Market day

Today we went to Järvenpää, our neighbour town to see a harvest festival for farmers and producers like crafty people. I was there last year with my daughter Kaija, but we only stayed for one day because of the cold and rainy weather. Kaija's books can not be exhibited in a tent in such weather. I sold a couple of bags but didn't like enough to give it another try. This year she couldn't come because she is working. Instead, we went there as tourists and I took a lot of pictures because the weather was excellent. First there was a flower show by one of the local florists.

Kukka = flower, kaali = cabbage (kukkakaali = cauliflower)


This table was filled with berries, grapes and vegetables:

And then there were various flower arrangements you could vote for:

Some of the sellers were young but most were a little older. This lady had made beautiful decorations of straw (I think it is rye straw).

And she had knitted wool socks for small and bigger feet:

Then there was a mushroom exhibition. The lady showed delicious, edible and poisonous mushrooms and gave advice how to use them. Many poisonous mushrooms can be used for dyeing wool.

And of course there was some harvest from the field as well.

To make the event more interesting for men as well there were some old tractors, Fordson and Fergusson. The newest looking was from 1956, this little grey one is probably much older. They look so tiny compared to the shiny modern giants now running in the fields. In the backgound there are old milk cans of 25 litres or even bigger, formerly used to take the milk from the farm to the dairy. They are replaced by tanks now.

Lots of pictures, little text. Have a nice weekend!

Walking for my own health and others'

I think I am an autumn person. I like autumn clothes best, warm polo shirts and tweed jackets and trousers and reasonable shoes. I feel ready to start new things. I like apples and mushrooms and cabbage. I like the cooler weather when I can dress in warm clothes; I don't mind rain if I can wear decent rain clothing and rubber boots.


This autumn energy has made me a serious walker again. I have bought sporty walking shoes:





As you notice further down on the right, I have earned new merit badges as a Brown Owls Faraway brownie. For the walking badge I have walked for exercise last week every day from Monday to Friday, and this week every day exept on Thursday. My usual walk is half an hour: I walk 15 minutes away from home, turn, and walk back. Today I walked a fair bit further than on the first day. This is a cell phone link mast up on the hill.

There is a warning: beware of ice falling from the mast! With this morning's 13 degrees C there was no real danger.

Further away on my long and straight walking route is another warning, here I have already turned homewards. This sign tells me to look out for skiers! The ski path crosses the road here.

For these poisonous beauties there is no sign, but every child learns not to touch the red toadstools with white spots.

The nex picture is to show you that the forest has beautiful spots as well. This is uphill from our house, I just took a few steps from the road to make this picture.

The last picture was not from today, but I took many pictures on my way. Therefore my walk took a little more time, as you can see in my pulse meter. I love it when the meter gives me little + signs for each 15 minutes my heart rate has been within the recommended limits! Today I had two, as you can see at the top of the little screen. I got this meter for my birthday from DH several years ago, to keep me walking. This autumn I have decided to use my walks for the Pink Ribbon campaign in October. I will pay 1.5 euro for each walk for the campaign. So far I am my own sponsor and this is a one woman campaign here. Merete is my example, she does it in Norway.

Thank you all for the Summer Stash Challenge

The Summer Stash Challenge is finally over. These flowers are for all of you who spent this summer with Eileen and me, making beautiful quilts from your stash. The yellow iris was blooming in June, when the challenge started and we started getting names on a list we never expected to make.




During the summer months we learnt to know talented women from many parts of the world, joined together by their hobby of quilting and their love for fabrics. These peonies were picked in July, when the most quilts were being made.





And finally came August with these begonias. The last quilts were being stitched and bound, even in the last hours of August 31st. It has been a joy to follow the process of nearly 40 quilts being transformed from a pile of fabric or even a pile of old clothes to a beautiful quilt. Some quilts were sewn by professionals, at least one - my sister Maija's - was the first quilt to be finished. She didn't quite make it by the time limits, but I will encourage her to finish the quilt anyway, and to start her own blog. Her blog will not be the only one started because of this challenge, so I think we all can be proud of ourselves for inspiring these lovely women to both sewing and to blogging about it. A good example is all that is needed, and at least I have seen such good examples of lovely quilts that I don't know where I'm going to find the time to make my version of them.

Today I have been bouncing in and out the blogs and trying to find the post where the completed quilt was shown. I changed the links on the Summer Stash Challenge list on my right sidebar to link to that post. I know some of you have finished more than one quilt for the challenge, and if you feel I have linked to the wrong one, please email me the link you want to be used. In some cases I couldn't find a post telling about the finished quilt, so I linked to the finished top shown. Any one of you who has not joined the SSC Flickr group and would like to show her challenge quilt in the company of the other challenge quilts, please contact me or Eileen.

With these flowers from my garden I want to thank you all for quilting with Eileen and me, it has been a great experience. And no, we are not planning another challenge ;o ! Not yet, at least. Why don't you host the next one? We knew nothing about hosting a challenge when we started, but we have learnt a lot. And last but not least my heartfelt thanks to Eileen, you carried the heavier load, and without you I couldn't have done my share.

Award, and new challenges

Suzie, the Little Busy Bee, has given me this award:




Thank you very much, Suzie! I have spent a whole week trying to decide who will get the award from me, and here is the final list of brilliant bloggers, all from our summer stash challenge group:

Amanda Jean - Crazymomquilts


Eileen - Eileen's Attic


Cheryl - Polka Dots and Rick Rack


Nanette - Freda's Hive


Nedra - Cactus Needle

It has been a pleasure to get to know these ladies and work at our quilts together this summer.

Now I have taken another challenge. Not officially, but I'm following the example of this sweet lady, and this one. Only I do my version of it. Firstly, without music. I perfer the sounds of nature to any music outdoors. Secondly, I have my walking sticks if I turn to the right and woods from our yard. They look like this, and they help me move my arms efficiently, give me support when my knee hurts and keep me in an upright position when it gets slippery. They don't look funny any longer here, everyone is used to seeing "skiers who have forgotten their skis at home".

This week I have been walking every day for at least 20 minutes. The good result for my first week is partly due to the fact that DH is in Lapland this week and can't take me to the train by car, but I try to continue the walks when he is back home. Which is after three days and two nights. Which makes me very happy and able to sleep well again.

On my morning walk on Monday I had the camera with me for little stops and to show you a bit of the surroundings here. The forest is dark and full of trees of various sizes growing very close to each other. I can't walk in this forest! I walk on the road, and I met a lady in red jacket probably going to pick mushrooms, and two ladies and a gentleman together walking a little dog. Ten cars passed during the half an hour's walk. Next time, I will go a little earlier so it will not be so crowded. I like to walk by myself.

And yes, when I turn to the left when leaving home, I'm going into the village and there I don't use the sticks unless it is really very very slippery.

EDIT later in the afternoon: after careful thinking I noticed DH comes home tomorrow night, after just this day, one more lonely night and one looong day.

Changing colours

The summer is ending. Today it has been raining all day, but I still went for my walk, wearing raincoat and rain trousers. The sound of the trouser legs sweeping the knee of the other leg reminded me of the woosh-woosh sounds of little kids wearing their rain overalls. I can even remember my own woosh-woosh, which was very embarrassing because I was a big girl, 7 years old. I didn't have to wear those overalls to school, only when I was playing in our own yard and sandbox. - I have been walking every day this week, and this picture of the changing colours in nature was taken on Monday.



On Tuesday I picked red currants in my FIL's garden. It was a bit late, usually I pick them when the school starts in mid August.



The berries were in perfect condition and one bucket not quite full gave me almost 5 litres of juice. If the weather is dry tomorrow, I may pick another 10 litre bucket of these. It is my harvest time; next I will start cooking apple jam.

Colours are changing in the kitchen, too. Remember the "stranger quilt"? I couldn't think of a suitable border and backing for that quilt from my stash, so I dyed one old sheet with Dylon:

(I also dyed two fingers of my right hand, because there was a little hole between the fingers of the other glove.)

This is the border fabric, the flash changed the colour. It should be 'deep violet'. I tried to make the border fabric a little darker by putting it in the dye 15 minutes before the rest of the fabric. The fabrics are now hanging on the washline, and tomorrow I'll continue with the quilt.

Challenge Quilt is finished!

There it is, hanging on the kitchen door railing like I usually photograph my quilts. It took me all summer but not all the time. The top and binding are from stash, backing and batting I bought for this quilt because I don't usually have them in my stash. All the stash fabrics are also recycled garments, mostly my DH's shirts. This quilt is for him. I'm still thinking about a name for the quilt, so the label will be added later.


The batting is 80 g/m2 polyester, like in most of my quilts. The cotton or wool battings require shopping trips to the "big world" so I have only used cotton once, for my daughter Kaija's hand-sewn Grandmother's Garden quilt.



Machine quilting in ditch was easy with my new sewing machine, the bulk of the quilt was no problem there.

The reverse looked quite nice when I was fastening the quilt top edge to the railing: the light coming through the lighter pieces. In real life the backing is just brown and back striped lightweight shirt flannel.

Well, girls on the bottom part of the list on the right: this is the final week to get the job done! My name will move to the asterisk group today, how about yours? I'll be visiting the blogs and looking for signs of progress. Is it so that for each job to be done all the available time will be used? If I have a month to leave an application, I will leave it in the last week. If the apples need to be picked this week, I probably pick them on Friday. The last of August is next Sunday, so you better pick up your quilt top and make a plan how to finish it. And tell us that you have done it! Who would want to be without the beautiful, framed badge allowed only for those who finished the challenge quilt on time?

Proud Mother

This weekend I have reason to be proud of my children. My daughter Kaija, who introduced the blogging world to me last winter and put up this blog for me, is now the Featured Seller on Etsy.

She mentions me in her interview, so readers have been pouring to this blog like never before! If you are one of them and would like to see the quilt she mentioned, you can see it here and on many post before. The Grandmother's Garden quilt was one of the reasons I started this blog; I wanted to get the hand quilting and binding done in about two months. Doing this part in public kept me going, and the quilt with the 2,226 little hexagons was ready for the spring exhibition of my sewing group.

Now I'm working on this other quilt with a public deadline: my summer stash challenge quilt for my DH. I have finished the machine quilting with my angelic new sewing machine and sewed the bindings on by machine. Today I have been ripping off the basting threads and darning in the quilting threads. Hand sewing the binding is something I like to do when watching TV.



This year there will be lots of apples. These red ones are so sweet that they are no good for jam or pie, I just have to eat them. DH is allergic and can't eat them, so I keep giving (recycled) plastic bags full of apples to anyone who happens to come by. Soon I will start cooking jam of the other apples.

The other child to be proud of today is DS1: he had his Master of Science (Economics) degree officially yesterday. No big ceremony there, just the paper from a clark; and he could finallly close the school doors for the last time.

The DS2 keeps surprising me constantly so that I can be proud of him every day in a smaller scale than of the bigger siblings ;o)