Greetings from Britain and two new CO finishes

The holiday is over and I bring you greetings from London and Oxford. I took my daughter on the trip and she was a wonderful guide and source of information in London. Before the trip I created something new for the Craft Olympics. We have a saying about something coming up like mushrooms on rainy weather. Like this:

 

... and suddenly there are some chanterelles too...

 

 

... and before you notice the toadstools have popped up. This is my finish for the New Category of the Craft Olympics, my own designs in crochet and knitting.

 

For the Special Category I sewed a little rucksack with a zipper in the front

 

 

and another zipper in the back for another pocket, and adjustable straps.

 

The craftiest part of our trip was this fence in Oxford, with lovely pieces of knitted and crocheted graffiti art.

 

Can you guess how we got to see this, and C.S.Lewis' and J.R.R.Tolkien's favourite pub, and the place where Inspector Morse used to sit and have beer, and the Ashmolean Museum and many other places? We had an experienced guide with local inside information, and many of my dear readers have enjoyed her guided tours in different parts of Britain and other places. Did you guess her name already? It was Melanie, and she tailored us an all day program based on our interests, and came all the way from home to her old home town  to meet us. My next post will cover the first part of our stay in London, but we'll come back to Oxford after that.

 

Meanwhile, Autumn has arrived to our part of Finland. The leaves are turning red and yellow, and I look forward to sunny days with cool, clear air and fresh wind.

 

 

Busy weeks

September is such a short month. I have been busy making apple sauce, 91 jars in all. That ought to be enough for the year, anyway I can't squeeze any more jars on the cellar shelves.

 

 

In the evenings - the days are getting shorter every week - I have knitted the last squares for this little blanket and crocheted them together.

Then I have knitted a secret gift which is also my first Craft Olympics project. I'm sorry I can't show more!

I made new curtains for one of the new windows we had installed this Summer.

The trees have started to change their colour, some birches have even dropped their leaves already.

 

Our garden must look a bit like a witch's garden with so many poisonous toadstools

 

 

and berries. Lily of the valley - Convállaria majális - is also poisonous.

 

 

The open college sewing group I have attended for many years already was too small to start this Autumn, only three of us wanted to join. We decided to have our own group without any fee, and tomorrow will be our second meeting at Mr. K's conference room. It is a "bring your own sewing machine" night, but I think I will bring my own light box and start preparing for my next Craft Olympics thimble.

Autumn colours and harvest time, knitting

On Friday we had a very warm weather and I had a long walk in the forest. It is harvest time. Combine machines have threshed the corn, berries have been picked in the gardens. There are still wild berries in the forest, like arctic bilberries

and lingonberries

Hawthorn berries in a tree in the park of the library:

Lovely red of the poisonous toadstool amanita

Many edible mushrooms are brown

These yellow ones may be edible, or not. I always check twice and ask Mr. K before using any mushrooms for food.

All plants are making their seeds ready to fly with the wind or to fall on the ground or to be eaten and spread by the birds. This is willowherb.

My own harvest in the vegetable patch is showing no signs of real progress:



My Jersey tomatoes have grown big and lovely, but there is still no sign of red in them. We have had a handful of the smaller domestic tomatoes to taste.

I have not been sewing anything I can show just yet, as they will be my PIF gifts. Because no new names were signed on my list, I have decided to make a baby sweater project in Ethiopia my third PIF recipient. A Finnish midwife has started a project in Ethiopia in order to get the women to hospital to give birth to their baby. If they do, the baby will get a knitted sweater like this to go home with. Also, this way the baby will be registered and get a birth certificate.

This is my first sweater for them, just knitted and not yet sewn together. In September there will be information about how to send them to Africa. The deliveries are on hold now, as there has been a new customs fee to be paid for the sweaters, and  the hospital people are negotiating about this and hoping to avoid the extra cost.

Autumn is a busy season

It seems that I don't get to blog posting as often as I would like to. It is the time of the year! I have been busy picking the apples:

and steaming them

and winding them through my faithful almost vintage (1980's) Moulinex:

to make apple sauce:

There are 61 not very small jars in the cellar, and I think I will make two more lots to make it last until next autum. This is why there have been no new finishes to show on the crafty front.

On Monday I was waiting for the train and suddenly heard the trumpets from above. Cranes are migrating to Africa for the winter.

The swans are still staying here, growing strength and feathers. This year the couple had four cygnets, but one of them died in August. The Whooper Swan family is staying in the ponds in the middle of the village, and the young ones are learning takeoff and landing:

All summer flowers are composted now, and the heather has replaced them. The concrete tiles are Mr. K's this summer's project.

This area, where the geothermal heating pipes come to the house, will wait over winter before the tiles cover it.

My rainy week was cheered up by Melanie's mail with all kinds of great things. Thank you, sweet friend!

She had knitted red pirate caps for the Amazons, Unicef dolls still waiting to be born. They will join Melanie's  Dorothea and Dick when the time is right. The Haggis Broth tin and the Wright's traditional tar soap as well as the strong Mints in a cute tin are all related to our two-member book club reading the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The chocolate bars go with the theme as well; Susan often gave everyone rations of chocolate. The Lynette Anderson bag is from Melanie's trip to the Birmingham quilt show, where she actually met Lynette Anderson! Melanie also included a big piece of fusible pellon for my future stitcheries, as she knew I can't get it locally. The leopard print fleece is meant for a future Unicef doll with African origin. Melanie is obviously encouraging me to reach the limit of 100 dolls now that the 50 dolls are adopted! The toadstool coaster is for me because we both like funghi. These are poisonous:

but these are delicious. Mr. K has walked in the forest and brought home buckets full of nice mushrooms, and I have made warm sandwiches and sauces with them, and many portions are in the freezer for future use.

Next post should show some sewing again. I'm having class tonight again and hope to finish the sun print table runner. There are other projects on the way as well, but nothing to show so far. And finally some good news for the friends of Eileen: I have been e-mailing with her, and now that she has all wedding business happily behind her, she is working on a quilt and taking pictures. A couple of more pushes and she'll start posting on Eileen's Attic again.

Harvest Fair

A couple of weeks ago there was a harvest fair in Järvenpää. Farmers come there with their products, and other producers are invited as well. I took you there last year, but why not join me again. The pedestrian zone is decorated with these flowers at the beginning of the summer, and now they have grown really big and lovely.


We went there on a Saturday, because we also went shopping for groceries, and the weather was nice. This is a general view, many people carrying their shopping, the air was filled with smells of garlic and of fried fish.


My club Järvenpään Käsintekijät (the Villa Cooper people) were there, like always.

A closer look at the sign.

Hand knitted mittens and socks are always wanted.

House shoes made of soft leather.

Pottery products.

This stand belongs to a member of the club, too. Her fabrics are all hand dyed linen.

But we were not the only handicraft producers there.

We bought a brush here, Mr. K likes to use one in the shower, and he needed a new one.

Pretty flowers. I remember when my second grade teacher took us all to a market place in September to see the flowers, and back in class we coloured the whole paper full of purple and red asters with our crayons.

These flowers are dry and will last until next autumn.

Now we come to the food area. Chanterelles - their time is over now, but as I type this, Mr. K in in the forest behind our house and will bring home some funnel chanterelles. They are the greyish dark brown ones, with a yellow foot.

Parsley, cucumbers, tomatoes, cauliflowers, red onions.

Lingonberries. Mr. K picked a 10 L bucket full of them on Friday, and today I made seven bottles of juice of them, and 8 containers went to the freezer, crushed and mixed with sugar. The berries were crushed, not the plastic containers.

Apples. We don't need to buy them either. The one big tree will give me as much apples as I can
use, and the apples from our other trees can be given to friends and neighbours and deer in the forest.

Today I counted 54 jars of apple sauce and 13 bottles of apple juice in the cellar, from this year's harvest. I will cook some more, but I also want to get back to my sewing. I promise to show something hand made by me in my next post!