Tour de Fibre 2013/ 1 and pictures from my book fair tour

The Tour de France has started, and so has Hanne's Tour de Fibre 2013. With hours and hours of daily sitting in front of the TV, I'm trying to use that time in a creative and useful way. I'm working on Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring stitcheries.

 

 

I have also a little housing project going on. It is called Peek-a-Boo Street, and Stephanie sent me the pattern. I'm using recycled and new fabrics mixed.

 

 

 

 

Near the town of the book fair is an old stone church from the beginning of the 16th century. It is called St. Olaf's Church, and it has an interesting history.

  

 

 Like many old churches it had been replaced by a new church in town and was only used in Summer. It needed renovation, including a large restoration of the 18th century shingle roof. Volunteers completed this work, including 17,000 aspen shingles carved by hand for the roof. The renovation was finished in 1997, but only three weeks  later the church was almost entirely destroyed by arson.

 

 

What did the good people of Tyrvää do? They decided to rebuild their church, and volunteers were called again to the building work. Over the years 1997 to 2003 more than a thousand volunteers participated, with a small core group working every day.

 

You see the text Anno 2000, that is when the new roof was finished. On the other side of the building I noticed the "signature" talkoilla rakennettu - made by volunteers. This time 34,000 shingles were needed because the whole roof needed to be built again.

 

 

 

 The interior is built in the style of old churches, but the paintings are the work of two contemporary artists, Kuutti Lavonen and Osmo Rauhala.

 



 

Kuutti Lavonen painted the panels of the galleries. St. Mark with a lioness.

 

St. Luke with a lamb.

 

St. John with a young eagle.

The pulpit and the altar area have paintings by Osmo Rauhala.

Some pictures of the Story of Creation. The First Day - The Birth of Light. The swirl shows the line of movement of a dove's wing.

The Second Day - The Creation of Rain.

Altar table - The Lamb

 

The Fall of Man - Eve and the Apple, Adam and the Serpent. Rauhala didn't want to paint humans, so he used elephants to picture the Fall of Man. Female elephants offer fruit to the male as a part of their mating process.

Thirst for the Word, the deer.

Door to the sacristy seemed to be original.

Tools used in the renovation work, and some of the original shingles.

Remains of the church door after the arson.

 

The Septenary Cross in the circle on this wall was a theme in one of Lavonen's paintings too.