Knitting Tour 2017

Like every year in July, I need a knitting project for the many hours I am going to spend with Mr K. watching the Tour de France cycling race. This is the first pair of socks I finished - yes, I know, you have seen three similar pairs already but again the heel is different and this time the leg part is longer than usual.

Next I wanted a pair for little feet, for some 3 or 4 years old person who might love roses and red.

The next pair is again a pattern I used last year already, but I like the bubbles and I like these colours together.

The next pair is on the needles. Today's ride is not a bad one, moderate hills only.

I'll leave you with another picture of our Flammentanz rose, without socks this time. Have a nice weekend!

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.

Tour de Fibre 20 - more stitching

Yesterday's post reminded me of the Scandinavian Christmas quilt I was stitching last year as a part of the Tour de Fibre 2012. I took out another Lynette Anderson project, Scandinavian Snowball Fun, that I was going to stitch together with Melanie last Autumn. Life (and the opposite) happened, and I couldn't get my project started. Melanie has finished ages ago but said she will keep her project secret until I'm ready.

 

 

So I have built a cosy nest on the sofa, where I'm surrounded by the pattern sheets, three snowball blocks to stitch, and my floss and thimbles and needles.

 

I had prepared the blocks months ago but for some reason - again - didn't proceed. I know I have too little dark red floss, so I have stitched on all the blocks with other colours and keep on doing so until on Monday I can buy that missing floss. There is still so much to stitch here! The long  Eurosport broadcasts from the Tour de France in the Alps have been just perfect for this project. Yesterday the Finnish reporters told about a lady who was supposedly knitting on her 4th sweater during the Tour, and they found the idea quite hilarious. They immediately imagined a family wearing a yellow, green, white and dotty sweater. How little do they know! In addition to our Tour de Fibre I have seen a Tour de Fleece for spinners - and they were not having a spinning group at a gym, but making yarn - and there must be other more or less loosely formed groups, who all combine the great cycling event with things to do with their hands while watching. Three weeks of intensive work on old and new projects mean good results! A stitchery in the hand also prevents me from eating all the time quite efficiently.

 

In the garden the hosta is in bloom. We planted 5 plants of 4 different species of hosta some three years ago, and it looks like we have to give them a little more space and replant some of them in a new place.

TdF 13 to 16 - slow progress on Peek-a-Boo Street

The past few days have been busy with a secret project so I'm showing you other pictures. My old rattan basket flower table could not bear the weight of rain but fell through the frame. It was only supported by the pleated rim, and when soaked in the rain it was easily bent. I must soak it again and put it under some weight upside down on a flat surface. The geraniums will get another pot.

 

 

We have had two anniversaries over the weekend, and celebrated the beginning of our story with a wild raspberry cheesecake. Dear Mr. K went to the forest to see how the bilberries are and whether there are any chanterelles yet. Bilberries were not yet ready, chanterelles were not to be seen, but he found lots and lots of perfect, worm free wild raspberries. Delicious!

 

 

 

I have machine quilted the Peek-a-Boo Street quilt and made the binding. I just need to iron it and sew it on, and I will have a perfect TV project for tomorrow's Tour de France.

 

 

TdF 11 and 12 - I'll never be up to date!

It seems that I spend too much time watching the Tour on TV, because I'm always a day late with my posting! Anyway, the central panel for Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring is now done. I just need to make the quilt blocks for this row now, before putting it aside to wait for the applique.

 

Today I started the July stitchery, a cute little chick with an umbrella and rubber boots.

 

I have been machine quilting the Peek-a-Boo Street quilt, hoping to get the binding as my hand sewing project during the Tour. Bindings are such a dull job that they require some TV watching. The backing is a smoky blue flannel.

 

Here you have a glimpse of my new flowerbed with a malva just opening its first flowers. The background is a part of Mr. K's 5 year plan waiting for its turn.

 

 

TdF 9 and 10 - just some progress on two projects

 

This is still the June stitchery for Happy Scrappy Spring. I'm also picking fabrics for the quilt blocks in this row and in July's. I have misplaced a fabric I wanted to use for the connecting chequerboard rows, and I need to find nice wool fabrics for the applique all over the quilt. There will be bunnies, carrots, hearts and flowers at least.

 

The Peek-a-Boo Street quilt is pin basted and ready to be quilted.

TdF 7 and 8, stitching in all kinds of weather

Yesterday we had "local showers":

 

It was raining for about 15 minutes, so hard that the ground couldn't take up the water, and the gravel area of our yard looked like this.

 

I was happily stitching the big central panel of the Happy Scrappy Spring quilt and watching the cyclists in the mountains. Luckily they had a sunny day.

The thunder last night wiped our sky clean and we are having a hot day again. Not a cloud in sight.

 

I couldn't resist showing you one last bird baby picture:

 

 

This was the last baby flycatcher to come out of the nest. They only stay in sight for a few hours on the lawn before they disappear to the safety of the woods to learn the skills needed to cope on their own. Click the image so you can see the fierce look in this one's eyes, and the wide baby peak.





TdF 5 and 6, a little this and that

Have some wild strawberries! The taste and sweetness of a big strawberry squeezed in this size, smaller than a fingertip, and add some sunshine and childhood memories, and a delicious scent. Mr. K picked these for me this morning before he went fishing with DS1.

 

I have almost finished another one of June's stitcheries for Happy Scrappy Spring, and worked on the corner blocks for Peek-a-Boo Street.

 

The babies of Pied Flycatchers came out yesterday. I noticed this one through the kitchen window, on the ground, testing his wings and his lungs. "Mama, I'm hungry! Where are you?", he was chirping. And then louder: "Mama, Papa, can't you see I'm starving? I can open my peak even bigger so you can see where to bring the food!". And finally, in a small voice: "Have you forgotten about me already? Mama, bring me at least some foooood!"

 

And then the Mama came, gave him a mosquito or two, and said: "Look, little fellow, I have others to feed too, but it is time you all start learning how to find your own food and use your wings. Everything is fine, I'm here now. Look here, there is an ant, they are easy to catch. Let me show you!"

 

Tour de Fibre 4 - in our own style

Mr. K and I have our own ways of making the most of the Tour de France. I'm participating in Hanne's and May Britt's Tour de Fibre for the second time, making fibre projects while watching the Tour on TV but also at other times when machine sewing is needed. Today's project is another block of Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring.

 

Mr. K concentrates totally on watching when the TV is on, but before it is TV time, he takes is own bike and put on his hot cycling pants and the bright shirt, a helmet and the cycling shoes and goes for a ride, maybe 25 km or so.

 

I'm glad we live in a rather flat part of the country. The Tour's mountains are frightening, both up and downhill.

Tour de Fibre 3 - The village is up

 

My Peek-a-Boo Street has the centre built and all houses are standing the right way. I must learn to keep all my seam allowances the same width! I had to make the yard of the last house along the moss green sidewalk a little bigger because the houses came out a bit narrow. Triple borders and corners with yo-yo's and flower applique will be next on this list.

 

My summer flowers start to fill the empty spaces in their box and grow nicely. Today was a fresh day after last night's thunder and rain.

Tour de Fibre 2 - building houses and roads

Look how busy I have been in the Peek-a-Boo Street! All houses are built, the garden work is done.

 

 

The pavements need to be finished. This will be such a nice street with cafés, fabric and yarn shops.

 

Wild Summer flowers in an old milk can. Have a wonderful day!

Tour de Fibre 2013/ 1 and pictures from my book fair tour

The Tour de France has started, and so has Hanne's Tour de Fibre 2013. With hours and hours of daily sitting in front of the TV, I'm trying to use that time in a creative and useful way. I'm working on Kaaren's Happy Scrappy Spring stitcheries.

 

 

I have also a little housing project going on. It is called Peek-a-Boo Street, and Stephanie sent me the pattern. I'm using recycled and new fabrics mixed.

 

 

 

 

Near the town of the book fair is an old stone church from the beginning of the 16th century. It is called St. Olaf's Church, and it has an interesting history.

  

 

 Like many old churches it had been replaced by a new church in town and was only used in Summer. It needed renovation, including a large restoration of the 18th century shingle roof. Volunteers completed this work, including 17,000 aspen shingles carved by hand for the roof. The renovation was finished in 1997, but only three weeks  later the church was almost entirely destroyed by arson.

 

 

What did the good people of Tyrvää do? They decided to rebuild their church, and volunteers were called again to the building work. Over the years 1997 to 2003 more than a thousand volunteers participated, with a small core group working every day.

 

You see the text Anno 2000, that is when the new roof was finished. On the other side of the building I noticed the "signature" talkoilla rakennettu - made by volunteers. This time 34,000 shingles were needed because the whole roof needed to be built again.

 

 

 

 The interior is built in the style of old churches, but the paintings are the work of two contemporary artists, Kuutti Lavonen and Osmo Rauhala.

 



 

Kuutti Lavonen painted the panels of the galleries. St. Mark with a lioness.

 

St. Luke with a lamb.

 

St. John with a young eagle.

The pulpit and the altar area have paintings by Osmo Rauhala.

Some pictures of the Story of Creation. The First Day - The Birth of Light. The swirl shows the line of movement of a dove's wing.

The Second Day - The Creation of Rain.

Altar table - The Lamb

 

The Fall of Man - Eve and the Apple, Adam and the Serpent. Rauhala didn't want to paint humans, so he used elephants to picture the Fall of Man. Female elephants offer fruit to the male as a part of their mating process.

Thirst for the Word, the deer.

Door to the sacristy seemed to be original.

Tools used in the renovation work, and some of the original shingles.

Remains of the church door after the arson.

 

The Septenary Cross in the circle on this wall was a theme in one of Lavonen's paintings too.