This and that ..

...which means I haven't finished anything to show you but wanted to let you know I'm still here. Mr. K has finished something:

 

 

This is our new pergola/patio/terrace - I'll be happy to hear what it should be called. Our new outdoors coffee place with no roof, half walls on three sides, and a trellis for future parthenocissus or other creepers. Last Saturday we celebrated the opening of this space with most of our sisters and brothers and all our children, and their spouses. The weather was hot and sunny, and this was definitely the place to get the most sun and warmth. It was very nice to be gathered "just because".

 

My Summer flowers enjoy this warmer than usual weather. Six weeks ago they looked like this. The begonias (pink, on both sides of the Blacke-Eyed Susanna) are hiding under the other flowers now.

 

And while you looked at that post with the flower box you saw the quilt in process. It was finished a while ago, but last week I finally made the label and this week I took the Peek-a-Boo Street quilt to the nursing home where Mr. K's father lived his last years. The staff was surprised and happy to get the quilt, comfortable size for someone sitting in a wheelchair.

 

I promised to make other quilts for them in the future. I think it makes more sense than sending them to the other side of the world. I just didn't know this need excisted so close to home. A perfect address for quilts I want to make but have no space for!

 

The other day we heard a humming sound and saw something very black flying in the living room. It couldn't be a bumble bee! It was like a heavily loaded cargo aeroplane compared to a passenger plane. It bumped into the window and left a black mark, and I think it fainted and died. I swept under the sofa and found this:

 

A mini chimney sweeper! It was indeed a bumble bee that had come down the chimney and past the dampers, and it was covered in soot and therefore could not fly properly.

 

Knitted graffiti revisited:

 

 

My piece has stretched and it has been moved to the other end of the rail, and now I can touch it every time I come from the train and cross the street right here.

 

Other pieces have also moved a little, but no real damage seems to be done. I even comeared these with my old photos and I think nothing has been removed - or added after I added mine.

 

So, what is the newest red and white  building in our yard?

 

Summer doings

Lately I have been busy with my weekly dose of the Between Charming Friends quilt along. This week I have assembled the blocks together for the quilt center and have about one day to finish the inner and outer borders.

What kept me from doing that was another project, with a strict deadline on June 30th, so naturally the strings had to be attached first. Here is a handbag for Stephanie's challenge, sewn with donated strings from my endless stash. I bought some black linen for this when I couldn't find my linen stash, but looking for something else I happened to dive  into a plastic bag with linen scraps and an almost 2 m piece of black linen! So the handbag is completely from stash fabrics after all. I used here the grommets Stephanie sent me some time ago, using the instructions on the back of the packing, Stephanie's tutorial and the encouragement of Suzie.

The other side is also stringy. I took the bag picture with my not so early peonies, but only a few can be seen there, so here is another view. Yesterday they were all just closed buds.

My vegetable patch has changed a lot in 4 weeks, but the only harvest so far can come from the herbs we bought in pots and some lettuce I planted here after using the big leaves for salad. The radishes (two first rows from left) are about 1/4" thick.

I feel heroic after having cleaned the living room windows, finally! The new fireplace caused a repair work on the parquet, and the whole floor had to be treated so there was no colour difference between old and new boards. When this dusty business was over (yesterday), it was so necessary but also so easy to clean the windows. If we had empty rooms with no furniture and especially no "stuff",  cleaning the house would only take a few minutes. But now we are slowly returning to normal life with carpets on the floors, chairs and tables in the room, and I might even hang the curtains some day.

Fireplace story

Once upon a time there was a godfather who thought he could design a perfect fireplace, and so it was built in his friend's house as well as his own. The houses were identical. The other family moved in their house on the day their grandson was born, and the godfather was asked to be his godfather. The grandson was Mr. K.

His grandparents tried to make a fire in their perfect fireplace, but all they got was smoke in the house. So the fireplace became a landing place for things. When we moved in almost 30 years ago, we started our own collection of things, like copper basins with dried roses, big vases too big for cupboards, jars for coins, beautiful things, important papers, sports trophies, small paintings and nice books. A very bulky narrow shelf, if I may say so.

You can see how the attempts to keep a fire have blackened the red bricks. Last winter was a very cold one for several weeks, and we began to think how nice it would be to sit in front of a fire and to have a warm house, and to save on oil.

So we looked at brochures and chose a fireplace, but first the old one had to go:

Half way gone!

It's all gone!

The new fireplace is being built.

And there it is, with a gaping hole around it to be fixed in one way or another. We need to wait for some weeks before making a fire so the mortar can dry. The plastic on the wall will go, too. Sorry godfather, your fireplace was no good! I miss the shelf though.

Today Mr. K was making me a raised vegetable bed and took our "self made soil" from the leaves compost for it. He called me and asked to bring the camera so we could have a picture of a blindworm. They are very rare nowadays. It is not a snake but a legless lizard, the brazen serpent. This was a big one, and about as thick as my little finger.

While I was out, I also took a picture of the lilies of the valley. In German they are called Maiglöckchen, little May bells, but up here they don't always come before June.

The fireplace project has been taking over our living room so I could not do much hand sewing there, but I hope things will change for the better. Unless the floor man comes and everything must be cleared away ...

Mother's Day

Today we visited my Mother and I picked her these flowers from her garden:


This is the place where I have spent all my summers until I was twenty, and lived there until I moved away from home at the age of 23 (the last summers I was working abroad for my studies).



My heart aches every time I leave this house, because I know it will not be there forever for me to visit. My mother is 91 and lives there alone. She is very healthy and cannot imagine leaving the house. I can understand her view. On a beautiful day it is like this:

This is the sauna by the lake. I think this is a lot like paradise. There are about a million photos taken from this spot, by all of us who love Rantakoto. This is the newest, taken today.