December 1 - Socks On Line

It is this time of the year again. Some people are waiting for the holiday season with excitement and joy, some are stressed and some just couldn't care less. Five times I have made my own advent calendar on this blog, with a photo posting and a few words every day until December 24th, and I thought it would be nice to do it again. Today I have socks hanging on the wash line, just for the photo shoot. Up here in Finland where Santa lives, we don't hand them on the mantelpiece for Christmas.

Santa comes to the door and meets the family by the tree, or if he is busy he just leaves the gifts behind the door. No way could he come through the chimney, because when there is no fire burning, the chimney is closed by shutters to avoid the warmth from escaping.

If you are interested in a really lovely, non-christmassy advent calendar, you should visit my talented artist daughter's blog and/or instagram. She will post her matchbox art every day until Christmas, and her Etsy shop Paperiaarre is filled with beautiful things. You just might find the perfect gift for a friend there.

I hope to see you again tomorrow!

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.

Advent Calendar 2014

It is time for my Advent Calendar, daily posts with a picture and little words. This will be the fourth one: I started in 2009, the next one was in 2011, then last year and now suddenly for the second year in a row.

The Christmas Season opening parade was yesterday in Järvenpää, Santa arrived very conveniently in a sleigh on wheels.

Advent Calendar 2013

It is time to post an advent calendar again on my blog like I did in 2011 and 2009. This fancy one is a gift from Melanie. I wish you all a stressless countdown to Christmas.

Winter Roses

It has been a busy time, like it always is for everyone at this time of the year. Most of my doings has been secret, but here is something I can show you:

 

 

Mr. K painted two walls in our hallway with the leftover paint from DS2's room renovation. We thought of ways to protect the wall from new dark green marks from this chair. I suggested a board, then thought of covering the board with some fabric and batting ... and my thoughts wandered and I came up with this idea:

 

 

 

A hood for the chair back made with some upholstery fabric leftovers from my mother. It is not quite the same colour as the seat I renewed some years ago, but they go together nicely. I added some double batting on both sides, and simple tape ties at the lower edge.

 

The Winter came with the advent time, we had lots of snow at the end of last week and the weather turned really cold after a long and unusually warm Autumn. Today our thermometer hasn't climbed to the warmer side of -20C/-4F all day.

 

 

Mr. Bullfinch has a snow moustache (click on the photo to enlarge) from digging for sunflower seeds in the new soft snow. All the little birds seem to have come back from the forest where they stayed during the Summer and Autumn as long as they could find their food there. We put the feeder out again in early October when we had the first cold days.

 

I'm not doing an Advent Calendar this year, but if you want a look at great talent and a dose of beauty without fuzzing about Christmas, you should go here every day and see what my daughter has created. When she was little, she was not allowed to cut in books, but now that she can make them from scratch, and buy her own books to cut, she can do the most wonderful things.

 

Merry Christmas

This is our tree, brought in and decorated already on the eve of Christmas Eve. Kaija decorated it with just our new baubles from last year, and some paper stars she made. She will tell about the stars here in a few days.

The gifts will appear under the tree when nobody watches, and they will be opened after dinner. I'm starting a holiday break from blogging now, but may sneak to the computer for some blog reading during the holidays. I wish you all a peaceful, joyous and merry Christmas and a happy New Year with good health, lots of energy and good ideas for sewing!

More Snow

There is a saying about evening red sky and bad weather for the coming day. This is a picture of the setting sun yesterday, after a sunny, frosty day.

This is this morning, after I had been showeling for over one and a half hours, and Mr. K came home to clear our driveway after he had done it at work, and to finally have his breakfast.

Six inches new snow this morning! He woke up at 4 to see if he needed to get up and start this winter hobby, but there was no snow, so he came back to bed. At 5 when it was the right time for him to wake up, it was snowing heavily, so he went to work and I started showeling at home. He was very glad to see my results when he came, and I felt like a little tonttu.

There is more snow coming, so we shall repeat this show later.

Tomorrow will be the last Advent Calendar post before my holiday break. In case you are busy with your holiday season already, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Thank you for coming by and being there with me.

Snow

This picture shows the first snowman of the year. Our neighbour's little girls built it two weeks ago, when there was just a little snow. Autumn leaves stuck on the snow, but today the snowman will have a clean white coat on.

It has been snowing for a couple of days, and the weather is still cold (-17 C = 1.4 F this morning), so a white Christmas is guaranteed for us. I hope the Christmas traffic will not suffer too much from this.

Our daughter Kaija came home for Christmas yesterday. Today she will be visiting a friend, but after that she will be my little inspiring elf in the kitchen. My brother and his wife dropped in for a quick change of Christmas greetings on their way to spend the Christmas with her mother. Tomorrow I may expect my sister P and her husband on their way to spend the Christmas with our mother. We are the lucky ones, our children are coming to spend the Christmas with us, and we can stay at home.

Pictures from the Elma 09 Fair

Do you remember the paper twine flower curtain from Dec 8th? Here are some more pictures from that fair. Wool rowings in lovely colours:

People could try their hand on sewing a ryijy rug. Big ones are woven in a loom.

It was also a countryside fair with farm animals. Here is Viola, the winner of the Prettiest Cow in the City pageant. With her baby. They were moving so fast that all my other pictures were just a blur.

Day 20

Yesterday we visited my mother in Tampere. I gave her the nightie I made, and a "Christmas hamper", only it was a recycled pillowcase turned into a light shopping bag, filled with vanishing goodies like coffee, tea, biscuits, chocolates and candles. It was lovely to be able to spend the day with her.

On the way home I visited my father's grave as well, and brought him a Christmas candle.

Take care of your loved ones!

What do you need a spade for in Christmas cleaning?

On Friday was the coldest day so far, -22 C (-7.6F). I decided to use a spade for Christmas cleaning.

I took our red Oriental carpet out, but it didn't fly me away to warm places. It was dusty. So I needed the spade to do this:

Then I brushed the snow this way and that way and on the other side too.

And so I had a bright clean fresh nice carpet! (And very very cold fingers in my mittens.)
Have a nice weekend! I'm visiting my mother today.

Santa's Little Helper Reveals a Secret

This is something I have just sewn with my own little hands and my little overlocker and my big sewing machine:

It is a Christmas gift for my mother, a nightgown to keep her warm. I can show it to you, because she doesn't have internet, and I believe my sisters can keep this kind of a secret if they happen to see this. I want Christmas gifts to be surprises, so we can all believe they are made by Santa's little helpers, the tonttu elves, who have been secretly watching us. They know what we need, or maybe not need but very much would like to have. They know what colours we like, or what materials, what we collect or what we like to read or to listen to. They also note in their notebooks if we have been nice or naughty, so Santa can decide what we are going to get.

As one of Santa's helpers' helpers I have noticed that my mother sometimes needs extra blankets when she sleeps, so I believe a warm nightie would be welcome. She also appreciates hand made gifts, so I dived in one of my big cardboard boxes in the cellar and found this piece of jersey I bought for her nightie some years ago and wasn't inspired to use before now. I used one of my favourite nighties as a pattern. So now I have been good and reduced my stash a little!

Be good, the elves are still making notes!

Vintage Thingies 50 - Straw Goat

This is my 50th VTT. Suzanne is hosting again, and the links are here.

 

This is a traditional Finnish Christmas ornament, a goat made of straw. My mother-in-law made it for me and

my family in the early 80's, so it can be counted for vintage.

 

What does a goat have to do with Christmas? Long time ago masked young men wearing goat horns and a fur coat went from house to house begging for the last Christmas beer on January 7th, when the Christmas season was over. Their version of trick or treating! At some places they did this also before Christmas, sometimes throwing little gifts through the door and disappearing before being seen.  (This was the beginning of the Father Christmas character as well. His Finnish name is Joulupukki, joulu = Christmas, pukki = goat.) The straw goat is related to this tradition; it was important to see that the straw goat ornament had enough beer to drink. Straw items, like the more Finnish tradition himmeli, are usually referring to good harvest or fertility. The straw goat tradition comes to us from Sweden. There is a giant straw goat every year in Gävle, but it usually gets burned by bad boys before Christmas.

The real Joulupukki's office is here in English, you can follow several links and see tonttu elves at work, Finnish reindeers and arctic landscapes. I hope it will give you Christmas spirits!

Tonttu Needed!

What do you think of my sewing room? Do I need a tonttu or some English speaking elves here to help me clear this mess for Christmas?

    

I have the perfect answer for this from a lady from a women's assosiation: "Yes, if you are going to spend your Christmas there!" She actually said that about cleanig all cupboards for Christmas, but I think it goes for sewing rooms as well. Now you can all feel so pleased with yourselves, because there is someone whose house is messier that your worst closet. (Or teenager's bedroom.) The rest of my house is not this bad, it is pretty good. This will be dealt with when there is less stress. Stressed mothers are no good.

The Sun is here

This is the time of the year when our days are the shortest, the sun rises around 9.20 and sets right after 3 in the afternoon. Yesterday was a lovely, sunny day with -18 degrees C (-0.4 F), with some new snow to make the ground look white and nice. This is how high the sun was at noon:

 

This is my shadow, as short as it can get at this time of the year, shoes not included:

Today is a little colder, but the temperatures are rising towards the end of the week, only by a few degrees. It looks like we are going to have a white Christmas!

Calendar Blocks

These are my last two blocks for the Country Calendar BOM. I have shown the November block with the cute little bird earlier. Now I finally got to the October block after buying some black fabric.

The December block was easy to make. I will put the blocks together to make a quilt, but that will happen in January. This time of the year is too busy.

Working on these blocks instead of Christmas gifts to my nearest and dearest, or at least baking lovely cakes and mountains of gingerbread reminds me of the time I was supposed to study for the final exams in high school. I wanted to study, I really did, but I always found myself cross-stitching yellow flowers on linen to make pretty placemats. I passed the exams anyway, and I want to believe Christmas will come as well.

Third Advent

Today is the third Advent Sunday, time to light the third candle.

 

This Advent candle holder is a gift from my sister P. She brought it from Stockholm many, many years ago. Sometimes I use red or green candles, matching the lingonberry decoration. This year, hoping for a little snow, I used white ones.

Feed the Birds

This is our new bird feeder. Mr. Kotkarankki built it to make a squirrel-proof feeder with enough space for the seeds so we could be away for a couple of nights and the birds would not starve.

 

The old feeder was made of wood and he squirrels gnawed the edges of it, tring to get inside. They reached the tray when hanging upside down like this:

The new feeder is made of a smooth and slippery leftover piece of plastic sewage pipe, so it will be easy to keep clean, too. I do like the squirrels, but there is food for them in the forest as much as they need, and they can still find acorns on the ground as long as there is no more snow. The birds are more fun to watch and more helpless against the cold. They will always drop some seeds on the ground for the squirrels too. The new feeder has been up for a week now, and I already saw a new species of bird not yet seen in 2009: the willow tit Parus montanus was there together with its cousins the great tit Parus major with the black tie, and the little blue-capped Parus caeruleus.

Matchbox Crafting

Yesterday was a reversed childhood day. I was crafting with my daughter, but it was she who showed me how to do it! She is staying with us for a couple of days because of her house renovation, and she had to make her matchbox for the day here. Luckily she had a spare one for me (because I still have not found the ones I bought for crafting in 2008).

Kaija made her box, and I tried to make mine as nice as I could. I watched her closely, and she explained what she was doing and why. She is a good teacher. She teaches me new things like computer and digital camera, too.

    

I only had glue sticks, but she managed to make a lovely work without her good materials.

 

She glued little torn bits of paper for the box bottom. I kept everything very simple. You can see Kaija's box here. She has made one for every day since the first advent. This is my first box:

I have collected little things I have picked up from the ground between the house and the washline, and always intended to make a project with them. Unfortunately the little bird egg shell broke into too small pieces before I used it. These items are not so fragile, and they go together because both are used for building.

The metal thing is something used as a nail to build our house in 1947, when there was a true shortage of everything, including all building materials. The yellow one is a Lego brick of my children, maybe fallen from a pocket on the washline, or they have played with their Legos outdoors, which was kind of not allowed. When you step on a Lego brick on the lawn, it disappears in the ground, but when you step on one in their room, it hurts like **** and you immediately notice it so you can save the poor brick from getting lost.

The nail is in fact a waste bit of metal cut away when making forks. Our floorboards and interior walls were nailed with these, and I found one in the ground.

It was much fun to sit together and talk about things we remember, learn something new and just be together. When I someday find my boxes I will continue crafting with them and make boxes for the other items I have found.

My daily posting has taken me by surprise: this is post number 300! I will celebrate later, as I'm too busy posting every day for two more weeks and trying to make Christmas happen in the family as well. In January will be my blog's 2nd Anniversary, that will be the time to celebrate.

Vintage Thingies 49 - Tonttu

Today's Advent calendar picture is a vintage Christmas ornament. This tonttu elf is double sided, printed on cardboard, and with a jingle to decorate his long red peaked cap.

      

The style of this drawing reminds me of Swedish  Christmas cards by Jenny Nyström, but it is not signed. The clogs make me believe the tonttu is from Sweden. Here they wear felt boots.

     

Remember to go to Suzanne's blog and visit all the lovely places with vintage thingies on Thursdays!