December 18 - Light into the darkness

One of the advantages of dark nights and snow is that we can use living fire outdoors to make the evening look festive. Instead of the giant size tea lights in tins we had a home made, traditional light called jätkänkynttilä, lumberjack's candle. It is a piece of tarry log, old wood, sawn crosswise almost  through the length. Chips of wood are used for making the fire that can last up to 4 hours.

That was our Independence Day outdoor decoration, and this is what was left of it next morning. It burned on a concrete tile without falling in the wind.

Special treats and new challenges

We continue our sightseeing tour in Järvenpää. This is Halosenniemi, the studio and home of Pekka Halonen from 1902. He was one of the artists of the Golden era of Finnish art. Melanie introduced another local artist of that time in her travel report here, Venny Soldan-Brofelt. We visited her 150th birthday exhibition at the art museum of Järvenpää.

 

Because Melanie is such a fan of Villa Cooper, I wanted her to see the "sister villa", Sibelius' Ainola.

The roof of this home museum has been repaired during the winter and the place will open for the public again in May. The timber walls have been boarded over at an early stage, but you can see details like at Villa Cooper.

This is an earlier picture of Villa Cooper, the big dining room windows facing town.

Melanie brought me a suitcase full of girly treats for a birthday tea. I had asked her about scones and clotted cream, so she brought those too, along with strawberry marmalade. We ate the scones ages ago, but I tried the delicious ingredients on biscuits and on toast too. The marmalade goes first:

Yumm! Here you see the wrapping from the container ....

.. and read some history:

 

In exchange, we gave Melanie a chance to try a Finnish specialty, which could also be worth a Protected Designation of Origin, mämmi:

 

 

Mämmi is a traditional Easter or Lent food, made of rye, malt and water slowly baked in the oven. It has a porridge-like consistency and is served with sugar and cream. Melanie is either really well behaved or she just happened to like it, because after the test spoonful she had a normal serving like the one in my picture.

 

Now that the busy season with birthdays, Easter and Melanie's visit is over I have had time to join this year's Craft Olympics, now hosted by Sylvia. If you need deadlines (at the end of this year!), have UFO's (new category) and feel like having company when doing your projects, you can click the button on my sidebar and find the new rules for this year's Craft Athletes. Sylvia hosts both in German and in English. Be a good sport and join in! My other new project is a BOM at Kaaren's blog, The Painted Quilt. Happy Scrappy Spring only started yesterday so there is still time to join in and make a scrappy quilt with some stitcheries and some wool applique. I'm planning to make this quilt entirely from stash, preferably with recycled fabrics. The instructions for the whole first row are waiting! A button on my sidebar will take you to Kaaren's blog.

Old Easter Traditions and Nice Flowers

Twice a week I take the train to the next town, do my sewing related shopping in private, without darling Mr. Kotkarankki, (who, after all, is only a male,) have some Caffe Latte or a nice cup of tea (the niceness guaranteed now that I have this sweet tea wallet from Dawn, my Time for Tea Swap partner), and meet with him later to do the grocery shopping. This is the place where we shop, and my latte table is just behind the corner on the right, where I can see the florist's arrangements. I took these pictures recently, they are for Easter.



I really liked the feather wreaths. Mr. K might want to use some of this for his fishing flies.



Yellow is the real colour for Easter, isn't it?

There was also a big bunny hiding behind a pillar.

The old Easter tradition I wanted to tell you about is this special Easter dessert called mämmi. It is a originally from South-Western Finland, hundreds of years old traditional food of the Lent. The ingredients are water, rye flour, rye malt and salt, nowadays also syrup, bitter orange and orange peel marmalade. The water is first heated, the flour and malt mixed in and left to gain sweetness. Then the porridge-like mixture is baked in the oven for a long time. The result is dark brown and a little sticky. It is served cold, with sugar and cream as a dessert. Originally it was a clever way to meet the strict regulations of Lent food (no sugar) and still have a sweet taste from the malt.

You can see the little stripes on the box; originally mämmi was baked in the oven in boxes made of birchbark. Traditions change over the years, and now mämmi is made in bakeries, bought from the shop, and available refrigerated from New Year until Midsummer. Most people buy a box or two at Easter and serve it as a delicious dessert on Easter Sunday. Modern Finns have also protected the name and origin of our specialty in the EU, just like Feta cheese and Parmesan have been protected. Nobody can start cooking rye porridge in Spain or France and call it mämmi!