Happy New Year!

Does your Mother know where you are? Or do You know where your kids are? :P I don't know why I think that's funny but I do :D Doesn't seem like I'll be growing up anytime soon I guess :)
I have been thinking quite a lot lately though..
I felt one night when I was lying in bed a very strong sadness at the thought of maybe being alone for a long time, maybe not finding the right one in time to have kids and so on.. I really really want to have kids one day, my own.. I don't even think I'd want to adopt.. I'm not sure.. I'll take that question if it ever arises. But I do want a big family.. :) a huge one! with dogs and cats too :)
I've been thinking more than that, this whole autumn has been a long meditation. And I'm not finished yet. I still haven't been able to decide on what I want to do when I grow up/the rest of my life ;) yes, I know, I don't have to do the same thing the rest of my life, but at least for a couple of years!
I have so many ideas and alternatives.. I looove numbers, it's a bit crazy but I do :) you can do so much with numbers, finding meanings, creating meanings and so on.. I just don't know exactly how I could implement this love.. statistics? how and where? economics? accountancy? Usually need to have some sort of training to get a job in any of those anyway..
Then there's the whole creative field.. :) textiles in almost every imaginable way, some fields of art, photography, crafts.. And then there's the food, mostly baking, bit. Which in my world belongs to the creative field :) I seldom follow a recipe to the letter, and especially when making cakes I quite often make them completely from an idea I've got :) I get inspiration easily, getting the things done is a little bit harder.. :P
That's the major interests.. well, let's add interior decorating and architecture as I am very interested in them too. If I've forgotten anything I'll let you know :P I love greenery and gardens and flowers and so on too, but I actually don't think that love is enough for a job, except if it is a part of a larger concept.. :) like having a restaurant in a big old house with a huge garden :P and of course an art&craft shop in one of the old buildings ;) I've read way too many country life (interior) magazines ;)

With these thoughts in my head I'm ready to enter a new year and try to be open to whatever it brings me! :)
Happy New Year once again!

More crafting ;)

A Christmas tree ornament I made late one night before going to bed.. :) just had to try it at least once.. :) it's just 13 stripes held together by string, easy! :)
Yesterday I had a day almost free from crafting, I just read instead.. :) "Hand i hand" (Hand in hand, duh) by Irmelin Sandman-Lillius and Heddi Böckman. About their childhood.. nicely written as it was sometimes the same happening told from both sisters different viewpoints :) I've read books by Irmelin Sandman-Lillius before and I love them :) and I loved this one too, it was more real of course but it was the same homely feeling.. a little bit like reading Moomin-books.. it feels so homely to me :) actually the two sisters knew Tove Jansson, Moomins creator :) and they're all Swedish-speaking Finns, just like me, and grew up more or less at the same time as my parents, and in the same city too :) so it's not such a wonder really if their writings feel homely :)

Crafting with company

might look like this:

I was going to continue on the flower-ball I had started in the morning and Tufs (the bigger one) decided she wanted to help! well, sleep would be a better word.. ;) Trollis was already lying on that white-gray cloth by the window but when big sister came and flopped down on all my papers she wanted to do that too! Yey! ;) Luckily I didn't need anything that was under the cats nor very much space on the table.. and as the next pic will show you I managed to finish two small flower-balls :)

Perfect size for my Christmas tree :) I did some creative work with a marker, just to see how it would look :) I like the one on the left more, it has just got an orange border.. the red one might be better with just the middle piece red, I'll try that on a later one :P This is a really fun crafting, as it's mostly just fold, fold, cut, cut, glue, glue.. as I've said before it takes time, but it turns out really nice too :) and can of course be varied in a thousand different ways.. how about inserting small led-lamps in the middle of each flower.. :) I tried taking a pic with one flower-ball on each cat but Trollis woke up when I placed one on her so I had to change plans and use Tufs as base ;)

Looks nice, doesn't it? :)
I'm still debating with myself whether to do a round ball out of paper stripes today or some other day.. :) There's an instruction in one of my Christmas craft books how to do it, but they use just rectangular strips and I think they should be tapering.. so I need to find out if my idea looks better :) and also if it's possible to overlap them in a certain way, don't know how to describe my thoughts there.. ah well, you'll see when I've made one :)

Ugh..

My stomach still isn't exactly up to normal.. and now Mom has got it too.. I just hope it won't decide to take a second round! I want to eat normal, good food :) For some reason I have a higher craving for salt again so I've been planning tomorrows lunch really long :P I'm going to make chicken with blue cheese and some creamy sauce and with french fries.. :) it's something you can get at quite a lot of places at least here and I just want to have that now.. I dreamed of it already when I had just had dinner :P now it's just one night and breakfast to get through first ;)
hopefully a night better than last.. took me ages to get to sleep! Today I've stayed up longer so at least that should shorten the toss-and-turn period a bit I hope.. and yesterday I had dinner quite late so I think my stomach was working hard when I went to bed..

Chocolate and stomach flu..

You're right, they don't go together.. which sometimes can be a really good thing! :) The stomach flu of course made a pause in my chocolate eating, and that was exactly what I needed but couldn't make myself to do. So for once I've gone a Christmas without gorging myself with chocolate! On Christmas eve I didn't even gorge myself on food, still having a feeling I want to be just a little bit careful with my stomach.. Although today I've eaten almost normally, just had some lovely potatoes and meat that wasn't Christmassy in any way! Apparently the gorging on Christmas foods I've done over the years is enough to make me feel like it's a blessing to eat "normal" food again ;)
This year I've had a lot of thoughts about Christmas and traditions.. I'm not sure I want to follow all of the ones from my childhood but I'm definitely not sure which ones to change or let go of. And as long as I spend Christmas eve with my parents that will probably be quite traditional anyway. I don't do almost any of the Christmas food just for me, Christmas baking on the other hand.. :P

Paper flying!

Literally! I've been folding, cutting, gluing and what not! :) There's so much fun out there to do and try out and learn :) I just finished a ball of stars/flowers using my lovely coloured origami paper and a tutorial I found on metacafe :)

Crappy quality as the battery in my camera died and I had to photo it with my laptops inbuilt camera..

In the video they use a stapler instead of glue, luckily I was out of staples so I had to use glue (no visible staples to disturb the eye) :D
I also found a video of a guy who made houses out of one paper just by cutting! First round it looked just amazing, now I'm starting to get ready to try for myself :P But I think that will have to be tomorrows project.. :) Making the flower ball above isn't very hard, but it does take some time to fold, cut and then glue 12 pieces together.. :) especially when I started out trying to make one of 6-pointed flowers instead of 5-pointed.. Snowflakes has given me a fascination with 'multiples of 6'-pointed things.. instead of the usual multiples of 4 or 5.. folding paper easily gives you the ones of 4 and I guess 5 is just from the basic 5-pointed stars and flowers :)

aaaand Christmas continues.. :)

Luckily today is a day for relaxing and not doing anything more than I have to.. :) I slept until 12 and then I slowly got up and had breakfast and dressed and so.. then I've been reading and looking through some craft-books I got for Christmas :) which finally got my inspiration level so high that I had to get off the couch and do some crafting! ;) It's especially a book about plaited hearts/ornaments that gets my inspiration soaring ;) plaited hearts is an old Nordic Christmas tradition, originally from Germany I believe. Although I think it has lost it's footing in Germany and mostly exists in the Scandinavian countries with a small foothold in Finland too (well, at least I still do them :P)

The book I got for Christmas and the four first tries :) The one on the top is supposed to be a butterfly ;) and the two green-purple ones are just playing with perceptions :) I think the heart within a heart turned out quite well! :)

 We made these hearts when I was a kid and my parents has some old ones left that they made for their first Christmas together :) but those are ones with just the regular plaiting :)

I took some pics of my tree today too, but the only thing showing is the lights in it.. I need to hang more stuff on it so that it will show! :P
Another of the books I got had a cut out bird, just an easy peasy thing but it looked very nice :) I've been thinking of cutting similar birds of nice papers for my tree, some light-coloured paper that will show up against the dark tree :) It's such a lovely Christmas tree this year, just so dense that everything get's lost in it :P

Christmas it is :D

Merry Christmas :)

What more needs to be said :) I had a nice dinner with my parents, although a bit more relaxed than earlier.. but then again we've all been more or less sick this week.. and I'm growing up and having Christmas my own way in my house so I can more easily let them do whatever and however they want the one day/dinner I'm there :)
I realized this year for the first time that Christmas eve is just one part of Christmas, the first big day of Christmas.. Then there's a lot more Christmas still after that! I want to bake gingerbread cookies, just need to find someone to eat them as I'm not really that much into eating them too :) or maybe I'll make some other kind of cookies but with my Christmas cutters :) we'll see.. tomorrow it's another family dinner, but at my Sis' place :)
Tomorrow I might take some pics of all the nice gifts I got today as well :) although more gifts coming tomorrow :P not so much more though..
Then the rest of Christmas is unplanned! But I hope to meet some friends and I got 3 lovely books on (Christmas) crafting so I won't have time to get bored anyway :P
Now it's bed, still get tired rather easily :)

24h bug

Yes, managed to get a 24h stomach bug.. but now I'm mostly well again :) just not very much appetite yet though.. but I guess it will return, at Christmas dinner if not earlier :P
I did manage yesterday evening, even while being half dead from bug and fever, to put the lights in my Christmas tree! And today I've been slowly decorating it, far from ready though :)
The worst part of having the bug yesterday was that I had planned to do a lot of cooking and baking! Well, some I could still do today luckily.. so now I have some sour dough rising and salmon with spices in the fridge and dinner is ready in a minute or two! :)
After dinner and a rest I'm going to start wrapping gifts! yey :D

I've got a Christmas tree! :D

It's thawing and drying in the bathroom because it's snowing again today.. :) But it smells wonderfully greeeeen! :) just like it should :) the cats are so interested, they've both been several times looking and sniffing at the tree :) and Tufs tasted the water it stands in to see that it was good enough :P
Still packed into it's plastic it doesn't look so nice.. but just wait 'til this evening when I unpack it :)

Update: Now the tree looks this nice!







I've also been knitting quite a lot, still two Christmas gifts to finish :) My sisters fluffy muffler might look like it was finished in the picture, but she wants it HUGE so it needs to go twice round her neck, it's just one round yet :) But it is sooo warm and soft and oooh! :) maybe I'll have to knit something similar for myself :)

 And the fluffy muffler in it's whole beauty :) so far almost 2 balls of yarn, will need at least one more possibly closer to 2 more... Luckily I have in my stash already :)

I'll just continue knitting and waiting for the tree to thaw :) some baking on my mind too, I'm thinking of a saffron bun baked as a plait and with marzipan in it too... mmmm :D

Gingerbread "village"

I've forgotten to post the pics of my gingerbread houses! Three small ones, start of a village :) I'm going to add lights too, even street lights if I just get it to work and find the right stuff I need.. I just have to wait until dad is free, he know electronics so much better than me :)

Aren't they cute? ;)

 I went to yet a Christmas art&craft market on Wednesday and decided to buy a necklace, I don't wear jewelry, never have.. But lately I've found a bit of an interest in it anyway.. especially when going to the Opera or some party it's nice to really make an effort :) one of the reasons I don't like jewelry is because I don't like metal.. especially not against my skin.. *shiver* But now there's a lot of lovely stuff with no traces of metal :) and I've matured some more ;) This one I call my sunshine as it's such a happy yellow colour :) I'm going to change the string to a brown one, probably a bit thicker too.. :) I also got another one, a red one, similar but a little bit smaller.. :)

The colour isn't perfect in the picture, it's such a lovely yellow-orange-brown mix :)

I've had quite a productive morning today :) Finished the Christmas cards (except some that I'm going to give when I meet them.. gives me a bit more time ;) and then I've been washing and doing dishes and stuff :) soon I'm going to make candy! Mmmmmmmmm! :D

Christmas crafting 24/7 ;)

Almost.. I'm almost done with the Christmas cards, luckily because I think they have to be posted tomorrow to have any chance of getting to their destinations before Christmas.. :) It's a lot of fun at least :D I'm planning to make gift tags too.. and then I want to make really nice parcels.. will just have to see have far my energy goes :)
Tomorrow I'm going to make a lot of different candy with a friend :) and on Saturday I'm going to a flea-market with another friend.. and then on Sunday it's the big Tree Hunting Day! We usually go every year with mom and dad to our cottage and get trees :) one for them, one for me and sometimes one for my sister too :) quite often my parents have decided on a tree already during summer (no snow to wade through) but not this year.. and we have a lot of snow this year too.. So we'll probably look like snowmen before we're done :P We're also going to a Christmas market at Mörby Gård on Sunday, it's close to our cottage so it works :) mostly they sell stuff from the farm (they have a lot of ecologically produced flour etc) and then some more or less locally made craft/knitting and so on.. It's a nice tradition :)

I still have some unfinished gifts, especially knitting.. the fluffy muffler had to wait for a while as there where other, more pressing, gifts to finish.. I think I'm more than halfway through anyway.. but of course my sister wants to be able to wrap it twice around her neck so it has to be really long.. sigh ;)
And then there's some other things I can't mention here ;) One of the best things about Christmas is all the secrets in the corners :D

A good monday :)

Although it was a bit slow in the morning.. I had problems getting myself out of bed.. :)
But then I got a lot of things done! Some Christmas gifts and Christmas cards mailed, walked to the post office, store and library :) Then I glued my gingerbread houses :) pictures of that coming tomorrow or sometime.. ;) Aaaand then! I started to knit cables! I've never done it before but of course I wanted to try :) I still have one knitted Christmas gift unstarted and I've been thinking of using cables on it.. but for that I'd have to learn how to do it first :) I've thought knitting cables would be one of the hardest things to do but it turned out to be quite easy :) not fast, a lot to keep track of, but not really so hard :) Especially a lot to keep track of the way I did it, just look at the picture ;)

Crisscrossing here, there and everywhere ;)

I had a glove with a similar, but neater and clearer, pattern in mind when I did this.. :) I think I'll do one more training piece before starting on the "real" one :) I want to try it exactly as I want to do it :)

Otherwise today has just been cold, cold and cold! Although I got lucky when I was out and saw the sun and blue sky! I was so happy walking home, I walked quite slowly and just looked at all the wintery beauty around me :)

Tomorrow it's time to decorate the gingerbread house(s)! At least the one mom and I made, uhm, mom made.. Then I also have three small ones of my own but I'm not sure if I'm going to decorate them tomorrow or the day after.. :)

Snow day

Yes, it's snowing again.. quite a lot too :) perfect timing, I have to use the car today, now I get some extra exercise when I dig it out :P
I also cut a snowflake of the new paper I got, only 70g per square meter.. the usual printer paper is 80g so this one is a tad thinner.. it's the thinnest I've found without resorting to tissue paper.. :)

Trollis was just about to step before the camera so I'm telling her to keep away, hence the look on my face.

 I was keeping my lovely snowflake book open on my lap while cutting, to get some inspiration :) you can see the book in an earlier post, definitely worth getting :)
I'm going to cut lots more snowflakes, it's so fun :) and you can do such a lot different ones! :)

Just an ordinary day

I seem to be a bit slow on updating my blog.. I will try to write more often.. :) Otherwise I've been getting better at "updating" my life, i.e. doing stuff that needs to be done.. :)
I returned library books today (2 days late but no fee) and I actually walked there and back! It's not very far, but I've been sooo lazy for so many years that I've almost forgotten how to walk :P
The weather is nice, the sun is actually shining right now! That happens so seldom in Finland during the long, cold winters. The sun was out on Tuesday too and I even went out with my camera and took a couple pictures :)

Today it's been blowing so hard that some of the snow from the trees has fallen down, but not much.. :) it's still as beautiful :) luckily at least it hasn't snowed in the past two days.. we've got quite enough already :) 

I'm getting on with my Christmas knitting, another present is soon finished :) luckily as it has to be posted on Monday! I need to finish the Christmas cards that I need to send on Monday too.. 

I've been making cards with cutouts, I can probably post a pic later on and you'll see what and how I mean.. :)

It keeps on snowing..

And I started cutting out snowflakes ;) I just have to buy some thinner paper, normal printer paper is a bit tick.. as it needs to be folded so many times. Being the way I am, of course I make my snowflakes 6-sided, as natural snowflakes are :) or at least multiples of 6.. I found some nice snowflakes in an e-mail from Habitat and that got me started.

They do look like they were cut out of paper don't they? :) I've cut snowflakes most winters, but when I was a kid I did like everyone else and cut them with 4 sides/points.. but after reading this book:

The Snowflake, Winter's Secret Beauty by Kenneth Libbrecht and Patricia Rasmussen

I can't go back :) my snowflake-virginity is lost ;) but it was worth it, that book is awesome! Soo gorgeous pictures and a lot of facts about snow and snowflakes too :)

But yes, it's snowing here again, it snowed most of yesterday and the day before.. and we had quite enough snow before that :) yesterday I had to dig to get my car into the parking space! Today I moved it to a space that was already cleared.. :) luckily they seem to be quite active with their snow-ploughs here :)

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm chocolate! ;)

My favorite! All the time! Fffffffffazer :D

I don't have that much to say right now.. mostly I'm just sleepy :) should go to bed.. Been crafting with mom today, started making Christmas cards (nope, no pics, you don't want to see your Christmas card in advance do you?) and then I made an experiment and baked bread using sea-buckthorn juice..

it turned out quite edible :) could've been a bit sweeter though.. But I'll be making more experiments :)
I've also been crocheting today, finished one snowflake, started on a new one and then I got the bright idea to try and get the Mary Jane slippers done so I could wear them tomorrow! uhm, I don't think that's going to happen.. but at least I've started on them :) and then they'll be finished for the next party! :) I think they'll be my number 1 accessory this Christmas :) oh, I have to figure out what to wear tomorrow too..
Well, off to bed it is! To dream sweet sweet dreams of chocolate! :P

Merry start of Christmas! :)

Welcome to my home! :)

One star in my bedroom window :) there's one in every room, all different of course :) but I haven't taken photos of them all yet :)

And the best.. A small amaryllis just breaking into full bloom with some lights behind it, reflected over and over again in the windows.. :) Sometimes me and my camera get lucky :)
Happy time waiting for the Christmas! I loooove this time :D