The postman is busy

Yesterday I opened the first box of Christmas decorations. These three little angels came to stand on the fireplace edge. I don't know if this can be called a mantelpiece, as there is no wooden shelf (like I dream of having). I made the angels many years ago.




Last night was also the last sewing group meeting. We gave our teacher an Amaryllis, and I made this gift bag for it using Suzie's tutorial:


The buds will be open before Christmas!

I did some opening before Christmas, too. Yesterday I reaceived a heavy parcel from Melanie. She is such a sweet friend and seems to have endless energy. Inspired by my vintage copper things she had found this set of three small copper pans for me.

Have a closer look at the little basket filled with sweets:

Three Santas with the lovely gifts and Christmas trees with stars on top like we have up here. Thank you so much, Melanie!

Today my good luck continued. I had mail from USA, my Secret Stitching Angel Swap partner Marie sent me the swap gift together with a giveaway gift I won at her blog:

A quilting magazine, thimble brooch, snowman and snowflake buttons, dark chocolate (yumm...), embroidered towels ...

and the swap pincushion big enough to hold long quilting pins safely. Thank you, Marie!

This is a wonderful time of the year! We remember our friends near and far, and even if we don't keep contact all the time, at Christmas we send cards and updates and letters ... and even gifts to people who are important for us. I really like making and sending cards and little presents, and receiving them is at least as much fun. OK, I admit, it is even more fun, and many times also fattening. Which is often the same thing.

Where have all the colours gone?

This is my last Stitchers' Angels Swap project. Because I skipped doing the embroidery designed by Lynette Anderson, I had time and energy to make three scissor holders. The one at the bottom of the picture with the floral print on top went to my secret swap partner Aldana in Spain. The top one was for my sister Maija, to match the Angel bag I made for her, and the middle one I kept for later use. The swap was great fun!



November is our darkest month, as there is less and less light every day and no snow yet on the ground to reflect the streetlights. This is the view I see from my kitchen window, not very encouraging, don't you think?

Here you can compare the view from our yard towards the forest yesterday

and on September 30th! I prefer life in colour.

On Monday morning the temperature was already 4 degrees below freezing point. The last leaves were frozen to this heap, but they will eventually melt again to be mulched with the lawn mower and taken to the leaf compost.

Now I'm going to tell you a story. It is a bit sad, so take your hankies! Once upon a time, about in September, there had been a hit and run accident on the road near our house and Mrs Squirrel had lost her life. Some days later we noticed three little brown squirrels jumping and playing around in the backyard. They were obviously orphan babies of Mrs Squirrel, because they were so small that you usually don't see them anywhere alone this small. (Like so often in animal world, the Mr Squirrel had continued life as a bachelor elsewhere.) There were lots of acorns, berries and mushrooms around, so everything seemed to be fine. One chilly morning, when I came back from my Nordic walk, I saw Arthur Squirrel sitting on the lawn, eating something and shivering. I thought he had found something tasty to eat because he didn't move when I walked past him. When DH came home for lunch, he told me there was a dead squirrel on the lawn. It was poor Arthur, right there where I had seen him shivering. The night must have been too cold for him, and perhaps he didn't have enough to eat, or not the right kind of food. Bernie and Charlie remained, they played together and found more and more acorns under our oak tree. But then one morning I found Bernie Squirrel laying with his legs stretched under a table in the garden. He had gone to be with his mother and brother, poor fellow. It was again after a cold night, so he had not been ready to face the Finnish autumn without parental care after all. But like in every good fairytale, the third brother was clever and learned to keep himself warm and to find his food. Yesterday I found Charlie's apple storaged tightly between two branches by the edge of the forest, right in the middle of the picture here:

Soon we will start feeding the little winter birds like titmouse and bullfinch, and Charlie will take his fair share of the sunflower seeds. He will find shelter in an old birdhouse, where the woodpecker and some squirrels have enlarged the opening. He will keep warm and dry there, and I will try to take a picture of him to show he is allright.

In case the squirrel story made you sad, I will show a last picture of something different. This is my modest winter flower, Calluna heather, in fact three of them all planted in a small basket on our kitchen doorstep. I hope they will keep the colour all the way until the sun starts shining again.

New finish

I have seen some great studios in the blogs I read, tidy, large rooms with lots of light and organized stash. Some sewing corners have been cosy and comfortable. Some people show what they have "on my desk", and it usually is something very interesting. My "studio" is a terrible mess in the cellar of our house, my stash is midway between the old cardboard boxes and the new plastic ones, and there is no room for my new (bought in July) sewing machine. Our two older children have their own homes now, but it seems they have not moved away from our house yet: I arranged me another sewing table in our daughter's old room, but there are several cardboard boxes of her things on the floor. So this is not yet a great, organized studio corner, but I have a perfect low table for the sewing machine, and another, high table for cutting fabrics and drawing patterns. The high table is about as high as the kitchen worktop.

Because my other sewing machine and all the materials are in the cellar and this workspace is upstairs, I needed another (well, a fifth) pair of scissors to be kept by the new machine. Because I have not been able to take my walks as regularly as I planned, I decided to support the Pink Ribbon campaign by choosing this cute set (10 % of the price goes for the campaign):

The smaller pair is nail scissors but they will do fine for cutting threads. I spent some time today at the machine and finally finished this Stitchers' Angel project designed by May Britt from Norway. There are lots of pictures of the bag from other Stitching Angels. I made this one for me, as I already have sent the three other projects to my secret partner. This one is in my colours.

I added handles like many others had done, and I also made the bag bigger than the original pattern. The swap was great fun. There were 7 free patterns by different designers, and I'm planning to make some of them as Christmas presents or for myself when I have more time. I enjoyed the hand stitching, something I had not done before this year in this form. I have done some cross stitching when I was younger, but after becoming a mother I concentrated more on sewing clothes for my children. Now it seems to be time to do other things again.

Taking it easy

Last Friday I had to admit that I am more like a cow than a goat when it comes to walking on steep rock paths like the ones I took last Tuesday and posted under Morning dew. I had to go and see a doctor and show him my aching, swollen, hurting knee. He gave me some pills which seem to help a little, and told me to take it easy for a week. "Only the obligatory walking, and ice packs 4 times a day on the knee." So there will be no walks this week. Yesterday, when I was in town, I didn't walk to the fabric shop, not even to look at fabrics. Instead, I enjoyed the florist's shop in the shopping centre where I have my latte or tea. When I sit in the cafe, I can see all this:


And this:




It was easy to spend an hour there, with my notebook and tea and a piece of cake. Yes, you see, when I can not get Brownie points for my walking badge this week, I can at least see to it that I have earned my tea drinking badge and cake eating badge. Every cloud can have a silver lining!


Last night we had frost again. It has been windy and the leaves are falling from the trees. After a frost it only takes a little breeze and the leaves start falling on the ground. This is a picture I took this morning in our yard. I tried to catch a titmouse in the picture, but even without it I like the pattern of the branches.



The Bergenia leaves are turning red. They roll up like this when it is cold and open again when the air is warmer. The grass looks grey because of the frost.

I have been able to finish two of my Stitchers' Angel Swap projects, and I'm going to send them to my partner tomorrow. This is the mini tote Blue Wren's Nest designed by Natalie from Cinderberry Stitches.

And this very big pincushion is designed by Karen of Cotton Spice Blog.

There will be space for all kinds on pins and needles!

I am still working on the stitching of May Britt's angel stitchery for my own bag. The Stitchers' Angels patterns are all free to be downloaded for your own use, even if you are not participating in the swap. I have enjoyed this new kind of handicraft and I think I will keep making stitcheries even after the swap. But at the moment I'm feeling the need to start a new quilt, even a little one. And I really ought to start working on my Unicef dolls if I am going to get them ready for the auction in November.

Autumn colours and embroidery

These are my autumn flowers I bought a couple of weeks ago when I was frustrated of the behaviour of my jumping petunias. As you can see, the basket has a wide bottom and it is placed safely on the ground ;o).



I also wanted autumn colours for the little table where I keep my hand-sewing projects. I chose this vintage tablecloth embroidered by my great-aunt or my grandmother in the early years of the 20th century. After taking the picture I thought I'd better iron the cloth before putting it to the table, but when I looked at the amount of projects I currently keep on that table, I saw it would be a waste of time and electricity.

I have finished the first project of Stitchers' Angel swap and sent it abroad, but the fabrics are still on the table for the other projects to come, and of course the box with my embroidery floss, and my sewing box with all the necessary things, and the folder with the instructions for all the projects. They cannot be moved away before the sewing is all done! This is how the armchair caddy looks when it is in use:

The other pocket is hanging on the other side. -It was fun trying something new. I have made some cross-stitching when I was young, and my first embroidery was the name panel for my brownie uniform. I think I'm going to like this.

On Thursday I spent the day with my mother. DH was on a fair in Tampere and took me to my mother early in the morning and picked me up in the evening. You know what little children sometimes say to their parents: "When I'm big and you are little, I'm going to ...". This has happened with my mother now. She used to be a lot taller than I, and for a time she was a "woman of traditional build" (we both are great fans of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), but now she has grown to be the little one. I altered two pairs of trousers she had from my younger sister (they had been shrinking in her closet), and I had to take in a lot, still leaving them comfortably wide and easy to wear.

Yesterday I was pampered: I had received for my birthday in spring a gift voucher for a pedicure from my friend P, who is a nurse and pedicurist. It was lovely! She is also the one who gave me the plastic bag with the stranger quilt pieces. I took the opportunity and gave her the quilt when we met. I found out that the pieces were from her late mother, who had made quilts for her grandchildren but not for this daughter, so I think it was just right that she now has a quilt started by her mother. She recognized many of the fabrics from her mother's dresses and blouses. Happy end!

From Helsinki (pedicure) I took the train to Järvenpää where I had errands to run, and I saw this delicious-looking apple tree at the station - you can see the old building behind the tree. The apple tree is called the "railway apple tree", it was a result of plant breeding in our other neighbour town Hyvinkää and used to decorate the railway station surroundings. The apples don't taste very good, but the tree looks nice with the hanging branches. It is less than 2 m high, easy to keep in shape by cutting away the branches trying to reach the sky.

Last night I finally had time to read some blogs and emails. I noticed my talented special friend Karen had mentioned me in her guest blog on Monday in connection with some real textile artists. She had been trying to send me emails, too, but I still have not received them. Go and see the wonderful art the ladies create!

What took me so long on my walk

Last week I took the camera with me on one of my morning walks. The 30 minute walk too 45 minutes, when I observed the nature and picked some mushrooms for lunch as well. Here is what we ate:





Blogger wants to show this one on its side, but it doesn't matter because I had picked the mushroom before taking the picture. The whole group of this kind of mushrooms has the Finnish name tatti, but their Latin names begin with boletus or suillus or leccinum. Boletus comes from the Greek word bolos meaning a lump; suillus is the Latin word for hog-like; and leccinum is the Italian name for one of these mushrooms. The Italians are great fans of these; any amount of our Boletus edulis could be exported there. The tatti mushrooms are easy to use, I just cleaned and chopped them and fried them with chopped onions. Yummy!


This picture is showing a very different kind of fungi, the orange coloured little haarakas, a member of the ramaria family. It is soft and branched and looks rather exotic.

These are in Finnish tuhkelo (from the word for ash) , their Latin name is lycoperdon from the Greek lykos meaning wolf and perdomai, to break wind. Both names must have been inspired by what happens when the mushroom is ready to spread the spores: there will be a little hole on top, and when you touch the mushroom, the spores come out like a little dark, bad-smelling cloud. Melanie and I had some email exchange last week about the mushrooms and their names, and she mentioned puffballs. This is our version of them. There are others, often to be found on lawns and not so many together; they are very nice to eat when they are fresh and not puffing around!

These are just some brown mushrooms I didn't recognize, but there are lots of them.

These are another species, and around them the little green twigs are lingonberries. I'm sorry they don't look like the pictures in my mushroom books and I can't identify them. I should have looked at them a week earlier!

My walks are getting easier day by day. I have learned not to think about going, I just go. The bad knee gets better because there are some muscles growing to support it. It doesn't hurt at all during the walk, only in the evenings a little. I hope the weather will stay fairly dry, it is a lot nicer to have a walk when it is not pouring. The walks do me good, I spend too much time sitting and sewing or sitting by the computer.

This is supposed to be a sewing/craft blog, and so I need to show a little peek of my secret project. I have been working on these for a couple of weeks already. They are my Stitcher's Angel swap projects, an armchair caddy designed by Helen of Hugs and Kisses, with a pincushion and pockets for threads and needles and scissors; and a little tote bag with the Blue wrens designed by Natalie from Cinderberry Stitches.

I have finished the caddy by now, but as it is supposed to be a secret I will not show it before the swap is over.

P.S. I started writing this on Saturday, so blogger insists on that date. It really is late Sunday afternoon my time already.