New doll for Unicef

When I made the two dolls in February, I prepared three more to be finished later. I think he needs a T-shirt for the Summer! The two other new dolls have some difficulties with their hair, so they will come later.

We have had some unusually warm days this week, and beautiful weather, so we have been taking walks and bird watching. Almost every day we have seen the swan couple with one of them hatching (that would be the white plastic bag in the bushes) and the other one having breakfast in some other pond where the water looks more fresh.

Gagea lutea (käenrieska), a beautiful little wild spring flower.

Maple trees are in full bloom here now. When we moved in, all trees were bare of their leaves so I don't really know what some of them will look like when they get their leaves. Most of them are recognizable the year round, but especially young trees may all look the same when they have no leaves.

 

Bird watching and knitting tiny sweaters

Once again I have a couple of Unicef dolls coming. This is the first one almost finished, a little boy doll for a little boy.

I knitted  this sweater to use up some yarn that was not so nice for socks or mittens. It is waiting for a girl doll to get some hair and the rest of her clothes.

On nice days we have been bird watching and met some new birds. This is a male Goldeneye, Bucephala clangula (telkkä). We met in April for the first time. 

The other end of his pond was still covered with ice.

On today's walk we met some punk birds I had never met before. They had like brown hair standing upright on top of their head.

According to our books and the internet, they are Horned grebes, Podiceps auritus (mustakurkku-uikku), and there was another couple on the same pond. 

And finally another bird we didn't see near our old home, an Eurasian wigeon, Mareca penelope (haapana).

If you missed our local swans, here they are from an earlier walk. One is hiding behind the other.

Today they were having lunch near their nest so I didn't want to disturb them by taking photos.

 

Swans on Ice ...

... and some new socks on the floor. Grey socks for my bare-ankle daughter, a simplified version of my Aino'S sock pattern,

and some giant socks, large socks and smaller socks knitted just to use up rests of yarns.

We have gone on walks again when the weather has been nice. Pollen is nearly ready to spread from the grey alders.

The swans have returned. Yes, they are in my photo, the two white lumps on white ice, about in the center of the photo.

I took the photos on my phone, and the sun was so bright that I just couldn't see how to zoom on the swans. 

By this date we have identified 25 species of birds this year, and hope to see many newcomers once the migrating birds arrive. Common gulls and black-headed gulls have arrived, and lapwings, but the small insect eating garden birds are still on their way from the South.

Patching the patchwork

Sometimes a quilt faces heavier use than the materials are designed for. This was the case with this Stained quilt from 2012.

 Recycled shirt fabric is not very durable under the paws of a mid-size dog as you can see:

For some reason especially the brown thin striped fabric was attacked. Luckily I had not binned the remaining fabrics from this and another project using my son's business shirts.

This meant that I could replace each patch with the same fabric it was originally made.

Only the grey sashing is now a shade darker than the original, but this could mean that the original has faded over the years and from frequent washing.

I have sewn some patches by hand and machine stitched some, and I added a piece of new wadding in the block that was worst. Machine stitching went surprisingly well and I only needed to redo one bit where the backing was puckered.

Encouraged by this modest success I have added several other unlucky quilts on my list of patching my patchwork.

The Flying doll and his cousin

 

Who is that, flying through the air? He looks like SuperM!

And so he is! Hello, M!

- Hi R! Are you coming from the sauna in your bathrobe, standing in the snow? What does you Mum say, or our Auntie?

- I’m not cold, I’m a Finn, and Mum doesn’t know I’m here. Besides, this is no bathrobe. It is my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu uniform, with a black belt now.  But why are you wearing your underpants on top, and what do your Mum and our Auntie say to that?

- They don’t say anything because they know I think this looks cool. And when I wear them and the cape, I can fly like you saw. Your black belt must mean something too?

- Yes, it means I’m cool too and more experienced at my sport than those who have yellow belts, or green or blue.

- Great. Now I must spread my cape and fly home. I have a little party on Sunday. Take care!

- You too and have a nice birthday!

- Likewise, dear cousin!

- J*******a, my pants again!

Happy birthday dear little nephews!

Struggle with socks

The problem with yarn rests is that when you start a project you don't really know if there will be enough yarn. Clever people use the upside down method, more commonly known as toe to top, but I find it very difficult to calculate when to start the heel, so I prefer starting up and knitting towards the toes, the old fashioned way. Careful as I was, I knitted these Harry Potter coloured socks in a rather small size, and ended up having still some yarn left, and so I knitted another pair in a baby size.

Then I started a more demanding project for an elderly birthday boy. Plain grey socks sounded too dull and modest, so I chose a simple cable pattern I had admired for a long time.

The cable is as simple as can be, two stitches crossed, once or twice every other round, but boy was it a struggle for me! I could not keep track on where I was on the pattern, what I had knitted on the previous round or where and when I should start the cable-ing. Finally I remembered the stitch markers and used them to mark the beginning of the pattern. I decided to stick to more simple ways of knitting again, plain stripes or purl and knit variations.

I have also worked on a secret sewing project but it will be revealed in a week or so.

Some dust from Sahara sand storms reached our country. It showed clearly as a yellowish layer on top of the pure white snow. Just for fun we filled a glass jar with the dirty snow to see if there really was sand, but when the snow had melted the water in the jar was coloured, and only very little anything was left in a white coffee filter. Only the lightest particles were carried high up in the air all the way to us. Now the temperatures have gone up from the -20 and the snow is melting when the days are above 0 and nights only some degrees below. The Winter is by no means over yet, we may have new snow in April if we have a cold Spring.

I don't want to end with such an ugly photo so here you have some flowers instead!

 

Grey knitting, sunny days

Knitting in the evenings in front of the TV is my way of relaxing. It feels like I'm not totally wasting my time when I knit. I found this version of basket weave stitches and liked it, as it was very easy to remember and didn't require counting more than five rows.

The father of the little knight from the previous post got these mittens to match his son. The yarns are from a pullover I had started to knit for him when he was still a schoolboy living at home. At that time my arms refused to cooperate with long needles and big pieces of knitting, and I developed a tennis elbow, I who have never even played tennis! The son has grown a lot since I began the knitting, so the wisest thing to do was to unravel the knitted half of a pullover, soak the skeins and wind the dry yarn into balls for new knitting projects.

We have had lots of snow this Winter unlike last year when we had none. Mr. K pushes the snow further away from the drive so there will be space for more snow to come. These old apple trees are in our new garden in afternoon sun.

We are only half way done with Winter by now, there may well be lots of new snow at the end of March and it may snow some as late as end of April and beginning of May. Now we are enjoying some sunny days and clear skies, and having but not so much enjoying temperatures of -20 C.

The hares are making their paths in the snow when we are not watching.