New Lanyards & Moving Along Week 4

Making the lanyard last week was easy and fun, so I digged deeper in my stash and found more plastic buckles.

I made one without the removable part, too. Now I need to buy more of those metal snappy things before I can make more of these. I just hope our customers will find the lanyards useful. They should, I think, because you can hang the mobile phone, keys, camera, access card and even a wallet round your neck and don't need a handbag or a skirt with pockets. Or trouseres with pockets.

I have been moving, too, especially last weekend at the fair and museum and cemeteries. This week has been more quiet, because something went wrong with my knee injection and it (the knee) has been like a football but achy, too, what footballs are not, as far as I know. Anyway, I consider my walks done for the 4th week of moving with Pip.

This is where I walked last week, too. This is the path through the woods I can take when I go to the village centre.

This is cow chervil (Anthriscus silvester) growing aog the path:

A spooky tree stump further away, now in broad sunlight waving at me.

Two-leaved maianthemum. The Finnish name oravanmarja means squirrel's berry. There will be small red berries later.

The next photo was taken last night at ten. The trees seem darker than they were, but the sky is just like it really was, with the clouds reflecting the sun. The sun set about 45 minutes later. It is dark for about 1 hour and 20 minutes in the night, and the twilight lasts almost 2 hours. According to the definition it means there is enough light for outdoors work during dusk. I can understand why tourists may find it difficult to sleep here during the summer. My sleep is much lighter than in the winter, and the warm days we had made me tired. Today it rained a little and the air cooled down to 16 degrees C or 60F. It will be a good night!

I will leave you with these peonies from our garden. We have never had so many before, they often make many buds but they will not open. I'm glad I took the picture yesterday, because today's rain will make the big flowers so heavy that most of them bend all the way to the ground.

Bags once again & walks

I have had a productive day or two, and now I can show you the results. This is a new product, a multi-purpose necklace to carry your key card, mobile phone, keys or whatever little thingies people need to carry with them. It is made of a pillowcase from my sister P's paper bag, and some parts I had lying around in the house. The snap lock is there so you can use the keys more easily.

The necklace didn't use up the whole pillowcase, so I made this shopping bag from the rest of it, and still have material for other small projects. The other pillowcase ended up like this but with light blue bias tape. The bag is cut like our grocery store's plastic bags, but you can use this one over and over again, and wash it in the machine if necessary.

Her bedsheet was full of bright flowers, and I made this shopping bag of it.

It was a nice sheet with lace and all, so the top ended being the double bottom of this wider bag, and the lace is still there. There will be a smaller bag with lace, and another without lace like the one above, and still some fabric left for other bags. I try to make them light so they can be folded and carried in the handbag, and used instead of plastic bags from the shops.

You may remember Melanie's lavendel hedge, and Eileen growing her own tiny lavendel from the seeds Melanie sent her? I have always liked lavendel. When I was very young, my mother made small pouches of wide silk ribbon and lace, or of linen decorated with cross stitched flowers, and I filled them with dried lavendel flowers for the school fundraising fair. A while ago the florist next to "my" cafe in Järvenpää closed for the summer holidays and sold the last flowers with 70 % off, and I couldn't resist any longer.

I have my own lavendel plant! It needs a nicer pot to live in, but I love it even so. This will probably be a short relationship, because we don't have the right kind of climate, but I'll try to keep the lavendel alive over winter in the storage shed.

Tomorrow will be my vintage day, so I'll report my Movements today already:

Today's walk to the bank and grocery store brought the last point needed for this third week!

June

This June has been cold, temperatures have been staying below 15C or 60F for three weeks now. Even the wild flowers are coming out slowly, but they are very much appreciated. Veronica chamaedrys:

Lathyrus pratensis:

My June BOM for Country Calendar. June is in Finnish kesäkuu, summer month. Doesn't feel like it yet!

On Thursday I had my hair cut in Hyvinkää (walk to the station and back, and in town), the other neighbour town, and I took the camera with me to take a photo of this little statue I pass on my way:

The building in the background is a school for 15 to 19 year olds studying for the exams needed for university studies.

I liked her toes! Siskokset (Sisters) by Anne Sipiläinen 1977.

Then I met the little bear on his bike. Sirkuskarhu (The Circus Bear) by Pirkko Nukari in 1977.

The next monument is for the famous Finnish female painter Helene Schjerfbeck, who lived for many years in Hyvinkää. The monument Ovi (Door) is by Tapio Junno in 1998, and based on one of Schjerfbecks paintings from 1883.

She was born in 1862 and died in 1946.

The other side of the monument:

Her paintings are well known and much loved.

Just after I had passed Helene's monument and prepared myself to take a picture of the Welders (by Mauno Oittinen in 1963), my eyes met a surprise:

Two young female artists Kaija Papu and Aino Louhi had added something to this monument, combining the history of metal industry and textile industry in Hyvinkää in their piece of art.

Pitsihilli is the name of their work, a play with words impossible to translate. Hitsipilli could be the unofficial name of the welder's tool, and the parts of this word have been changed to make Pitsihilli. This new word doesn't really make sense, but the first part of it, pitsi, means lace. Children often play with words in this way: sanakirja > kinasarja, kahvipannu > pahvikannu.

I think this is a lovely work, and a lot of knitting.

It almost looks like the men were knitting the last stitches.

The exhibition Todellisuuden Taju 2009 will be there for the summer.

In the link you can see another knitted work, Stairway to Heaven.

I hope you liked the little walk. I made all the points in need by next week for my Moving it Like Mike!

EDIT The links to the knitted art artists are in English and you can read more about their work there. Pitsihilli fits perfectly and is hand knitted for this purpose only.

Move it Like Mike! Week 2 Report

This past week from last Thursday was the second week of my Moving it Like Mike, or walking with Pip. On Saturday I walked my 20 minutes in two parts, when I brought my father in law his lunch and walked back home. I did a bit of cleaning there while he was eating, but it wasnt't vigorous enough to count for extra points.



The wild strawberries grow by the roadside. The weather has been so cold during the week that the berries seem to take ages to get red and ripe.

On Tuesday I walked my daughter Kaija to the train just to get my bit of exercise, and to help her carry one of her bags. She stayed with us a couple of days, and we worked together on three dresses for her: one vintage dress needed to be altered, one she sewed herself and I helped, and one was a new dress and a new top made to a new dress.

On the walk back I saw this garden runaway flower Hesperis matronalis (illakko) Eileen needed help identifying just a while ago. I knew I had seen them here!

This is a wild flower Melandrium dioecum (ailakki), which also can have purple or white flowers, and the Finnish names get mixed in my head easily.

The walk to the station and back was two times 20 minutes, so I managed to get my three times 20 min walks for the second week. Extra points for vigorous special gymnastic program Tuesday night. I try to find my waistline. I lost it in the eighties, so it may take a while to find it.

Walking Again with Mike's

Last Thursday I started walking again with Pip, who invited everyone to Move Iit Like Mike. The idea is to take a 20 minutes walk three times a week and report the results on Thursday. Walks can be replaced by running, cleaning vigorously, etc. I kept it to the walking, and kept my eyes open and DH's camera available. The two first walks were on Thursday already, in rain.

Summer is coming. Dandelions are balls of parachutes already, and the Ranúnculus are the next yellow. Two more walks, in cool but dry weather.





Geránium silváticum, and Anthríscus silvéster


Four walks for the first week is not a bad start. Today begins a new week, and I need to earn my moving points, and report next week.

Exercises

Thank you all for your good advice on free motion quilting. I practised, not a lot but some. It started to look like this:


I'm not very keen on any kind of exercising. It made me think that I usually learn by doing, so I started quilting the actual, biggish quilt. I even remembered to use my reading glasses instead of the normal ones with a reading area in the lower part of the lenses (I usually look above these lenses to write). Keeping my shoulders relaxed and all. My lovely machine has a longer arm than usual sewing machines; the needle is about 10" or 27 cm from the machine body, so there is more space for the quilt when you are working further away from the right edge. This doesn't mean the quilt would move easily there, so no question of smooth movements. After a while I started to wonder why the machine sounded different. Then I noticed that my shoulders covered my ears almost completely. Dropping them down helped for a while, but soon I was quilting in a difficult spot, and there they were again! I also clenched my teeth together, so my jaw was all stiff after the work. Luckily I hade a massage appointment on Thursday, which leads to my other exercises.

Pip from Meet me at Mike's has asked people to Move it like Mike. I walked with her International Walking Team last year until I hurt my knee. Now I'm on better medication and better understanding what a traditionally built woman of my age can and can't do, so I joined in. I earned two points of the weekly three required, when I walked to the massage and back.


I think I earned an additional moral point because it was raining; see how my hood is dripping after I was back home. The shoulders are relaxed again, thank you, and I didn't catch a cold because I changed into dry clothes and had some hot tea. The quilt it quilted, the binding is machine stitched, so there is only hand sewing left to be done. Pictures will come after the work is done.

New treasures

Today I finally get a chance to show you the loveliness I received from my dear friend Karen from UK. My daughter Kaija went to London in December, did some shopping I'll envy forever (but she bought adorable things for me, too), and met Karen in real life. Karen sent me these pieces she has made. The first one I was allowed to open immediately:




You may have seen this work in progress on Karen's blog. Once again, she has hidden the long text quotation by cutting it up and sewing back together. There is also some machine embroidery on paper, and the eyes on the edge. I will have the piece framed and hang it with the two other works by Karen on my wall.


The present for Christmas was this collection of silk puffs with embroidery. They need to be touched (but wash your hands first!), and I'm looking for a suitable glass jar where I can keep them safe but still be able to enjoy the look of them.





On Monday I was in Helsinki to see a knee doctor; I hurt my knee in September when I was walking for the pink ribbon and overdid it a bit. Good news and bad news: there is nothing they can do before it is time for a total knee replacement, but the time is not yet. I'm thinking of having a knee like the fashion models have, you know, narrower than the parts below and above it, smooth and elegant. I'm sure they only give me metal parts in my own surface material :-( . Well, it will go better with my other thick knee! Anyway, to make the most of the trip I went to two fabric shops. This is what can show of my new fabrics:



I'm planning to make a big bag for my cutting mat and ruler (I bought a new ruler with inch measures!) and the projects I'm carrying to the sewing group, so I bought the sewing prints. The dark background fabric and the striped brown fabric may come to use for my Time for Tea Swap project. I bought two other fabrics I will not show before the swap is made public.

This last fabric is heavy cotton, marked as "trouser fabrics", 20 €/kg. I'm not even tempted to make trousers of it, but I'm thinking of shopping bags for the spring and summer. I just may have in my stash the perfect dark olive green to be used for the bottom, and maybe some pink for the lining at least.

Walking for the Pink Ribbon

Today is the last day of October, and the Pink Ribbon campaign is ending. Merete in Norway got me into this, and the Brown Owls' Walking badge obliges to walk for my health. I have counted my walks for ten weeks now, and promised to donate 1.50 € for every 20 minutes or longer walk for the cancer reasearch through the Pink Ribbon campaign. The total count was 35 walking days, which would make 52.50 €. The online bank wanted to take 5250 € from my account for this. Because I didn't have that much, and because I didn't promise that much, I only paid 52 €. I didn't make it 53, because I had also bought the pink ribbon, and the pink scissors. And I was a little angry because I felt like they had tried to rob me.


Last night was my sewing group night again. I took some pictures there so you can see the nice classroom we have. Earlier we used the sewing class of another school, where the pupils are 7 to 12 years old. The sewing machines were good there too, but the tables and chairs were so low it was difficult for us to sit there for our three lessons.


Here is Anne, our teacher:




And this is Hanna, the woman with the magic colour pots! She is making a slash cut (chenille) carpet using old jeans and other old fabrics.

And this is my pile of rag rug baby quilt pieces and magazines.

The school kids had been making patchwork, paper-pieced potholders and other small projects.

I like these autumn colour art works.

I need some creative thinking to finish the baby quilt, because I don't have enough of the mouse pattern flannel I used for backing. Maybe it will not be a children's quilt like I intended but one baby quilt and one preemie quilt.

We will be visiting my mother tomorrow. We don't celebrate Halloween here (allthough the shops have started selling halloween decorations some years ago), but this weekend is All Saints' Day. It is the time to make a visit to the cemetery and bring some winter flowers there, like Erica or Calluna, and some people take candles to the grave of their family. We do that at Christmas only. So I'm wishing you all a nice weekend, and happy Halloween to those who celebrate it.