syko

dream happy

Helsinki is in bloom and I enjoy it fully! I think the older I get, the more I love this season. Right now the town smells sweet of bird-cherry and soon it will be followed by lilacs. Just look at me! I'm running around hugging cherry trees!

I got some flowers for the balcony too, a rosy Busy Lizzie, a romantic little lady.

 For Mother's Day I gifted myself with this Clematis 'Omoshiro', such a beautiful name, don't you think? I hope it will be happy to live with us, but above all I wish that I will soon have a garden of my own to plant it in... *sigh*

We have found a house (we have been looking to buy a house for a long time now) and I am crossing fingers and toes that this time everyhting go well and we will be moving in June, but more about that later, when I hopefully have some good news to share! Until that I am focusing on:

I hope these two words will help! And the winner, I hear you asking? First I want to thank everyone who participated! The winner of Skandinavische Näh-ideen is: Katrin!!! Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

 

What happened...

...while I was away on my unintended blog break. I think I got a bit over-whelmed with this TV thing. The program can now be seen by anyone anywhere in the world, without the copyrighted music: here. Just to keep you updated, here are few things that I have been doing.

I made mead, which is a traditional drink at 1st of May celebrations.

I got myself a new dress for Summer from the Marimekko sale and took a picture of it in a mirror in desperate need of dusting...
I picked some flowers in the forest.

One of my Mårbacka geraniums fell on the kitchen floor, luckily it survived! I love these old geraniums, they grow really tall and are great for people like me who do not like curtains.

I love that pale pink colour of the flowers, so romantic! And I am pretty proud that I managed to nurture the plants one more winter.

I have also done some sewing, these dots were for a set of "mod handbags" I made, I'll try to get a picture of them for my next post!

The sun is shining in Helsinki today, I hope it is shining where you are too!

Felt cake play-food/pincushion tutorial

Tonight is the night I will be on TV (19.30 at YLE TV2), sadly most of you will not be able to see the programme, but I would like to share a little tutorial with you for the felt cakes me and my friends are making in the programme. They both have small kids so I thought it would be a fun little project to take home. All pictures are taken "behind the scenes" at the TV shoot by Viivi Lehtonen/YLE. The pretty felt needle book in the picture below was made by my friend Laurraine.

Ohjeet suomeksi ylen sivuilta.

What you'll need for your cake:

• basic sewing supplies
• felt (we used craft felt, but wool felt would be lovely)
• cardboard (a cereal box will do fine)
• embellishments, like buttons and lace
• wadding 

You can  either sew the cake on your sewing machine, or by hand, if you have a lot of time! 

1.Start by making the card-board circle. This will make the base for your cake and will prevent the needles to go through the bottom of the pincushion. You will need a circle with about 10 cm (4'') in diameter. Draw and cut it out.

 

2. Cut two circles from the felt. Use the cardboard piece as a pattern and add a 0,5 cm (1/4'') seam allowance. Then cut a 5x38cm (2''x15') strip from the felt. 

3. You can either embellish your cake now, or when it is stitched together. I stitched on some lace cream to the side strip of my chocolate cake at this point.

4. Now stitch the top piece to the side strip. The ends will overlap generously so the side seam does not have to be sewn. Stitch the other circle to the bottom (right sides facing) leave a gap big enough for the cardboard piece (stitch about half way). Turn your cake inside out.

5. This is Tuija's pink marzipan cake. She will now start to fill it with wadding. And then close the gap by hand.

6. And the cake is ready! To eat? Päivi's cake does look tasty!

I made a chocolate & cherry cake! What's your flavour?

 

 

 

Happy Easter!

Chicken lovingly handmade by my daughter Elsa ♥

This week I have been stitching up a bunch of happy word cushions from vintage fabrics and neon thread. Now I am waiting for Elsa to come home from school, I will take her shopping in the Spring sun. We want to put the winter clothing away soon! And tomorrow we are travelling to see my family, I look forward to the break! Happy Easter holidays everyone!

Snow & Souvenirs

I was complaining about the grey weather in my last post and I got heard... We've got lots and lots of snow during the last days and I am enjoying myself! Walking in a snow flurry to take little e to school with my dear companion the blue plastic sledge and then back to the post office to pick up a BIG box  is my kind of extreme sport. 

The box is full of returned items from my Christmas exhibition. The swiss bag was a Christmas gift and is full of groceries, I made lunch for my friends Tuija and Susanna today, I'm so glad they dared to come despite of the challenging weather! Inside in the warmth I am enjoying the souvenirs we brought home from Switzerland. 

Switzerland was expensive since the exchange rate for Euros is quite poor at the moment, luckily I have always thought that you find the best souvenirs at the fleamarket. Which we did. Look at that charming tea-towel with famous Swiss buildings with a very high kitsch factor!

T is very content with the two lovelies above...

This shelf in our kitchen hasn't got anything to do with our holiday, but it is another vintage find. I found it abandoned in the attic covered in dust and decided to save it. It is perfect for my marimekko tins!

I hope you are having it warm inside! Next post will have some craftiness in it, I promise, I have just got started with a little Spring collection!

 

Blogging on TV

I am sitting in my sofa surrounded by a TV crew when I start to write this post. The first and last blog post I will write in this manner, that's for sure. Yle TV2, which is one of the national TV channels here in Finland is doing a TV lifestyle programme about creative female bloggers called Blogistania. I am one of them! The program will be broad casted beginning in March 2012. Of course I hesitated about inviting a TV crew in our small crowded home, but then again this could be a once in a lifetime experience and our living situation is no secret. I am much more convenient behind the camera than in front of it and have never ever dreamt of a career as a film star or model so this was very much outside of my comfort zone. But, I really like the theme of this programme series and I do think there should be more real people on TV, so here I am! Here are some "behind the scenes" pictures from the two days I spent with the TV team. All pictures taken by lovely Viivi Lehtonen (YLE 2011). 

A big thanks to my gorgeous friends Tuija and Päivi who dared to come to my somewhat unusual party! And to my big girl Elsa, of course, who rather did some guest-starring than went to the movies with her dad! Now I'm going to my last weekend event for the season, a Christmas craft workshop for kids and families. It has been an Autumn filled with events and new experiences and I am looking forward to the (I think) slower pace of January and to get some more time for blogging, I do not want to feel ashamed to call myself a blogger. Happy weekend!

That time of the year

It's the time of year when everything seems to be happening at the same time! Last Friday to Sunday was spent at the mall. It felt quite strange to see my pictures on the posters promoting the event.

 This was the best pic of my table that I managed to catch, I made some new table-runners with birds and tomte brooches. And on the left handside you can see some handy bags for knitting needles!

Today I went to Ekenäs (Tammisaari) to build a shop with Annika and Noora. Well, actually the shop is Noora's, but she has asked Annika and me to share the joy. I am so very happy to share this beautiful shop space in an old house in my favourite little town! Unfortunately I did not bring my camera along, but I will next time! Sadly I've had so much going on lately that I had to close my Etsy shop, but as soon as everything calms down I promise to have it up and running again. However it won't be tomorrow, because tomorrow I will have a TV crew in our little flat.... Wish me luck! 

This Friday...

...I went to pick up a box of cards at the printers, which is right next to the marimekko factory outlet= very dangerous. I couldn't help myself so I went inside and was very happy to find this grey canvas that will become perfect handbags, like the one you saw in my last post. For this bag I'm picking the colors for the leaves from the vintage fabric to the right that I will use for lining.

Then I picked up my to E's early from school, we were heading to the zoo with friends, who were so very kind to invite us for very tasty lentil soup. This bike parking on their street made us laugh.

They had a 'cat night' at the zoo. You know how the lions are always asleep when you visit the zoo during daytime? This is why some one at the Helsinki zoo came up with the idea to invite people to come and see the big cats at night and see the animals get fed. Little e enjoyed reading the map, he had come to see the red panda, which still was- asleep. But we did spot it :)

I always have mixed feelings at the zoo, I am more fond of animals outside cages, not sure about the lions though... Anyway, this cushion here is free and flying into the shop, which is now open again!

The thing we all enjoyed most at the zoo was when it got dark and the evening was still warm, they had lit thousands of candles and torches and these Jack-ó-lanterns were our absolute favourites! 

I must say they make the thought of Autumn less boring. I had nearly forgot how much I like cosy candles and warm blankets.

I hope you are having a nice weekend!

Yarr-arr, it's Summer!

Hello! How have you been? The last weeks have flown away so quickly. Suddenly Summer arrived and so did the last school week, which was full of events out of the ordinary and I could hardly find any time for sewing. Big E left for her first Summer camp yesterday, she will be away from home for five days (eek)! The camp is called I'm creative, she picked it herself (that's my girl)! And while she's away I will be sewing with school kids at two day camps. We'll be making monsters again :) And maybe we can come up with a way to use these Kona cotton scraps I have.

The biggest occasion last week was Big E's birthday party for her classmates, her real birthday is on Midsummer's Day which is a national holiday, that means everyone will be away at their Summer houses so we always celebrate her birthday early before school ends. She doesn't mind getting some of her gifts a month early :)

She ordered a pirate party (Please mum, I don't want any crafting or sewing at my party!) so me and the Dad did our best. I'm pretty proud of the invites we made. While preparing for the party T and I realised we did not know much about pirates and how they party, but we enjoyed saying Yarr-Arr to each other. A lot.

For the nine nine year old girls the pirate-thing seemed to come quite natural, at the table they had spontanious burping, screaming and farting contests... You can't really tell a pirate not to behave like one, can you? 

 

 

Hobby vs work

Here's the progress so far on my new hobby project! I'm liking the colours a lot, but I do like the squares with a white inner circle more. The yarn is Drops Alpaca from Garnstudio (pattern link here, the yarn I use is much thinner than in the pattern). It was a great relief to move my studio out of our home earlier this year, because our apartment was crammed with my stuff. I have noticed though that I quite liked to work from home. So in the future I wouldn't mind having a studio connected to our house again. I am the kind of person who needs to get busy with my hands all the time so now when my work is out of reach at night, I have suddenly been in an "I have nothing to do"-situation, which is very rare to me. This is why I've taken up crocheting :) This is and stays a hobby, I've promised myself not to make it a jobby too...

At work I've been doing a lot of this lately. Today I sent one village to Spain and another one to Portugal! Tomorrow I will start to working with a large quilt for a new project I'm very excited about (more about that later). It is not everyday that I have the time to make larger quilts so I am quite eager to get started with this quilt. As soon as I get my fabrics from customs... Remember this quilt I made last year? It is now hanging above our dinner table brightening up this darkish corner. The fox and the snow had to go, it's Spring! 

The sun is shining from a blue sky today in Helsinki! I hope you are well where you are!