Short travel report

Long time since I last posted! We had a five-day holiday in Germany over last weekend, and you all know how it takes some days to get back to the everyday routines.


In the first mail I opened after the trip was an envelope from the USA, with this sweet house:


It was from Stephanie, our Time for Tea Swap hostess. You may have seen them on other blogs as well this week: she made one for each of us! On the other side there is a pocket just big enough for a tea bag. Mine was white tea with raspberry! Go and see Stephanie's blog, she is making the most interesting blocks with ladies with personality!


Now I'm going to take you on a little tour to Germany with me. This was my third time ever in Munich, Mr. Kotkarankki's sister lives in a small town just outside Munich. My first visit was to her eldest son's christening 28 years ago, and on the second visit we only saw the airport. Mr. Kotkarankki has been there a lot, so we went shopping alone on Friday. It was 12 o'clock when we emerged from the S-Bahn. First we saw the Cathedral with one of the towers hooded for some renovation work, and the City Hall in front.

The musical dancing figures of the City Hall tower are a tourist attraction. It was raining lightly, so we didn't stay long watching them.

Thi last picture is from Saturday, when we made another trip there with his sister. We went to the Alte Pinakothek and saw lots of old paintings from Paul Rubens, Rembrandt, and some less famous painters. Afterwards we enjoyed coffee and tea with big pieces of cake at the Wiener Cafe.

I have more pictures from our Sunday excursion, but they will have to wait.

I had another special mail, from Melanie, but at the moment I can only say the things were wrapped in red! Thank you Melanie for your Random Act of Kindness!

Between laundry, cleaning and ironing I have been sewing my first ever quilt-as-you-go blocks for Jan at Ozcomfortquilts. She uses 10.5" string blocks to make quilts for the Victoria bush fire victims in Australia. I used mostly strips from the bag I received some years ago with the half-finished quilt top I called the stranger quilt because I didn't know who originally started the quilt.

I hope to get the blocks mailed tomorrow, and then I will try to catch up with my Country Calendar blocks - February and March!

Vintage Thingies Thursday 17 - Tea Cosies

This week I'm playing along again! The Coloradolady is hosting, and on her blog here you can find the links to other blogs showing their vintage finds and treasures.

This week I'll show you two of my newer tea cosies. This first one is from the 1960's, very straight edges and stripes. The fabric is heavy cotton and the insulation layer is foamy plastic. The stain may be coffee or tea; I'll need to try and wash it away.

This other one is more interesting. The covering chintz is from the 1950's. The tea cosy is very heavy. When my mother gave this one to me, she told me I could renew the insulation. I picked up the seam connecting to top fabric and the inner flannel, and guess what I found? The original wool fabric (dark red with a cream pattern, heavily damaged by burning and stains), and the original insulation. It was newspapers dated several years before my birth! I left all the original pages there, added some new news, washed the fabrics and put it all together again.

I think this fabric has a Mediterranean touch, hot summer days and laundry lines across the window. The tea cosy was used also in the garden when we had mid-morning tea and coffee ("elva-kaffe" like our grandmother used to say) or afternoon coffee with the grandparents, great aunt Saima, my parents, the kids who happened to be at home and the summer exchange students or other friends we happened to have living in the house in later years.

There was a round table, four wooden garden chairs, two benches and the lawn to sit on. Naturally, the sun was always shining, the lake was blue and the birds were singing.

In this last picture is a generous peek at the secret Tea Swap project I have been working on. I'm leaving for a little holiday trip tonight, and when I come back on Tuesday evening, I will pack this and the other two things together and send them on their long way on Wednesday.

Laskiainen - carne lasciare

Today is a special day known as the last day of the carnival season. Mardi gras is in Finnish laskiainen. The name may come from the Latin "carne lasciare", farewell to meat at the beginning of the Lent. Our Lutheran church doesn't require fasting before Easter, but we still enjoy fat food on this day. The traditional meal is thick pea soup with fat smoked pork in it; and as a dessert or afternoon coffee treat we have a sweet wheat bun filled with whipped cream and almond paste or strawberry jam. When I was a child, the buns were served on a deep plate with hot milk, which I found most awful.

An old agricultural tradition has remained, too, because it means lots of fun. It is sledging down the hill. This was supposed to make the flax grow tall, and make the harvest good in many ways. The longer the slide, the taller the flax.


These pictures show big and small children having fun this morning, sliding downhill on binliners or plastic sledges.



It was heartwarming to hear the merry laughter and shouts of the kids of different ages. I remember from my own childhood the feel of the bumps on the slope, falling off the sledge and getting snow in my neck and wrists, and climbing uphill again and again. Rosy cheeks, and moist hair clinging to the forehead, fingers and toes pricking with the cold. Oh happy times!



My sister P who was a student at the time, went with her friends in a bigger slope later in the evening, and afterwards there was a dance where everyone went in their sporty clothes. I can imagine there was romance in the air, too, when young adults were playing like kids in the dark winter evening.

Small scraps can make a difference

You probably know I can't throw anything away, because I might need it for something someday? So I keep even small scraps of fabric. They can be used like this:


But my tiny scraps are not always big enough for a project. I wanted to make a set of four coasters, and use a pretty pale yellow floral print in one of the trapezoids. Well, my scrap was big enough for three, but for the last one I had to take a different fabric. It is the first trapezoid from the top clockwise in the bottom hexagon.


Here is a blue set under construction. Next I will make the backing and then top stitch the coasters. I found the pattern in the new Stitch magazine.


Talking about hexagons, there is a project called Hexagons of Hope going on for the bushfire victims of Victoria, Australia. The idea is to send EPP fabric hexagons so the women who have lost their houses and everything else and their fabrics and needles and sewing machines, could put their hands on a new project. I first heard about this from Suzie, and I think it is a great idea. There is a lot of information about the size of the hexagons and how to make them, just follow the link.


Today I finally had a chance to mail my wonky Maverick stars to the Bushfire quilt project. I got a little carried away and instead of the originally planned 12 blocks I suddenly found myself making the 25 to finish a quilt top. I thought my recycled men's shirts (the man is not recycled, I'm his first wife!, but the shirts are) are so different from other people's fancy quilting fabrics, and so I took my scrap bag and went on happily.

This star is one of my favourites, a combination of a plaid flannel shirt, a twill shirt and our living room curtain fabric.

And this is the top finished. I got to make the fun part, and the good ladies in Australia will provide the batting and backing and machine quilting and binding.

Star blocks

When I was going through blogs and Flickr, I found a great way to participate in helping the people who lost their homes in the Australian bush fires. Tia in Australia is organizing a quilting bee to make quilts for those people. You can send 12" blocks to her, and she and her quilt guild will sew them to tops and quilt and bind them. She recommended the Maverick star using 4.5" squares and a light background. One tutorial is here. The Quiltville tutorial is using 2.5" squares, but for the 12" blocks you make the squares 4.5".


I had been making the smaller star blocks for a while for another project, but now I took an unbleached white calico from my stash and cut it up for this project. It was enough for 12 blocks, and this morning I aready sewed six of them.

So far I have only used two fabrics for the stars, but for the remaining six blocks I will find more colours. Tia was also looking for more masculine fabrics, and I think men's flannel shirts certainly are masculine.

There are other projects going on as well, like the Brown Owls' Restash a Crafter, the Handmade Help, Jan's string quilts with tutorial - make your choice! Every block helps, a donation made with warm, appreciating thoughts will be welcome.

So many ways to help others

This week I spent four days at the Children's Hospital of the University of Helsinki. There are many patients, whose parents are at work and the nurses are always busy, so I try to help out sometimes. There is so much you can do to help without a nurse's training to make the patients feel a little less lonely: reading books, helping them eat or just sitting by the bedside when they come back to the ward from their operation.


The hospital building is built during and after the WWII. This picture of a mother and a child must be from that time.




The original benches in the entrance lobby are very uncomfortable, but the modern pillows are a great help:

These elephants and flamingoes are are donated by Marimekko.

This is the part I love, being a child from the fifties and growing up waiting for new Moomin books to be written. Tove Jansson painted this picture for the stairwell of another chlidren's hospital in Helsinki. That hospital was later changed to take adult patients only. The paintings were copied by art students and painted again in 1998 in this hospital, with the blessing of Tove Jansson.

I love the way the characters are running up the stairs, smiling happily. In the next picture is the framed story about the history of this mural, and in the lower part of the paper a copy of Tove's handwritten letter expressing her joy for the continued life of her characters, to cheer up new generations of child patients.

These stairs come from the entrance floor to the next one.

Isn't the horse just lovely?

This spinster auntie is hurrying with her nieces to bring gifts and flowers to someone.

The operation ward greets the little patients with teddy bears in green. I get this far with the patients, the mothers of young kids are only allowed to the elevator doors, to avoid any separation drama up here.

I love this owl door. It leads to the recovery room, reminding everyone on this side that there are people asleep even when it is daytime. On the inside of the door is another painting, with sunshine and a little bird singing.

There are some professional visitors on the wards, too. Every Tuesday two hospital clowns come to meet the patients who are well enough to have a laugh. You can see pictures of them here. The idea is brought from New York, where the first clown had her training at the Clown Care Unit . Today the Finnish clowns operate in three major children's hospitals for free.

I finished some hand sewing there while my patient slept, but the project still needs some machine sewing before it is ready for photographing. My mind is full of ideas for projects for the Australian bush fire victims. Pip from Meet me at Mikes has done a wonderful job organizing ways to donate, and her sidebar shows numerous links for those who want to help.

The Poet's Birthday

Last Thursday, when I was busy showing pictures of old plates, I also remembered to celebrate the birthday of the Finnish national poet J. L. Runeberg (who wrote in Swedish!). The celebrating was emphasized on the material side and included noticing it was that special day, and eating a tart named after him. Runeberg's tart is baked with biscuit crumbs and raspberry jam, and you never know whether you get a moist, soft, delicious one or something like what I happened to choose this year:





It looks just perfect, but the cake was heavy and almost dry. The taste wasn't too bad, but I have eaten better ones. I wasn't in the mood of reading any 19th century poetry, so I just had my private celebration at the waxcloth covered kitchen table.


I have been arranging my handicraft books and magazines. Last week my daughter Kaija was here for two nights, and I wanted her to find her bed easily. My newer sewing machine is in her old room, and so are my handicraft books and magazines. For some reason they tend to gather on the bed instead of the shelves.




But now they have found their way back where they belong. Above are the old books and some magazines.

Here are the quilting books, and on the lower shelf some old magazines: the Australian Handmade from the 90's and British Inspirations from about the same time. Plus all kinds of British, German and US quilting magazines.

On the same day I had some lovely mail. Melanie sent me two magazines/books about Claude Monet and his wonderful house and garden in Giverney. Thank you, Melanie, you are such a sweet friend!

The other mail was from Japan. I bought these fabrics and pinch pouch frames from good-ness Etsy shop. I just wanted to have the mushrooms, and I think of using the sewing machine fabric for my sewing group bag I'm going to start planning someday. It is so good to have the materials ready when the inspiration hits!

Next week there will be little or no blogging, just some quick blog reading in the evenings. I will be volunteering at the children's hospital in Helsinki for several days. I have some hand sewing projects reserved for the moments when the little patients sleep, and some reading for the commuter train. Have a good week everyone!