Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

For those of you who haven't been there already, the  Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova is the museum of history and contemporary art. Located maybe 500 m from Turku Cathedral, it's both near the market square and the rest of the city center. And the museum closest to where Mikael and I live. My good friend Mimi is working in the museum this summer summer, and since her sister came for a visit yesterday, Mimi guided us around the museum. I think she's a brilliant guide, and I'm not saying it just because she's a friend. The museum is divided into two parts. The historic part (Aboa Vetus, or 'old Turku') is located in the basement, and the sections for contemporary art (Ars Nova) is located on the two upper levels. The ground floor is where the ticket office, gift shop and the Aula café is located ('aula' is the word for 'lobby', so it's a slight play on words) . Click on the link to see the virtual tour. The exhibition at the contemporary...

A part of the "Turku - Culture Capital of 2011" event is the appearance of all these festivals, lectures and musical performances that - at least - a lot of people in Turku has been blogging/writing/updating people about. Now that it's summer, all sorts of events are taking place. Like the  ISD , for example. Held at the new congress center " Logomo ", which is actually a renovated giant warehouse that used to belong to Turku train station,  we (me, Micke, Mimi+her boyfriend Tommy, and we met Pernilla once we got there) spent the morning and most of the afternoon listening to seminars held by some really awesome quantum physicists and artists. ISD home page. The seminars were a collaboration between the University of Turku, the Heriot-Watt University ( Edinburgh, UK), the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) and the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), and it was sponsored by the Finnish Cultural Foundation (Science Workshop on Entanglement)...

In Finland, for those of you who don't know, there's this department store called Stockmann . Twice a year, they have this "special event" called Hullut Päivät (in Finnish) or Galna Dagar (in Swedish). Translated into English, it's "Crazy Days". And it's a really really aptly named event. From Wednesday to Sunday, you get to shop things for "special" prices. But only on certain of those days, and they only have a finite number of those "special" prized products. For example, this year (that is, last week) my dearest Micke wanted to buy himself one of those Sodastream machines (actually, a lot of other people wanted to buy them too), because they had them for only 49 euros ("normal" price being between 59-99 euros). They were available only on Thursday, and when I got there at 12 p.m., the guy behind the counter told me they had sold off all of them before 10 a.m. Such is life. Crazy, that is. Nevertheless, I...

Browsing through my feeds at Google Reader, I noticed that o h no, someone didn't like their fair  (the post is in Swedish and about "Symässan", the Sewing fair held in Malmö, Sweden). How sad! Although, most of hte things she's written is true about fairs in general (everything about the fair, like tickets and parking, is too expensive, and there's too few vendors with 'good' and 'good-value' products). Good thing I did though. Like the Turku Arts, Crafts and Antiques fair, that is. Only thing I didn't like was the price of the tickets (12 bloody euros!), so it was good that we in the Turku Ravelry group had managed to somewhat (heh! :P ) coordinate us and get in as a group. That way, it was only 8,40 euros. It was fun to walk around with Ulrika and Fredrik - I learnt a lot about 'antique' Finnish handicrafts (mostly glass and silver) that way. They collect (well, I think it's mainly Ulrika's passion, but they're both i...

Turku Ravelry goes to Turun Kädentaitomessut :) To everyone who's interested, we're going this Saturday at 10 a.m. Meet up with us either at the buss that's leaving at 09:40 a.m. from the bus stop outside Turku's Orthodox Church  or at about 10 a.m. by the ticket office inside Turku Congress Center. We'll be happy to have you :) The reduced price for members of a group is 9 euros, instead of 12 euros (full price). Remember to bring a large enough bag with you, if you want to carry your own jacket and not pay 2 euros for cloak room storage.

Last night, the sky suddenly decided to give us a huge gift of water. In the form of snow. It looked so pretty while it was still fresh, and it feels so fluffy under your boots. This snow is the perfect snow for making snow castles and snow men. Welcome to Turku, we got snow :) Vårdberget, with the Observatory in the middle. Klockringaregatan. King of all that he sees: Per Brahe and the cathedral. Snow on the cathedral steps. Biskopsgatan. Hello, huge elm by the cathedral. More cathedral. Feels like they're looking down on me,

... last Friday, and came back with tomatoes, books and yarn. Not to mention borrowing 2 x 10 liter stainless steel cooking pots, and lugging them home. Had a nice chat with friends at Biocity too, and got some glögg and baked goodies for "special price" (read: all the odd cash I happened to have in my wallet... 35 cents). This snowy quest took me from Biocity, to the open air market, to the library, and to Lankabaari . Lankabaari is one of my favorite LYS here in Turku. (For all of you non-knitters/crafters, LYS stands for l ocal y arn s hop...) But I still can't wait for Menita in Espoo/Helsinki to finally launch their web shop. So, it was a busy weekend. I think I spent most of my free time on Saturday in the kitchen, doing all sorts of things. While things were simmering on the stove, I opened one of the books I had borrowed from the library, and it started out just as silly as I had expected it to be. Even so, I read it until Micke went out with the boys to t...

It's been snowing! And much, if you ask my opinion. Sadly, nearly all of it will melt during the day and freeze during the night, so all the pavements will be horribly slippery. But, even if it's not snowing anymore today, I'll still show you some pictures of how it was yesterday. Turku market square Outside the city library

"The net is truly vast and infinite." While I was searching for patterns for both knitting and crocheting, I stumbled upon Ravelry.com . It's a site intended for those around the globe who want to both be a part of, and contribute to, the (apparently) growing interest in knitting/crocheting. Since I'm all for (smart!) social online platforms, I really like the site. Since the -reason- behind any such platform is to bring people together and allow them to interact via common interests, I must say that during this past month I've learned a lot. This is thanks to all the persons (mostly women) who I've met during a few knit-alongs here in Turku. Most of you know I speak swedish, but since finnish is the language of the majority, I suddenly realized that I really need to practice speaking it. And during the first of these knit-alongs I found out how terribly degraded my knowledge of finnish has become. But no more! About three times a month now, I'll be att...

I found it thanks to this blog , which link one of my Facebook-acquaintances posted. Again, the world got a little more odd. Although it was kinda strange to begin with. Once, I proposed that it would be nice if someone could invent a sort of anti shock-collar for us girls. The idea of such a collar would be that it would, well... give the non-wanted people approaching us a SHOCK , and thus turn them away from us. This was said in a moment late at night when I was extremely tired, and didn't want any company of the following during my walk home: aggressive men, drunks and druggies Sometimes, it's nice when people come up and talk to you, especially if you're feeling lonely (at e.g. a party or such), but most of the time it's the people with nothing to loose that are doing it. Every girl having a drunk beside her while sitting on the bus knows what I mean. Men behaving badly are so totally out. It's awful when you're all alone, and really need the support o...

This weekend, they're having DBTL in Turku. That's short for "Down By The Laituri", or down by the pier. It's a music happening, and it takes place in the city centre, between the Aura-bridge and the Teatteri-bridge. Since the music played can be heard - at least a little - off the main area, people take their drinks and friends and sit around the Aura river's shores during the event. Because it's cheaper, and because there it's not off limits for under aged persons. What is the result of this? A weekend full of: Men peeing everywhere there's room, even though many public places, like the library, are open until at least 8 pm. People vomiting or passing out, because they're stupid enough not to limit themselves for just a few beers. Litter everywhere, especially glass. Every restaurant around the area is packed with people. Good luck to you if you didn't book a table in advance. Since I hate when people behave like pigs and force other...

It seems everything from TV, newspapers and friends' status updates on Facebook are all agreeing on something: It's mighty hot outside. Summer in Finland suddenly got warmer: up to 30 degrees Celsius here in the south. And even though every sun-lover is celebrating, I would guess most people find the oppresive heat annoying. If only because I've heard of folks sleeping outside on their balconies or verandas, because their homes are 35 degrees and more on the inside. But what can you do, when finnish houses are built to conserve heat inside (think: scandinavian winter!), aided by triple window panes, heat isolation in celings and walls, and of course radiator-lines under the floors. Me, I been praying for rain. And thunder, because I like the action that brings, but mainly rain. Yesterday, I got my wish, because it rained hard for less than 20 min around noon. Then, it took perhaps 30 min for everything to dry up and go back to "oppressive heat" again. *sigh...

Well, here in Turku the bridge Kvarnbron (Myllynsilta in Finnish) is falling down. Mainly because of bad workmanship back in the eighties when it was built. It's now all the rage to write about in the local papers. I know it's hard to see the difference from this photo, but if you enlarge it you'll see it better.

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...