Monday, October 23, 2017

"Hacking" Ikea

I've written over the years about the idea of customising IKEA products. (For example, see here or here.) The New York Times recently published an article about the growing community of companies that are using IKEA furniture as a starting point for customisation.

The Times even mentioned my friends at Bemz, who have received a few mentions on the blog. We bought a Bemz cushion cover this year and we love it.

Our kitchen has the standard white glossy drawer fronts. It might be fun to go to a company like Semihandmade, Dunsmuir, Kokeena, or even the high-end people at Reform to update our kitchen at a relatively low cost. A huge number of colours, finishes and drawer pulls are available. It would be fairly easy to order doors in the USA and check them on a flight to Sweden.

It'll be fun to think about what we might want to do! Our kitchen is smack-dab in the middle of our house, so any changes there would impact the look of the whole place.


Monday, October 16, 2017

"Ticks have found a way to get around the immune system"

We all know that Sooz is not a fan of ticks. I was surprised when she sent me an article recently about  research underway. New medicines may be developed that build on the survival techniques employed by the lowly tick.

It's quite an interesting article. It doesn't make me like ticks any better, but perhaps I will respect them a bit more.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

September's Weather

Although September looks rainy on the graph, the month's total was only 1.6 inches, well below the Stockholm average of 2.1 inches.

It's been fairly dry and cool all summer. We could use a turn in the weather; the wells in our area could use a refilling. There's also nothing like a good cold snap to kill the bugs, too!

Monday, October 2, 2017

Time to leave

We're leaving shortly on a taxi boat. I'm hoping it's not a small boat as it is blowing up quite a storm outside right now!

We had good weather over the past few days, though. Our own boat is nice and snug, so our main job is complete. It's peak mushroom season, so we spent lots of time investigating all the different fungi around the island. We weren't brave enough (or foolish enough) to eat any of them, though.

Photos of the visit (mostly photos of mushrooms, to be honest) are on the Flickr page.

We're not sure when we'll be back. We want to make a winter visit and take advantage of our new luftpump. In the meantime, I will have a few more tidbits to share on the blog.