my journey to the Alphabet Land (day W)

My next post for #AlphabetHunt challenge by @barbara-orenya. This week we hunted for words starting with letter "W". I had no problems with it.

W — Way

Heaven sent me an opportunity to illustrate this word in quite original way -- without taking a pic of the street signs directing you here or there. Instead, I have the picture of the 'way' directly and literally xD This was heaven-sent to me 5 days prior to the W hunting week have started, so, I just have to include it, although I have more intresting entries. Count it as a bonus, or off-the-challenge-extra if you'd like to.

W — Wax seal

This entry I was considering from the very start of the Week, as I have this thing hanging off my Wall, like a decoration. Yes, believe me or not, this parcel (or a small packet, to be precise) decorates my room since... er... since 2005?!

Why I decided to hang it there ... I remember my thoughts at the time: this is how parcels always looked in Soviet epoch, at least in the last third of the twentieth century, and maybe earlier too, as well. But then Millennium happened. Around year 2005 I used to exchange music and music videos on DVD discs vis post service; torrents were not yet as developed as they are now, there was nowhere to download DVDs of radiohead amateur concerts, and it was impossible - a package with 5 or 12 discs from Canada could end up in my hands in within a month, which was 100 times faster than downloading one DVD ... We used the B&P (Blanks & Postage) system and I sent and received a lot of packages at the time. International shipments looked like an ordinary plump kraft envelope, but this parcel - an internal one, from a Russian province, in 2005 already looked like something alien, like a remnant of the gone epoch... Natural hemp twine, rough kraft paper, and WAXSEAL! At the moment I thought there would be no more letters like this in the future, I had a feeling this was the last one in my life, so I decided to keep it on the wall in memory of the bygone era.

In fact, as you can see in the photo below, I have got more sealing wax - I cut it from promotional letters that accidentally fell into my hands ... it's design, imitation, simulacrum, not a real postage stamps. I decided to keep them because I was going to play with my child in the 'postage service', I had that in my mind, and I wanted to have a sealing wax supply for the letters ... to show her how does it smell (oh, melted sealing wax has a very special unforgettable smell! Decades ago, post offices smelled exactly with this smell) but I don't know where one can buy it today, hehe. We never ventured into it, and my stock remained intact.

W — Winnie-the-Pooh

Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh, The Best Bear in All the World. I think everybody have read Alan Milne's book and is in the know who he is, no extra comments are needed? Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, and by November 1931, he was a $50 million-a-year business. (By the way, year 2009 and 2016 saw two sequels to Milne's story were published. I havent read / seen Russian translations yet). Most iconic image of this bear was created by E.H.Shepard. The best known Russian edition of this story (1976) has another image of Pooh created by a great artist Boris Diodorow (see the photo below). But the most iconic and exploited image of Pooh (here, in Russia) is the one from the cartoon that date back to year 1969 - and it is the figure you see in my photo.

(I am adding this extra photos of Boris Diodorow drawings mostly cause I assume you might be intrested to have a look, Barbara).

W — / Woodcarving / Woodwork

Do not think this is my piece of art, no! I appear here as a photographer only. A friend of mine, a colleague at my last job, was fond of wood carving, and he carved this nice figurine above from a Walnut wood (one more W as a bonus!)...

...and this case for one of my vargan instruments. It was his 'good-bye' memorable present when both of us parted with our employer. It is sitting on my desk and feeding my eyes everyday. Nice!

W — Woolly milkcap / Wool

A cropped fragment of same mushroom (no scale down). Now you got the idea why did it receive its name.

W — White

There are so many things that can illustrate this word. Nature is full of black, white, and black-and-white stuff, actually :P
And speaking of white, there exist snow white (and the Snow White, as well), milk white, brilliant white, ghost, alabaster, ivory, cream, cotton, coconut, salt, bone, porcellain, egg shell, pearl white ...and many others.

This fungus is named 'White Coral'. Impossible to say which 'white' color it is, exactly: that vary and depends on lighting, and on photo-editing, of course...

This do not look any white at all, isnt it? This is cropped fragment of a stem of Porcini, or Ceps, or Borovik mushroom; in Russian we name this specie 'Belyi' mushroom, i.e. 'a white mushroom'. Probably, they got their name for this 'white' stem...

I could fill a dozen posts with different white mushrooms, actually. So, let me move to my last entry:

This is UFO - Unidentified Fungi Object. Not sure which shade of white it is. Maybe, salt or snow white? My fave, bizarre sort of fungi! Looks more like a mold, than a shroom.