Summer Holiday, Tiny but Lovely

Last Friday Mr. Kotkarankki had his work done by lunch, and we had two whole days for just the two of us. This was carefully planned in March, so we tried to make the best of it.

First we drove to Tampere to see my mother, 92. We did some gardening for her, and them Mr. K heated the log sauna for us. It's been many years since we last bathed there. Come and see, this is the path down to the lake.





My mother can't go there with her walking aid, the grass has started to grow on the path.


This is the door to the sauna cabin. The wooden steps are my favourite place to sit and watch the lake, a sunset late late at night, or the rain, or a thunder and lightning, or just people slowly rowing in their boats.

The water is taken from the lake with a pump, and heated here in the washing room.

This is the kiuas to heat the sauna, in the other room. Here is a link to very detailed information about the sauna in English.

We sit up here where the heat rises. The benches are of aspen, it is not hot to sit on (on the towel called laudeliina).

This is what I can see from the steps, our little cove where I learned to swim.

A closer look, the yellow irises in my garden are from here. They are wild.

Don't you want to try if the water is warm?

This is another favourite place, niemenkärki, the point of our tiny cape, where we used to angle for perch and roach and usually get bleak.

After the bath - lake water makes my hair unbelievable soft - it was time to go back to the house and eat a light dinner.

The weather had been hot all day, but the walk back made me remember the time when this place was my home and we would run back in when it was cold and rainy in the autumn. During winter we bathed in the other sauna in the basement of the house.

Early on Saturday morning we left for Vammala for the Old Literature fair. This year's theme was War and Love. This is where my daughter Kaija was last year awarded the second price in a book binding competetition for this book. This year there was no competition, but the weather was even hotter than last year.

This is the school where the lectures and discussions took place. There were also many of the second hand book sellers' stands.

And there was this tent. Not a religious meeting, but more booksellers, and even hotter than indoors.

We found some nice books; I will show my loot on Vintage Thingies Thursday this week.

We were there already before the doors were opened, just in time to have an icecream. When we had spent more money than intended, we decided to drive out of town for lunch. In my next post I will tell you more about it. It is too hot to sew, and I must see my dentist tomorrow morning and my doctor before lunch, so there really is nothing crafty to show in the near future.

This last scene is from the local market place, where we found the last book or two, OK, two for me and one for him. The water made the place feel fresh in spite of the heat. I know some of my readers are from really warm places, but the weekend's 27 degrees C (80.6F) was too hot for me.