and the weather forecast says it might be snowing next week, or not.
At least there are postcards who show snow. And thanks to 'Postcards for the Weekend' I was triggered to share them with you.

The postcard above I received from Margit from Germany, a cute one of Little Mole, or Krtek, and his woodland friends.



Although I dislike the cold and slipperiness of snow, sleighing is fun. This postcard is an illustration by Fiep Westendorp.

The postcard below I had made out of a photo I took some winters ago, from footsteps of our feathered friends on the pathway next to our home.



And this is a regular postcard, showing a winter scene in the province of Drenthe:



I used it for a chaincard, and after a journey via the USA, Indonesia (without melting!) and Russia the card returned home safely, the backside filled with snowmen:




See more winter scenes at and via Postcards for the Weekend!

Sunday Stamps: 'D' is for Duif

My contribution for 27th of August's Sunday Stamps came a little later. Nevertheless I like to share with you the 'Duif'.

The Dutch word 'duif' in English is both 'dove' and 'pigeon'. Still it is hard for me to distinguish the difference between these two English translations, as in Dutch we name them both simply 'duif'.

Of course mail lovers will love the Postduif (Mail Pigeon).
Dutch PostNL happened to have issued two shaped stamps in honour of the 'youth philately's day' in 2014. One of these shows the Postduif:



The fact that postduiven ('duiven' is plural of 'duif') have to do with mail, is also shown on the following Europe stamp from Kazachstan. In 2008 the Europe stamps' theme was 'letter writing', and here he/she is: the postduif!



Many more duiven have been issued on stamps.

This (post)duif is from Indonesia:



And an other kind of duif from Malaysia:



Duiven also appear on cancellation stamps. Here is one on an official postmark from Taiwan:



And an unofficial postmark, but real rubberstamp print, from the USA, showing this most well-known bird to deliver mail:



See more stamps on the letter 'D' at and via the 27 August 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: 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!