New Quilt, New Tunic and Old Books and Bears

Have you seen Stephanie's Long Johns quilt? She remembered her grandfather's long johns on the washline, and made the polka dotty pieces like them, up and down. She also made a Christmas version, very pretty. She gave me the pattern for my senior home quilts, and here is what I came up with:

 

Long johns on the line are, in this climate and this family with two men and just one me, a very usual sight even today. (So there you see, Mr. Squash, you don't have to be "a woman of a certain age" to have seen that sight.)  The quilt top is made with what forms another substantial part of my laundry, men's old shirts. Old men's shirts, whatever. That's why I named my quilt Laundry Day. Take a look at Supreme Candace's version here. She too added a border, but I made an extra row too. This way the quilt will be big enough to keep any tall grandpa warm and cosy when he is taking a nap. The backing is checkered flannel like the binding. Tomorrow I'll be taking this and the Bee in my Bonnet Row-Along quilt to the nursing home.

This quilt is also my 4th project in the Special Category of the Craft Olympics hosted by Flickenstichlerin. I have been on a new sewing class, just 6 evenings with the theme tunics. I learnt to alter the pattern to my personal measures, and here is the result:

 

 

I'm really pleased with it, and the jersey's cheerful grey and greenish colours are just me. This is my 4th project in the New Category of the Craft Olympics.

 

Last Friday we went to the Helsinki Book Fair, a perfect place to test use my new tunic (can be classified as one of the "cultural ladies robes", you know the roundish ladies between 40 and 80 who go to concerts, theatres, art exhibitions and interesting lectures, wearing figure flattering long tunics/vests/jackets). We concentrated once again on the older books.

 

This raven has been on every book fair I remember.

This year the teddy bears had a special place at the fair.

I didn't even know there are so many literary teddy bears.

This one I know!

 

And here's for you, Melanie! (She is going to Rupert's cottage next Spring). Bamse is sharing this shelf with Rupert.

 

 

Do you know Rasmus? He comes from Denmark. I have read about him to my children...

... but not as much as about this brave fellow, Uppo-Nalle. He is created in Finland but according to the story he floated here from France.

Some of the teddies were really old.

Some were more famous as toys than from stories in books.

Winnie the Pooh like he originally was and what Walt Disney did to him.

The modern Pooh Corner gang.

 

We spent a lovely day at the fair and I found a used copy of the new Finnish translation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, illlustrated by Helen Oxenbury . Perhaps I can finally read the whole story!

Have you a favourite literary teddy bear? Was he on this exhibition? I had a toy teddy bear that my best friend made for me when we were maybe 12 years old, and my childhood literary bear friend was Winnie the Pooh like Uncle Shepard drew him.

Colours are changing

This year the change of colours in the trees has been more beautiful than in years. Our backyard oak was yellow like this a week ago:

 

and only three days later the leaves were brown.

 

The rowan changed early, I just managed to take a photo of the last brilliant reds two weeks ago.

 

I have been busy catching the Autumn colours in socks for the winter.

This was taken on a sunny day and the yarn colours are more natural here. Three balls of heavy yarn made 4 pairs of socks, and I think I can make yet another baby pair with the rest.

The big ones are a Christmas present, but the little ones are no particular size, just testing different patterns from my books.

I'm sure I can find the right little feet for them too. Therefore I call them my third thimble project in the Special Category.

The aspen on a sunny day were like carrying gold coins and letting them fall on the ground.

The birches had a different shade of yellow.

This morning Mr. K and I were raking leaves for one and a half hours, clearing the driveway and the strip of lawn behind the house. At lunch we looked out of the window and noticed almost no difference to yesterday's view, but those were new leaves from the oak. It is kind of like laundry, or washing dishes: you have just done it, but the basket/sink is half full again before you dried your hands. But some day the trees will be bare, and regardless of whether the leaves are raked or not, the snow will come and cover the ground, hopefully until next Spring. (The laundry and the dishes never end.)

Greetings from Britain and two new CO finishes

The holiday is over and I bring you greetings from London and Oxford. I took my daughter on the trip and she was a wonderful guide and source of information in London. Before the trip I created something new for the Craft Olympics. We have a saying about something coming up like mushrooms on rainy weather. Like this:

 

... and suddenly there are some chanterelles too...

 

 

... and before you notice the toadstools have popped up. This is my finish for the New Category of the Craft Olympics, my own designs in crochet and knitting.

 

For the Special Category I sewed a little rucksack with a zipper in the front

 

 

and another zipper in the back for another pocket, and adjustable straps.

 

The craftiest part of our trip was this fence in Oxford, with lovely pieces of knitted and crocheted graffiti art.

 

Can you guess how we got to see this, and C.S.Lewis' and J.R.R.Tolkien's favourite pub, and the place where Inspector Morse used to sit and have beer, and the Ashmolean Museum and many other places? We had an experienced guide with local inside information, and many of my dear readers have enjoyed her guided tours in different parts of Britain and other places. Did you guess her name already? It was Melanie, and she tailored us an all day program based on our interests, and came all the way from home to her old home town  to meet us. My next post will cover the first part of our stay in London, but we'll come back to Oxford after that.

 

Meanwhile, Autumn has arrived to our part of Finland. The leaves are turning red and yellow, and I look forward to sunny days with cool, clear air and fresh wind.

 

 

Tour de Fibre 2013 - Finale

The Tour is over for this year, and I managed to get one project finished during the three week period of watching TV and sewing. It is the Peek-a-Boo Street quilt.

 

 

Let's walk around this neighbourhood but maybe we can take a cup of coffee with cake in the café first? There is a café in both corners of this first street, and between them a fabric store and a shop that sells both sewing notions and silks for fly-tyers.

Around the corner is something for babies in two shops, yet another café (!), and a yarn shop.

 

The Lavender Shop sells herbs and spices, the next one is a music shop. The shop with the yellow roof is specialised in mushrooms, wild berries and such. I had to think hard to find a suitable product for the shop with my sun-dyed leaf fabric before I had an excelent idea: In Finnish we can use the same word, lehti, for a leaf and a newspaper or magazine, so this is a newsstand.

Along the last street runs a little brook. There is a plant nursery (because they have a very big backyard up here), the first house for flowering plants and the second for trees. Next is a place where you can buy treasure maps and all kinds of equipment you might need for adventures, and the last one is a fishing gear shop. Test fishing is possible in the brook.

 

Thank you, Stephanie for the pattern! This quilt will go to the nursing home where Mr. K's father spent his last years. It will keep someone warm when they go out in wheelchairs, or whenever their old bones feel like they need to be kept warm. This quilt is also for my Cratft Olympics, my second thimble for the New projects category.

 

Scandinavian Snowball Fun is now my main project:

 

 

And this is the secret project I started and finished during the Tour, now arrived and taken into use. It is my version of Kaffee-Momente stitcheries by Diana.

 

 

To celebrate the end of the100th Tour de France I baked a cake and had an Oops experience:

 

 

 

With a fairly liquid inside the cake collapsed, but the taste was still nice. Next time I'll need to bake longer and test more than one spot!

 

The July stitcheries of Happy Scrappy Spring are also finished and I'm putting the row together between other projects.

This week's rows and other finishes

This week I picked some apples and went zig-zag with my scrappy quilt. I managed to finish two more rows for the Bee in My Bonnet Row-along I'm making at my own pace.

 

My first four rows look like this, and next week I'm making some mugs and flying geese.

 

My blog remote control (DD) helped me find what was suddenly wrong with my pictures: The camera has settings for white balance, and somehow I had managed to change them. It made the pictures all blue, and I only thought it was the spring light, and tried to edit the worst of them. With her help I found the settings and at least the top photo looks OK now. The wind was blowing so much that I couldn't get the four rows lay still but had to take them in for a group photo shoot.

 

I made a little baby quilt for a friend who is going to have a baby next month.

The fabrics are all leftovers from the preemie quilts I have made earlier.

 

In the evenings I have been knitting dishcloths from some lovely cottons and bamboo cotton  blends.

Then I had to try this new to me traditional potholder pattern. I should have used heavier yarn, because the holes are so big you can burn your fingers if you use this for something really hot. This potholder is double-sided, the reverse is black. Can you find the missing stitch? I only noticed it now from the picture. I will go and add it, no problem. This will be my first entry for the Craft Olympics 2013 Special category.

A new project and some new houses

Mr. K has been building new houses again, for our little friends. If you click the picture, you can count four in the trees. One came to replace an old one the squirrels had used, and one of the old bird houses was damaged when we had to cut down some birches.

 

 

The morning after the six new houses were put in the trees and four other ones spring cleaned - did you know the birds make their own spring cleaning too? - I saw house hunters at four new houses. Here is a blue tit, he chased some great tits away as he was showing this place to his sweetheart.

 

This is a birch where we never had a birdhouse before, but it was obviously a good place, because there were many young couples interested to see the house. "A modern, compact house in a respected area", I think. An old birch would possibly have natural holes tits use for their nests. The titmouse went in and spent a long time checking the workmanship. I hope there will be happy families in all the birdhouses so we can enjoy watching birds during the non-feeding season too.

 

 

My new  project suitably begins with a birdhouse stitchery:

 

The first row for Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring ROM (Row of the Month) is almost done. Tonight I will stitch a juicy big carrot and add that block to the end of the row.

I'm using all kinds of scraps from my stash, recycling plaid shirts and whatever happens to please my eye. The light outdoors is strangely blue in the last picture, where my row is on the snow. Yes, still plenty of that on the ground, and we had some new snow on Sunday and Monday, to brighten up the world. - This quilt should be finished in the Autumn so I think I can find a suitable category for it in the Craft Olympics Sylvia is hosting this year.