Farmers' Market, flower fence, and knitting again

This year the (very un-)traditional flower arrangements in Järvenpää were chairs fastened to the ugly fence. You may remember the wellies from 2013,

the bags from 2014,

and the bikes from 2015.

This year they used old, donated chairs. I didn't have a chance to take a photo of the whole fence, but after the chairs were taken down earlier this month, they found new addresses where to stay as long as the flowers are pretty. This one found a new home outside Lentävä Lapanen, the Flying Mitten. One of he owners is active in the movement that makes the flower project possible.

Yesterday a storm was sweeping across the country, leaving 200,000 households without electricity for some time, but we enjoyed a sunny and relatively warm, windy day. The beautiful weather brought thousands of people to the pedestrian area and the park by the lake in Järvenpää where the annual Farmers' Market Maa elää was held.

The market was filled with the autumn's harvest from fields, gardens and forests as well as craft rooms.  Delicious chanterelles:

and lingonberries.

There was an info desk with wild mushroom samples. The ladies from the local equivalent of a Women's Institute (or something like that) were there to help people identify different mushrooms and especially to separate the good ones from the really bad ones.

After this point the street was too crowded for me to get any photos, but there were over 130 tables or stalls. Beautiful flowers, home made cordials and jams, bread, cakes and flour, carrots and potatoes, handmade clothes for dolls as well as children or women, hand woven rugs and many more crafty things.

It has been some time since my last post so a lot of knitting has been going on. A pair of mittens to go with the peppermint candy striped socks, using my grandmother's favourite pattern which makes them thick and warm and yet not stiff.

I had little balls of yarn left from sock knitting so I combined them and  tried my hands on the bubble pattern I used for my grandson's blanket two years ago:

Those bubbles felt a bit too big after all (six rows high) so I reduced their size and used finer yarn and just two colours. Sea-hawthorn berries without the thorns?

This pair will take an evening or two to finish, but every time I finish a pair I feel so happy the pair is finished, both socks or mittens are the same size, have the same number of rows, and I can start a new pair, not just a new sock or mitten and trying to knit it the same way.

Half way point of the Splendid QAL

This week has been productive, we are back to normal everyday routines. Mr K. has been picking bilberries, "just a nice evening stroll, max two hours", and as a result of these strolls we now have about 30 liters of those tasty arctic blue berries in the freezer to give us vitamins and good eyesight with our oatmeal every morning until next harvest season. Blue berries, blue hexagons for the Splendid Sampler QAL.

This flower applique was easy. I made the background HSTs from two 4" squares of each fabric instead of cutting four 3½" squares of each and wasting the smaller triangles. 

Foundation piecing, luckily just large pieces of fabric this time.

I found my favourites are normal pieced blocks like this one.

Because I didn't even start one recent block and dumped my paper pieced Balls in the Air after just one quarter of the block, I have been sewing several of the bonus blocks to replace those two and maybe some future blocks.

A fun little hat,

a flower in a pot

and to mark the half way point with 50 blocks published, we are now over the Top of the Hill:

I made my moon over the mountain very realistic, but as we don't really have such high mountains here, I could have called this Moon behind a fir tree, if I had used green fabrics in this quilt. Well, I haven't, so a brown mountain it is. I try to keep to the fabrics I chose last winter for the project. There are browns, blues, yellows, oranges and reds, two blacks with print and a selection of white to grey and beige for backgrounds. All fabrics are from my stash, and this may be my first project where I use new fabrics only, nothing has been recycled.

Naturally, my hands will not be idle when I'm watching TV, so I have knitted a pair of train socks, again. You can read my short version of the history of the socks here. The ribbed long legs make sure the baby doesn't kick his or her socks off. A friend is having a baby in the autumn so I decided to prepare for his arrival. With the rest of the white yarn I made stripes for a pair of peppermint candy socks, and yesterday I started a pair of mittens to go with them.