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: 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: 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!

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: 'A' is for 'Aap'

From last Sunday until 25 Sundays later, the Sunday Stamps are dedicated to the alphabet.
As it is easier for me to find a complete pictoral / stamps alphabet in my native language than in English, I thought to combine my to-be-shown stamps with a small course in Dutch language. Twenty-six nouns only, you might have learned after the coming half year.

So the letter 'A' does stand for... Monkey! In Dutch the word is 'aap', the pronounciation of which I cannot explain to non-native speakers. Even translate.google.com has difficulties explaining: its sound (click the speaker under the word in this site) does not sound native into my ears.
Anyway, we have been lucky that the aap also is part of the Chinese Zodiac. Thus many stamps have been issued on this theme. Above the very first Chinese Zodiac Dutch PostNL has ever issued: a year of the monkey (jaar van de aap) stamp sheet in 2016.

From Hong Kong I received this beautiful matching combination of postcard, stamp and postmark.



FinnBadger sent me this wonderful stamp and postmark from the USA. It took me some time to find the aap on the stamp, maybe you can spot him/her sooner?



Here he/she is:



This stamp arrived from Malaysia:



This apenmasker (monkey mask) like picture appeared on a Canadian stamp:



And three different apen ('aap' plural) stamps traveled from Japan. The first two seem to have had some trouble during their journey, but the two of them make one complete picture. From 1968:



From 1992:



A definite stamp (I think, not a zodiac one), received in / probably from 2016:



From Taiwan I received various zodiac stamps in one mail. First I thought to cut out the aap from this picture, but the postmark is worth sharing, too:



See what 'A' stamps our colleague stamp lovers have chosen for this Sunday at and via Sunday Stamps!

Sunday stamps: Roosters, Chickens

Today's theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Roosters, or Chickens'.

I was very happy and lucky that Dutch PostNL issued a serie of ten chicken stamps two months ago:



On 28th of January 2017, the Chinese Year of the Monkey turned into the Year of the Rooster. To my surprise Dutch Post had issued a Year of the Monkey stamp sheet (in August 2016, while the Year already was half a year old).
And in November 2016 there was this announcement of the coming change of the year, by this stamp sheet:



The text under 2016 and 2017 says: "Farewell Year of the Monkey" and "Welcome Year of the Rooster".

And in the end of January 2017 the Year of the Rooster stamp sheet has been issued:



You read it well: I was not only happy, but also lucky for these issues by Dutch PostNL! What is the case? Via Instagram I learned to know stamp loving people from almost all-over the world, and various people are joining so-called 'chaincard' projects. This way you form a group of 4 to 6 (sometimes more) people, mostly around a chosen theme. Via the private, so-called 'direct message' option of Instagram you can exchange addresses. Each person starts to send a postcard, with stamps matching the chosen theme. Consequently you send the next received cards to always-the-same member of this tiny group. And after having traveled via all countries of the participants, in the end your own card returns, with stamps from all of the participating countries.

Thanks to the Year of the Rooster, and to mail companies in several countries who issued 'Year of the Rooster' stamps, many chaincards are exchanged on this theme.

I couldn't resist to participate in some of them. This way several rooster stamps have been landed in my place, which I have forwarded to the next participants. For instance, from and to Hong Kong:



From and to Japan:



From and to Korea (in real some of the dark lines are shining like gold):



From and to Singapore:



Not only Asian mail companies issued Year of the Rooster stamps. Also, for instance, Ukraine:



And here you see a Canadian and USA stamp, to which I added the Dutch one:



All of the above stamps are from other people's postcards so they just were in transit at my place (and fortunately my scanner did work :-) ). Hopefully they will arrive soon and safely to the owners.

Meanwhile the first of my own chaincards returned home! To which, besides the Dutch and Singaporean stamps, also Year of the Rooster stamps from Taiwan and Thailand have been added. And the last sender, Komimi from Taiwan, was so kind to decorate my card with a few more nice birds:



The front side of the postcard (which I chose beacuse there is a Rooster in this famous English song):



See more Rooster and/or Chicken stamps at and via today's Sunday Stamps.