December 10 - Villa Cooper revisited

Welcome again to Villa Cooper! These wreaths hang by the entrance, where they will keep fresh. They are perfect for welcoming guests at your door.

The dining table was covered with handmade candles is all sizes and colours.

Wreaths for indoor use, and tonttu elves in many sizes and materials.

Modern versions of himmeli. This link is in Finnish but the photos show the basic construction of any himmeli. You need straw, linen thread and a needle and scissors!

Come again tomorrow and I will show you some more!

Day 19

Wreaths, candles and hand made Christmas cards.

Table runners, stars and other ornaments.

Himmeli ornaments made of straw in a traditional way.

Himmeli

Himmeli is made of rye straw for Christmas. It is a traditional Scandinavian ornament, and the name comes from the Swedish and German word Himmel meaning heaven or sky.

I have seen them made of plastic straws in bright colours but for me the original material is the only right one.

The tour continues

There is a closet under the stairs in Villa Cooper's old dining room. It is used for small scale exhibitions. This time the theme is old toys from our members. These are from the 1940's to 1980's.

 

More tonttu elves.

 

Himmeli traditional straw decorations in the dining room.

More to follow!

Christmas in Villa Cooper

Welcome to a tour in the Villa Cooper, my craft club's shop and architectural treasure in Järvenpää. I took the pictures yesterday in the afternoon, here are the entrance hall and office windows around 4 pm.

In the little entrance hall we must put those protective wax cloth things over our shoes to save the original wooden floors. Felted hearts and felted bullfinches have joined the tiny tonttu elves at the window and on the windowsill.

The table was set for Christmas in the biggest room. We'll see the other rooms next time.

The fireplaces are not used for heating for safety reasons.

Big tonttu elves.

Traditional Finnish himmeli decorations made of straw.

Handmade books and pottery.

A closer look at the dining table.

More ceramics and hand painted china.

 

A nativity scene and some blue lanterns for tealight candles.

Modern Christmas decorations.

Wreaths made of materials from the nature.

Angels by many designers.

Shiny hearts.

This was all for today, we'll visit the other rooms soon. I hope you enjoyed the tour.

Vintage Thingies 50 - Straw Goat

This is my 50th VTT. Suzanne is hosting again, and the links are here.

 

This is a traditional Finnish Christmas ornament, a goat made of straw. My mother-in-law made it for me and

my family in the early 80's, so it can be counted for vintage.

 

What does a goat have to do with Christmas? Long time ago masked young men wearing goat horns and a fur coat went from house to house begging for the last Christmas beer on January 7th, when the Christmas season was over. Their version of trick or treating! At some places they did this also before Christmas, sometimes throwing little gifts through the door and disappearing before being seen.  (This was the beginning of the Father Christmas character as well. His Finnish name is Joulupukki, joulu = Christmas, pukki = goat.) The straw goat is related to this tradition; it was important to see that the straw goat ornament had enough beer to drink. Straw items, like the more Finnish tradition himmeli, are usually referring to good harvest or fertility. The straw goat tradition comes to us from Sweden. There is a giant straw goat every year in Gävle, but it usually gets burned by bad boys before Christmas.

The real Joulupukki's office is here in English, you can follow several links and see tonttu elves at work, Finnish reindeers and arctic landscapes. I hope it will give you Christmas spirits!

Shopping day

On Thursday I went for a short shopping tour to Helsinki on my own. I found almost all I needed, and a glimpse of sweet things I remember from years back. This is one of the shopping streets, Aleksanterinkatu, with the traditional lights and A letters. Even the Salvation Army's pot belongs right there, in front of the Stockmann department store.





This is a new tradition, a Christmas market Tuomaan markkinat in the Esplanade park.

The statue of J L Runeberg, a famous Finnish poet.

Onse again, himmeli and other straw decorations.

The Finnish elves are called tonttu and they look like this:

Every year since my early childhood I have seen the Christmas window of the Stockmann department store. There was one in Tampere too, where I grew up. The decoration was different every year, but always with lots and lots of details and moving figures. This time there were children ice skating with a snowman, and small forest animals preparing for Christmas.

The snowman was making circles.

There is always a platform for the little ones so they can get closer and see all the details.

The mice were having a cosy time in their house under the snow.

From the other window you could see the hare family. They had their little Christmas tree in front of the house.

I wasn't the only grown-up remembering the windows from years back. Many mothers told their little ones what kind of windows they remembered from their childhood.

And now back to crafty business. I have been stitching along with Mikes, and now I have finished the Christmas stockings. The snowman figure is my own drawing, and the elf is a combination of Pip's two patterns - I wanted the owl and little bird to go with the boy elf.

I added a Christmas babric to the top edge to make the stocking longer. When I was filling it, I realized that less would have been better!

Here I started cutting along the stitching line so the snowman is a little further from the heel than I meant him to be. Both stockings will go to Turku with my daughter Kaija, who is at the moment visiting us for the weekend.

This was all for today. I hope you are not too stressed with your preparations. Take it easy!

Friends make me happy

Today I received my first Christmas mail. I was so excitedand in a hurry I couldn't take pictures of opening it(we had just finished eating and I was going to drive into village with DH to mail my Christmas mail). It was from my dear friend Eileen from across the ocean. There was a sound to be heard from the envelope! A jingle!


This cute little bag was in the envelope, and a familiar piece of feedsack she had told about on her blog. In the bag were three cute owls she had been teasing us with, showing the bits on her blog, and I thought she was making some flowers!

There were also two lovebirds made of feedsack fabric, and some scented tea and a cinnamon stick to mix it with. I feel so lucky to have a friend like her! Now I need to clear a corner of the house and hang the owls there. The lovebirds are already hanging from the lamp above our dining table, jingling their silver feet.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Elma Countryside Fair in Helsinki and poseted about it. I forgot to show something I bought there, a real bargain for 7 € only:

I have so much plaid in my stash and some more easily available from DH's closet that I thought I could use some patterns for the next plaid quilts I'm going to make in future.

At the fair there was also a woman who made decorations of straw. I posted the pictures, because I had sent some straw and some links to my friend Melanie in England, thinking she might be willing to give it a try. And there it is, in her blog, today, a genuine Finnish Christmas decoration made by her. Go and have a look, she always has such wonderful pictures. And if you want to know more about the himmeli decoration, click the link and you can see a Finnish page with a video of the basic idea.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 9

Time flies and it is Thursday again. A good excuse to show old things and hide the fact that I haven't finished anything I could show you! Coloradolady is hosting this fun with a Guest writer, and in her blog you find the links to other blogs participating this week.





This is an old Christmas angel made of rye straw. It is from my childhood home, and I took the picture in October when I was visiting my sister Maija in Germany. Looking at the picture now I remember that there used to be a halo behind the angel's head, made of gold paper. There were two of these, one must be from our maternal grandmother. The wings have suffered a little during all the years, but she is still shiny and beautiful.






This other, typical Finnish Christmas decoration is himmeli, also made of shiny rye straw. Our mother has made this for my sister, and she keeps it in the living room all the time. The himmeli decoration is easily breakable and needs to be stored hanging, so why not hang it so everyone can see it. In the old days the himmeli stayed in the ceiling until next summer, and a new decoration was made every year for Christmas.





This is all for this time, because all my own Christmas things are still on the attic neatly packed.

It's beginning to look like Christmas

On Saturday the Villa Cooper was all dressed up for Christmas. We had a little Christmas market in the garden, nine brave women in warm clothes behind their tables of christmassy crafts. I was one of them, and I can tell you it was cold! My feet were freezing, because I couldn't wear more than one pair of woollen socks with my flight socks, the shoes were a little too tight. It was only a little below zero Celsius, around 26 Fahrenheit, but standing outdoors in that temperature for five hours is cold. A very curious thing happened, though: I had a sore throat during the week and my voice was like a crow's, but today no more sore throat! Maybe it was all the hot tea and glögi I drank there. Glögi is a Scandinavian hot Christmas season drink, hot berry juice with spice like cinnamon and ginger, ofter served with raisins and almonds in the mug. Other versions include various amounts of alcohol.



Here is a tour around the house, tables being set up by the entrance:





Kitchen window and the wheelchair ramp built last summer.




View from the garden.

Big dining room decorated with christmas things for sale. Notice the modern version of himmeli straw decoration hanging from the ceiling. You can click all pictures for detail.

Christmas lights and angels on the windowsill.

Kitchen and candles.

Toy cupboard.

Little elves, tonttu, Santa's little helpers who will keep track on who has been good and who has been bad. They also make Christmas presents in Korvatunturi near the Arctic Cirle, where the real Father Christmas lives, like every child in Finland knows.