two for christmas

An Estonian postcrosser sent the lovely card at top. I sent the other one to a Dutch postcrosser who requested Christmas cards.

baby, it's cold outside

It's not "Buffalo" cold here but it's pretty darned close, with wind chills around zero. The amusing Buffalo card is from friend Jozef Bajus, who writes that the city is expecting a weekend storm. The bottom card, from Tom Davis of the wonderful Station Inn in Cresson, Pennsylvania, shows an 80-MAC's with Jordan Spreader. The photo was taken at Summerhill last February by Dave Abeles.

re.cycle fiber

Jozef Bajus sent this great announcement card for a show he recently juried in Pittsburgh. It's called re.cycle.fiber and runs until January 23, 2011 at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. www.pittsburgharts.org

expired 12.13

These two cards 'expired' today. The top one went to a postcrosser in Sweden, who dropped out of postcrossing sight more than a month ago. The bottom one went to Belarus. The postcrossing account is active but the postcard seems to have gone missing in the mail. I've got a slew of expired postcards and about six others headed that way.

visiting lingfeng for mume blossoms

Prunus mume is one of my favorite trees. I've got one going in front of the house here but it will be decades before it looks anything like the gorgeous trees in this fabulous card sent by a Chinese postcrosser in Hangzhou, the "heaven", she says, of China. I've been to Hangzhou but it was in the rain. The scene here is one of Ten Views of the West Lake. One of the unexpected pleasures of mume blossoms, which I know well from years in Japan, is their heady wine-like fragrance. In English the tree is called Japanese flowering apricot, but more usually miscalled plum. The botanical name is prunus mume and, as a translator, I like using mume, as this card did, for its name.

This sleek stamp was on the card below. The rings, part of a series called "My Easter", were designed by famed Finnish goldsmith and jewelry designer Kirsti Doukas. She took her inspiration for the rings from a custom from her childhood, that of finding rings in Easter eggs. It sounds charming--and the rings are fab.

A Finnish postcrosser sent this card made from a 1954 photo taken in Lahti, in southern Finland. The building at left, she explains, was once a manor house, now a historical museum. I can only imagine how the rest of the city has changed since this photo was taken.

winter watercolor

This lovely winter scene came from a first-time German postcrosser. Enjoy.

as in a morning sunrise

Krkonose is the highest peak in the Czech Republic, says the Czech postcrosser who sent this dramatic view of the mountain. She recently visited Krkonose but did not say if she saw it at this time of day. Here, it's cloudy this morning and this card provides inspiration.

pots, pots, pots

Willi Singleton is showing new pots from his fall firing this weekend and next at Pine Creek Pottery, located at the foot of Hawk Mountain in Kempton, Pennsylvania. (610.756.6387 or info@willingleton.com) I'm always curious to see the original illustrations that Willi draws for the announcement cards for his shows. He now sends the cards first as an email attachment, but still follows up with the real thing.

Willi, who trained in Japan, fires his pots in a fabulous wood-fired kiln that he built himself. It's worth a visit to his pottery just to see the kiln. Earlier this autumn, I sent this postcard, of a 19th-century stoneware kiln in Indiana, to Willi. It reminded him, he said, of the old groundhog kilns of North Carolina.

houses

A Slovenian postcrosser sent this romantic view of life in the beautiful Trenta Valley.

A German postcrosser sent this card of an old half-timbered house with a more contemporary neighbor in Wernigerode in the Harz region of her country. Wernigerode is on the German Half-Timbered House Road.

more cool stamps

a day for animals

The smug kitty at top, from a Ukrainian postcrosser, is a very lemony illustration from a book of stories called, if I read it correctly, Mar Mur. Some of the stories are about a girl and a cat. The splashing horses at bottom is from a French postcrosser.

les pilleurs d'epaves

A French postcrosser named Jacqueline (love it) sent this page from history, from the days when "looters lured ships to the Breton coast at night with their lanterns." The 1681 decree reads: "Shipwreckers--They who light false fires at night and wreck ships will be punished by death and their bodies hung from a mast at the place where the fire was lit." The postcard is wonderful, though the subject matter, about people being lured to certain death, is not.

monuments

A postcrosser in Macau sent the terrific card at top, showing the ruins of St. Paul's, which was destroyed by fire in 1885. Since then it has become an impressive, and world-famous, ruin. The card below, from a Spanish postcrosser, gives a cartoon treatment to notable monuments in Madrid.

first christmas greetings

A Russian postcrosser in Perm sent the first Christmas card of the year. She is thinking about Christmas already though she will not get to celebrate it until January 7. The first holiday stamp came from a French postcrosser in Bretagne. Both are lovely. It's a pity that the card took a battering in the mail.

vuka means wolf

Multiviews are not among my favorites but the one at top is from Croatia, reason enough to post it. Even more, Vukovar, wrote the postcrosser who sent the card, means the 'town on the river Vuka' and 'vuka' means wolf. I don't know what Zutphen means but the card, sent by a Dutch postcrosser, has a classic feel.

a poet for two countries

Poet Adam Mitskevich is claimed by both Belarus and Poland. A Belarusian postcrosser sent the card at top, showing a handsome statue of the poet in Minsk, which is why I use the Belarusian spelling of his name. Not to slight Poland totally though, here is a recent card from a Polish postcrosser, too.

shanghai

My friend Inga stopped in Shanghai on her way to an ikebana conference in Kyoto and sent this postcard from the expo there. She wrote that it rained heavily for three days in Shanghai, but that didn't stop 800,000 people from showing up on the day she went to the expo. She left after three hours, wet from head to toe. I would never recognize the city from this card. If I went again, I would no doubt stumble around like a country bumpkin.

dragon well

A postcrosser in Hangzhou sent this quintessential image of nearby Dragon Well, famed for its green tea. Shown are rows and rows of tea plants. I visited Hangzhou in the late 1980's, in shincha (new tea) season, and was thrilled to be able to buy Dragon Well tea almost at the source. The postcrosser also used some pretty special stamps.

singing bird

Does Elton John qualify as a singing bird? In any case, these two cards arrived together. The pretty one at top is from PostMuse and the one at bottom from a postcrosser in Belarus who is looking forward to joining her 'sweetheart' this summer in New York. Now, that's a singing bird!