Computer news and picture update

After long consideration, some waiting and two days of learning we finally have a new computer with everything needed, and I'm writing my first blog post here. There are some problems still: the laptop has no access to the internet like it should and used to have, and DH's email account has disappeared because of a misplaced password. I need the magic help of the next generation to get a photo editing programme (and at least two patience games  ;-)!). Luckily DD is arriving tonight from Berlin. She originally put up this blog for me, and has taught me almost everything I know about using a computer, especially the internet.

Maybe you would like to see some of the pictures I have taken since September? I'll show them anyway. About at the time when the computer crashed, I saw the most exotic butterfly in my life:

The Red Admiral. They are rare visitors in Finland. This one was warming itself on the sunny wall of our new garden shed.

We put up the bird feeder early in October, and the birds returned to our yard quickly. The first  portion of seeds was gone in a week, but as the Autumn has been unusually warm, the second fill wasn't needed until last night.

This squirrel has already changed fur for the winter, the reddish brown is only left in the legs. He was sitting in  our oak tree, apparently resting, and I thought he was just like me with my second cup of tea and newspaper, when I sit at the breakfast table alone after the men have gone to their duties: my nose drops closer and closer to the paper as I'm almost falling asleep again.

The trees had beautiful colours

but they are gone now.

I have played with yarn, not only knitting it but felting some too:

These little balls of yarn have been machine washed in hot water, rubbed a little to smooth the surface, and sent to Stephanie for her birthday some time ago.

With my PIF gift to Kaite in Australia, I sent a small fabric basket for her mother Coralie.

And look what she sent me in return:

The prettiest little daffodil pouch is handmade by her, and the cute house brooch is from Kaite. It is Spring down there, and daffodil time. Thank you, Coralie and Kaite!

PIF sent, and other news

Finally I have a working system on this borrowed laptop and can show you some of my recent doings. Some time ago I sent all my PIF gifts on their way, and they have now arrived at their destinations in Australia, Switzerland and Ireland. I made them all a little tote bag using Marimekko fabric, and a smaller bag for small things.

 Barbara and Heather both received the sets shown above, and Kaite, who signed in later, got a more colourful tote (because I had used my beige for the two others):

 

and a knitting needle holder as I happen to know she is a knitter.

 

The baby sweaters went to the Black Lion Hospital in Ethiopia, to fulfill my earlier promise from 2008 to send three handmade gifts. At that time I only had two ladies to sign in for the first PIF I signed in.The Finnish Nuttu project has received nearly 50,000 baby sweaters for them in a few years, and it has spread to Switzerland as well, where the sweaters are sent to another place. I'm so happy Barbara decided to knit some sweaters too, and luckily we found a way she can join the project in her own country.

You can see here what Melanie sent me and her other PIF ladies. The pictures are at the end of the holiday post.

I had to use my photos as they came from the camera, I hope they don't take ages to upload when you read this.
I have been working on some Unicef dolls again, and on my crumble blocks, enjoying some lovely autumn days but also had rain and wind, even the first night frosts. A new post will follow soon! I hope to be able to visit you all now that the internet seems to allow me opening more than a few of them.

Autumn bag and Stash use report for September

This week I have been suffering from a crushed down computer syndrome and the situation is still going on. Mr. K offered me his laptop so I have been able to read and send emails, but this poor thing is slow and constantly having internet troubles. Therefore I have not been able to visit your blogs. On the other hand, I have had more time with my sewing machine.

The Bag Club, Melanie, Simone and I, have been working on an Autumn bag. Melanie and I kept to the original plan of making a more complicated pattern from our book The Bag Making Bible, and Simone wanted to finish a big bag she had been working on. The Organiser Bag inludes details like a gusset, several interior pockets, a harness for a laptop, and an adjustable strap. These were all very clearly explained in the book and not too difficult to sew. The final touch was my big headache: the flap is closed by two twist-locks. Cutting the holes for the buttonhole metal parts was SCARY! The bag flap had many layers like exterior fabric, interfacing and lining and heavy interlining , and I had to be so careful not to cut the hole too big. Next time will be easier. Melanie can tell, as she has already made two of these bags. You can get to her blog from the link Houseelf Doings in my sidebar, she has great pictures of her bags there, and more.

Here is my bag:

There should be a picture but I'm not sure whether you can see it. I'll download it again later when/if the good computer will be good again. Anyway, the exterior fabric is from linen curtains from my childhood, and the bag front is an upholstery fabric. The lining is a brown fabric handed down to me from someone in the family. This makes the bag made completely from stash. For my statistics I estimate I have used about 1.3 m fabrics in all for this (exterior and lining). Other September sewings took 0.8 m for the last PIF gifts I made for Kaite, who signed in later, and some other minor projects.The gifts are now on their way to Heather, Barbara and Kaite. Pictures will follow when the ladies have received their mail. This all adds up to 2.1 m fabrics used, and nothing bought!

This time I can't put in any links or photos in the normal way, but I hope to have the computer problems solved as soon as possible and visit your blogs again.

Autumn colours and harvest time, knitting

On Friday we had a very warm weather and I had a long walk in the forest. It is harvest time. Combine machines have threshed the corn, berries have been picked in the gardens. There are still wild berries in the forest, like arctic bilberries

and lingonberries

Hawthorn berries in a tree in the park of the library:

Lovely red of the poisonous toadstool amanita

Many edible mushrooms are brown

These yellow ones may be edible, or not. I always check twice and ask Mr. K before using any mushrooms for food.

All plants are making their seeds ready to fly with the wind or to fall on the ground or to be eaten and spread by the birds. This is willowherb.

My own harvest in the vegetable patch is showing no signs of real progress:



My Jersey tomatoes have grown big and lovely, but there is still no sign of red in them. We have had a handful of the smaller domestic tomatoes to taste.

I have not been sewing anything I can show just yet, as they will be my PIF gifts. Because no new names were signed on my list, I have decided to make a baby sweater project in Ethiopia my third PIF recipient. A Finnish midwife has started a project in Ethiopia in order to get the women to hospital to give birth to their baby. If they do, the baby will get a knitted sweater like this to go home with. Also, this way the baby will be registered and get a birth certificate.

This is my first sweater for them, just knitted and not yet sewn together. In September there will be information about how to send them to Africa. The deliveries are on hold now, as there has been a new customs fee to be paid for the sweaters, and  the hospital people are negotiating about this and hoping to avoid the extra cost.

Holiday in the wilderness, & PIF gift

Last week Mr. K took me out to eat every day. We were on holiday in North Carelia at the same cabin as many years before, and our dining table was in the outdoor kitchen as usual. Here is the cabin, an old log drivers' cabin you can only reach by boat.

There were big changes from last year: we had electric light instead of gas light, there was even a lamp at the kitchen sink (only needed for making the evening tea before bed time, as I washed the dishes outdoors).

The bunk beds are on the other side of the room.

The electricity came from this solar panel.

I was trying to be a Coot Club photographer, but water birds were absent. I watched this little wagtail catching insects above the rapid, and tried to get a picture of the dozens and dozens of swallows flying up and down above the water with their peaks wide open, but they were way too fast for me to focus on.

The weather was good until the first night so we didn't get wet with our bags on the way there. We were prepared to the change in temperature and just dressed warmer every day.

Some fishing pictures will follow in the next post. When we arrived home for the weekend, a sweet surprise was in the mail on top of the bills:

Melanie had already sent her PIF gift to me! It was a beautiful pinwheel table runner in Summer colours. Tiny perfect pinwheels, and she told this was a stashbusting project for all her PIF ladies.

My hands have been busy with laundry only, but I hope to get back to the sewing later this week. There is still one PIF name missing on my list  as Melanie's PIF recipient, and another from my original PIF list from years back. This is your last chance to let me know you want to join. Next week I will decide on two charities to take those places and make something to them to pay forward to people who need a little gift showing that we still care.

Stash use report for July, and PIF still open

July with the hot, lazy summer days is gone, and it's time to look back at the fabric piles. It  looks like they didn't melt away! I didn't manage not to buy any fabric at all, but I only bought 1 m calico for stitching as it is something I don't usually have in stash. My fabric use was very moderate too, but I had a lovely little project I finished last night. Earlier this year I got this old iron bed:

I cleaned and washed it, mended the net on the sides, and washed the fabric covering the original bottom half, and made a new one to replaced the missing half. They are hinged together with twine in the middle.

Then I made a mattress and a pillow using old mattress fabric to suit this antique bed. I don't want to repaint it.

The bed needed sheets as well, naturally, and I unpicked the lace from an old, worn out sheet and used the good parts for the pillowcase and the top sheet.

I finished the hexagon quilt in about 17 days.

It is in the bed now, with the lace sheet and pillowcase. Too bad the bed is too small for me to sleep in! All I need now is to make myself some dolls to keep in the bed.

Here is a better look at the little hexagon quilt. The border is the same fabric as I used for my DD Kaija's quilt three years ago, the one that took me 17 years with pauses to finish.


The bed project used about 1.5 m fabrics in all, and washpeg aprons, a secret bag and a bag for Mr. K's bamboo rod took 2.2 m more, so the stash was reduced by 3.7 m. I hope to show the bag soon, and I'm planning to make a completely not quilting or sewing -related post about Mr. K's bamboo project. Oh I almost forgot the polka dot bag, I don't even have a picture of the white one. They were both sewn in July, and used up 2 m of fabrics. Total use was 5.7 m, not very much but not too bad either.

There are still two more possibilities to sign in for my PIF, as Barbara and Heather are so far the only ones on my list. You can read more about this offer in my previous post, if you are interested.

Tour de Hexagon & Pay It Forward

In my last post I promised my new Grandmother's Garden quilt would not take another 17 years to make, as I had one flower block as a leftover from the big project. I had the remaining fabrics still left in a basket, and a handful of basted hexagons. It took me some time on the Pyrenees (with Le Tour de France, on TV, naturally) to make these:

As the cyclists are torturing their muscles on the Alps, I'm stitching. That was quick, wasn't it? I must admit this quilt is not a very large one.

A while ago Melanie announced the PIF challenge she took, and I was one of her lucky three who promised to carry on and pay it forward to another three persons. Do you know what this is all about? The original idea is from a film, and it is living its own life in the blog world. The rules are simple: I promise to send a handmade (by me) gift to the first three people who are willing to join in. I don't know yet what the gift will be, but I will send it within a year from now, probably much sooner. What you need to do to get that gift, is write about the PIF on your blog and make the same promise. I have played along once before, when I had just started my blog, and back then I only had two answers. Therefore I promise a gift to the fourth person as well, to keep my original promise from 2008. Now I'm just waiting for my PIF gift from Melanie to arrive before the end of the year, but meanwhile I would love to start planning nice gifts for you, my dear readers. To give you an idea of the kind of gifts we are talking about, check here (scroll down past the interesting Egypt tour if you just want to see her gift) what Melanie got from Anne Marie, or what I got from a Swedish Ulla.

The weather has been too hot again. Our tomatoes five weeks ago were like this:

And now they are as tall as I am, almost at least. There are some tomatoes too, all green and small but they seem to grow fast. Like they say in the song in West Side Story "everything's big in America".  The tall plants are from the seeds we had from Candace and Mr. Squash. In the lower right corner you can see our Finnish tomato plant in a pot, about 30 cm high so they have hardly grown since the first picture was taken.

I hope you can enjoy the summer, remember to drink enough water if the weather  is hot. Who wants to sign in for the PIF? Be sure I can contact you when you leave a comment.

Sweet surprise

On Monday I had the sweetest surprise mail from Suzie. She was my first PIF contact and I have just shown what I sent her. Now she wanted to thank me and sent me this cute little name panel to wear in class or meetings:








And to help me find the page I was reading last night, she has sewn me this most beautiful bookmark in my favourite colours:




It is only 6,4 cm/2½" wide so you can imagine how tiny the log cabin pieces are. And all corners are sharp! She is a very clever girl, so maybe you should go to her blog and sign her PIF to get something hand made by her. All you need to do is tell her you want to join in her PIF and then publish the rules in your blog, promising to send handmade gifts to the three first persons signing in on your blog to continue this game. There is still one name missing on my list too.

My summer stash challenge quilt is still waiting for progress. I have bought a new backing on Monday, to replace the too small one. Unfortunately this was the last bit the shop had and it ist not very much bigger than the first one, but the colour goes better with the top. Today I will iron the washed backing and sew the seam in the middle and make the sandwich. My wadding has been lying flat since the day I bought it so it will certainly not be bumpy any more. I hope to post some progress pictures tomorrow.

PIF mail in and out

This lovely table runner is made by another Ulla, the one in Sweden in Ulla's Fiber Blog. I received it yesterday as my PIF gift from her, and it is in my favourite colours, different shades of brown.






There was also this sweet little pouch, which blogger insist on showing rotated. It is easy to look at this way too. I have not yet decided what I shall use this pouch for. It could be for lipsticks and nail file in my bag, or some jewelry when I ever happen to travel. The zipper closes perfectly, so the thin chains would not escape. It could also be useful for sewing threads when I go to my sewing group again in September. I love my gifts very much and I'm glad I chose Ulla's PIF to participate.








Here is what I have sent as my PIF gifts to both Suzie and Lesley:






They both like blue so I made them a set of holders for scissors, thimbles, pins and needles. They are useful when you take a small sewing project with you to waiting rooms or trips. I take the opportunity to remind my readers that I still have one gift to send. It may not be like this one, and it may not be very soon, but I can promise it will be sent within a year from my original promise to Pay it forward.


A little update on my Summer Stash Challenge quilt: I bought yesterday the backing fabric and didn't think it was only 90 cm wide insted of the normal 150 or 140 cm. It will not be enough for the size the quilt top was planned to be. After some thinking I ripped off three rows of tumblers and put on a narrow border. Today I will think a little more and decide wheter the borders stay or not, and calculate how many rows can go back if I decide to get rid of the borders. It would be useful to think twice in advance!

It seems that I'm a very slow starter. I still have not put two pieces together in my summer stash challenge quilt, and Eileen will start hand quilting her quilt today! Luckily she will do it by hand, and I'll do mine by machine, so I'm not too much behind. I just wanted to finish my PIF gifts first, and I sent them off on Monday. That was a lot of blue! And I should perhaps inform my new readers that I still miss one name on my list of three! The gift will not necessarily be anything like the ones I have sent, but it will be hand made by me. Check here for the rules, if you are interested!

I have never before had so many of these dark irises! I have brought them from my mother's garden. Two years ago we worked on this flower bed making it a lot smaller and easier for me to take care of, got rid of some flowers and kept these. The yellow ones are from a little start I once dug up at my parent's place. It was growing in the sand on the little "beach" where I learned to swim. I think the waves had brought the first seeds or roots there.

This is another project I have finished, I sewed the last bit of the binding this morning. This is my whirligiggle children's quilt, and I chose the most orange binding. Is this my way of getting ready to be a grandmother someday? This quilt is for no specific child, I just made it because I wanted to try the pattern and recycle the nightgowns!

Next post will show some progress on my challenge quilt, I promise.