On my desk on wednesday

Kirsty is showing every Wednesday what is on her desk. I have been working hard, and this is how my desk looks now:




I can't really get very near to the table, because we are rearranging our hobby room. The cardboard boxes almost reach to the ceiling. But when making the desk so messy and emptying a cupboard, I found something very nice I can show you tomorrow on Vintage Thingies Thursday.

Elma 2008 Countryside Fair in Helsinki

On Saturday we went to a food and agriculture show in Helsinki. There was a hall full of forest exhibitions, information for city forest owners and for students considering studies connected with nature. In the forest hall we saw a little nature path with stuffed wild animals like this Lynx lynx, the largest cat in our forests:






This is wolverine.

And here is the Cygnus cygnus swan. I'm sorry about the lights above the swan, the people wouldn't take the swan down for me.

This is the Dryocopus major, or great black woodpecker I have mentioned earlier. They live near us in the forest. The tree trunk looks a little pitiful for this big bird; you usually see them in large old trees where they can find their food.

There were other animals, too, but they were difficult to photograph as the forest was dark like it sould be in real world.

In the agriculture hall were the usual horses, cows, sheep, rooster, hens and chickens. But there were also alpacas, imported to some farms from the South American Andes. They do very well in our cold climate. We didn't see the agility show of the alpacas, but we saw this modern version of hand carder. The alpaca wool was sooo soft! The lady told me there are over 30 natural shades of white, brown and black.

In the handicraft hall we watched spinning with a spindle, which I had never seen before. The Spinners' Guild had come to the fair to show their skills.

There was also a spinning wheel I had only seen in pictures before this.

And then the spinning wheel commonly used in Finland. My mother-in-law had one of these and she could use it as well. Too bad I didn't take the time and ask her to teach me how to spin.

In the handicraft hall were big and small exhibitors. One lady had this small booth with traditional Christmas decorations made of rye straw. Here is a table runner with linen warp and straw weft.

These straw mobiles are called himmeli (from the German and Swedish words Himmel for heaven or sky).

The decoration is almost impossible to transport or store without breaking it. In the old times a new one was always made for Christmas; nowadays you can see it hanging in its place all the year. Straw decoarations naturally belong to the harvest time, but many traditional forms of harvest decoration have been included to Christmas in Scandinavia.

One year later

The pond by the school centre tonight, one year after our world changed. It was a chilly day and the water was partially covered with thin ice. By tomorrow morning the chain of candles will reach around the pond, like caring thoughts embracing the village and its people.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 6

It is Vintage day again! Lisa, the Apron Queen is hosting this fun game and you can find the links to participating blogs at her place here.







This week I will show you something I enjoyed doing already when I was a child. These jigsaw puzzles are from the childhood and youth of my mother, 92 next week. Most of them were packed in little handmade boxes like this:






The pictures are magazine illustrations glued on thin plywood or thick card, and the pieces are sawn by hand. This little puzzle is called Dog Friends:





And this morning I put together this

to make this, The Swimmer Girl:

This was all for today, pop over to the Apron Queen to find other vintage treasures! Why not join in?

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.

Not Spooky Cemetery Story

I have often wondered how different the cemeteries look in different cultures. Of course my opinion is based mostly on films and news material and only partially to what I have seen. This weekend was All Saints Day, which in Finland has been renamed the Day of the Deceased. We don't have saints in the Lutheran church, which is the main religion here. Anyway, this is the day to put the graves ready for the winter and take out the last summer flowers to replace them with something that will last.

Here are some pictures I took earlier this autumn when we visited the grave of my DH's grandparents and his mother. These are some of the really old gravestones. The families don't excist any longer so the places have been taken to use again and the old stones are gathered in this area within the cemetery. The Tuusula church was built in 1734, this cemetery is from a later time.

This is a general view over the cemetery.

There are usually trees growing in all cemeteries, and I think this is a typical Finnish cemetery, with graves from a long period of time and still in use.

On Saturday we were visiting my mother in Tampere and brought candles to the grave of my father and my maternal grandparents. My grandfather was one of the first to be buried in this forest cemetery of Vatiala in Tampere. The chapel was built in 1957, and it was designed by the Finnish architect Viljo Revell, who has also designed the City Hall of Toronto, Canada.

I have always loved the arch shape of the roof. It is copper plated.

This is a side view; you can see through the chapel as the side walls are all glass. The water pool is outdoors.

Here you can see the forest cemetery. The original idea was that there should be no grass on the graves but wild, evergreen brushwood like cowberry. The graves are not is straight rows, and the trees will remain where they grow.

This is the area of urn tombs, and for strewing the ashes.

There was also a place to remember loved ones who are buried elsewhere. There were lots of candles burning already in the morning of Saturday. We also bring candles to the graves on Christmas Eve. The cemetery looks very bautiful in the dark, with snow covering the ground and small candles burning on almost every grave.

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.