Old Easter Traditions and Nice Flowers

Twice a week I take the train to the next town, do my sewing related shopping in private, without darling Mr. Kotkarankki, (who, after all, is only a male,) have some Caffe Latte or a nice cup of tea (the niceness guaranteed now that I have this sweet tea wallet from Dawn, my Time for Tea Swap partner), and meet with him later to do the grocery shopping. This is the place where we shop, and my latte table is just behind the corner on the right, where I can see the florist's arrangements. I took these pictures recently, they are for Easter.



I really liked the feather wreaths. Mr. K might want to use some of this for his fishing flies.



Yellow is the real colour for Easter, isn't it?

There was also a big bunny hiding behind a pillar.

The old Easter tradition I wanted to tell you about is this special Easter dessert called mämmi. It is a originally from South-Western Finland, hundreds of years old traditional food of the Lent. The ingredients are water, rye flour, rye malt and salt, nowadays also syrup, bitter orange and orange peel marmalade. The water is first heated, the flour and malt mixed in and left to gain sweetness. Then the porridge-like mixture is baked in the oven for a long time. The result is dark brown and a little sticky. It is served cold, with sugar and cream as a dessert. Originally it was a clever way to meet the strict regulations of Lent food (no sugar) and still have a sweet taste from the malt.

You can see the little stripes on the box; originally mämmi was baked in the oven in boxes made of birchbark. Traditions change over the years, and now mämmi is made in bakeries, bought from the shop, and available refrigerated from New Year until Midsummer. Most people buy a box or two at Easter and serve it as a delicious dessert on Easter Sunday. Modern Finns have also protected the name and origin of our specialty in the EU, just like Feta cheese and Parmesan have been protected. Nobody can start cooking rye porridge in Spain or France and call it mämmi!

Vintage Thingies Thursday 18 - Tea Set

This week I'm showing you something I used when I took pictures of my new tea cosy made by the talented Dawn from Piece & Love for me for the Time for Tea Swap. Coloradolady is hosting Vintage Thingies Thursday again, and on her blog you find the list of links to all the other blogs playing along this week.

My vintage thingies are a silver tea/coffee set and a little tablecloth. We had the silver set from my parents as a silver wedding anniversary some years ago. They have been birthday presents for my maternal grandfather.

The tray has a different pattern but they have always been used together.

The tablecloth is a very small one, with a clover pattern in each corner. Like all my old tablecloths, this comes from my family but I don't know who made it. The stitching is very simple so this may be a beginner's work. The colours go very nicely with my new tea cosy!

Now go to Suzanne's blog to visit the other vintage posts, and notice that Suzanne is also having a giveaway for her birthday on Saturday!

Some finishes, and new toys

You may remember I was working on these hexagons many weeks ago. Now I have finally finished them, with heavy interfacing and honeycomb weave backing. I think they make nice coasters.



The other day I was playing with my textile paints. I printed some hearts on this kitchen towel.


Yesterday I received a package from the other side of the Atlantic. You can imagine my surprise when these two fellows climbed out of the box! They are Ann and Andy, and Eileen made them just for me! Thank you, sweet dear friend! Eileen used an original pattern from 1940, and I can dress and undress the dolls. The way Andy is behaving, I'm afraid there will be laundry to wash sooner or later. Every detail is perfectly sewn.

Raggedy Ann and her brother Andy wanted to sit in the snow at first, because they thought it was a little exotic at this time of the year.

Ann wanted to see if there was anything to see in my flowerbed, because at Eileen's there are crocuses by now. Well, I have snow. Oops, her pantalettes are showing!

Ann came in and needed a nice cup of hot sweet tea with some cucumber sandwiches. She even brought my old kettle to her tea table, to freshen up the tea when Andy comes in. By the fierplace it is warm to sit. Her little biscuits are in the tin. What a lucky girl I was to receive this tea set from my Time for Tea Swap partner Dawn earlier this week! I have had a porcelain tea set in doll size but it must still be at my mother's house.

Guess what Andy was doing when Ann sat nicely and had her tea? He was climbing in the oak tree in our back yard and wanted to see Charlie the squirrel eating at the bird feeder. Of course none of the squirrels, not to mention the birds, dared come when there was a little boy just a couple of feet away. I had to get him in before he caught cold.

Speaking of birds reminded me of something beautiful I saw Monday afternoon when coming from town: a white hooper swan was flying to the South! It must have come here to check if there was open water anywhere, and went back because everything is still covered in ice and snow.

Time for Tea Swap Loveliness

Last night I received my swap delivery from across the ocean. Dawn from Piece & Love was my partner, and she sent me a huge amount of lovely things.


These she made herself:

The most beautiful tea cosy, and a matching tea towel and potholder, a cute little tea wallet with a snap button and some tea bags, and two clothespegs with magnets and yo-yos with tea themed buttons. All in the lovely fabric with teapots and sewing machines - what could be more suitable? The tea towel has yellow giant rickrack, and prairie points at the edge, the first ones I see live! I live in the periphery of the world, we don't do such fancy things here!

Machine quilting on the backside of the tea cosy. Blogger turned the picture but let's not care. I think I need a straw hat like that for the summer for my tea parties.

Look at this loveliness! Dawn has hand stitched the text and the flowery steam coming from the teapot. There is another yo-yo on the pot, with a tea button. You may notice how perfectly the tea cosy matches with one of my vintage tablecloths.

Dawn included a lot of extras in her gift for me: a booklet full of cookie recipes, a tiny tea set just for me, and a quilting magazine. Even her card shows ladies drinking tea! The magazine cover tells on the left-hand corner that rickrack makes comeback - I have always loved rickrack, and after I started blogging I learnt its name in English and found it even more fun (koukkunauha doesn't sound funny at all).

After this wonderful swap I don't think I'll join any for a long time. Anything must feel like a disappointment after this. We had a perfect hostess, Stephanie, who fed us with the most inspiring links every Tuesday. And now is the time to take rounds around the blogs to see what everyone has made with the inspiration. Stephanie's list shows who has already received her goodies. The ultimate deadline was only yesterday, so the parcels will keep coming for a while. Go and have a look!

Short travel report

Long time since I last posted! We had a five-day holiday in Germany over last weekend, and you all know how it takes some days to get back to the everyday routines.


In the first mail I opened after the trip was an envelope from the USA, with this sweet house:


It was from Stephanie, our Time for Tea Swap hostess. You may have seen them on other blogs as well this week: she made one for each of us! On the other side there is a pocket just big enough for a tea bag. Mine was white tea with raspberry! Go and see Stephanie's blog, she is making the most interesting blocks with ladies with personality!


Now I'm going to take you on a little tour to Germany with me. This was my third time ever in Munich, Mr. Kotkarankki's sister lives in a small town just outside Munich. My first visit was to her eldest son's christening 28 years ago, and on the second visit we only saw the airport. Mr. Kotkarankki has been there a lot, so we went shopping alone on Friday. It was 12 o'clock when we emerged from the S-Bahn. First we saw the Cathedral with one of the towers hooded for some renovation work, and the City Hall in front.

The musical dancing figures of the City Hall tower are a tourist attraction. It was raining lightly, so we didn't stay long watching them.

Thi last picture is from Saturday, when we made another trip there with his sister. We went to the Alte Pinakothek and saw lots of old paintings from Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and some less famous painters. Afterwards we enjoyed coffee and tea with big pieces of cake at the Wiener Cafe.

I have more pictures from our Sunday excursion, but they will have to wait.

I had another special mail, from Melanie, but at the moment I can only say the things were wrapped in red! Thank you Melanie for your Random Act of Kindness!

Between laundry, cleaning and ironing I have been sewing my first ever quilt-as-you-go blocks for Jan at Ozcomfortquilts. She uses 10.5" string blocks to make quilts for the Victoria bush fire victims in Australia. I used mostly strips from the bag I received some years ago with the half-finished quilt top I called the stranger quilt because I didn't know who originally started the quilt.

I hope to get the blocks mailed tomorrow, and then I will try to catch up with my Country Calendar blocks - February and March!

Vintage Thingies Thursday 17 - Tea Cosies

This week I'm playing along again! The Coloradolady is hosting, and on her blog here you can find the links to other blogs showing their vintage finds and treasures.

This week I'll show you two of my newer tea cosies. This first one is from the 1960's, very straight edges and stripes. The fabric is heavy cotton and the insulation layer is foamy plastic. The stain may be coffee or tea; I'll need to try and wash it away.

This other one is more interesting. The covering chintz is from the 1950's. The tea cosy is very heavy. When my mother gave this one to me, she told me I could renew the insulation. I picked up the seam connecting to top fabric and the inner flannel, and guess what I found? The original wool fabric (dark red with a cream pattern, heavily damaged by burning and stains), and the original insulation. It was newspapers dated several years before my birth! I left all the original pages there, added some new news, washed the fabrics and put it all together again.

I think this fabric has a Mediterranean touch, hot summer days and laundry lines across the window. The tea cosy was used also in the garden when we had mid-morning tea and coffee ("elva-kaffe" like our grandmother used to say) or afternoon coffee with the grandparents, great aunt Saima, my parents, the kids who happened to be at home and the summer exchange students or other friends we happened to have living in the house in later years.

There was a round table, four wooden garden chairs, two benches and the lawn to sit on. Naturally, the sun was always shining, the lake was blue and the birds were singing.

In this last picture is a generous peek at the secret Tea Swap project I have been working on. I'm leaving for a little holiday trip tonight, and when I come back on Tuesday evening, I will pack this and the other two things together and send them on their long way on Wednesday.

Socks and Secrets

Our local newspaper Keski-Uusimaa invited everyone to knit socks "for a friend". All socks sent to the newspaper will be given for charity in this area before Valentine's Day. (Valentine's day is here called "friends' day", we deal better with less romantic love! So it is suitable to send cards to all your friends, or not.) They received 174 pairs in just a few weeks; the appeal was made after Christmas. Now all socks are exhibited at the shopping centre, and the public can vote for their favourite pair from 12. The selected socks can be seen on the newpaper's website here.






The other socks were grouped by colour for display:


The knitters were asked to make their own pattern and use their imagination.

Some socks were obviously knitted by beginners. The ones I'm showing are among the best. I am not a knitter although I can knit socks and other things; I just wanted to show you the variety.

I may have told earlier that I kind of like ironing. Last week my old faithful ironing board collapsed, and I needed a new one. Here it is:

The new one is higher, wider and longer than the old one. and it has this nice holder for the cable. You can see my ironing pile on the dining chair behind the board: there are only two table cloths and one men's shirt left after today's test drive.

I have been making my secret Time for Tea Swap projects, and now I can give a little peek on what is coming. Here is some embroidery:

And the other project is more in the quilting department.

This last one will not be sent away so you can see a litttle more of it.

I have some new plans in mind, too. There is still time to start a smallish project, I think. On the other hand, I just downloaded the February block for my Country Calendar BOM from Ellie's Quiltplace. It is a nice one and will not take too long, especially because I have already stitched the name of the month.

Icing

Yesterday we had a beautiful, sunny day with -15 degrees C or +5 F, no wind, the sun felt warm on my face when I took these photos. The bare trees had literally icing on the branches; I believe I could have heard a little tinkling if there had been any wind. You can click the photos to enlarge and see the glass-like ice.








I took the photos at noon, to demonstrate the increase of light around these northern corners at this time of the year. On January 31st the sun rose at 8.37 a.m. and set at 4.31 p.m. This is how high the sun was at the highest:





The following picture was taken a month ago, on December 31st at noon in the same place. Sunrise was at 9.24 a.m. and sunset at 3.23 p.m. My almanach states the dark hours of the 22nd day of each month; in December it was dark for 16 h 14 min on that day and in January only 15 h 8 min. The time of morning grey and twilight was in December 51 minutes and in January 58 minutes. By the spring equinox the day will be about five hours longer than now.

With the increasing light I hope to increase my energy as well. I'm thinking about things like changing the plants in bigger pots, reorganizing some more stash, starting some new projects and so on. Next week my dear daughter Kaija will come and stay in her old room for a couple of days; she will be starting a new school and there will be a few school days per month near here. Having her here will inspire me. I'm sure I will want to have something to show when she comes back from school!

A couple of days ago Suzie, the Little Busy Bee, gave me this award:

Thank you, Suzie!
It came without any rules, and that is how I'm giving it forward to the following creative bloggers:

Eileen

Ewa-Christine

Gunnel

Kaija

Karen

Melanie

As an awarded creative blogger I feel like I ought to show something I have been sewing for a change. I have been mainly working on the stars I have already shown, and on the very secret Time of Tea Swap, so no crafty photos doesn't mean I have been lazy! I will try to make some sneaky peek photos of the tea project when the sun is up again.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 15 - Time for Tea

My this week's vintage thingies are tea related, because I'm in the middle of the Time for Tea Swap projects. That includes lots of information on tea through Stephanie's blog, and drinking extra cups of Earl Grey to keep the ideas coming! Suzanne is hosting the Vintage Thingies Thursdays, and links to other blogs showing vintage things are here.





Tea tastes really different from a thin china cup. These are from my mother around the time I started my own household. The cups are from Japan or China, from the early part of 1900. The pot is from a different set.

The lid is secured with a piece of string, because it falls off too easily. It is just a round lid, without the extra bit to keep it secure when pouring the tea. The ladies of the pot look Japanese to me.

It was easier to show the cup upside down. There are no marks to show where the cup was manufactured.

The saucer has the same picture.

Finally the tea cosy, from about the same period. I have shown this one before. Linen, with cotton embroidery. It was stitched by my now famous great aunt Saima or her big sister, my grandmother. I made the lining and put the tea cosy together.

The table runner in the first picture is from grandmother or her sister, too (Saima lived in her sister's family). It has been used a lot, mended, and stained. No wonder, it looks very lovely, and the tea pot has a runny nose!

Go and see the Coloradolady to find all other lovely vintage thingies!

Tea Tuesday, and some Tagging

Another Tea Swapper Melanie was showing her many different English ways of serving tea. Go and see, it is a lovely collection of photos from 2008, with fresh strawberries and all! My tea culture has influences from east and west, and my blog friends in Britain might be shocked to see the way we make tea. My modern way of drinking tea is this:






A mug (Arabia/Iittala Teema, special edition in red, a Christmas present), a coaster from Melanie, and black tea with nothing in it: no sugar, honey or raspberry jam (the Russian way), and for God's sake no milk. Therefore no spoon needed. This is a mid-morning cup, therefore nothing to eat either.


On Saturday we visited my mother, 92, still living alone at home. There was a lot of snow on the trees, so it was not easy to see the lake. You can get a peek in the middle of the picture, above the snow covered rock. The white area is the lake, and the dark area above the straight horizontal line is an island. You can click all my images to enlarge.




Mother had started putting together a 1,000 pcs jigsaw puzzle my youngest sister had given her for Christmas. The picture will be of an old Dutch painting with 12 persons and a dog, but also some dark corners is brown and black.

I have been tagged by Miri. I'm not very good at these things, but let's try.

Here are the rules of the game:
1. When you are tagged you are asked to list eight random facts about yourself and post them on your blog for visitors to enjoy.
2. Tag eight of your blogging friends and leave them a comment that they have been tagged and to join in the fun if they have the opportunity. (If not, that's okay. They can still enjoy the random facts everyone shares :) Be sure to list a link to your eight friends in your posting.

Here are my eight random facts:

1. My "name day" (a smaller celebration than birthday, all names have a day in the calendar, and variations of a name celebrate on the same day) is on my father's birthday. It was a special day for my mother as a teenager when she was already in love with him, and she wanted to call one of her daughters Ulla for this reason.

2. I drink black tea three to four times a day.

3. When I drink coffee, it is latte (1/8 coffee, 7/8 steamed milk) or cafe au lait.

4. I sort everything that needs to be thrown away. In addition to the one real waste bin I have two small containers for problem waste (batteries and medicins), 4 bins for recycling: compost, glass, metal, and packaging materials, and we take fluid cartons and newspapers to their separate recycling places. It goes without saying that we recycle all bottles to be reused, and get our money back (0.40 € for a big soft drink bottle).

5. Fabrics that other people need to throw away I turn into quilts and Unicef dolls. This doesn't happen very quickly!

6. I like old things.

7. I read a little in bed before going to sleep.

8. I have read all Agatha Christie's detective stories.

Here comes the difficult part. I have many blogging friends, and even more blogs I follow more or less regularly, but I don't really know which of them don't like to be tagged. Therefore I leave the choice to you, my reader. If you want to play this game, leave a comment with a link to your blog and copy the rules from above. In this way we can all come and learn a little more about you.

Stars and prints

Last night I was in my sewing group again. This time I took my own needles and my presser foot with the 1/4" lines along; luckily they too have Husqvarna sewing machines at the school! I saw this tutorial on Belinda's blog some time ago, when I was lurking around all the Tea Swappers' blogs. I think this star is cute, and the tutorial shows a very easy way to make them. I don't cut my star point bits at all before sewing them, because I use very small scraps here. My squares are 2½", a little bigger than Belinda's. This will be my fun project I can always take on when I don't get my other things done.




Yesterday was a nice day to be outdoors, we had just a little new snow. The animals had left their marks on the white surface. Here are some little bird's footprints, the dark things are sunflower seeds or their hulls from the tray hanging above. The birds we most often see here are the great tit, blue tit and green finch. The squirrels drop a lot when they eat there, and birds can come and eat on the ground at the same time. Sometimes they change places.

Here are the squirrel's prints at the feeding place.

A hare lives also in the forest around our house. Its footprints are easy to recognise:

This little fellow is having a hard time in winter.

It is the mouse. He hides in the snow, making tunnels.

And this is why the mouse wants to hide:

Some neighbour's cat always keeps coming to our yard, peeing in the corners and pooing in the sand under our kitchen steps. The least the cat should do is keep the mice and moles away!

Today there is no sign of these footsteps left. Last night it snowed over 10 cm or 4". I spent almost two hours pushing the snow away from the easy parts of the driveway. I only do the parts where I don't have to push up any slopes to get the snow out of the way. My only responsibility is the front door steps and the path to that door, but I did some more because the weather was good and my one hour's work brings DH home half an hour earlier. Which, I hear, is right now, so I will go and make us a well deserved, nice cup of tea.