Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

Micke had been feeling a little blue, and as far as I can guess it's because of the usual: the weather, work and all the home assignments he's supposed to do. So, when we saw the expansion box (collectors ed. mind you!) for World of Warcraft on sale (for 35 instead of 60€) in the store, while shopping for groceries, I said to him that we just have to take it. Bonus was, you got a week of free gameplay. Yes, I was the one that said to the game-playing nerd to buy an expansion pack. Seriously folks. So, Micke has now spent most of his time by his computer, but I think he's been feeling better. The gaming gets a little manic, but I personally take mania over depression any day. We'll see how it goes when he wants to buy another month of gameplay (which I guess is about 30€).... then I might have to put down my fists.  Look, he looks so much happier! Even though it took all day to install since he had to download 2,5 GIGAbyte of patches for the game.... You got a fre...

I've been  making granny square patches since last November (2009) and today (30th of March) I finally crocheted a thin border around the whole blanket, and cut off all the tiny threads that I hadn't managed to "hide away" inside the crocheted squares themselves. Oh boy, did it take time to make the whole blanket! One square in itself doesn't take that much time, but when you have to make 19 x 13 = 247 squares , then suddenly it becomes a PROJECT (notice the capital letters!). This blanket took a loooooot of time watching CSI, Lie To Me, House and other TV-series with Micke to get done. I think I've gotten the hang of "mom-multitasking": watching TV with one eye, keeping my hands busy with the PROJECT at hand, and talking with Micke during the commercials while crocheting. What you need to make a blanket like this: Patience (well, duh!). I planned the layout of the pattern I wanted to make on a paper before I started crocheting. It helped, bec...

Location : Turku market square Open : Mon-Fri   8ish - 17ish Sat   8ish - 15ish (Yes, winter to summer, but not on Christmas day or when its more than -25 degrees cold!) How do I pay : With cash only! If you like vegetables, fruits and other green product, and want to buy LOTS for a cheap price.... then visiting the open air market is a great idea. In order to compete with the local stores and keep Turku's market culture alive, the open air market often have more affordable prices for us students (sometimes even 1 euro cheaper/kg). If you're lucky, you might even find the odd shipment or two of exotic fruits for sale. Salad, onions, carrots, tomatoes, cucumber, apples and potatoes are the ones that are always found though. In summer you can find berries, in autumn mushrooms. The great thing about the market is that at the end of the day the vendors clump together the day-old veggies and fruits into large plastic bags, and sell them for 1 euro/bag. So, if yo...

You are what you eat... therefore, breakfast sometimes needs to be taken to the limits! As in this prime example with semolina-porridge made with lingonberries (swe. mannagrynsgröt, vispgröt) and some cake-decor... Start with porridge. Add milk, look - it's an island! Eat! Nom nom nom... All gone :)

What you're gonna need are: 1 necklace wire with screw-clasp * ~40 pearls (with a diameter of at least 1,5 cm) ~40 matching seedpearls ** *These can be found at e.g. Näpsäkkä in the colors blue, gold, black, silver, red, pink turquoise.... I love using them, since the wire makes the pearls fall nicely around your throat, and the lock is already prefitted to the wire. ** Make sure these are at least size 8/0, as smaller usually have hole that won't fit around the wire I've used here! String the pearls on in any order you want them to be - here I put a seedpearl between each large pearl - then close the clasp onto the wire with a straight-nosed plier. Ta-daa! All done and ready to use. And it took about 10-15 min.

Crafts: a loom! Me, Mimi, and a few other girls from her study program (art history) visited Turku Congress Center on Sunday. Reason: to ogle out eyes on antiques, crafts, and art. The fair was actually divided into three parts, and the one we spent most of our time (and most of our money too, heh!) was the area where the Craft -boutiques and -entrepreneurs had their stalls. People were displaying things they had made by weaving, knitting, cross-stitching, beading, sewing with leather and gods know what other things. There were people selling yarn for every possible use, and even a vendor selling the latest in sewing machines. At one stall, where the girls from C04 were, I bought a knee-length skirt made from felt (100% wool!). It's violet, and I reeeeally liked the color. Just had to buy it. Mimi bought a white west at the same stall. Before that, I bought some yarn at Lankabaari 's stall, so now I have enough to make that crocheted vest I want. The main thing I had wan...

It's funny how clear life suddenly becomes when you wake up at 5 a.m. and just *know* that eventually you're going to have to run to the bathroom to throw up. Your body is telling your mind - in no nonsense terms - that this will eventually have to happen. So you plead with yourself, you take shallow breaths, you DON'T think about food, picture a sea of calm white when you close your eyes and you try to hold on.... but then comes the point when enough is just enough, and you lurch/run/crawl to the bathroom. (This latter is sometimes done with various degrees of success... As evident that one time with Micke and the TV) Since this happened early in the morning (hello! 5 a.m!), and I'm a generally decent human being, I didn't want to wake up Micke while I did all of this... activity. So, I left out the lights, and closed the bathroom door. He managed to sleep through all the ... activity ... and even the shower I had to take afterwards, because I felt like crap and ...

Many daycare-group take their young charges to Turky City Library to lend books for the week. Some even stay for an hour or two to read. Here is a little group I managed to spot today. Some of the kids wanted to lend the books of the friends in their groups, so much fun are the lending machines! You see, at Turku City Library, kids have two lending machines of their own. At the top hole, you show the "lending robot" your library card and punch in your code, then you get to stuff your books - one at a time! - into the hole. As soon as the "lending robot" recognizes the book, it does this funny beep to let you know it's all right to put in the next book. Every book you borrow falls down at the back of that top hole, and you can pick them up at the hole at the bottom of the machine when your done. If something goes wrong (usually it's that you punch in the wrong code) , the machine instead does a "dooh!" much like Homer Simpson. Hilarious!

I had to get out the sewing machine once again, this time to patch some of our clothes. It's amazing how easily H&M-clothes get either holes, loose threads or drop their buttons. Talk about clothes for only one season, jeez! Micke had cut away a washing label tag on one of his T-shirts, and since he did it in a hurry he cut away both the tag and some cloth to spare. Ergo sum, a hole! How typical. After this sewing - which was easy! - I decided to finally sew together all the parts I had already cut out for a bag made out of crocheted ' granny squares ' (swe. mormorsrutor).The squares are made out of 3 different shades of brown, and sewn together with the same yarn that's used in the last 'round' on the square. I really like the colors, although they're not exactly "spring colors". It was supposed to become an autumn bag, but.... *lazy* The only thing I don't like about the end result are the handles. They don't match the rest o...

... at least according to an article posted in todays Hufvudstadsbladet . I tried to find the link for it on Hbl.fi , but I couldn't find it except on the pages where you could read the whole web-newspaper. So I'm sorry for breaking copyright and all that, but I'm still posting it here. Sorry, Hbl! (to read it, click on it!) See the first and second paragraph? In the first, they're discussing the fact that more and more people buy foodPRODUCTS when shopping, and not food that has to be prepared from scratch. In the second, they're discussing how the availability of ready-made meat has made people forget how to prepare meat (I assumed that they mean everything from choosing the right meat for the dish, cutting it, and finally to prepare it right). Are we truly going downhill with this? (says the girl who has gone the other way and always wants to prepare everything from scratch...) Are people really not acquiring the skills needed to cook? I suppose you actually...

And it will be a HUGE weekend project. Because I calculated that we must own close to 350 books, and if (and that's a big IF) you manage to find all the Swedish ones online you might still not get the right covers for them. That would mean uploading covers for the ones lacking, which will turn out into a mini-photo shoot. But still, I think it will be worth it. If someone wants to buy us books in the future, they can check online if we already have it. Which is kinda smart, I guess. And if we, for some reason or another, need a complete list of all we have (insurance reasons or so?) it will be easy to print one out.

Although last week was a bit depressing, there were some bright moments to be found. Besides celebrating the twin's 22nd birthday during the weekend, I managed to have Mimi over for some creative sewing. She needed some alterations done to a jumpsuit she'd bought from H&M for next to nothing. She's like me when it comes to H&M - if you manage to find something you like, you almost ALWAYS have to do some slight alterations to it. Not everyone is a size 0 / size 32 and thin as a twig. I think the sewing went quite well, and she was real happy about getting it done :) The suit is this one-piece thing, and although it fit her to a T around the hips and legs, it was too wide up around her chest. I took away about 5 cm, and then it fit her perfectly. Here she's checking out the finished result in our hallway mirror. Thing is, she freely admits that she considers my skills on the sewing machine to far exceed her own, so she gladly lets me do alterations to her clot...