December 20 - Snow surfaces

 Some days there is only little snow.

It covers all surfaces and creates nice patterns for quilt blocks or quilting lines.

Some days there is more snow and the squirrel must dive deep to find the sunflower seeds that fall from the bird feeder.

And sometimes there are lumps of older snow left when new snow gives a light dusting on the yew needles.

French Braid

Back to working on the Mystery QAL. The French Braid was a very slow process, no chain sewing at all. I needed over 240", six meters and some.

I decided to make one huge snake so nothing gets wasted when I cut the ends straight. I'm going to add my personal touch to the quilt at this stage to make it a little longer so I don't know yet what length the braid is going to me in my quilt.

I have added some new fabrics to the mix but am still keeping my palette limited to the colours I have already used.

The Nature's palette is adding shades of yellow and brown and reducing the greens to minimum.

Ligularia Dentata. We moved these from the old garden of my FIL this Summer to replace the rose bushes which didn't like this place in the shadow of the house. Now the roses grow in front of the house and these handsome beauties obviously have found their place here.

The Fox

Just the other day we spent some time watching this handsome fox with his prey at the edge of the woods.

Six magpies were flying around and waiting for some leftovers. The last time I saw a fox here was in the Spring 1982 when I was hanging up laundry on the line. We have seen footprints in the snow, but they usually don't show themselves.

Colours are changing

This year the change of colours in the trees has been more beautiful than in years. Our backyard oak was yellow like this a week ago:

 

and only three days later the leaves were brown.

 

The rowan changed early, I just managed to take a photo of the last brilliant reds two weeks ago.

 

I have been busy catching the Autumn colours in socks for the winter.

This was taken on a sunny day and the yarn colours are more natural here. Three balls of heavy yarn made 4 pairs of socks, and I think I can make yet another baby pair with the rest.

The big ones are a Christmas present, but the little ones are no particular size, just testing different patterns from my books.

I'm sure I can find the right little feet for them too. Therefore I call them my third thimble project in the Special Category.

The aspen on a sunny day were like carrying gold coins and letting them fall on the ground.

The birches had a different shade of yellow.

This morning Mr. K and I were raking leaves for one and a half hours, clearing the driveway and the strip of lawn behind the house. At lunch we looked out of the window and noticed almost no difference to yesterday's view, but those were new leaves from the oak. It is kind of like laundry, or washing dishes: you have just done it, but the basket/sink is half full again before you dried your hands. But some day the trees will be bare, and regardless of whether the leaves are raked or not, the snow will come and cover the ground, hopefully until next Spring. (The laundry and the dishes never end.)

Happy Scrappy Last Row

Here it is, the last row of the Happy Scrappy Spring quilt:

 

 

Before joining the rows I will add some wool applique on the blocks. How exciting, I haven't really done that before, just a little wool candle mat some years ago. This quilt has five rows with stitcheries, and pieced sashings and borders.

A couple of days ago Mr. K. called me out with my camera. There was the biggest caterpillar we have ever seen:

 

It was moving really fast, climbing up the concrete border of our paved area ...

 

... having difficulties to decide which side to go to.

I found a name for this caterpillar too, Cossus cossus, and the Finnish name means tree destroyer. It just made me think of a fun children's book about the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I used to read it to the children when I was au pairing as a student, and then later to my own children. Books with holes are such fun.

Rows of the week and some spring pictures

This week I have been making mugs and Flying Geese. My geese are flying North now in Spring. We have seen some migrating cranes and geese. It is always something special when you see such big birds. My fabric geese are tiny and a bit blurry because I didn't think too much when choosing the fabrics.

 

 

I had to make some left-handed mugs as well. This quilt in progress is last year's row-along by Bee in my Bonnet, and I'm using mostly recycled fabrics and leftover scraps from dressmaking. Here are my six first rows. Next week I'll be raking leaves and knitting mittens!

 

Within the last few days our birches have dressed in light green lace. It looks so lovely after the long, long winter. Even the wind sounds softer now.

 

 

Wild white anemones cover the forest ground. The perfect pretty flowers to pick for Mother's Day tomorrow. When I was little, we used to pick the blue ones, liverwort, if they were out, because that's what was growing in our nick of the country.

 

I planted some Anemone Hepatica from my childhood home last summer in our yard, and I hope they will thrive here. Now the flowers are very pale, but if you look close enough and click for a bigger photo, you can just see a few of them. 

 

Mr. Pied Flycatcher is guarding his new home. It looks like many of our birdhouses have nest builders at work. Mrs. Flycatcher chose Silver Birch wallpapers for this house.

 

 

Our first daffodils are out! The little ones are Tete-à-Tete daffodils from my hanging flowerpot from last year of the year before. I buy them for Easter already in bloom, and when the snow is gone I plant them in the garden.

 

 

First Swan report of the year, and some knitting

My regular readers may remember my pictures of whooper swans nesting in our village. For several years already, a whooper swan couple has built their nest by one of the little ponds around the village and brought their young to the village centre for flying lessons. This year made no exception, the couple - together for life - arrived in the spring and walked their babies to the bigger ponds for a first visit in June already. Local bird friends were worried about them and put up a self-made traffic sign:

 

There are two bigger ponds on different sides of the road through the village, and the birds would need to cross it if they wanted to change scenery. The bird looks more like a mute swan with the curved neck, but everyone will understand to look out for swans. After WWII the whooper swan was almost extinct in Finland, but the books by a beloved author, Yrjö Kokko, changed the situation and the estimated number of nesting couples for last year in Finland was already 5,000 to 7,000.

 

In August the school begins, for little swans as well. They have now moved to the big ponds in the village and learn to find their food in deeper water. This year there are seven (7!) babies in the family.

Later when the parents have grown new feathers, flight lessons will begin. They need a long runway to get in the air. There is often already ice on the ponds before the swans are ready to leave for the winter.

Mother or father is keeping watch while the cygnets eat with their heads under water.

On the crafty front I have been very passive lately, just knitted some squares for a new blanket in the evenings while watching TV.

There is a touch of Autumn in the air already, today is the last day of Summer. Enjoy your weekend!

One finish and lots of gifts

This week the Tour blanket was finished at last. It is bigger than I thought it would be, as my squares refused to be 20 cm as instructed. No sewn seams here, I have picked the stitches for a new square on the side of an existing one, and knitted two squares together at the end of each row of a new square.

This week has been a Very Nice Mail Week. First came the 100th Houseelf blog post giveaway mail from Melanie: a bright tea towel, a rainbow coloured lavender bag, a Kaffe Fasset tissue holder and some special teas and sweets.

Today I received another parcel from her, from her summer trips she has been showing on her blog. Coal tar soap and mustard bath to keep me clean and my toes warm when the winter comes. I'm not old enough to have lived in the war time, not to speak of the time of the Bronte sisters, but Melanie and I have read old books together and she makes the world of the Swallows and Amazons real for me with products that have been there already at their time. Thank you, Melanie!

Today's mail brought me another surprise, a parcel from Simone. I had admired her zakka projects, and she sent me a hand made ribbon:

Beautiful thoughts! The ribbon is hanging by my sewing machine already. She also sent me a cheese cutter for young cheese - we are comparing models, it seems! Thank you, Simone!

There have been very little birds in our yard during the summer, they live in the woods and find their food there. They don't have time for songs either, they are too busy raising their families. Mr. K found something different, a slow-worm, when he was clearing something in the yard. This reptile has been called brass snake because of its beautiful brass or copper colour. It is not a snake, but a lizard.

Knitting and ranting

Almost two weeks have passed and I don't have much craftiness to show. I have been knitting these tiny preemie baby beanies in the evenings. This is my last ball of baby yarn, and I think it will make four little hats as there is over 240 m yarn in the 50 g ball. I almost fainted when I heard the price: 6.75 €, but then I remembered that I had entered Mrs. Greedy's shop again, against my earlier decision. (Back in 2009 she charged me in € the old FIM price of all the old knitting needles I bought from her for charity, which makes it 6 times the correct price, and made me pay for more thimbles than I actually got.) Don't ever go to her shop, and if you do, don't buy anything.

We are approaching the shortest night of the year. Last Thursday night when I had to go in the middle of the night, I saw a funny sight through the round window in our hall. The full moon was shining from a very light blue sky at three in the morning (so it was actually Friday already). For some reason the moon looked a lot bigger than in the picture.

I have made plans for a couple of new quilts waiting in my PIPS box. I found the outer border leftovers from the big Grandmother's Garden quilt, and some sand colour fabric. It is my old safari suit trousers from the time I was young. They will complete the blocks in process.

The second plan includes a chambray all-in-one suit from the early 80's, and some Egyptian scarf halves from Melanie.

These two great black woodpeckers spent a long time on this aspen in our garden. They were playing hide and seek or learning to find food, or then something else. They looked rather small to us so we think they were young ones. It was fun to watch the one on the right shake his head from side to side. Both made quiet noises, maybe they were whispering something about me and my camera. Just when I took a few steps closer to get a better picture of the one on the left, they decided to fly back to the forest where we often hear their calls.

Secrets revealed and wonders of the nature

It has been a long time since my last post, due to Internet problems. Things are getting better now and I hope to catch up my blog reading soon.
This is what I have been working on in secret:

In February I heard through Simone about the Stained Quilt Along hosted by Sarah at Narcoleptic in a Cupboard. After seeing Simone's blue and grey fabrics I thought my son's shirts would make a lovely stained glass quilt to match the Business Class quilt I made for his birthday.

His long-time girlfriend has her birthday this week and I had a chance to give this to her yesterday

They had invited us and her parents for a very delicious Mother's Day lunch at their home. The quilting is in the ditch as I didn't want to disturb the "glass".  -  I couldn't resist borrowing DD's stained glass angel for the last picture. There is no border in this quilt, just a narrow binding in the same grey as the sashings. Sarah's pattern was for a crib size quilt and I wanted to make a lap size, so I added a row at the bottom and to one size. I forgot to measure the finished quilt but it should be around 55.5" x 66.5".

Marimekko has taken old prints into production again. This one is "Helsinki - Helsingfors" by Per-Olof Nyström from 1952, the year of the Helsinki Olympics. I don't remember this print from my childhood, but my mother used to have summer dresses and skirts in this style. I found this piece of fabric in the local Marimekko shop and used it for a shopping bag for my sister Maija in Germany.

And now some spring feelings. Wood Anemone is one of the first wild spring flowers, usually popping up for Mother's Day.

My daffodils like their new place and are blooming right now. This is their second spring in this spot.

The green finches were courting over lunch. He on the right is showing his nice yellow wing feathers.

Mr. Pheasant has four lovely ladies, here he is watching over two of them having lunch. He is wearing his spring feathers, with brighter colours and much red in the face.

 

I almost forgot to update my Scandinavian Christmas. Here is Block 4 all finished:

And here it is added to the other three. I'm slowly starting work on the border of hearts and snowflakes. If you want to see a finished Scandinavian Christmas, pop over to Melanie. She is being a star pupil!

This is all for today, I hope to come back soon with new finishes.