In The Post

I was wondering if I had received any interesting stamps since the 10th of May for this week's meme challenge and then on Tuesday this wonderful quartet came sailing into my mailbox from Canada. Lots of countries have gone for the easy option of black and white historic photograph for the Titanic celebrations (including my own) but I think the Canadian issue is one of the most imaginative.  Four stamps making the whole. As my postcrossing friend Denise is a stamp enthusiast she has retained the sheet edges containing all that lovely philatelic information.  The other thing she likes to do is theme her stamps so from her collection of older stamps she made up the postage with 

a 1978 Canadian Inuits 'Travel' series showing a soapstone sculpture of a sailing umiak by Joe Talirunili.  This is a larger boat than the familiar kayak, and more stable, being used to travel on the coast to summer hunting grounds. The title of the sculpture is "Migration" which is what some of those poor passengers who only made it to the graveyard in Halifax were doing.

As you can imagine I was pleased that I had such wonderful stamps arrive in time to share on the Sunday Stamps meme but then a few days later a package with these on arrived

from Eeva in Finland so then I was even more excited.   From left to right she has used the 2010 stamp of the Torronsuo National Park, a near natural area of raised bog, you can see where it is from the little map on the stamp. We have raised bogs here and they are fascinating habitats even though sometimes there is a possibility  of disappearing up to your knees in bog and getting very muddy.  I had not realised that Finland were doing one stamp a year on their national parks  and the next is one issued this year of the most recently designated park - Sekämeri, only the 5th marine national park. It consists of 160 kilometres on the western coast, 99% of it lies under the surface.  The designer Teemu Ollikainen took the picture above sea level on the top of the stamp and the marine biologist Heidi Arponen dived to take the underwater photo.

Next are the stamps for this years Europa theme of "Visit..."  These were designed by Johannes Ekholm who chose old Finnish travel posters. I love the travel posters of the 1930s but have never seen any Finnish ones before, as you can see Eeva, another stamp lover,  has left the stamp booklet edges on the stamp with their details  The first is part of the 20 miles of sandy beach of Hanko on the south coast of Finland,  the lake is Saimaa, the largest in Finland.  They both certainly make me want to Visit Finland, doesn't it look luscious. Lastly

the first class stamp of the 'Clouds' set of 3 issued on the 7th May with into-the-sun photography by Timo Berry. No need to get your Cloudspotter's Guide out because the surface of the stamp has been pictogram printed using transparent lacquer which indicates the cloud types, number of clouds and the weather types. The circled 1 shows up but the name across the cloud of hazy "Stratus Nebulosus" is not too distinct on the scan.  Stratus clouds are most commonly around coasts and mountains and are the lowest forming of the cloud and when they are at 0 feet you could call them mist.

So thank you to my Postcrossing friends Denise and Eeva for making my week, and Viridian Postcard for coming up with the Sunday Stamp theme.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps