syko

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!

There will be flowers...

I am back in my studio after a week of holiday. We went to the Summerhouse my dad has been building for the last years. It's finally finished and perfectly cosy on a cold winter day too, I just wish we could have stayed longer! My dad was so clever to make these peeking holes on the loft for the grandchildren!

Mum and dad had prepared a great sledding hill for us and the weather was perfect (that's my mum in the picture)! Look at all that snow!!!

This is Big E taking a break from reading, she was mostly up on the loft reading all the books we got in the local second-hand book shop :)

I got this one for me, I fell in love with the beautiful cover, but I am certain it has some useful information inside too! I am very ready for the gardening season! Last weekend felt promising, snow dripping from the roof and birdsong, ah!

So the time felt right to make an art print of this picture to keep hope up during the cold days that I'm sure will come during March. Yes, there will be flowers! Eventually.

The Love machine is now also an art print. At the moment this is my favourite of my printed designs, I love how the colours of the quilt turned out. Tomorrow I will finish the rest of the paper work I have waiting and then dedicated the rest of the week to sewing! I cannot wait!

What are you longing for today?

 

JANUARY11

Hello everyone! Nice to be back! Happy new year! Before I say anything else, the heading is a coupon code for my Etsy shop, by entering it you will get 25% off everything in my shop (sale items too). I will add new items to the shop every day this week, mostly old produce and printed seconds. The code is valid until the end of this month.  

Now sorry for my long absence! Last Autumn was busier than ever for my business + my first book was released which meant a lot of work and e-mails so I decided I needed a long break over Christmas and I think it has made me good! I didn't sew anything for 3 weeks, so long that I started to miss it very much and new ideas started bubbling in the back of my head. I love that feeling and have missed it when I've been too busy to slow down and be creative. The mosaic above is proof for myself that I actually managed to create a few new things in 2010. The best thing that's happened however is that I've finally moved my studio out of our home. 

You can tell how happy my kids are to have a dining room, can't you? We have a small home, but with all my crafty stuff away it feels so light and airy! I got the "new" table on huuto.net, which is the local ebay for 5 Euros and I love it! This is how this room looked before.

This ikea shelf has been in our home a long time, and the paint is fading, but it's practical! I came up with the idea to put  hooks underneath it when I decorated my daughter's first room and now I could finally put some of my Etsy prints on display, easy piecey, I never get to frame them anyway so better enjoy them in this simple way... Click on the pic to get links to the Etsy shops where I got the art!

Syko now resides in a small room at Whyprint, the place where all my cards are printed. I finally have more space and room to create + the light here is so much better for taking pictures. It does feel a little  strange to go to work in the mornings like a normal person, but I can live with it :) I have already started planning my first projects....

Talk to you soon again!

 

What I am doing today

 

Hello everyone! I've got a new table and it makes such a difference! Finally I have room for my cutting mat next to my Bernina! I'm still very fond of the colour of this mat from Fiskars! I have a very compact space to work in so I am trying to find a place for every nick-nack and still create a nice place to be in. With small additions and improvements I'm slowly getting there. The wooden chair is from a charity shop and has a very nice patina. "It looks like something you'd find in the attic, but I guess that's your style" said the dear daughter. My fabric shelves are behind my back when I sit at the table, can't show them today, no time to fold fabric nicely for you, too many tomte, houses and angels to make!

 I like to put the stuffed tomte legs in this pretty Finnish design bowl Flora, designed by Oiva Toikka in the 1970's, good design is supposed to be used, don't you think?

In between sewing and stuffing legs I have been running back and forth to the common laundry room in our house. I like to use this washing machine because it's HUGE and I can wash one week's laundry in 3 hours instead of washing every day. The only laundry I like to hang up to dry though is of the kind above= new fabrics ♥

And then back to sewing! My resellers are waiting for their Christmas items and Bernina Aurora is still working smoothly.

Give the house a loop to hang it in, put them aside and start cutting angel bodies. Just a regular October day in the Syko studio! 

Thanks so much everyone who have bought or pre-ordered my book! If you are making houses or tomte stuffies too or anything else from the book I would be delighted if you'd post pictures of your projects in the Scandinavian Stitches flickr group! There is one tomte looking a little lonely today...

Down shifting....

Summer..., originally uploaded by -syko-.

Hello my friends!

I'm about to send the last package for the season to a reseller today and after that I will take a 2 week long break from Syko. It's been a busy Spring with book business, an exhibition and lots of wholesale orders and now I feel very much in need of a holiday. It's hothothot outside so I have spent the afternoons reading about Coco and Igor. I heard someone wise say that you have to start with some light reading to get into the groove and then when you're on the hook you can move on to the Nobel prize winners. I've got one behind the patchwork curtain there :) That is my project improv quilt top that is still not finished. I think I will just add some more white around it let it become a window quilt. I love what the light does to the colours and patterns. My son just spotted the shape of a dinosaur on it this morning :)

I will be adding the exhibition quilts to the shop in the near future, I will keep you posted on Facebook when!

Have a wonderful Summer! I will be back when I've had far too much ice cream!

 

Thank you!

Thank you so very much for all your comments about my book and my exhibition project! If it wasn't for all of you I wouldn't be making either of them! I will talk more about the book later, it is still 6 months until we will be able to browse it! I am so inspired by the exhibition now! It feels great that I have come up with a way to bring my blog to the gallery, after all this is my base and where my ever growing craft project started! You gave me so many positive and beautiful (and fun!) sayings, phrases and proverbs that it is enough for the whole exhibit. So I have decided to make one big quilt and a few smaller art quilts. I will make sure to follow up the project here on the blog.

 

I have more to be thankful for! This is me trying to show off the pretty swap goodies I got from Danielle aka Dinosaur toes in the Dutch sister's Spring swap. Can you spot the pretty rose brooch and the lace necklace? Do check out her shop too, she's got the most wonderful mustaches listed!

 

Danielle also sent me this pretty mini bunting that was perfect for big E's new shelf above her desk and craft corner (like mum, like...). There was also two pieces of pretty fabric that I have already started cutting in :) Thank you so much Danielle!

 

This is the little quilt I made for Danielle, whose best friend is lovely parrot! I've never sewn a parrot before :) I usually use a white background for my quilts, but here I tried doing it the other way around. The background fabric comes from a vintage pillow case.

Have a nice day and thanks again my friends!

 

Surprise revealed

You may have noticed the trend with texts and messages on the walls during the last years? Keep calm and carry on, must be the most loved one. As much as I love many of these messages and how they connect with the sampler tradition I can find it a bit annoying at times to read the same texts over and over again every day. The flap quilt I made recently planted a seed and I came up with a solution to this little issue, I have put my message in disguise, or should I say "under cover" (not sure if you think that's funny, but I'm smiling :)

 
  We've had some wonderful Spring sun as you can see, but it's still cold and we have a lot of snow so I'm doing my best to make it springy inside... So there's the flap cushion in the sofa, the colours are picked from my apple fabric, I finally got a chance to cut in it! It feels a little sad to reveal the surprise, but then again it would be like buying a pig in a poke if I didn't tell you what it says underneath the flaps, there is one word under each flap:

y o u   a r e

 

o n    t h e   i n s i d e

 

It is made from a steady linen-cotton canvas, for the backing I used a shirt again. I also made a rectangular one from a blue shirt, it has red and white flaps. My daughter looooves this one, maybe because I loved to dress her in this colour combination when she was a little baby, who knows?

 
 

These will both be listed in the shop soon. *Done!* I am now checking out for the weekend. It will be spent with my sister, she just arrived yesterday from Switzerland with a lot of chocolate and a bunch of pretty vintage fabrics that I need to show you next week!

Let the sunshine in (my current theme song)!

P.S. Nämä ovat saatavana myös tekstillä: s i n ä   o l e t   k a u n i s    m y ö s   s i s ä l t ä