Birds, puzzles and boxes

There must be some kind of lazy bug in the air as I don't get my sewing  going. I have ideas and plans, but all I can manage is some knitting in the evenings. The birdwatching nearly two weeks ago went fine, we saw 8 species but no big numbers of individual birds. The Common Redpoll was this year's most frequently seen bird. We have one male who has already started to change colour and grow red feathers on his chest.

 

 

The Great Spotted Woodpecker has also found our bird restaurant and enjoys the peanuts and the fat, but he also looks for insects in the trees.

 

With no inspiration for sewing, I have been playing with jigsaw puzzles from my childhood. Actually they are from my mother's childhood and youth in the 1920's and 30's, all hand sawn. We used to assemble them on rainy days in the summer. The original boxes are folded of heavy brown paper, many of them crushed and torn, some mended with masking tape.

 

 

I wanted to try if I can make new boxes to replace the worst ones. I took one box apart, made some measurements and started. Some of you know that my dear daughter is a master bookbinder; I think I have inherited some of her skills because this went really well for a beginner.

 

 

One width from the paper roll gave me three squares so I needed cut another strip to make a lid for the odd bottom I made with the third square. And so on...

 

 

First box completed. I added a picture of the finished puzzle in the box because some of these puzzles are really difficult.

 

Here you see this one: look how the pieces are cut on the colour lines on the minarets.

I made nine boxes in slightly different sizes, copied the original logos from the boxes and glued the copies on the new boxes.

 

 

I think I must go through every jigsaw puzzle, put it together, measure it, count the pieces, take a photo, and add it to to box with the pieces. Some puzzles have a note about missing pieces, but I also have a box with some spare pieces. It would be fun to find the right picture for all of them.

 

 

Winter lights, knittings and bird watching

There is a big tree with winter lights in Järvenpää which we pass every time we drive to town or back home. Yesterday I tried to take a picture of it when we stopped at the red lights. It wasn't very dark yet - our days get longer by about 6 minutes per day already. The sky really wasn't this black then. Anyway, you can only get the idea of the shape of the tree. There are 28,000 tiny lights on it, and the tree is huge and beautiful. I will try to take a better picture soon.

 

 

I'm still just knitting, but I have changed to Spring colours and a bamboo/cotton blend from my new favourite shop, the knitting café Lentävä Lapanen (the Flying Mitten, if Finnish names are hard for you to remember).

 

These dishcloths are fun and easy to knit, and it takes me two TV nights to finish one.

 

 

This winter the weather has changed more than during the past two winters, when we had no wet days at all. I haven't built snowmen on the warmer days, but we have had our bird feeders full, and after Christmas Mr. K carried our Christmas tree from the front yard to the back garden, and put a sheaf of oats on the top. Yellowhammers soon found their favourite treat, here is a couple of them on the ground under the tree eating. They must have other restaurants too, because I have not seen them again here.

 

The Big Garden Birdwatch event is again this coming weekend. We are going to watch the birds during one hour in our garden, and make a list by species and maximum number of birds seen at a time (so we don't count the same individuals over and over). BirdLife Finland will then make a list on their website with nationwide results.

 

The bullfinch also found delicious seeds on the ground, and the new snow caught on his face feathers.

 

 

 

I hope to see many birds and all our regular visitors on Sunday!

 

 

Knitting

The new year has started with winter weather, some snow, some frost, some sleet. New bird watching list on the fridge door with ten species so far spotted. I have some projects started but no new finishes for this year, so I thought I could show you my end of the year knittings.

Craft Olympics socks and wrist warmers for DD. I made a similar set for another young lady but forgot to take a picture.

 

October knitting: infinity scarf and wrist warmers for someone special abroad. Here I combined a novelty yarn with some mohair type yarn in burgundy to add warmth.

 

First pair of mittens using my Granny's pattern I showed you last Summer when I figured out how she did it. She used to knit them on two needles to the end of  the two-colourd part, to avoid knitting purl stitches, but I used a circular needle and made both mittens at the same time.

 

That has become my favourite method and helps me make identical socks and mirror image mittens. This other pair is for a young man.

 

I just had to buy this soft wool blend yarn in Aubergine colour. Again, the rest of the yarn was used for wrist warmers to go with the infinity scarf.

 

 

That was all I can remember. Knitting soft yarns in the evenings in front of the fire is my main hobby nowadays. Preparing for the time when I'm really old an can't see any more, but my fingers remember how to knit!

 

Soon there will be more light to make decent photos, and I hope to get in the mood for sewing too. Now it is still time to semi-hibernate. Thank you for coming by again!

Craft Olympics - all my thimbles

Finally the secrets are revealed, Christmas gifts opened and I can show what I have been doing to get all those thimbles from Melanie's Craft Olympics. My first thimble was for a secret knitting project, toe to top two at a time socks for my daughter Kaija, and the rest of the yarn was enough to make wrist warmers for her busy hands. The yarn is hand dyed Araucania yarn from Lentävä Lapanen, the Flying Mitten knitting cafe, very lovely to knit. I'm also beginning to learn the idea of the toe to top heel!

 

 

 

The yarn was so lovely I bought another skein and knitted socks and wrist warmers for my daughter-in-law-to-be as well.

Second thimble is for this stitchery, where I learnt some new stitches.

 

My third thimble came with this Granny Square quilt I made for my sister, who is a granny. The grey and pink outer rounds of the blocks are from our Granny's old summer dress.

 

All the fabrics came from my stash as usual, and 90 % of them are recycled garments or bed linen.

My fourth thimble was a change of plans: I had no time to make the wool applique I had planned. Wreath making is crafty too, so this will be within the rules.

 

The fifth and last thimble was for a new skill, needle-turn applique. The pattern is one of Kaaren's freebies on her blog The Painted Quilt. My work is nowhere near perfection but I could give it another try, hoping for better results and rounder circles. Sorry for the poor quality of the photos, the days are really very short and dark at this time of the year here.

The applique is on the front of this bag I made for Melanie as a Christmas gift for her knitting projects.

The Craft Olympics has been a fun challenge at the end of the year, not too demanding as we could choose our crafts and change our plans during the Olympics. Go to Melanie - she always puts the kettle on when visitors arrive! - and see who else has been a crafts athlete. Melanie has links to all the finished projects on her sidebar.

Merry Christmas

It has been a long and dark Autumn and an early Winter. Not much has been done, but I hope to come back to blog reading soon. Thank you all for coming by, thank you, my special friends, for the thoughtful gifts I have received. Take some chocolate or dried cranberries, or almonds and raisins if you prefer, and smell the Christmassy scent of the hyacinths. Coffee and gingerbread are waiting on the other table.

 

Have a happy and peaceful Christmas!

Craft Olympics 4

Change of plans - my fourth Craft Olympics craft will not be wool appliqué but this Christmas wreath.

 

 

It is hanging on our newly (last Summer) painted wall by the door. The red wall makes a better background to the green fir twigs, and I didn't want to hammer a nail to the new door. The green needles remain fresh for quite a long time outdoors.

 

My last CO project is also finished but it is a Christmas gift so I will show it later. It has been fun making these small projects at the end of the year. Melanie's thimbles are nice trophies for the sidebar.

 

We have lots of snow so Santa's sleigh will have a good chance to reach every house on time next week. Be nice, the elves are watching you!

Winter Roses

It has been a busy time, like it always is for everyone at this time of the year. Most of my doings has been secret, but here is something I can show you:

 

 

Mr. K painted two walls in our hallway with the leftover paint from DS2's room renovation. We thought of ways to protect the wall from new dark green marks from this chair. I suggested a board, then thought of covering the board with some fabric and batting ... and my thoughts wandered and I came up with this idea:

 

 

 

A hood for the chair back made with some upholstery fabric leftovers from my mother. It is not quite the same colour as the seat I renewed some years ago, but they go together nicely. I added some double batting on both sides, and simple tape ties at the lower edge.

 

The Winter came with the advent time, we had lots of snow at the end of last week and the weather turned really cold after a long and unusually warm Autumn. Today our thermometer hasn't climbed to the warmer side of -20C/-4F all day.

 

 

Mr. Bullfinch has a snow moustache (click on the photo to enlarge) from digging for sunflower seeds in the new soft snow. All the little birds seem to have come back from the forest where they stayed during the Summer and Autumn as long as they could find their food there. We put the feeder out again in early October when we had the first cold days.

 

I'm not doing an Advent Calendar this year, but if you want a look at great talent and a dose of beauty without fuzzing about Christmas, you should go here every day and see what my daughter has created. When she was little, she was not allowed to cut in books, but now that she can make them from scratch, and buy her own books to cut, she can do the most wonderful things.