Childhood revisited

Yesterday I was visiting my mother at her house all day. This is the place where I spent all my summers as a child, and it was my home from age 15 to 22, when I moved to a flat on my own. It has "always" been there, full of memories of happy summer days, winter holidays and finally the permanent home all year round.

I spent some time outdoors pruning her roses and clearing the dead leaves from her flowerbed. I felt like I earned a stroll around before making our afternoon tea. Come along and see what's around the house!
Here we are looking from the back of the house to the lake, still covered with ice and only the shoreline free for a goldeneye couple. My father had a birdhouse for them in a tree near the water. The log cabin on the right is the sauna.

The water is very low at this time of the year. The waves have brought dead leaves to our little sand beach, where my father taught me to swim.

This is a summer picture of my rock "ship" from the other side of the sauna. The little step with the green moss front made it easy to climb on the deck. At that time the spruce branch didn't reach down to my deck. I could sail far away and be back the moment I was called.

Behind the sauna is a wood shed, and in front of it one of the many birdhouses my father has built. He has carved the building year 1996 in this one. He was 81 years old at that time.

The forest around the house is full of big rocks like these:

This one looks like spooky character with green hair of polypody. The rhizome tastes like licorice, but I was always suspecting it could be not safe to chew too much of it.

Behind the carage and father's workshop is a mysterious jungle with a secret river. You can see a narrow bridge across this dark water.

The meadow between the lawn and the forest is about to get blue with liverwort. Where I live now, liverwort is rather rare. Here the wood anemone will soon cover roadsides and forest grounds, while in my childhood I thought of it as an exotic beauty.

Here a closer look, you may recognize this wild flower:

We had a playhouse, also used as a winter storage place for the garden chairs and tables. Here is a sunny summer picture of the building. It was painted white when we were little.

 

Now it is full of things in storage, so I can only let you see some of the loveliness. This old child-size cupboard comes from my mother's playhouse from the 1920's.

 

There were three little doll's buggies ready to take the dolls for a ride. I believe the red ones are from my big sisters and the light blue one belonged to my younger sister. I had a lovely wicker bed for my doll. The iron bed on the right was my mother's.

  

Can you imagine a lovelier window for the back wall of the playhouse?

 

I'm happy I can still visit the old playgrounds. Everything has grown smaller, only the trees are bigger every year. My feet still remember every step of the path from the front lawn to the sauna, but the path will soon be taken over by grass and flowers.

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!

Secrets Revealed

This weekend we went to Tampere to celebrate my Mother's 93rd birthday. Every one of her six children was there, together with two of her sons-in-law and both her daughters-in-law. The youngest grandchild, the only one still living with his parents - my younger son - was representing the next generation. Mother had cooked a giant soup for us which I helped finish, and everyone brought something to share as well, like drinks or bread or cakes or pies. Like in the old times, we all squeezed around the big dining table and enjoyed a delicious meal. - Thank you everyone who sent her congratulations! She was planning the celebration we will have in seven years.

Now I can reveal my secret project, a birthday present for my mother. It is a bedspread for her double bed, matching the curtains I made for her new bedroom four years ago. The big print was originally bought and cut to be curtains by my sister P, but she never finished them. I used the main part of the fabric for the curtains, edged with solid blue.

Now I just cut the remaining prints in biggish squares, added frames in the blue and solid white. I had just enough print (because I found some more at a flea market) for a border around the quilt, and blue for the binding.

My other secret project was a custom order of three more Unicef dolls for my sister Maija. She now has six of her own, representing herself - the first one I made for her - and all her sisters and brothers.

On Tuesday, when my sister P was visiting me, I asked her to change the eyes I had made for the doll representing her. P has heavy eyelids, and she had told me the doll should have too. I had no time to make a new doll from scratch, so all she could do was make up the doll's face. I think it turned out just perfect! The dresses of the dolls T and P are made from each sister's original dress scraps. These dolls are numbers 42 to 44 on my list. I'm still dreaming of making at least 50 of them in total. Unicef gets the adoption fee of minimum 20 €, which will rescue one real child's life through the vaccinations Unicef will buy and arrange for the child.

On Friday I had to deliver stuff for the Christmas Shop at Villa Cooper - why are all the deadlines so close to another? - and luckily I found quite a lot of things that didn't sell last year. Let's just hope the buyers will like them now. I also made some new angels, my main Christmas item. These can stand on a table or a shelf.

The other group prefers hanging around.

This was all for now. Today we have been raking leaves in our yard (yes I know it is kind of late for that) as the snow has melted away and the weather was good. 30 heaps wait for transport to the leave composting area in the back yard! Yesterday morning the temperature was -11C (12 F), and today we had + 4 C (39 F). The winter doesn't know if it should come already.

In Autumn we fill our cupboards and cellars

Last Wednesday I visited my mother in Tampere as a surprise to her, while Mr. K was on a fair all day in town. He brought me there very early, and as I waited for my mother to wake up, I hand sewed the binding of the Giraffe quilt. It is just plain dark brown, a leftover bit from the birthday quilt I made for my BIL in June. The length was exactly right for this little quilt when I used straight seams instead of bias to combine the strips.





This is the reverse side. The green and the dark brown are again leftovers from the Maverick star quilt, the beige is new flannel.






My visit at my mother's included, once again, a raid through her sewing room (guided by her), and another trip to the attic with my sister P, who came there in the afternoon. My loot included small and bigger bits of fabrics like this:

and some old clothes from the attic, some of them made for me by mother, others handed down from one sister to another and another and even another. We usually kept the home made clothes and recycled bought ones to the church or Salvation Army.

I think my mother has even more unfinished projects than I have, but of course she is much older than I am, so there is plenty of time to break her record! This looked like an interesting apron project. It is not just one but at least three aprons. They may have been meant for my school's fundraising fair. The mothers in the "ladies committee" made a tremendous job arranging Christmas Fairs, children's parties and other events to raise money for the school. Not only did they buy and sew curtains for the whole big school, but they managed to get a language lab with 20 sets of tape recorders, headphones and sound isolated desks in the 1960's. For my young readers I can tell that it was very advanced technology, and I spent many lessons there learning to say: I like reading my books. Ann likes reading her books. She sits there. She is sitting there. Do you want to play? Does he want to play? - And the same in French.

On Thursday I will show a couple of the dresses I saved, very vintage as they are! And if I manage to find all necessary parts to make an apron of this mess or of the other project I didn't photograph, you will see the results some day. It is so good to know there is material to work on when the dark, long evenings are just almost there! My fabric stock has never been so full before.

Now my duty calls, I have lots an lots of apples to cook. It is such a lovely, sunny, clear autumn day today. Rain is to be expected tomorrow, so I'll try to pick as much apples as I can today.

Fabrics, Stamps & Tourist Tour Part 2

This will be a huge post with lots of pictures. I take the crafty ones first:



Stephanie from Loft Creations sent me this collection of fabrics in lovely autumn colours, tied with dark brown giant rick-rack, and a spool of Essential thread. Thank you, Stephanie! I'm trying to find a special project for them.

This is what I have been doing, when it was too hot to think about sewing:



I stamped logos on cotton tape, so I can sew them on my bags and aprons for the shop.

And now I take you to the second part of our tiny holiday tour. After the old book fair we drove back to Tampere (on our way home) to find a nice place to eat out. First we wanted to visit the Emil Aaltonen Museum we had heard of. We thought it would be in the old shoe factory building. It wasn't, but this monument by Raimo Utriainen is in front of that factory, which is turned into apartments and offices. You can click all my pictures to enlarge them for details.

The museum is in the house Pyynikinlinna where Emil Aaltonen lived. He started his first workshop as master shoemaker in 1889, and started first industrial footwear manufacture in 1902. The factory was transferred to Tampere in 1905. His business grew into the largest footwear factory in Finland and whole Scandinavia. He also owned a plastic factory and a locomotive factory.

Emil Aaltonen was also an important figure in Finland's national cultural and scientific development. The Emil Aaltonen Foundation has so far donated 9,200 grants, about 55 million euros.

The museum exhibits works from his art collection, masters of older Finnish painting. This link shows pictures of some of them.

After the museum visit we found a place for our late lunch. It was delicious. Then we enjoyed our rare freedom of doing what we want, without considering anyone else's needs, and decided to visit the grave of one of Mr. K's friends. On the way there we noticed we could also visit the oldest building of Tampere, the Messukylä Old Church.

The church was built as a Catholic church in the late Middle Ages, most likely during the first two decades of the 16th century. It is the second church on the same location, the first one was a small, wooden church.

Let's walk around the church now. This is the entrance facing west.

The north wall with a plain window, no glass paintings here.

The gable wall of the vestry is decorated.

Vestry window. The shake roof is typical for old churches in Finland. It is painted with tar, the link has interesting details about the use of tar.

Many different kinds of stone were used for the walls.

The east window behind the altar.

The south entrance, formerly to the arms room, now a part of the church hall.

At the end of the 18th century considerable reparation work was done on the church. The walls were raised by three or four layers of timber (you can see it in the picture below), the wooden entrance porch was built for the new west entrance, and a new barrel vault roof was built.

Now we take a look in. The wall paintings were conserved at the of the 1950s. They had been painted over during the reformation. A wedding just ended here, so the wedding ryijy rug was still there where the couple had kneeled on it.

I wonder if they are ever going to be as happy as this (young) couple still are together?

We were married in this church 29 years ago in July. The photo has changed colour, and so has my hair (and not artificially).

These wooden saint figures and the crucifix are estimated to date back to the 1430s and 1440s, and they remain from the wooden church. The figures are the patriot saint, St. Michael, St. Jacob and the Norwegian king, St. Olav. The most valuable sculpture of Virgin Mary is now kept in the Finnish National Museum.

The pulpit is beautiful with valuable intarsia decorations.

You mustn't think I know this much of all old places. I just happened to work here one summer for a week or so as a guide. The church has always been important for me also because my father worked in the conservation committee when I was little.

The stone fence around the church.

One of the few old cemetery monuments, an iron cross erected for assessor Gabriel Ashman in 1799.

This is the last picture, because the camera battery went flat and because most of you probably stopped reading a while ago. We did got to the cemetery too, and to the other one where my father is buried. On Thursday there will be old crafty books!

EDIT The iron cross is for another clergyman, Taxell, and the latest date on it is 1853. I didn't have a picture of the oldest gravestone from 1799.

Summer Holiday, Tiny but Lovely

Last Friday Mr. Kotkarankki had his work done by lunch, and we had two whole days for just the two of us. This was carefully planned in March, so we tried to make the best of it.

First we drove to Tampere to see my mother, 92. We did some gardening for her, and them Mr. K heated the log sauna for us. It's been many years since we last bathed there. Come and see, this is the path down to the lake.





My mother can't go there with her walking aid, the grass has started to grow on the path.


This is the door to the sauna cabin. The wooden steps are my favourite place to sit and watch the lake, a sunset late late at night, or the rain, or a thunder and lightning, or just people slowly rowing in their boats.

The water is taken from the lake with a pump, and heated here in the washing room.

This is the kiuas to heat the sauna, in the other room. Here is a link to very detailed information about the sauna in English.

We sit up here where the heat rises. The benches are of aspen, it is not hot to sit on (on the towel called laudeliina).

This is what I can see from the steps, our little cove where I learned to swim.

A closer look, the yellow irises in my garden are from here. They are wild.

Don't you want to try if the water is warm?

This is another favourite place, niemenkärki, the point of our tiny cape, where we used to angle for perch and roach and usually get bleak.

After the bath - lake water makes my hair unbelievable soft - it was time to go back to the house and eat a light dinner.

The weather had been hot all day, but the walk back made me remember the time when this place was my home and we would run back in when it was cold and rainy in the autumn. During winter we bathed in the other sauna in the basement of the house.

Early on Saturday morning we left for Vammala for the Old Literature fair. This year's theme was War and Love. This is where my daughter Kaija was last year awarded the second price in a book binding competetition for this book. This year there was no competition, but the weather was even hotter than last year.

This is the school where the lectures and discussions took place. There were also many of the second hand book sellers' stands.

And there was this tent. Not a religious meeting, but more booksellers, and even hotter than indoors.

We found some nice books; I will show my loot on Vintage Thingies Thursday this week.

We were there already before the doors were opened, just in time to have an icecream. When we had spent more money than intended, we decided to drive out of town for lunch. In my next post I will tell you more about it. It is too hot to sew, and I must see my dentist tomorrow morning and my doctor before lunch, so there really is nothing crafty to show in the near future.

This last scene is from the local market place, where we found the last book or two, OK, two for me and one for him. The water made the place feel fresh in spite of the heat. I know some of my readers are from really warm places, but the weekend's 27 degrees C (80.6F) was too hot for me.