Black minus red is blue and yellow

Today's Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Dark, colour or theme'. When I saw this theme announced last Sunday, I immediately had an atmospheric, nice dark / sunset stamp in mind. Not knowing what would happen later this week.
Thursday morning, 24 February, a horrible news shook the world. How can one man even think of attacking a country, and then let his bad saddening thoughts come true by letting the army of his country invade the neighbouring country...

Thanks to our stamp hobby on instagram I've learned to know kind and thoughtful people from both countries. While the woman in RU feels guilty and sad and supports the UA people, the UA woman is hiding in shelter due to the bombing...

Both you, dear visitor, and I know how real mail can connect real people in a positive way, and I wished that this agressive president would have been sending postcards and drink tea and make music with the neighbours instead of causing pain and loss by starting a bad, sad war.

Instead of the dark sunset stamp I originally had in mind, I chose two specific bright colours for today. The connection with the theme, dark/black: Painters know that the three primary colours together make black (or at least a dark grey).
So if we pull the red out of this black, the remaining colours form the bright colours of the flag of the country we are supporting in these hard times.
And I chose these stamps (coincidentally from other countries) to have these Blue and Yellow always keep on shining bright.

Last but not least, I dont know if KR Post did issue this yellow umbrella stamp intentionally to support the people in HK, but anyhow I think these people, whose freedom has been taken away by an other mighty country, deserve attention and support, too.

Let us not forget that many other countries have been invaded and even stolen by other countries (also in 'our' past via colonialism) and still today many more people in many countries suffer from war and agression.
Hopefully peace will gain victory all over the world very, very soon.

See more stamps on the theme, supporting Ukraine and peace, at - and in the comments to - today's Sunday Stamps post.

Sunday Stamps: F is for Feathers and Fountain pens

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is the letter 'F'.

I found some good old writing tools. The feathers might be hardly used anymore nowadays, in contrary to fountain pens, who have a lot of new fans.











See more stamps showing an object or name starting with an 'F' at today's Sunday Stamps.

Sunday Stamps: C is for Chair and Couch

Today's theme for Sunday Stamps is the letter 'C'.

Coincidentally I received a chaincard back home yesterday. The card started its journey on 19 November 2018, and after traveling from the Netherlands to Germany, Hungary, China and Taiwan, it came back full of nice stamps.
As the theme was 'Furnitures', there appeared to be some matching stamps: chairs!



The front side of the card is matching, too! It shows contemporary art by Bill Viola, a video still titled 'Catherine's Room (panel 3)' (2001).



On some of the cards of my chaincard pals I didn't stick the same stamp shown on my card bottom right, but an other stamp from the Children's Stamps 2015 serie, showing a couch:



This time the words in Dutch don't start with a 'C':
chair = stoel
couch = bank (the 'a' pronounced as the 'a' in 'harvest' or 'calm')
coincidentally = toevallig
contemporary art = moderne kunst
card = kaart
chain = ketting
children's stamps = kinderpostzegels

See more stamps on the theme 'the letter C' at today's Sunday Stamps, and don't forget to check the links in the comments to that post!

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: 'M' is for milieuvriendelijk and molen

For Sunday Stamps' letter 'M' I chose a long word, however, in English it is even longer. An important subject, to my opinion: milieuvriendelijk.
In English: enviromentally friendly (milieu = environment, friendly = vriendelijk).

While on one hand we, humans, are polluting our world by consumption, traveling, etcetera, on the other hand fortunately more and more people are aware of the fact that we should take care of our earth. To stop polluting, to recycle waste, to consume less and to not use up the earth's resources.
There still is a long way to go. And on this long way there are some bright spots. For instance the fact that several postal services from all-over the world have issued stamps to spread the awareness.

This chaincard arrived home with stamps from six countries! South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Australia and the Netherlands:



In Europe many environmentally friendly stamps have been issued last year, for the theme of the 2016 Europe Stamps was 'Think Green'. I've posted some of these here in April. And I was happy to receive some more since then, like this Europe 2016 stamp from Slovakia:



And these, from Belarus, Ukraine and Estonia (and you can see the other - of two - Dutch Think Green stamp),



The Irish 'Minecraft'-like stamp still fascinates me:



This stamp from Serbia is one of my favourite 'milieuvriendelijke' stamps. Alas I had it in hands just for one day, because I had to forward it to someone else, and the sender from Serbia didn't have any more of these. Fortunately I could scan it and show it to you:




On many of the Europe 2016 'Think Green' stamps you see a wind turbine. In Dutch we name them 'windmolen' (plural 'windmolens'), or windturbine. The older type of windmills we name 'windmolen', too, although most of the time the simple name 'molen' is used for them.

The Netherlands are well-known for its molens. But of course you know that molens can be find anywhere in the world, like these pretty stamps are proofing. I received them from John from the United Kingdom:



The one on the stamp on the left we tend to name 'watermolen' instead of simply 'molen'. But the front side of the card shows a lot more molens:




See what other stamp lovers have chosen for this Sunday's theme 'M', at and via Sunday Stamps!

Sunday Stamps: 'H' is for haai and haan

Today's Sunday Stamps is about the letter 'H'.

First I'll share this stamp, showing a haai:



Guessed right! 'Haai' means 'shark'. The Dutch word 'Haai' is pronounced as a kind of loooong 'Hi!'. And although most Dutch don't say 'hi' as a greeting (instead we say 'hoi' or 'hallo', plus some more formal words), there is some silly joke about the word haai, the 'haai!... walvis!' joke. One person saying 'haai!', in the meaning of 'hello!'. The other person hears a long 'hi' in it, thinking the first person says 'shark', thus replies 'whale'.


From haai to haan it is just one letter. The amount of stamps I can share here, showing hanen (plural of 'haan'), however, is a lot larger than the amount of haai stamps in my collection. The reason is that this year is the Jaar van de Haan, the Year of the Rooster, and I happened to have been involved in several chaincards on this theme.

So here's a variety of stamps about the hen's husband, the haan (rooster).
The first card has traveled within Europe and arrived back home with haan stamps from Serbia, Ukraine, Estonia and of course my own country:



And this card traveled through eight, mainly Asian, countries during seven and half month, to finally return home, with stamps from China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands:



and a bonus postmark from Malaysia on the back:



The Korean stamp is a nice, shiny one. You can't see it on the scanned card above, but I happened to have made photo of other people's cards, before I forwarded those cards to the next receiver, and you can see two shiny hanen on these stamps:







Finally, on bottom, a UN stamp showing a haan:



Curious to see other 'H' stamps? Please check today's Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there!

Sunday Stamps: Fireworks

This Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Fireworks or Night Views'.



As far as I know Dutch Post has issued only the fireworks stamp you see above. It is from the December 2014 stamp sheet, which contains twenty different 'December' themes.

The main image on the following Spanish New Year's stamp shows a clock and grapes: twelve grapes are eaten at each beat when the clock shows twelve at New Year's Eve midnight. But looking more closely, you can see the fireworks behind the Feliz Año (Happy [New] Year) wish:



From the USA I received several Chinese New Year stamps (thanks to Phillip), and one of these shows the fireworks before they are set off:



Fireworks are also shown on this stamp from China:



See more night views / fireworks at today's Sunday Stamps and the links mentioned there.

Sunday Stamps: the colour Red

This Sunday Stamps theme is 'the colour red'.
I thought I only had a few, but viewing the stamp through 'red glasses' learned me that there is a lot! Among them this selection.


Post-related red is the mailbox, in many countries:

from Malaysia:



from Myanmar, on a Thai stamp:



from the United Kingdom:



An old one from the Netherlands (nowadays they are orange and have two grey legs):



More post-related red you can see on these Dutch stamps, issued for the introduction of the postal code in 1978:






Red in crafts:

A rooster in cross stitch, from Belarus:



From China:




Ladies in/and red:

The famous French one:



Red blood, Dutch stamp issued to promote blood donation:




Red animals:

Beetle from Korea:



Fish from Japan:



Horses, one in red from Germany:



and two red horses, from Argentina:



And from Taiwan:



See more red in stamps at Sunday Stamps and via the links mentioned there.