Vintage Thingies Thursday 16 - Plates

This week I'll take you to my kitchen again. Coloradolady Suzanne is hosting the VTT and her blog has links to all who are playing along this week. Suzanne is showing some vintage Valentine's Day cards.




This is an old plate from the Finnish manufacturer Arabia. The pattern is from central Europe, like many of the early patterns were.

This is also Arabia, a rose plate my mother gave me for my cakes and biscuits when I was putting up my own household. The roses are decals, not individually painted.

This last one is something quite different. The plate itself is manufactured in Czechoslovakia, and my mother has painted it in the late 1930's, before she married my father. She has told me that the patterns were copied from special books. She also learned many names of colours in French at that time, because the colours were from France. "Le ciel est bleu", she used to say, when we talked about her painting. (This ciel looks more like purple!)

This is all for this week's vintage. Suzanne has more places to offer!

Socks and Secrets

Our local newspaper Keski-Uusimaa invited everyone to knit socks "for a friend". All socks sent to the newspaper will be given for charity in this area before Valentine's Day. (Valentine's day is here called "friends' day", we deal better with less romantic love! So it is suitable to send cards to all your friends, or not.) They received 174 pairs in just a few weeks; the appeal was made after Christmas. Now all socks are exhibited at the shopping centre, and the public can vote for their favourite pair from 12. The selected socks can be seen on the newpaper's website here.






The other socks were grouped by colour for display:


The knitters were asked to make their own pattern and use their imagination.

Some socks were obviously knitted by beginners. The ones I'm showing are among the best. I am not a knitter although I can knit socks and other things; I just wanted to show you the variety.

I may have told earlier that I kind of like ironing. Last week my old faithful ironing board collapsed, and I needed a new one. Here it is:

The new one is higher, wider and longer than the old one. and it has this nice holder for the cable. You can see my ironing pile on the dining chair behind the board: there are only two table cloths and one men's shirt left after today's test drive.

I have been making my secret Time for Tea Swap projects, and now I can give a little peek on what is coming. Here is some embroidery:

And the other project is more in the quilting department.

This last one will not be sent away so you can see a litttle more of it.

I have some new plans in mind, too. There is still time to start a smallish project, I think. On the other hand, I just downloaded the February block for my Country Calendar BOM from Ellie's Quiltplace. It is a nice one and will not take too long, especially because I have already stitched the name of the month.

Icing

Yesterday we had a beautiful, sunny day with -15 degrees C or +5 F, no wind, the sun felt warm on my face when I took these photos. The bare trees had literally icing on the branches; I believe I could have heard a little tinkling if there had been any wind. You can click the photos to enlarge and see the glass-like ice.








I took the photos at noon, to demonstrate the increase of light around these northern corners at this time of the year. On January 31st the sun rose at 8.37 a.m. and set at 4.31 p.m. This is how high the sun was at the highest:





The following picture was taken a month ago, on December 31st at noon in the same place. Sunrise was at 9.24 a.m. and sunset at 3.23 p.m. My almanach states the dark hours of the 22nd day of each month; in December it was dark for 16 h 14 min on that day and in January only 15 h 8 min. The time of morning grey and twilight was in December 51 minutes and in January 58 minutes. By the spring equinox the day will be about five hours longer than now.

With the increasing light I hope to increase my energy as well. I'm thinking about things like changing the plants in bigger pots, reorganizing some more stash, starting some new projects and so on. Next week my dear daughter Kaija will come and stay in her old room for a couple of days; she will be starting a new school and there will be a few school days per month near here. Having her here will inspire me. I'm sure I will want to have something to show when she comes back from school!

A couple of days ago Suzie, the Little Busy Bee, gave me this award:

Thank you, Suzie!
It came without any rules, and that is how I'm giving it forward to the following creative bloggers:

Eileen

Ewa-Christine

Gunnel

Kaija

Karen

Melanie

As an awarded creative blogger I feel like I ought to show something I have been sewing for a change. I have been mainly working on the stars I have already shown, and on the very secret Time of Tea Swap, so no crafty photos doesn't mean I have been lazy! I will try to make some sneaky peek photos of the tea project when the sun is up again.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 15 - Time for Tea

My this week's vintage thingies are tea related, because I'm in the middle of the Time for Tea Swap projects. That includes lots of information on tea through Stephanie's blog, and drinking extra cups of Earl Grey to keep the ideas coming! Suzanne is hosting the Vintage Thingies Thursdays, and links to other blogs showing vintage things are here.





Tea tastes really different from a thin china cup. These are from my mother around the time I started my own household. The cups are from Japan or China, from the early part of 1900. The pot is from a different set.

The lid is secured with a piece of string, because it falls off too easily. It is just a round lid, without the extra bit to keep it secure when pouring the tea. The ladies of the pot look Japanese to me.

It was easier to show the cup upside down. There are no marks to show where the cup was manufactured.

The saucer has the same picture.

Finally the tea cosy, from about the same period. I have shown this one before. Linen, with cotton embroidery. It was stitched by my now famous great aunt Saima or her big sister, my grandmother. I made the lining and put the tea cosy together.

The table runner in the first picture is from grandmother or her sister, too (Saima lived in her sister's family). It has been used a lot, mended, and stained. No wonder, it looks very lovely, and the tea pot has a runny nose!

Go and see the Coloradolady to find all other lovely vintage thingies!

Tea Tuesday, and some Tagging

Another Tea Swapper Melanie was showing her many different English ways of serving tea. Go and see, it is a lovely collection of photos from 2008, with fresh strawberries and all! My tea culture has influences from east and west, and my blog friends in Britain might be shocked to see the way we make tea. My modern way of drinking tea is this:






A mug (Arabia/Iittala Teema, special edition in red, a Christmas present), a coaster from Melanie, and black tea with nothing in it: no sugar, honey or raspberry jam (the Russian way), and for God's sake no milk. Therefore no spoon needed. This is a mid-morning cup, therefore nothing to eat either.


On Saturday we visited my mother, 92, still living alone at home. There was a lot of snow on the trees, so it was not easy to see the lake. You can get a peek in the middle of the picture, above the snow covered rock. The white area is the lake, and the dark area above the straight horizontal line is an island. You can click all my images to enlarge.




Mother had started putting together a 1,000 pcs jigsaw puzzle my youngest sister had given her for Christmas. The picture will be of an old Dutch painting with 12 persons and a dog, but also some dark corners is brown and black.

I have been tagged by Miri. I'm not very good at these things, but let's try.

Here are the rules of the game:
1. When you are tagged you are asked to list eight random facts about yourself and post them on your blog for visitors to enjoy.
2. Tag eight of your blogging friends and leave them a comment that they have been tagged and to join in the fun if they have the opportunity. (If not, that's okay. They can still enjoy the random facts everyone shares :) Be sure to list a link to your eight friends in your posting.

Here are my eight random facts:

1. My "name day" (a smaller celebration than birthday, all names have a day in the calendar, and variations of a name celebrate on the same day) is on my father's birthday. It was a special day for my mother as a teenager when she was already in love with him, and she wanted to call one of her daughters Ulla for this reason.

2. I drink black tea three to four times a day.

3. When I drink coffee, it is latte (1/8 coffee, 7/8 steamed milk) or cafe au lait.

4. I sort everything that needs to be thrown away. In addition to the one real waste bin I have two small containers for problem waste (batteries and medicins), 4 bins for recycling: compost, glass, metal, and packaging materials, and we take fluid cartons and newspapers to their separate recycling places. It goes without saying that we recycle all bottles to be reused, and get our money back (0.40 € for a big soft drink bottle).

5. Fabrics that other people need to throw away I turn into quilts and Unicef dolls. This doesn't happen very quickly!

6. I like old things.

7. I read a little in bed before going to sleep.

8. I have read all Agatha Christie's detective stories.

Here comes the difficult part. I have many blogging friends, and even more blogs I follow more or less regularly, but I don't really know which of them don't like to be tagged. Therefore I leave the choice to you, my reader. If you want to play this game, leave a comment with a link to your blog and copy the rules from above. In this way we can all come and learn a little more about you.

Stars and prints

Last night I was in my sewing group again. This time I took my own needles and my presser foot with the 1/4" lines along; luckily they too have Husqvarna sewing machines at the school! I saw this tutorial on Belinda's blog some time ago, when I was lurking around all the Tea Swappers' blogs. I think this star is cute, and the tutorial shows a very easy way to make them. I don't cut my star point bits at all before sewing them, because I use very small scraps here. My squares are 2½", a little bigger than Belinda's. This will be my fun project I can always take on when I don't get my other things done.




Yesterday was a nice day to be outdoors, we had just a little new snow. The animals had left their marks on the white surface. Here are some little bird's footprints, the dark things are sunflower seeds or their hulls from the tray hanging above. The birds we most often see here are the great tit, blue tit and green finch. The squirrels drop a lot when they eat there, and birds can come and eat on the ground at the same time. Sometimes they change places.

Here are the squirrel's prints at the feeding place.

A hare lives also in the forest around our house. Its footprints are easy to recognise:

This little fellow is having a hard time in winter.

It is the mouse. He hides in the snow, making tunnels.

And this is why the mouse wants to hide:

Some neighbour's cat always keeps coming to our yard, peeing in the corners and pooing in the sand under our kitchen steps. The least the cat should do is keep the mice and moles away!

Today there is no sign of these footsteps left. Last night it snowed over 10 cm or 4". I spent almost two hours pushing the snow away from the easy parts of the driveway. I only do the parts where I don't have to push up any slopes to get the snow out of the way. My only responsibility is the front door steps and the path to that door, but I did some more because the weather was good and my one hour's work brings DH home half an hour earlier. Which, I hear, is right now, so I will go and make us a well deserved, nice cup of tea.

Vintage Thingies Thursday 14 - more books and lace

Last week I left one book untouched, and now is time to show what is in it. Coloradolady Suzanne is hosting VTT again, and on her blog you will find the links to all other blogs playing along.

The last book is Handarbetsboken, a handicraft book in Swedish. It covers many different crafts, like sewing clothes, stitching, knitting and crocheting.

Samples of the crocheting patterns:

These are some of the laces my grandmother crocheted for me after she had gone blind in one eye. We are six sisters and brothers, and she crocheted a set of half a dozen laces for each and every one of us to be used in our bed linen.

Back to the book: this is how you learn to knit on four sticks.

And you will learn to make the heel in at least two different ways. I prefer the first one.

That was all for this weeks vintage. Suzanne is showing her first jar of vintage buttons, and at the end of her post are all the other links.