Night at the Library

This week Auntie took us to the local library for an adventure with the nice librarians and a bunch of soft toys. Over 30 of us were there!

Dogs, teddy bears, baby dolls, a piggy, an octopus, a snake ... we had such fun. Roger and I played some football with the other boys .

There was a little campfire, and all guests could have some tea by it, or hot chocolate. We were given tea as we are British.

I think some grilled sausages there too.Titty was cutting some Christmas spirited bookmarks with the help of the librarians. Her photo is at the end of this set. We were also shown how all the machines and printers work, and how to look for a book by its title or by the author.

A whole set of photos was made with us alone. The Instagram text here says that we are Unicef dolls and inspired by the characters of the Swallows and Amazons novels.

Here am I with the Finnish translation of the first book about us.

Susan with a matching color book cover.

Titty with a book matching her quilt - the librarians knew without saying which quilt belongs to each of us. Aren't they clever?

Roger with Auntie Ulla's Finnish edition of Swallowdale. The other books have not been translated into Finnish.

Finally there was a good night story before we all cuddled under our quilts and blankets for the night. Some monkeys needed a banana before they could sleep.

All those links are to the photos the library published on their Instagram. The library ladies sent these photos to Auntie today for this blog post. And here we are ready to be taken home on Thursday afternoon.

It has snowed a little again, and it is not at all so dark even the days are getting shorter by several minutes per day.

Everyone who stayed the night at the library could take home a certificate stating that and telling a little about the visit. There was also a list of recommended reading for children at different ages. It was a good list, and we have seen many of those books here on the bookshelves too.

We also got a paper photo of the whole group so we can remember our new friends. We had a very good time. The librarians asked if we would like to come for a longer time in the Winter, so that many people could meet us, and we agreed with pleasure!

On behalf of the Swallows

John

Old Literature Fair - the joy of second-hand books

On Friday we packed ourselves, our jackets and umbrellas and the camera in the car and enjoyed a beautiful ride through Finnish countryside. You can look with me through the car windows, on the right one of the many lakes called Pyhäjärvi. My original home town is far back where the tower is.

 

 

The road was up and down small hills, some of them steep enough to have sand boxes by the roadside for icy winter weather.

 

Our destination was the old literature event in Vammala about 160 km/100 miles from home, but we had some spare time before they opened, so we went to the farmer's market first. They had not only potatoes, strawberries and flowers there, but also some book stalls. One stall caught my eye immediately, because this was standing in the back corner:

 

Hundreds of buttons sewn on fabric and framed! In the other back corner was another button picture on brown background. Strange but interesting.

 

There is a small park with a water theme and beautiful flowers between the market place and the parking lot.

 

Now it is time to go to the book fair at Sylvään koulu, a school for grades 7 to 9, empty for the summer holidays.

 

 

It was soon getting crowded there, but we always go to the big tent first because during the day the air there gets really hot, and the morning hours can be cooler. Our favourite second hand booksellers are in the tent.

 

 

Books are arranged by themes and the titles are usually visible, so you can see at a glance if a stall has your line of interest.

 

My favourites - children's books - are often placed on the bottom shelves. That can be very tiring for the back and the knees too.

 

 

There was also an exhibition of bookbinding. These were by experienced bookbinders, and on another table were the works of students. I could see the difference as the mother of a master bookbinder. My daughter studied in this town some years ago.

 

Do you want to see my loot? I bought six books this year, never before have I found so many I wanted and could afford.

The old editions often don't have the title of the original book in the front pages, but it was easy to find that the book on top right is Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. This is one of the books I know we had in the family, and I loved the Railway Children by her, so I wanted to read this other book too again. The book we had at home could even be from my mother as it was written in 1902. These two are the only ones of her 60 books for children that have been translated into Finnish. The top left book is one from my own childhood by a Finnish author Leena Härmä. She lived in my home town Tampere and set many of her books in surroundings I could have known.

The bottom row shows my must have classics, the second book about Heidi, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book I have "always" known about but never actually read.

 

This book just made my heart jump! Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome, about children living on their own during Summer holidays and experiencing great adventures, with their mother only occasionally coming to visit and maybe bringing some food supplies. Melanie introduced me to this charming series of books a couple of years ago, and it has brought me great joy. I bought all the books in English but have only been able to find the first, Swallows and Amazons, in a Finnish translation before this.

Hunting for old books again, textile art

For many years already, Mr. K and I have made a Summer trip to Sastamala to the Old Literature Fair where sellers and buyers of old books are gathered for two days. The place is a school, and many sellers have their tables and shelves in a big tent in the school yard.

Mr K. found several interesting books on fishing, and my treasure is located on a river as well:

This is the first edition of the children's classic Wind in the Willows in Finnish. No pictures inside, but the cover pleases my eye.

After seeing all the books we drove to visit my mother and made lunch at her place. It was good to see her in reasonably good health and in a very good mood. Our next stop was in central Finland where our DD Kaija lives. We stayed in a new hotel.

The bed was the best after our own bed at home, but the bathroom could have had a rail on the wall to help anyone stiffer and older than we are.

As you can see the weather was nice all day, not too hot. This is a view from our window.

On Saturday we met with Kaija and wanted to visit the Finnish Handicraft Museum which was closed on the Monday when I visited Kaija before Christmas. This time we had better luck, although the permanent exhibition was closed due to moisture damage to the building. We saw Anu Tuominen's exhibition Fingerprints. She is known for her work with recycled textiles she has bought at flea markets, like these potholders:

or the soap dishes, arranged by colour to create her piece of art:

The name of the work adds a new dimension to her art, here is Compostor:

Carrots

Pancakes with Strawberry Jam, Milk 2012, from 2002 onwards, second-hand panholders, buttons, jam container and spoon, mugs and crocheting:

From the left: Worsted (combed yarn), 2007, combs, knitting
Three-colour knitting, 2012, brushes, knitting
Casting on for a striped scarf, 2007, knitting needles, yarn
Sweater for Mr Moebius, 2012, knitting. Unfortunately I missed the other half of this one, but you can imagine how it is when you think of the Möbius strip. Click to enlarge all the pictures!

If you want to see more of her work, here is a link to pictures on the internet.

After the exhibition we did some shopping, had lunch with Kaija and V, went to see their new home and came back to our own.

Vintage Thingies 41 - Children's House Book

A week has already passed and it is time to join the Vintage Thingies Thursday hosted by Coloradolady Suzanne. Today I'm showing you something that is not mine. When visiting my mother a while ago we found one of her old books from the attic. The spine was off and one page was loose, so I took the book with me so I could ask my daughter Kaija if she could or should repair it. She is a master bookbinder and knows about these things. Anyway, the book was too delicious to be left in the bag without showing you.

This is a doll's house, without any text but originally with paper dolls, unfortunately lost during the years. The pictures are from 1921. You can click all pictures to enlarge and see more details.

This is the hall.

In the cabinet I found a child's coat and hat.

The living room. There are slots in the table cloth for cups and bowls.

The parent's bedroom. Both doors can be opened but don't go through to the next rooms. The paper dolls can be put to bed through a slot between the pillow and the sheet.

The children's room. This page is loose.

Again, a door you can open.

The bathroom picture refused to be shown the right way, so I left it out. There was a toilet and a bathroom, and on the other page a cellar with food and mice!

This is the kitchen. The oven door has come off the hinge and disappeared, but there is a copper kettle and a dotted pot on the stove. The writing on the jars is in German, so the artist was German. The book cover shows the name of the Finnish publisher but I believe the book was printed in Germany, just using a different cover text for the Finnish market.

The whole kitchen view.

And finally the back garden.

My mother is an only child, and I don't remember us having ever played with this book, so it has lasted pretty well the 87 years! I remember I have seen this book, but only looked at it nicely. Mother remembers how she played with this before she had started school in the early 1920's.

I hope you enjoyed this bit of history. Happy VTT, go and see what else is on Suzanne's link list.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 3

It's Thursday again and time to show some thingies with the Apron Queen Lisa. In her blog you find links to other blogs showing their goodies. Click the photo to get to her blog.






Exciting things can happen when you blog, and lurking readers may come to the daylight with some unexpected news. Remember this brush I showed two weeks ago in my first Vintage Thingies Thursday post:

My sister P, who lives near here, had read my post and came to visit me last Thursday after I had already written my post, so this had to wait until this week. She had something for me:

Our mother had given her the copper dustpan years ago, when I was still going to school but she was living on her own already. Mother had told her that there should be a brush to go with the dustpan, but she didn't know where it was. Well, it was somewhere, because she gave it to me all those years later. Now dear P gave me the dustpan, and the pair can live happily ever after. If I had not posted about the lonely brush neither of us would have known that we shared the set. Next week I must remember to show the copper porridge kettle I have; I received it from my mother without the lid. Just this week my brother with his wife came for a short visit to get some apples from our trees. We talked about the copper cake moulds in my kitchen and they told me that they have several copper lids on their kitchen wall. I just might get lucky again!

Back to my sister P, who is the eldest of us. She was always "a big girl" already, when I was little; we have nearly 9 years between us. When she was in the upper grades of school, they got to try painting china in the art class. I was a little girl who just learned to read, and I loved the Moomin books. She painted this Moomin plate for me, from the lovely hole book I showed earlier in my Vintage Children's Illustrations post.

The plate is Arabia, the blue stripe was on the original plate and I think the milk can is therefore blue. P told me the blue spots were just to make Moomin look a little more colourful. As a child I always thought he had caught measles on his long and dangerous way trying to find Little My. I had measles at the beginning of my very first summer holiday from school.

I ironed an old tablecloth for the background of the plate, and as it is an old one, I'll show a closer look of it as well. This is a linen cloth for a small table or a really big tray. There is the border area for cross stitch decoration. I have seen tray cloths with very decorative cross stitch monograms in this border. You can click the photos to get a closer look.

That is all for this week from the vintage department. I hope to post something about our sewing group's textile art project tomorrow.