Raggedy & Friends, Block 3, and a challenge

Between apple sauce and laundry I have been stitching on September's Raggedy & Friends BOM, and last night it was ready.

Two stitcheries, a nine-patch and a row of two triangle squares, and the two rows of 2" squares at the top. I'm already waiting for the next block!

Today my Ann posed for the stitchery. She is a normal healthy doll so she looks a little plump compared to the model in Kaaren's drawing. We didn't have any watermelon at home so we used a wedge of cabbage instead. The little bird posing on it is a Christmas gift from Eileen, who also made my Raggedy Ann and Andy.

I couldn't let Ann sit too long on the concrete steps - the weather is a cool +8 C (46 F) - so I sent her in to tell Andy about the photo shoot. While still wearing my jacket and shoes I took some pictures of the new colours outdoors.

Blueberries get read leaves before they drop, but the lingonberries (middle front of the picture) keep their thick green leaves all winter.

The aspens often get yellow leaves, they are like golden coins. Some trees turn red, like in the first picture on the left of my quilt block.

The chilly weather and wind have brought me a cold, so I'm taking it easy and sneezing today. September is almost over, and I have used only very little fabric. I hope to finish something before the end of the week to make my statistics look nice! Maybe I'll make a little softie for the Softies for Mirabel campaign. You can read more about it on Pip's blog Meet me at Mike's.

Why don't you join me here? All kinds of soft toys are welcome, and they will be delivered to the kids for Christmas. Before that, Pip will show them all together in her shop window in Melbourne.

Autumn is a busy season

It seems that I don't get to blog posting as often as I would like to. It is the time of the year! I have been busy picking the apples:

and steaming them

and winding them through my faithful almost vintage (1980's) Moulinex:

to make apple sauce:

There are 61 not very small jars in the cellar, and I think I will make two more lots to make it last until next autum. This is why there have been no new finishes to show on the crafty front.

On Monday I was waiting for the train and suddenly heard the trumpets from above. Cranes are migrating to Africa for the winter.

The swans are still staying here, growing strength and feathers. This year the couple had four cygnets, but one of them died in August. The Whooper Swan family is staying in the ponds in the middle of the village, and the young ones are learning takeoff and landing:

All summer flowers are composted now, and the heather has replaced them. The concrete tiles are Mr. K's this summer's project.

This area, where the geothermal heating pipes come to the house, will wait over winter before the tiles cover it.

My rainy week was cheered up by Melanie's mail with all kinds of great things. Thank you, sweet friend!

She had knitted red pirate caps for the Amazons, Unicef dolls still waiting to be born. They will join Melanie's  Dorothea and Dick when the time is right. The Haggis Broth tin and the Wright's traditional tar soap as well as the strong Mints in a cute tin are all related to our two-member book club reading the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The chocolate bars go with the theme as well; Susan often gave everyone rations of chocolate. The Lynette Anderson bag is from Melanie's trip to the Birmingham quilt show, where she actually met Lynette Anderson! Melanie also included a big piece of fusible pellon for my future stitcheries, as she knew I can't get it locally. The leopard print fleece is meant for a future Unicef doll with African origin. Melanie is obviously encouraging me to reach the limit of 100 dolls now that the 50 dolls are adopted! The toadstool coaster is for me because we both like funghi. These are poisonous:

but these are delicious. Mr. K has walked in the forest and brought home buckets full of nice mushrooms, and I have made warm sandwiches and sauces with them, and many portions are in the freezer for future use.

Next post should show some sewing again. I'm having class tonight again and hope to finish the sun print table runner. There are other projects on the way as well, but nothing to show so far. And finally some good news for the friends of Eileen: I have been e-mailing with her, and now that she has all wedding business happily behind her, she is working on a quilt and taking pictures. A couple of more pushes and she'll start posting on Eileen's Attic again.

Raggedy Ann learns new skills

While waiting for the next Raggedy & Friends BOM by Kaaren next week, I have been working on an earlier pattern by her.  The Stitching Annie is one of Kaaren's First Friday Freebies. This generous lady publishes a free pattern on every first Friday of the month.

My Raggedy Ann doll had a fun time sitting in a small basket with a quilt and sewing notions, posing for the stitchery  

pattern. The basket I used was too small so it can't be seen at all under the quilt.

Annie had a laugh when I tried to pose her like the other Annie in the stitchery. I think I will use the stitchery for a ring folder where I can keep all my stitchery patterns I'm planning to use. Annie also wanted me to write here her greetings to Auntie Eileen, who made her for me. Eileen has not been blogging for a while, but she noticed my previous post with Andy, and she just might need some pushing to get her back to the blog world.

Snow Fun

Hi! It's me, Raggedy Ann. You remember how Andy and I came here last year from Ohio? Well, after the cute tea party we have mainly been sitting on the windowsill watching birds and hares and squirrels. I have been watching dust too, and then I always tell Her to sweep the stairs so I can breathe again. She only cares about sewing and cooking and washing and cleaning downstairs or upstairs, and keeps forgetting the mid-stairs where we live.
Let me tell you what Andy and I did yesterday, when She was - again - just sitting by the computer: We ran out!

I found a wool scarf in Their drawer and wrapped it around me, but Andy didn't want one, because he is a boy and you know how boys are. It was not a cold day, only -2C or 28F like we still like to think. It takes time to get used to new thermometers and all. The snow is pretty high! This is how much it has snowed since Christmas.

We wanted to slide downhill, like the local kids do. It was great fun! Over and over again.

Mr. K has pushed snow from the driveway like this, making perfect hills of snow for us to play in. But guess what? After a while I was getting cold, even in my scarf. And Andy said his bum was freezing! No wonder they wear such warm clothes here when they go out, and mittens and wool socks in their big boots. All boys have to wear long underpants in winter as long as their mother has anything to say! Girls wear such things too, but they call them leggings, and it doesn't sound so bad.

Our noses were red, but the cheeks felt quite red and warm too, from all the climbing and sliding. The other cheeks sure felt COLD! So we had to go back in and brush the snow from our clothes and shoes so She would not notice what we had done. Of course She noticed, but She is not the angry type. She let us sit on the radiator until our clothes were dry, and then She promised to type this story tomorrow, because my hands are not, how should I put it, keyboard friendly. No: the keyboard is not doll friendly. There is nothing wrong with me!

Keep warm, everyone!

Hugs,

Ann

Clean House

This week I had the unexpected pleasure to offer a training possibility for a student. Her subject was home cleaning. You heard right: vacuuming, dusting, wiping the floors, scrubbing the sauna from ceiling to floor. She worked with me (I wasn't sitting in an armchair and sipping cocktails, if that is what you thought) from 10 to half past two on both days, and did a wonderful job. There are many chores in a big cleaning which are difficult to do when you are alone, but go easily with another pair of hands. I took the big carpets out, because we could lift the tables together, and so on. Christmas cleaning made for Independence Day already.

Afterwards I felt like Raggedy Ann here on the windowsill, very pleased with the result! If you look through the window (we didn't get to cleaning windows because of the below freezing point temperature), you can see we finally have a touch of snow to brighten our days.
This is my 5th Advent Calendar picture. Have a wonderful weekend.

Bags once again & walks

I have had a productive day or two, and now I can show you the results. This is a new product, a multi-purpose necklace to carry your key card, mobile phone, keys or whatever little thingies people need to carry with them. It is made of a pillowcase from my sister P's paper bag, and some parts I had lying around in the house. The snap lock is there so you can use the keys more easily.

The necklace didn't use up the whole pillowcase, so I made this shopping bag from the rest of it, and still have material for other small projects. The other pillowcase ended up like this but with light blue bias tape. The bag is cut like our grocery store's plastic bags, but you can use this one over and over again, and wash it in the machine if necessary.

Her bedsheet was full of bright flowers, and I made this shopping bag of it.

It was a nice sheet with lace and all, so the top ended being the double bottom of this wider bag, and the lace is still there. There will be a smaller bag with lace, and another without lace like the one above, and still some fabric left for other bags. I try to make them light so they can be folded and carried in the handbag, and used instead of plastic bags from the shops.

You may remember Melanie's lavendel hedge, and Eileen growing her own tiny lavendel from the seeds Melanie sent her? I have always liked lavendel. When I was very young, my mother made small pouches of wide silk ribbon and lace, or of linen decorated with cross stitched flowers, and I filled them with dried lavendel flowers for the school fundraising fair. A while ago the florist next to "my" cafe in Järvenpää closed for the summer holidays and sold the last flowers with 70 % off, and I couldn't resist any longer.

I have my own lavendel plant! It needs a nicer pot to live in, but I love it even so. This will probably be a short relationship, because we don't have the right kind of climate, but I'll try to keep the lavendel alive over winter in the storage shed.

Tomorrow will be my vintage day, so I'll report my Movements today already:

Today's walk to the bank and grocery store brought the last point needed for this third week!

Move it Like Mike! Week 2 Report

This past week from last Thursday was the second week of my Moving it Like Mike, or walking with Pip. On Saturday I walked my 20 minutes in two parts, when I brought my father in law his lunch and walked back home. I did a bit of cleaning there while he was eating, but it wasnt't vigorous enough to count for extra points.



The wild strawberries grow by the roadside. The weather has been so cold during the week that the berries seem to take ages to get red and ripe.

On Tuesday I walked my daughter Kaija to the train just to get my bit of exercise, and to help her carry one of her bags. She stayed with us a couple of days, and we worked together on three dresses for her: one vintage dress needed to be altered, one she sewed herself and I helped, and one was a new dress and a new top made to a new dress.

On the walk back I saw this garden runaway flower Hesperis matronalis (illakko) Eileen needed help identifying just a while ago. I knew I had seen them here!

This is a wild flower Melandrium dioecum (ailakki), which also can have purple or white flowers, and the Finnish names get mixed in my head easily.

The walk to the station and back was two times 20 minutes, so I managed to get my three times 20 min walks for the second week. Extra points for vigorous special gymnastic program Tuesday night. I try to find my waistline. I lost it in the eighties, so it may take a while to find it.

Cake and flowers

The busy schedules of February with Time for Tea Swap and my trip to Germany left me no time to do my BOM for the Country Calendar. But this month I have sewn two blocks; here is the February block with Valentine's Day hearts:




And this is March with tulips. I'm doing this the easy way, machine applique and just some hand stitching for the details.


In my garden there is no hope of any kind of flowers this time of the year, but I have some tulips from my bigger brother, who needed three pairs of new trousers shortened.

I happened to have a little reason to celebrate, my birthday was yesterday, so I hade some more flowers. The sweet roses are from my biggest sister P.

And the orchids were sent by my brother-and-sister-in-law.

After having received all these flowers I baked a cake; and had only male company to share it with me, Mr. Kotkarankki and our two sons. We had quite big portions!

I had some unexpected presents. You already met Raggedy Ann and Andy, Eileen sent them for my birthday. But I also had something from AnneMarie from Norway. I know her through the Summer Stash Challenge 2008, the Stitching Angels and the Time for Tea Swap. She sent me a beautiful floral print in my favourite shades, some wooden buttons with hearts engraved, and a thimble from Norway. The picture of a reindeer walking in front of the midnight sun could as well be from the Finnish Lapland; we are neighbour countries up there. It was really sweet of her to send these gifts for me. The blog world has given me such dear new friends!

I had this very thick book for my birthday from DH. To be honest, he didn't choose it but let me have whatever I wanted from the bookstore. I had been looking at this book many times and hoping they would reduce the price, and now I'm really glad he bought it for me. It is about Finnish rya rugs over a period of 270 years. Maybe I'll show you some of the contents later.

Last Thursday was my first sewing group night in 5 weeks, and I was going to continue my photo transfer project there. My transfer experiments failed very badly and I need to start over with other material choices. Instead of that project, I was able to sew some 6" Maverick stars, and today I made 5 more and rotary cut background squares for more. I hope to finish that quilt for the spring exhibition in April. Suzie from Little Busy Bee told in her blog that this is a National Quilting Day in USA, and suggested it could as well be made international. I agree, and even if I can't go to any quilt shops, I have done some quilting related sewing today. By the way, she has made an excellent tutorial on the Lemoine Star. Happy Quilting Day everyone!

Thank you all for the Summer Stash Challenge

The Summer Stash Challenge is finally over. These flowers are for all of you who spent this summer with Eileen and me, making beautiful quilts from your stash. The yellow iris was blooming in June, when the challenge started and we started getting names on a list we never expected to make.




During the summer months we learnt to know talented women from many parts of the world, joined together by their hobby of quilting and their love for fabrics. These peonies were picked in July, when the most quilts were being made.





And finally came August with these begonias. The last quilts were being stitched and bound, even in the last hours of August 31st. It has been a joy to follow the process of nearly 40 quilts being transformed from a pile of fabric or even a pile of old clothes to a beautiful quilt. Some quilts were sewn by professionals, at least one - my sister Maija's - was the first quilt to be finished. She didn't quite make it by the time limits, but I will encourage her to finish the quilt anyway, and to start her own blog. Her blog will not be the only one started because of this challenge, so I think we all can be proud of ourselves for inspiring these lovely women to both sewing and to blogging about it. A good example is all that is needed, and at least I have seen such good examples of lovely quilts that I don't know where I'm going to find the time to make my version of them.

Today I have been bouncing in and out the blogs and trying to find the post where the completed quilt was shown. I changed the links on the Summer Stash Challenge list on my right sidebar to link to that post. I know some of you have finished more than one quilt for the challenge, and if you feel I have linked to the wrong one, please email me the link you want to be used. In some cases I couldn't find a post telling about the finished quilt, so I linked to the finished top shown. Any one of you who has not joined the SSC Flickr group and would like to show her challenge quilt in the company of the other challenge quilts, please contact me or Eileen.

With these flowers from my garden I want to thank you all for quilting with Eileen and me, it has been a great experience. And no, we are not planning another challenge ;o ! Not yet, at least. Why don't you host the next one? We knew nothing about hosting a challenge when we started, but we have learnt a lot. And last but not least my heartfelt thanks to Eileen, you carried the heavier load, and without you I couldn't have done my share.