Day 24

Merry Christmas everyone! Thank you for following me this year.

Day 23

A week ago I went to the Cathedral of Helsinki together with our younger son for our favourite musical event, the Christmas Oratorio by J S Bach. We enjoyed the concert very much. It was not allowed to take pictures during the concert so this is just the organ at the back of the church as we were settling down to our places. In the second link you can see the Cantores Minores choir.

Day 22

One last look at the Villa Cooper Christmas. Tiny tonttu elves had taken over one of the fireplaces and were busy with their own Christmas preparations.

Day 21

I forgot to show these horses with the other toys. They are a big hit here, and the girls even have their own races.

About half of our hand knitted wool sock sortiment.

Hand painted china for the Christmas table.

Day 20

Doll's clothes,

hand made toys

and ornaments for the tree or the table.

Day 19

Wreaths, candles and hand made Christmas cards.

Table runners, stars and other ornaments.

Himmeli ornaments made of straw in a traditional way.

Day 18

Welcome to Villa Cooper again!

Can you smell the scent of the real Christmas tree in the corner of the big dining room?

Little tonttu elves have gathered on top of the old radio. Could it be that they are singing?

Day 17

Yesterday's almost full moon in the morning from out back yard.

Day 16

We are still at the Flying Mitten, trying to choose between tea or coffee, cake or no cake.

I just popped in to deliver my first three pairs of baby socks for the big 100th anniversary project. I got some more yarn for my knitting too ...

Day 15

The Flying Mitten, Lentävä Lapanen, has flown to a new address, Postikatu 10, Järvenpää.

Their new premises are easily accessible.

There is more space and it looks like there is more lovely yarn too. A group of happy knitters were having coffee and tea by the window.

Day 14

The Malmgård manor house. Other pictures in the link.

!t was a day of long shadows.

Even the gravel cast long shadows!

Day 13

On Sunday we visited the Malmgård estate (the link is in English!) and their Christmas market. Stalls were placed outdoors and in some outbuildings of the estate.

Delicious looking gingerbread houses.

Jams, cordials, mustard and fish, bread, cakes and all kinds of delicious treats from small businesses, school classes or private persons for the Christmas table or to give as gifts.

Day 12

Christmas lights on our windowsill.

Day 11

One hour before sunrise.

Day 10

An old story for children, written by Zachris Topelius at the end of the 19th century, tells about two children who miraculously found their way back home by looking for a birch tree and the star twinkling through its' leaves in the evening. Home is where the birch and the star are. This is our big birch with the morning star just after eight this morning.

Day 9

A knitty picture for a change. I've been knitting socks for Christmas gifts and using up little balls of rest yarns.

This blue and white pair begins my new project. I'm going to participate in a nationwide project to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Finland's independence. The aim is to donate a pair of hand knitted blue and white socks for every new baby born here during next year. Yarn shops like Lentävä Lapanen, the Flying Mitten, collect the socks from knitters in their area and deliver them to the maternity wards, where every new baby will get her or his own pair. Some other people sew and donate quilts, but knitting socks seems to be our "thing". Almost every girl and woman here knows how to knit, a pair of socks takes less time and money to make than a quilt, and it still includes as much warmth and love from the maker to the person to receive the gift. 

Day 8

The little ponds in the centre of our village are frozen over, for the second time this winter, but the ice is still very thin. This is where the swan family teaches their cygnets to take off and land on the water in the autumn. They fly to the South when the waters start freezing over.

Day 7

Litte lamps in the trees look so nice in the dark.

Day 6

White and blue flowers for the 99th anniversary of our Independence Day. It seems the blue hyacinths were left out, but they looked and smelled great too.

Day 5

One more of the cabins at Vanhankylänniemi. All these pictures with red cabins were taken between 4 pm and 4.30 pm. Today our day is six hours and three minutes long.

Day 4

This used to be my club's shop premises before we moved to Villa Cooper. For about a year now another group of crafty people have their beautiful shop there.

Day 3

Little cabins with Christmas gift shops and activities for children a week ago.

Day 2

We just watched again the movie Calendar Girls on TV. The husband of one of the ladies died of leukaemia, and he had no time to give a speech at the Women's Institute. It was read there though, and in the speech he compared the women of Yorkshire to the flowers of Yorkshire, and how each stage of their bloom is more beautiful than the other. And then they seed.

I thought of his words when I saw these flowers of last summer, waiting for the birds or winter winds to spread their seeds, and in my eyes the flowers are still beautiful.

Day 1

My irregular blog Advent Calendar is back. Last year I had knee issues, some other years other things on my mind, but I decided to try again. Just a few words and a picture every day until December 24th or maybe even 25th.

This picture, taken today almost at noon, shows how close to Winter Solstice we are. Our days are getting about six minutes shorter every day for a couple of weeks still.

Welcome back tomorrow to a new picture of our winter.

Quilt blocks for the sampler and some knitting

After a long absence from my sewing machine I have taken the bull by the horns again and finished ten new blocks for the Splendid Sampler. I have decided to make things easier for myself whenever I feel like it, so I used a striped fabric here instead of piecing the half circle, and I appliqued the halves on the background instead of piecing them. I don't like curved seams very much.

This one is done by the book (there will be a book with these patterns in the Spring!).

Plus Love:

First Stitch, block 71:

And here a group photo:

I have knitted little mittens

and a pair of pink and grey socks.

Winter arrived at the beginning of this month for about ten days, but is now gone again, with rain and plus degrees. It was pretty while it lasted.

Dolls for Unicef, again

Meet my newest Unicef dolls, numbers 66 to 69 on my list. My hopeful plan is to make them a hundred dolls in my lifetime. I finished this lot today, and they are waiting for the new identity card forms from the Unicef office.

The dolls will not be sold but adopted, and the adoption fee, 20 to 40€ or more, will go 100% to Unicef. It is enough to buy all vital vaccinations for a real child somewhere out there where life is so much tougher.

The dolls don't even have names yet. I will go through my list first, because I don't want to use the same names again. I think the boy will be called Valtteri.

I was experimenting with new hairstyles and noticed that the more yarn I use, the better the hair will look, to a certain limit of course. The girl in the blue and white dress is having a bad hair day because I ran out of that yarn. Let's not call it bad hair, it is more like typical Finnish mouse coloured thin  and limp hair.

Maybe the two redheads ought to swap dresses? The purple might look great with green eyes.

Here are all my socks with the price tags Kaija designed and printed for me. I just stamped the size, price and name of the socks on them and punched the holes before sewing them on the socks.

October has almost over and I haven't sewn any Splendid Sampler blocks since my last post here. Maybe now when the socks and the dolls are off my list I can concentrate on the quilt blocks again.