theme: white

yesterday was a white day. V and me went to pick up a white kids' table and 4 chairs from a second hand store. with a white car. then we ate natural yoghurt. then we ate full corn rice (not so white), feta cheese and cottage cheese (and carrots and sun flower seeds, this was super nice; combination of fast food and slow food. long boiling for the rice, everything else just cut. the seeds roasted and with tamari sauce). then Y came home and brought me a white book from the recycling shelf in the center. white laundry too!
V cleaning her table. "i will have my own kitchen, and then i will have friends coming..."

second activity on the table after yoghurt. cutting and gluing. not so white anymore. with the stitchings from the morning. (oh! these are of course V's projects. i cut the regular boring looking pieces.)

on the book my favorite buttons at the moment. i'm not so good with white.

listening to:
Colleen "Les ondes silencieuses" and something more energetic soon

new dresses

V got this cute dress from S, who made it. so sweet. she was worried whether it would be Our Style, but it definitely is. we like.

for me! i decided now is the time for me to get this iloinen takki ("happy coat"), a classic piece of clothing by V Nurmesniemi. i was gonna go to marimekko, but i found an unused one from huuto.net (finnish net auction).

first try from new pattern books. i got this fabric from S. my sewing machine is developing new problems all the time, but i managed to finish this anyway. before finishing the collar i was very suspicious, the dress looked almost big enough to fit me, but when V saw it hanging in the morning, she wanted to immediately put it on and it looks wonderful!

this is a long time project: my old shirt that i made a bit smaller. i think i'm going to cut it shorter, now it looks like a laboratory coat.

magic

i have been planning to subscribe to the Purple Journal (or i think to Le Purple Journal to keep up my french a bit) when we move to Manteli, but a couple of weeks ago i ended up ordering the two issues i missed in between. the main woman in the magazine, E Fleiss wrote a nice little story about a magic couple she was following in Nice. i can relate to that so well! now that i've seen Nice (for about 2 hours) i can imagine how it is around there too. she says it's more common for her to see extraordinary, graceful women, but in my case it is charming older men i see every once in a while. but a couple together, equally graceful! i don't think i've seen that.

last time i saw someone i felt like following was when i was returning home from Alepa (supermarket) close to my place. he was a man around 65, with a perfect style and a beautiful husky dog. they looked like they would be living in a log hut in the wilderness. i wanted to see if he actually had a key to a door around here.

another time i was super attracted to a tall slim man in his 70's who was walking towards home next to us. i was wondering how to start a conversation, when he suddenly made a comment about V sitting in her pram. we talked some more and when we parted he waved his hand and that's when i realised who it was under that hood! a former president of Finland who lives in the house next to us.

i would need a new grandfather. i miss having one so much.

no connection, but i got these plates from Y's abandoned house adventure. i looked at them last night and thought they were brown and bright green (not my favorite colors in glass). in the morning they turned out to be perfectly my favorite colors. that's magic too.

food week

this week was the organic food circle food pick-up, so i'm thinking of food a lot. and i'm thinking where to place the food in Manteli. (in big boxes on a big shelf that D has found in the trash and in the cellar in rat-proof metal boxes...) i order 5 kg bags of rice, lentils, quinoa, hirse, sun flower seeds. a lot of bread. 2 kg apricots. today we made apricot muffins. experimental, with camelina oil and olive oil. V has a new job in baking: buttering the molds.

my favorite food things at the moment:
Urtekram maple syrup!
quinoa porridge (with maple syrup)
dried fruit always
Samsara organic breads, i have a big reserve in the freezer now
finnish leipäjuusto ("bread-cheese", it's cheese made in the oven)
udon and soba noodles (i also got big packages of them)

V's delicacies (oi, millaista herkkua!) from this week:
tahini and cheese
sauerkraut and arame seaweed
spelt cookies with dark chocolate spread
leipäjuusto

we have a plate for a squirrel at our table. i guess there was one passing by already.

mission (house talk)

so, we have a moving date. as Y is taking care of the house, he gave me a mission: i have to think of everything we have and think where all that will go in Manteli. i have to make really careful inventory in every little corner and ruthlessly get rid of stuff. i can't do anything to his stuff though, and i don't think he's any better in keeping only essentials. this move is so special, it's the first real home, a base i hope to keep forever. yes, forever. it doesn't even mean we have to live there all the time, it feels more like the house will give us freedom to go away too.

this kind of stuff i find in my big closet. examples of things i have to keep! well, they are very small. i gave the snowman-mum and child to V.

we had a super day with Y yesterday, 3 places to go and all of them were a success. V was with my mum.
first we went somewhere in Vantaa (?) to a place that imports Auro environmentally friendly paints and finishes. a funny couple with a hairy dog happened to be there even though they weren't really open. we are very happy with the things we got there: floor treatments and 'Airfresh' paint! it makes the air in the room fresher, how about that!
second we got a big wet/dry vacuum cleaner. very professional.
third we went to this strange 'junk & iron' sale place, that sells things (building materials etc) from factories for very cheap. after freezing in their storage room for very long, we found the perfect sink for the kitchen!

finding the sink has been the theme for a couple of weeks now. Y bought a sink last year from recycling center, but it's not good for the tap we bought from ebay. that tap deserves the best of the best surroundings.

another change of plans is the oven. the big serious electric oven we bought would destroy the look of the wood stove if it was standing next to it, and it was the only place where it fits. luckily, Y's parents need a new oven and they will buy it from us. so next step lead to the decision of buying separately a small gas stove and an electric oven. then the problem of how to install those two next to the sink... everything solved now! Y, the super-hero, found a good quality gas stove second hand. all we need now is the oven, and we don't even have to take the cheapest one! yey! they look more or less the same anyway. we'd like to have manual timer, no digital.

we had a long day, a good one, in such harmony! we agree on all these little details. it was a super nice revelation.
then we had dinner at the Nepalese. ♥

♡

some weeks ago V stopped taking naps in the daytime which has made big changes in our life.
it's away from my working time, but i get it back in the evenings: going to bed in the evening is so easy now! both me and Y are not exhausted and frustrated anymore. and what i have just noticed, is that we are meeting much more people nowadays. we meet with F & E, S & M and R & R (mother-daughter couples) every week, and it is so great. earlier half of the week we came straight home from kerho, and V would sleep, and then it would be evening. now we have trips to different parks all the time, and i get to have proper talks with the mothers.

all this is also part of having a love affair with Helsinki again (it's more difficult on the greyest days though) - meeting these people, having lunch at the Nepalese across the street, another lunch at my favorite place Zucchini (only 2 vegetarian places in Helsinki), walking to the library... well, walking everywhere! maybe i'll end up missing playgrounds too.

we have decided our moving date.

listening to:
washing machine and little singing (photo from my mum's mobile)

Tsumori + snow

i got this Tsumori Chisato book, "Kawaii". it's a lot of fun to look at. she's having fun. i used to visit her shop in Tokio a lot. they always played one Beck song there = a long time ago.

it is snowing! this is the first Real snow this year, i think. snow as it should be. i managed to get our sledge back from the unknown parts of the cellar. our storage room is under renovation, and all our stuff has been moved away from there, nobody knew where. we can go sledging after kerho. you gotta be quick with the snow this year.

listening to:
Blonde Redhead "23" (new feature on my blog!)

don't never mind

i'm not going to stop, thanks to kiltti M and IP. and Y.
i have to report how the spring branch is coming along!
and i got new books from N yesterday. it means i can try to sew something wonderful! a spring dress for V. a moving dress for next month!! (spread from "Koharu no fuku")
one day V stubbornly stuck stickers on the floor, now that there's a picture i can take them off. (what an ugly floor.)
we made a sunday pie, it's a fast and easy one that i make quite often. this time there was no alternatives since i didn't have any flour. it is a carrot-apple-oat flake-vehnänalkio-sunflower seed-raisin-cake.
well, it's monday, gotta work. 40 pages to go.

sad and angry

spam comments on someone's little blog. what kind of idea is that?
i don't feel like making this blog anymore.

my new hobby

playing with my little doll... only when she wants to. making braids can be quite solemn occasions. a childhood memory: wetting the sky-blue ribbon and rolling it around a bottle in the evening so that it would be straight in the morning. and burning the ends with a match (polyester).


spring branches in the kitchen: day 2 and day 3.

valentine's friends

in finland valentine's day is translated as "friends' day" (business idea of the finnish post, says my father). so we had a little card making workshop. the little girl was very disciplined, she finished all of them even though it was a lot of choosing colors and stickers. this card model is from kerho (heart-shape and stickers). we had nicer stickers at home. my friend N finally came back to Helsinki from Tokyo, and brought lovely animal stickers to V. i was the one wanting save them, V would've used all. yesterday we went and got her her own scissors.
and i got a letter from a honeymooner from Viet Nam!
now we're off to the sunny streets!

fog day, outside

pictures from outside on that foggy sunday. i just couldn't get enough of it! and snow too. what a strange winter.
i'm so excited about having a clearer feeling that Manteli will be ready for us, and that it's going to be quite soon. i'm very curious to find out how it'll feel, to actually live there and have no small city flat to get back to. i used to only dream of living in New York. and i loved Tokyo. and i have never ever lived somewhere contently, in every place there has been something wrong, or i've just known it's going to be temporary. our 'temporary' life in this flat has lasted for 3 (short) years - it's my second longest period in one place. me in the countryside. of course the difference is just that. it's us in the countryside.





i think having a forest is so important for a kid. i remember having very funny and very exciting games following footprints in the snowy forest. we were sure there was something strange going on: we heard morse signs from far away, and noted down letters. "the train at 10 in the evening, big load." and to have the freedom to let the kid go out on her own... V was very proud and happy to go out alone already. well, there was this guy to keep an eye on her.

fog day, inside

after much hesitation we ran to the bus yesterday to see a changed Manteli! the weather in town looked so boring, but in the countryside the fog was wonderful. and with a bonus: snow! pictures from top: continuation to the kamari series. view from the window to the field. the pride of the house: the one ready corner with the stove (i wanted to take a good photo of it, but forgot) (or actually i forgot to ask Y to take the good photo). working room with white papers. they will become darkish, 'indigo grey' says my hero, Y. having a fire again and heating lentil soup on it, looking at the fresh new plaster (the pigment doesn't show too much), having running water in the bathroom with Super taps (another photo i forgot to take)... i didn't want to leave! Y had spent the night there on a mattress. S & R and their kids A, O and baby R visited, and said it looks ready to move in! wonderful... i can't wait.


the wind had torn a big branch of a syringa (lilac, syreeni) and i brought some home. too early for this kind of spring signs!

cat pillow

i have finished making a little something! a long time ago i had an active day: there was a back part of a cardigan i had started to knit last winter. i thought i could to make a hat out of it. on that same day i made another hat too, and i was feeling like Puhti. (the most positive feeling one could imagine!) after all it became a little cushion that everybody likes, including a real cat, H.

a book

Y found a great book in the sales. (maybe i should start a blog about Y; Collected makings and doings of Y) it is called Suomalainen talonpoikaistalo. i don't know how to translate 'talonpoika', maybe it's just peasant. it's anyway about house groups around Finland, originally published in 1979 (which explains the super contrasted photos). there are wonderful houses, built in 18th and 19th century. a lot of information on building techniques. inspirations for window frames for example. and decorations. in the summer i want to build a little playhouse for V, ideas that don't fit to Manteli could be used in that. i love these doors, quite surprising!

step by step

i finally finished one work, so i get a little break.

this is how it was in the summer of 2005: digging and changing the bottom logs on three sides of the house. we dug a cellar too. then came the grovel and new floor construction with ecowool insulation. this is a power picture; this situation is so far behind! new floor boards in 2006:


this is showing how much extra stuff is there on the way. the room has insulation wood fibre boards on the walls, we will have only one bare log wall. next up: wallpaper ("Ken kiuruista kaunein"), floor treatment (some kind of bleach), painting the ceiling. electricity works. we really have a wonderful electrician, or actually two, father and son. and Y said the plumber was great (i didn't meet him), now there's a working shower in the bathroom and a tap on the outside wall! something even more wonderful happened too, but i want to see it with my own eyes before saying anything. also some new plans came along.

needle works

works by V. the first one is Snufkin's hat (Nuuskamuikkunen). the yellow stitches on the bird are her first sewing. she's so fascinated with needles. what kind of a mum lets a 2-year old play with needles?

today we've just been at home again. i'm so happy being at home, it's almost crazy. our baking for laskiainen is chocolate-apple cake - it turned out wonderful, just wonderful! we had 'laskiaispulla' at a nice bakery last week with C, baby M and Y on his lunch break. it was as good as they get. maybe we go there again on tuesday!

Y is in Manteli with C and the pipe guy!