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.

Postcards for the Weekend: Love / lovely

The text says:
'A 'lief' (kind/lovely/sweet/cute) message
from me ...
... for you!'

(the scanner made it a little dark but in real the letters are bright shiny red)

There are a few days left before the send-lovely/loving-messages-to-each-other-day (14 February, Valentine's day) and before the Chinese New Year will start (16 February: the Year of the Dog). Meanwhile this weekend's theme of Postcards for the Weekend is 'love/lovely'.
So - apart from the fact that my (vegetarian, rodent) pets are chased (and eaten?) by pets like these pictured two - I though this postcard a matching one!

See more lovely / loving / love mail at and via Postcards for the Weekend!

Postcards for the Weekend: December holidays

This 'Postcards for the Weekend' theme is 'December holidays'.
Nowadays here in the Netherlands many people send x-mas and new year's wishes via email, whatsapp or other social media. However, still (folded) cards are sent, fortunately, too.

And fortunately people from other countries are sending nice wishes, too. I am happy to have received some from abroad recently:

From Shufen from Malaysia:



I think it funny that the card shows a horse, because the Dutch word for horse ('paard') rhymes with the Dutch word for card ('kaart'), and this way it is a christmas paard-kaart.




Elena from Belarus created the following pretty card. As I love music, I am happy she chose this music notes background:



On the colourful envelope an also colourful December stamp:




Also Hana Ehagaki creates wonderful cards. From Japan she sent me this Happy New Year wish, brought to us by this ウォッチドッグ, watchdog:



On the back a special postmark and an other interesting stamp print:




In our half of the world we think the 1st of January marks the New Year. You can ask yourself if that is a logical day. In other parts of the world there are other first-day-of-the-new-year-days. And I think some of them more logical. Like the first day in spring, the day of the vernal equinox. Or, as the following postcard has been dedicated to, the new moon of the first lunar month.



The (Chinese) New Year of the Dog will start on 16 February 2018. So although not celebrated in December (thus not really matching this Postcards for the Weekend's theme), I post it today, because it is a New Year's card, and I received it last week, thanks to ChenHuei from Taiwan.
She had added a special and matching pictoral postmark:



And on the back side of the card she added this, er, cat, or dog?




Find more season's greeting-cards at and via Postcards for the Weekend!

In: from France

I love comics-like illustrations, and I love lighthouses on postcards, so I was delighted to find this postcard in my mailbox, sent from France by Eva.
This is the bateau feu (French for lighthouse ship) Sandettié, named after the sand bank in the North Sea between France and the United Kingdom. A newer version, the Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic nowadays is used as a weather station.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Sunday stamps: 'B' is for 'brief', 'bellen' and 'blindengeleidehond'

I love 'false friends': words which in one language have a certain meaning, and which have in an other language a totally different meaning.

That is the case with the word 'brief'. In English 'brief' means 'short'. But the Dutch word 'brief' has a meaning which I guess you all might like: 'epistle', 'letter'!



On the first stamp Nijntje (Miffy) is writing a brief (letter).
And on the second stamp you see the happy receiver of this brief (letter).



An other funny false friend is the verb (not noun) 'bellen', a false friend between German and Dutch.

In Dutch, the verb 'bellen' means 'to make a phone call'. In German, 'bellen' means... 'to bark' (in Dutch: blaffen).

Here you see some people 'aan het bellen' (calling),



And talking about barking (blaffen), the type of dog on the next stamps doesn't bark a lot, but works hard instead, to help to guide blind people.
In Dutch he/she is named 'blindengeleidehond' (blinden = blind people (plural), geleiden = to guide, hond = dog).
Sunny was the first guide dog in the Netherlands and started to work in 1935, the founding year of the KNGF (Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation).



The characters on top are from the Braille alphabet, named after Louis Braille and thus has the same name in Dutch, English and German.


See more stamps concerning the 'B' at and via today's Sunday Stamps.

Sunday stamps: Pets

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Pets'.

I would have loved to show two stamps about cavias (guinea pigs), because we had two cavias at home. Alas I must say 'had', because one of our dear house members, cavia Cato, sadly has passed away last Friday. Thus widowing her companion Senior.

As far as I know I've seen only two cavia stamps. Due to some suboptimal functioning desktop/scanner I cannot scan them for this Sunday's post. But fortunately there also are links to them:
- One cavia stamp is part of a recently issued USPS stamp sheet. Fortunately FinnBadger has showed this beautiful stamp on his website, click here to find it.
- The other is a personalized stamp, I made via PostNL 'personal stamps' website of our very first, also late, cavia Snuitje. You can find the stamp sheet on bottom of a previous post about pets in 2014 (click here).

Meanwhile I had the following 'chaincards' already scanned. The theme of this chaincard project also was 'pets', and the cards traveled via Netherlands, Taiwan, Azerbeidjzan, Singapore, Russia. It gives a nice insight in which animals are considered pets worldwide: especially the Singaporese and Taiwanese stamps surprised me, as most Dutch have cats, dogs, rodents and goldfish or guppys as pets. About the horse stamps was some discussion, whether they are pets or not, but because we liked the images too, they also were approved to use for the ones who wanted them.



The card shown above is from the Russian member, and returned home after I had added my stamps.



This card was mine, arriving home after having been traveling through all mentioned countries.

And the following card - from the Singaporese member - took a lot of extra travel time. The rubberstamp print tells us all about the adventurous reason why:



See more great pet stamps at this Sunday's Sunday Stamps site and follow the links mentioned there.

Sunday Stamps: Photography

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Photography'.

Photos are used often on stamps, but photography as an art in itself seems to be rarely used in the tiny traveling postage pictures.
Fortunately I found stamps dedicated to three Dutch photographers. Who, by the way, have been traveling all-over the world to take their pictures.

Charlotte Dumas (Vlaardingen, 1977) is one of my favourite Dutch photographers, because of her photos of animals, portrayed in a personal way. I had never heard of her, neither seen her work, until PostNL issued this stamp sheet of 'animals with a story' in 2015. In the selvages you can find the names of the animals, and read some more info (in Dutch).



In 2014 the five 'children's welfare stamps' ('Kinderpostzegels') stamp sheet shows pieces of art, depicting children. The artwork is part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum (the National Museum). Four stamps show paintings, and the fifth one, twice as much larger than the other four, show this photo:



The photographer is Maya Pejić (The Hague, 1935). The boy pictured is making some amazing manoeuvre on his skateboard in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam.
Some more information (in Dutch) about the photographer you can find on the website of the IISG (International Institute of Social History), and many more pictures you can find via google.

An other stamp sheet, completely dedicated to a photographer, is this sheet, issued last year in honour of Ed van der Elsken (Amsterdam, 1926 - Edam, 1990).
Personally I wasn't that interested in these stamps, due to the photos and the tiny size of these, but reading something more about the background (alas in Dutch only ,too) they became interesting for me though.




See more stamps on the theme 'photography' on today's Sunday Stamps blog and via the links mentioned there.

In: from Spain

The text says: 'Laika, come back to earth'.
A lovely postcard and a very much matching stamp, showing the unfortunate space-dog, astronaut and willy-nilly adventurer, Laika.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Sunday stamps: Outer space

This Sunday's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Outer space'.

The first stamp which came into my mind is this one, received from Assel from Kazachstan.
The stamp connects our world and outer space, I mean: we watch outer space, thanks to the naked eye and to telescopes, and meanwhile one can watch us, our planet earth, from the same outer space:



Micu sent the following pretty stamps from Hungary. They are part of an eight stamps mini sheet, issued in honour of anniversaries and events in space research:



Doesn't the dog remind also you of the unfortunate pioneer space dog Laika?

In 2015 Hong Kong Post issued stamp series named 'astronomical phenomena'.
This is one stamp from this serie:



By the way, the vessel doesn't belong to the stamp, but to a pictoral postmark!


A stamp issued in Italy in honour of the exploration of Mars:




Sri Lanka has issued a stamp serie about our solar system. Thanks to Ravindra I received and subsequently scanned these:






Are you also surprised that Uranus has a ring around it? In the complete serie (see here) you can see that indeed it is Saturnus who has the clearest and largest ring.

Also the USA Post (USPS) has issued a stamp serie on the outer space. Of which I received these two:



The recent USA international 'forever' stamps show the moon and earth respectively:



In the Netherlands PostNL has issued a so-called 'postset' on Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, who worked for the European Space Agency ESA and went on a space mission twice. The 'postset' exists of a stamp sheet and three postcards. Funny enough the year of issue hasn't been written, neither on the stamp sheet, nor on the postcards front or back side. I remember André Kuipers latest (second) space mission as if it was yesterday, but when I looked it up it appeared to be already five years ago.



This stamp sheet (and my enthusiasm about this sympathetic person) I posted previously, almost three years ago, here.

The postcards I'll add here, too, as it shows beautiful views of and from outer space:








And the circle is round, I'll finish where I started by saying that our Dutch astronaut and his Russian and American colleagues returned back to earth and landed, 1st of July 2012, on a countryside in Kazachstan!

See more stamps on this theme at and via today's Sunday Stamps blog.