First Snö!

The webcam spotted the first dusting on Aspö today. I'm sure it will melt shortly. It is nice to see the island all nice and white, however!

The IKEA Museum

When Sooz and I lived in Stockholm in the late 80's, we used to go to the big IKEA in Kungens Kurva and spend our Sunday afternoons looking around (and having meatballs for lunch!)

As we've well documented in this blog, most of our house is furnished by IKEA. It makes perfect sense to do that: their offerings are cheap, cheerful, and stylish, plus they're easy to bring out to our island.

I read recently about an IKEA museum that's opened in Älmhult. It's packed with IKEA's history, with recreations of their furnishings through the years. I'd love to visit; I'm sure it would bring back memories of our Sunday afternoons nearly 30 years ago.

The health benefits of island life

My friend Chuck sent along an article from the Telegraph recently. The author spent 72 hours in the Gothenburg archipelago as part of a project to measure the health benefits of island life.

Readers won't be surprised to learn that time spent in the wilds has a measurable calming effect. For example, the group in the article had a collective drop in stress of almost 70 percent.


I can attest to the effect myself. We always have our best sleep over the calm, quiet, dark nights in the archipelago.

October's weather

To quote Game of Thrones, "winter is coming". The temperature showed a steady decline through the month. We're getting pretty close to freezing by Halloween!

One good sign was that we had nearly 3 inches of rain this month. The October average in Stockholm is about 2 inches, so the extra rain is welcome.

Farewell, Ollie

I’m desperately sad to share that our beloved Ollie passed away peacefully this week. 

Ollie was handsome and strong and stubborn and smart. We will miss his beautiful face and his charming personality. 

Our family was blessed to have such a wonderful boy with us for so long.

RIP, Oliver Rhiwelli Blue Moon. You were a very very good dog.