Diary, allotment and blocked noses

One of Elf Son's Christmas wishes was to have a diary. I had some lined notebooks with white/ugly covers, so I went to work and covered his with some oil cloth.

The oil cloth adds to it a bit of old fashioned charm and a masculine touch. I bought these notebooks cheaply as a lot of 5 and have since covered them for different uses. I have one for my allotment diary as well, but it is missing a cover. I was fancying a garden themed cotton, but might end with waterproof cover...I'll show you when I have got my act together. I must ask Elf Son, what type of diary he keeps. I know he writes regularly, but knowing him, it could be as easily about his real life as a fantasy diary.

The allotment is in its winter hibernation and only things to harvest are the kales, purple broccoli, lettuces of different types, parsley and coriander. The leafier things live in our polytunnel. Today is a cold day and we even have a smattering of snow on the ground, unusual for our coastal location.

The picture is from autumn, since there are still some flowers there. This bed is now  sowed with garlic.

As an experiment I sowed two beds with winter clover

During the autumn I have been busy building raised beds with paths in between covered with weed suppressing membrane and wood chips. I hope to finish building the rest of them in February.

In other news Elf Son has generously shared his winter bug with Elf Husband, who is now on sofa duty looking miserable. I have felt the virus rummaging, but keep my fingers crossed for my immune system defeating this one. I just cannot be bothered with two colds in one winter.

The young one is me!

We went for a walk on a nearby beach and see what we found. The storm had revealed an ancient forest beneath the sand. It was "growing" from a layer of soft coal and it was obvious that the trees had fallen in a storm very, very long time ago. There were both stumps, trunks and roots on show.
 

We know that a tsunami hit this part of the shore line in the iron age and destroyed the human habitat on the shore, so we wondered whether these trees fell then.  It is clear that they weren't cut.

We even found a place, which looked like an end of a wooden log shed/storage building, but it is hard to tell. Maybe it was  trunks fallen just so.

So in the picture on the top I am the YOUNG one by a good margin. This one is though younger.
 

The pictures are courtesy of the Elf Husband. He writes more about our walk on his photo blog here

My Inner Nun is Pleased

with the white walls and the strict old school wooden chair with a candelabra and an icon and the simplicity of this one corner of my home. (Yes, you are right, I am obsessed with this spot).

We managed to paint the hallway during the autumn. It doesn't seem such a big job, because in my head there isn't that much floor space. Lots of it is taken up by the staircase. In reality, it is possibly the room with the largest wall surface area. Not enough with that, some of the walls are up in heights where the air starts to thin out.

I  did chop the job in three; the stairs, the downstairs hall and the walls up along the stairs. Still, it took a looong time and if I am honest, is not entirely finished as yet. We still need to build the under the stairs storage area and the floor still needs its last layer of wax-oil.

I am planning the pictures on the walls. We need to buy two picture ledges to go on the wall, so I can have changing exhibitions of pictures and small objects.  I have pictures to go to the upper landing, but I am planning to paint three for the lower end. Watch this space.

We are now officially on our Christmas holidays, or nesting days as I like to think about them. I restrict consciously the "going-out" and being social aspect of the holidays, so it becomes more of a "feathering my nest" holiday;  I can read books, eat nice food, go for walks and do crafts. We are not recluse, still get visiting and such, but it's not a whirl wind of activity kind of time for us.

Hope that you have a lovely, suitable for YOU holiday ahead of you as well!

A beam of light from the crack of the door

...and she tiptoes into the dusty room, where the blinds have been shut for so long time. The room is familiar, but unused and dusty. It is time to open the blinds, throw the window open and let light and air into the room and begin cleaning.

That is how coming back here feels. I often think of writing, then am too tired,  too busy and also too ambitious. The pictures are bad, don't know if I have anything interesting to say, there are so many better/funnier/prettier blogs on the net...But being all those things is not why I write. I write to remind myself of times which otherwise would be buried in the stream of days, which makes months, years. I write to show my family and friends who are scattered all over the globe what I am up to. If non-family members, friends I have never met, also read, it's a bonus. I need not to live up to an imaginary editor's expectations. This is my diary. So be it, possibly umpteenth time that I resolve to blog a little and often.

While I haven't been writing I have been busy. There is a virtual stack of photos waiting to be shown. I am sure some of them will make it here. At the moment I have time, the winter cold has forced me into resting, despite the things I want to start, finish, get on with, ready for Christmas...

A quote from Dalai Lama has made its way to my life several times this year. It was one of the things starting this year and it is certainly there in the end as well. It was read to me in a "work" context, just as I needed it very badly. You see, I often feel guilty about having my lovely life. I grew up in the culture that told me that one had to expect the life to be hard and the work to be a burden. My work is great, I enjoy it and it aligns with my ethics. It does not earn my living though. I am dependant on my husband's income for that. And there we go again: I was brought up with a thought that one needed to be independent, have their own income, it would be silly and dangerous to trust anyone that much as let them be the breadwinner. It has taken me years and years to accept that the partnership can have equality in other ways than this. I don't mean that the ways were unfamiliar to me, but to feel that they truly are as important and that is what makes the partnership. And as you might guess, I still need reminding. Not in mental level, but emotional.

The quote, which is so important for me, is this one: 

"The planet does not need more 'successful people'. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds. It needs people to live well in their places. It needs people with moral courage willing to join the struggle to make the world habitable and humane and these qualities have little to do with success as our culture is the set." -Dalai Lama

I need to hang it on the wall to be reminded, I think.

I have been on a cushion cover kick this year. This is how these things work; I make a present to a family member. They like it and then the next one asks if they could have their version as well. I then continue producing the same type of gift to everyone who either wishes to have one or could be thought to wish one.

This is the pair I made for my MIL.

 One of the nieces got "feminist" cushions:

 

The left one has an (incorrect) Virginia Woolf quote saying:
 

 
Although the quote is incorrect, the sentiment in my mind is right on many levels.

The right one has a little funny snippet on it's "washing instructions" label. I typed it with an old-fashioned typewriter and it says:
 

If it is too hard to read it says:
"balls are weal and sensitive. If you wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things take a pounding.

The backs of the cushions looked like this:

She liked them a lot.

Now my head is still ponding, but my tummy is empty, so I better make a plea for some food...or at least have a snack. See you soon!

Three reasons to be happy

As a mini gratitude meditation:

My long desired cast iron teapot, which not only looks fab, but brews my green tea magically to perfection.

My new, old home. I love our house. There are a lot of things to do before it looks as we would like to, but it does not matter. I have noticed how much better the air is in an old building like this compared to our last home, which was built in mid 80s.

Three succulent plants on our bedroom window sill. The picture gives vibes of quite minimalistic, Scandinavian  interior, which happens not to be the case. I enjoy my window sill minimalism! Actually in my head I have two separate dwellings; downstairs with its dark stained floors and quarry tiled kitchen, not very Victorian, but rather earthy and upstairs whiteness with splashes of brighter colours and lots of light. Love them both!

E Coli Happens or Ei menny niin ku Strömsössä

Just to keep things real. It is not all crafts, baking and sunshine here in the hut.

I was struggling yesterday to make our ten day food plan. This is by the way one most effective ways of reducing food waste and keep the budget under control in my opinion and experience.  I was begging suggestions from my family as my brain just wouldn't yield anything interesting and easy enough and made it in the end with a herculean effort.  I even compiled a shopping list for this morning. Pleased with my staying power I ripped the old menu off the fridge and threw it into the kitchen bin, put the new one on and used an extra magnet to hang my shopping list overnight on the fridge door. Or that is what I thought...
This morning, almost ready to roll I was grabbing my list just to realise that it was the old menu. The new one was where it should be, so the shopping list was naturally in the BIN! And as  I was a lazy bone last night, I threw it in the mixed waste bin.

AAARGHHHHHHH!!!! I had to fish it out under tealeaves and other waste, so that I didn't have to do all the thinking and checking the ingredients again. (I did copy it out rather than using the manky copy for shopping!)

 Note to self: Use recycling bin for ALL writing paper waste.

Life, Universe and Everything

 Long time no see. Well. I have been humming and haring about what to do to this blog, to my life and the Universe. I am back and intend to blog more about the life in general and keep this as my personal diary of what I am thinking and doing. You are welcome to read it too, if it interests you.

Lately I have been in process of making patterns for a line of bags I intend to make and sell. Deciding what type of materials and models I am producing has taken quite a while and I have been bothering both friends and family with questions and musings. I hope to show you soon the first fruits of the production.

My philosophy of making things for sale is in line with my own values; they need to be simple, practical, durable and hopefully beautiful. I have had qualms of whether I can justify to produce more goods into the world, which is already bursting with things. By making bags and dolls, both something pretty personal and useful, I hope that I can persuade a few people to buy with thought of sustainability.

Personally, I use both my bags and clothes until they are not fit to use any more. When I make or buy new, I try to choose well-made and good quality natural materials. I repair, re-use and recycle, in that order. I just patched up a couple of flat sheets, which had holes in them. To my surprise I could still remember from the school needle craft lessons how to do this. I doubt that very many people do it any more or even know how to.  A quick look on Google didn't reveal an article or video on this! That's a first. Maybe I should make one.

We have used fabric napkins for a good while and this has a big effect on how much paper kitchen towel  is used in our kitchen. Washing of the napkins is no extra load as the white washing they go into, would have been done anyway. We have tried a number of different napkins, but my favourite ones are made out of IKEA tea towels by cutting each towel in four pieces and hemming them. I have just sewed a new set as our old ones are quite grubby.

Now that I am back, I will show you some of the things I have made while it has been quiet here on the blog. Stay tuned in!

More showing presents while we are sniffy, wobbly and throatachy

She has gone mad you might think....posting several posts a day after leaving the blog occasionally for a month. There is an explanation: Christmas has been spent having my two boys' faces in various shades of gray, sniffing, coughing and sneezing. Until this morning I did brilliantly - not a symptom in sight. Now I have a sore throat and very wobbly limbs. I have my hopes up that a day's rest will work wonders and that I am feeling all shiny and new tomorrow morning. Meanwhile I have been putting up my blog roll, although I must admit that in reality it is longer. These are however the blogs I visit most frequently. I might well add a few, as I notice that I have forgotten some "oh so important ones".
I even had a look at some other designs, but none took my fancy, using the blogger has its limitations, but it's free and free is good in my book.

Here is the apron I made for Elf husband, as he is the bread baker in our family.  Can you see the D-rings for the adjustable strap? They are actually two key rings, which I sent the husband to buy in town before Christmas without telling him what I intended to use them for.

I gave him the River Cottage handbook for Bread, which has been a hit. If you like to make real bread and maybe dream of building a little bread oven in your garden, this is your book. It is the best bread book either of us has ever read. In addition it is really pleasing to hold being "book sized" and hardcover with old fashioned texture to the cover. Should I now add that I like the scent of new books and shoes?

I have to tell you that we have aprons in our house, but I have abused them with bleach and paint and varnish and you name it...This time we keep the nice one(s) for cooking only. (I have the fabric ready to make a new apron for me too).

Baking and Canning

It is that time of the year again. The projects that  take my time cannot be showed, so there will be an excess of baking and such on the blog. I will try to think other things to show as well and at the moment I still have a couple of things to show.

On Thursday afternoon waiting for the Elf son to emerge from the school one of the other mums asked me what my son had decided to dress as on Friday. I had the feeling of Alice being sucked into the Wonderland, falling, falling,  falling...I had just got over the costume producing and organising the son's week while he was starring on the big stage AND produced the viking costume blogged about previously. It was of course "Children in  Need" Friday, which I had been informed about in good time, but had promptly forgotten.

My luck was in though. Elf son did agreed to be a viking, so the costume had another run with an added woolly waistcoat, which we already had. The other mum did remind me about the cake stall as well, so I went home and made the macaroons in the picture. This is my "quick to make, tastes good and can be packed to impress" coconut macaroons. As  it was, they had sold very quickly, which just proves how much the packaging and presentation matters.

I have beavered away with my pile of baby presents this weekend as I have a queue of them and feel bad about beginning the production of Christmas gifts before I have cleared the work in progress. I will show the results when I have finished and the recipients have got their gifts.
On the kitchen front I took the better late than never attitude and produced eight litres of apple chutney, here all in the jars and ready to go for maturing in our storeroom.

Please forgive me this disgustingly brown post and use of flash. It is annoying that there are very few windows of nice sunlight at the moment. I promise to have more colours in the coming ones.

Happy Halloween

This is our pumpkin. I carved it according to Elf Son's wishes and scraped enough of the flesh to make a delicious pumpkin pie. In search of recipes on the net I noticed that all the recipes were calling for canned pumpkin, even the American ones! I could not believe it- we tend to make a pilgrimage to the supermarkets after the Halloween to buy some cheap pumpkins, because they disappear from the shelves as soon as the afore mentioned day is over. People don't obviously use pumpkin any more.

We made these bats as well. I cut a whole lot for our kitchen wall and Elf Son cut the ones for his room.  I got the idea from Dana and like her I am not much of a fan of coffins and plastic Halloween decorations. The bats on the other hand look rather nice and were good fun to make with Elf Son. I was pleased that he wanted to cut bats for his bedroom as scissor work and the required fine motor skills are challenging for him.

Yesterday evening I went out of my kitchen door and was about to get a heart attack. There was a ghostly Nessie in my carport. I had parked my plants from my polytunnel under the carport and wrapped them in horticultural fleece. There was a stiff wind flapping the fleece in a wormy manner and the car park lights were casting an eerie orange light on this monster. It was one of those split second moments when I almost screamed, but realised very quickly what I was seeing. Here is a hazy picture of my monster.

Believe me, it was far more scary in person as it was the movement which actually tricked me. Have a Happy Halloween!

Good Life

I know I am slightly stuck in a theme here; it's all garden and harvest and food, but it does not get much better than this. A friend has a beautiful old "coble", a traditional fishing boat, and went to give it a spin yesterday evening. As he was giving the engine a run he thought that he could as well have a line in the water and then it all happened! He had to stop fishing in order to stop landing fish which could not be eaten. We got five of the beautiful mackrels and I think all his neighbours and pretty much the whole street was supplied!
The fish was all gutted and headed, which I did not expect and look at their shiny sides here:

I went to the garden to get some new potatoes and salad stuff and we had a feast for the lunch. I would have loved to give some of my produce in exchange, but this couple has a double allotment providing them and for the aforementioned street!  Yum Yum Yum!

So Pretty, So Appreciated

Look at these roses! They make my heart sing just when I am on my way to our kitchen. The colours just are lovely: the roses, the candles, the teatowels on the radiator and the bowl full of bananas. All pretty and fresh in my newly painted kitchen.  I got the roses from a lady who is on the Kinesiology course I am running, so Thank-You P!























And Happy Father's Day to all Dads!

March and Much More

BIG SORRY to leave the blog for this long. I did not have much chance to blog on my holidays; going back home means catching up with the loved ones every minute at my disposal. We got back safely and then the horrid tummy bug hit our house...So this post is a real mixed bag. In the first picture my March calendar. You might ask: "What about February"? Well, officially it did not happen in our house, so no calendar. In truth I did not get round to it and had to force myself to do something for March. The end result was far better than my uninspired mood predicted.

I made a doll for my niece whom I met for the first time despite her being 18 months old. She was stinking cute (the niece, not the doll) and sligthly confused about who I might be tropping up with the Grandparents. Initially she wanted to call me grandma as well.

I just LOVE this doll and the colours. I have never before tried this type of combo. The doll is made of cotton, so is the hair. I am always torn between being really "natural" and use natural materials only or make it washable. So this time I went for the washable option as the doll was for a toddler. The filling is polyester and the doll is weighted with plastic beads. (Both parts secondhand, so at least that was a bonus). Obviously the face was embroided instead of painted for the washability. I quite liked the end result myself.

















I think this was the first time I used knits for doll clothes and it was SO good. The whole question of how to get the doll into the clothes was solved as they stretch, no zigzaging needed as the material doesn't fray. And the best of all, my old long t-shirt sleeves were the perfect size for the body part of the shirt and the trousers. So I had ready made hems!

I also made a playmat for a friend's little son. Unfortunately they were travelling while we were visiting, so it had to be posted. The playmat was made of hand dyed African cotton for the front and the binding and thrifted soft cotton for the back. I made different "sensory" things for the upper edge of the quilt for baby to play with. It is playmat size and can alternatively be used in a pushchair where the baby will still have access to his toys. The pockets were hand embroided as well as the robot's face. I hand quilted it with an irregular squiggly pattern, which went well with it's modern bright colours and toy theme. Everything it is washable and if the mother gets tired with the toys dangling from it, they can be snipped away.

 The weather up North was wintery. At times it was -22 C with stiff wind. That meant not going out other than getting from point A to point B. My sister claimed that her frontal lobes were deep frozen during our walk from the Zoological Museum to a department store. The picture of the elf son was taken on a day of lesser severity; only around -14 C and no noticeable wind. He is on the frozen sea ice, making confusing trails.

I promise not to leave the blog for another month. There are more things to blog from the travels and new fresh things to show, so see you soon.

Thrift Gifts

This is what I am going to take to my friend tomorrow. Homemade apple chutney and carrot-pineapple jam and a thermos I found on my thrifty rounds. It is the same colour as one of her kitchen walls. I don't mind giving people gifts and them doing whatever they are moved to do with it, but this time I am going on train and don't want to carry unnecessary things, so I actually asked her whether she fancied the thermos. She has not seen it yet and since she is not reading this blog I am safe showing it off to the whole world.
I am always pleased to find treasures in thrift shops and this thermos has been calling for me for months. Luckily I remembered to ask my friend, because when I went to the shop the flask had made it from the shelves to the pavement box. Close shave!

Atchoo!

That's how I have sounded last five days. I have had a cold and haven't had energy to blog. The pictures need to be taken of the latest crafty things and a few lines written. I promise I will be back VERY soon.

Finds

I went to my local charity shop yesterday to give them items I had cleared out of our kitchen cupboards. Of course I had to have a nose around for some treasures for myself. I am slowly building up a collection of glass containers for our pantry items. I like my flour, nuts, salt, sugar etc in containers instead of bags from which they tend to spread all over the cupboard in our household. I don't want to store my food in plastic, so big old jars do the job for me. I am in no hurry, I just pick up things when i see them in charity shops or car boot sales. This time I got one jar for my peppermint teabags and a new butterdish. Hurrah! I was starting to despair with our current butterdish, cheap stoneware from a supermarket, which had chips in it. It was not the most hygienic of containers any more.
I try to do mine for the environment, but I do buy new materials and yarns etc for my crafts. I hugely admire Amanda Blake Soule of www.soulemama.com for using so many repurposed materials. When I am in thrift shops I try to think in terms of "materials"and am getting better. There is also the matter of keeping all the stash, especially when it does not just fold in neat piles of fabric. I cannot make myself to cut the garments into fat quarters, as I know that so much of  the garment can be used as smaller pieces. Anyway, there was somebody's stash of fabrics for sale yesterday and I took a few pieces home with me together with some wool for my new crochet projects.
I picked up something to be shined up as a present for a person, but not going to show that as yet. Quite a while I have planned to start using fabric napkins instead of the never ending use of kitchen towels and paper napkins. My plan is to make some myself, quite simply from some cotton or linen, but these were cute and price was pennies...

I also got this tablecloth with fabulous colours and that unmistakable old-made-to-last-quality. The napkins I bought quite long ago from the same shop.
















The ladies in the shop are absolutely lovely and know me. They even remember Elf Son. Yesterday they sent a surprise to him in form of a tin full of marbles. Elf Son has a marble collection and these were a well received addition. All in all a very pleasing expedition with some stuff I didn't bother to show. The price? £5. Have you found any good things lately?
Editor's note: Sorry about the poor quality and total borishness of the pictures. There has been no light around these latitudes for a week and I could not wait with posting until we got some more natural light.

Calendar and Snow

This is what we woke up to yesterday morning. The pictures are from Papa Elf's morning walk in the snow:

 

This amount of snow is not common around here. We are normally seeing rain and if we are lucky a dusting of snow. The snow is still there, not as thick and pretty, but covering the ground nevertheless.

I am changing my plan and inserting a fresh project here I made yesterday after we have built snowmen and -woman, sledged and generally frolicked in the snow. We needed a calendar to hang on our fridge door. For our family it just needs to have very little space for each day to show the upcoming birthdays and to give us a quick overview of  where we are in the month. (Not that it helps us to remember to send the cards, as our friends and  family would be able to tell). All our "proper" organising happens in a diary, which lives next to our phone.

I went to one of the "print free calendar" sites and chose a simple calendar, which left space for a picture on an A4 sized paper. I left the "2010" out of the design, as I thought that even my amnesia is not that bad that I would forget which year we are in. I hope that my February design is bit more exciting, the January needed doing quickly and we had just had a big dump of snow, hence the snow flakes.

I printed out all the months of the year, but I think I will make the February page in the end of January and so forth. In that way I will get a calendar which reflects my mood for the coming month. In this way I will also avoid hanging a big bunch of paper on my fridge door. I hope that the Elf Son will agree to design as many of the months as possible. Editors note: The Elf Son has already been to request a page for March, that's his birthday month, so my plans of making a month at a time might change. Aw, just noticed that I haven't made a stellar job of glueing my paper cut pieces...