Writing from our messy home

I write this in the middle of chaos. Our living room and kitchen are full of stuff from the bedroom and the hall. There is hardly any room to move around. But hopefully this is not for long since the hall is almost done and then we can start putting the wallpapers to our bedroom walls. We also bought laminate for the floor since the bedroom has plastic carpet at the moment.

I have more pictures from our summer vacation trip. Very near where my brother lives, a housing cooperative has bought some sheep. They keep them for the summer and have a big party at the end of the summer and serve pit-roasted lamb for almost 150 people.

Here I am with my brother trying to get the sheep to come closer. I have the skirt on that I won from Lila Tueller's blog. I love that skirt! :)

In the end we had to go where the sheep were and here I am taking pics:


My brother's cat Viiru (Streak or Stripe in English) was with us. She is on leash even though you can't see it here. She likes to explore the world but she was a bit jumpy and she hated the sheep! :D


This is my brother's other cat, Hely (Trinket in English :)). She is afraid of the big outside world so we didn't take her out with us. She likes to sleep and all the photos I have of her are when she is lying down. :)

When in Hämeenlinna I always like to go to a little yarn shop called Villamokka. They dye small batches of yarn. This time I didn't buy that yarn, I found this beautiful Létt-Lopi yarn. It's from Iceland and it's 100% wool. I also bought a few small buttons on our way back from Tampere on Thursday.

A green bag and some vacations photos

I'm back at home after visiting my brother and his fiancee in Hämeenlinna. We had a lot of fun. :) On Tuesday night I finished a crocheted bag that had been a wip for so long it almost became an ufo. I was making it for my mother so I had it ready just in time before we left on Wednesday morning as she was coming with us. The yarn is Avanti Cotton by Marks & Kattens and the desing is from my head. I crocheted a little pocket inside the bag for a cell phone.


On Thursday we went to Särkänniemi Adventure Park in Tampere. There was only one ride called Tornado I didn't have courage to go on to but my husband and brother went. We also went up to Näsinneula Tower (it's 168 metres high but the deck we went to was at 120 metres) and I took this photo from there. You can see the Adventure Park at the bottom of it. Another high place for a person with fear of hights. :D

We also went to see the lovely dolphins at the Dolphinarium. Aren't they cute!


Today after leaving Hämeenlinna we visited the Häme Castle. I really like castles. It's nice to walk around there and imagine the life back in the middle age.


This is the courtyard of the castle.
And this is the Main Hall.
And this is me as a nobel lady in one of the chambers! :D

Vacation plans and something finished

My four weeks long summer vacation started yesterday and my head is full of cross stitching, sewing and crocheting ideas that I want to make. But the first project we are going to carry out is putting new wallpapers to our bedroom and hallway. It has been on our to-do-list for long time and now we are finally having time to do it. Before I tell you more about the wallpapers I'll show you one cross stitch project that I have finished. I gave it to my mum for her birthday. It's tin and I put some sweets inside it. The chart was designed by Lilian Kok for the Violarium's stitchers' weekend.


And now the wallpapers. For the bedroom I chose a brown wallpaper on one wall and lovely leaf patterned wallpaper for the other two. One wall is covered by closets so no wallpaper needed on that one.

Here is a pic of the wallpapers I chose for the bedroom:

For the hallway I chose this one. The pattern is an old pattern from 1874 and is now re-manufactured.
Here are the old wallpapers. As you can see they are horrid so you'll understand why I want new ones. :)
This is the one we now have on our bedroom walls.
And this unbelievable ugly, rubbery like surface is on our hallway walls. I don't understand why this was put on the walls in the first place but then again it was in 1980's so maybe that explains it... :D
But now I need to go and pack my suitcase since we are leaving early in the morning to Hämeenlinna to visit my brother and his fiancee. I will be away for the rest of the week so no wallpapering or cross stitching happening for a while. When we come back we'll put on our dungarees and start making a big mess and hopefully beautiful walls. :)

My first Round Robin

I took part in my very first Round Robin with other Finnish bloggers. We all stitch two small 20x20 stitches or similar size areas so I guess there's going to be some tiny and pretty pictures. :) My subject is birdhouses and here is my start for it.

The photo is not the best possible since I took it quite late last night. I didn't outline exact 20x20 areas, I just marked the places I want to have birdhouses with blue x's. They mark the center of every little stitching so others can stitch two small ones, one bigger one or maybe a tall and narrow birdhouse. The birdhouses and the banner I stitched are from Jeanette Crews Designs's "A Little Bit of Birdsong" and Jeremiah Junction's "I Love My Garden". I sent a leaflet with 46 or 48 birdhouses with the fabric for ideas.

By the way, the skirt I won at the Lila Tueller's blog arrived last week. It's gorgeous! :) I should take a photo.

Piglet handbag

I was flipping through an online stores sale section earlier this week and came across a pretty little Piglet kit. My friend loves Piglet so I just had to click click the kit to the cart. :) And of course I didn't want him to be lonely so I also added one Pooh kit too. They arrived on Tuesday and I stitched Piglet right away. I wanted to make a bag from it and went to buy the fabric yesterday. First I was thinking about a tote but then realised that Piglet wants to be on a handbag. I found a great free bag pattern from Ottobre and cut the fabric and sewed the bag last night. I was thinking about giving it to my friend as a birthday present but as it is sooooo long before her birthday I just went over and gave it to her last night as soon as I finished the bag. :D I have promised her that I teach her to cross stitch so I said that the bag was the first part of her birthday present and the second part is that I will help her to stitch the same Piglet and I'll make a wallet for her from it, matching the handbag of course. I sewed a little loop inside the bag and attached a carabin key chain for her keys so they won't get lost to the bottom of the bag. The Piglet picture is also a pocket. The pocket really is sewn straight eventhough it looks like it's really crooked in the picture. :)


Oh and I found another two giveaways. Clare is having a great Frog Giveaway here.

Green Fairy Quilts has four lovely thin$sg to give away. Go and take part here.

Giveaways

I love Irish music, art, landscapes, sheep etc. so I am quite excited about this giveaway. I hope I win but hope you will enter too to make it more exciting. :) It's here.

Violarium also has a contest and the price is a wonderful book - Cross Stitch Letters Bible by Valerie Lejeune. I have drooled over this one for a loooong time. :) Enter the contest here.

Tapestry of Dreams blog has a BIG giveaway. You can find it here.

Great stitching weekend with friends

I drove 280km on Friday to meet with other stitchers and had a great weekend! Thank you for inviting me! :) We stitched, stitched, ate, stitched, slept a little (very little...) and stitched again. And of course talked and laughed a lot! :D

I started to stitch Michael Powell's "Cottage Garden 1" and got this much done:

This is how it's going to look like when finished...

...with small differences. As I was stitching it I noticed there's a couple of spots that are different on the chart compared to the picture in the kit. I didn't have internet access at the time so I left those parts unstitched and checked them last night when I came home. They say on Michael Powell's site that they have improved the design after they got the model stitched and say you should stick with the chart. I'll do that when I continue stitching today after work. :)

I got a hint about a BIG store that was on my way home. It sells almost everything (except food) and there was a lot of nice things I just had to buy! :) I got some beads, felts, fabrics, bag handles, DMC threads, a new glass jar for my orts and so on.

Here is a rain photo from my garden. We had a big thunder storm last week. My lilies got a lot of water that day. :)

I won a beautiful skirt!

I took part in a competition on Lila Tueller's blog. She wanted ideas for a colorway for her next fabric line. Colors are for the fall collection so I sent her a link for a beautiful picture of autumn leaves. I just love those colours and I think they are the "real" colours of fall. :) Lila picked me as the winner! I am so excited! I won a beautiful skirt made from her fabrics. It's the perfect summer skirt and when I saw it I so hoped I would win it. And I did! Happy Dance!
When Lila announced the winners she had the names mixed up, my name is at the second picture and the autumn leaves has Stephanie's name on it. But she told me she'll fix it and I really did win the skirt. :)

The picture I chose for the colorway:

The skirt is on the left. Click the pic to see it better on Lila's blog.