Merry Christmas!

Is that Santa I hear?

Wintertime

It is starting to feel like winter is finally here. It's getting colder and started to snow after a long rainy fall. And it's fun to go outside as you can hear snow scrunching under your feet.

I haven't made much of the Christmas decorating/gift shopping/card making as I planned. Instead I have spend some time making few wreath bases and one finished spruce wreath is already travelling to it's new home.

1st day of Christmas

Somebody is already waiting for Santa to arrive ^^

Party anyone?

Let's see:

• - good food
• - good company
• - windy, but sunny day (normally it would rain snow or something)

Vappu (or Walpurgis day) is ready begin.

Chicken, sausages, baguette and salads. Got to love picnics.

After eating we took a little stroll in the woods and look what we found.

Some color to spring

We also saw White WagtailI and in Finland there is saying ”Västäräkistä vähäsen” (just a little longer from White Wagtail), meaning that summer is aproaching soon. Can't wait to weather turn warmer and camping season to begin.

Colors of spring

Butterflies have arrived ^^

So spring is officially here and so is spring flu. Third one this year and hopefully my last one too, although it has it's perks when you can watch tv without feeling guilty of being lazy. And also I finally had the time to make myself new pair of wool socks.

Most colorful socks I have ever made :D
Yarn used in these is Novitan 7 veljestä Raita (Novita's 7 brothers Stripe).

There is also new costume project that I'm making and hopefully it will be finished before June *Fingers crossed*.

My little "helper".
Don't know why but when I'm doing crafts there is always at least one cat in the way.

"Welcome to the Jungle..."

For the last day of my trip we went to Botania (Botanic Garden of the University of Eastern Finland). I never had visited botanical garden so it was exciting to see some exotic plants (and imagine to be in the jungle).



I'm used to see mailboxes near shops or other buildings so this one seemed so out of place and sad standing alone in the heaps of snow.



Tropical part of Botanias greenhouse.





Took some photos outside and thanks to drastic temperature change my pictures looked for a while like I was in sauna.



Lots and lots of coffee


I was so excited to see some cocoa beans.
(Think I love chocolate little too much.)

In the summer Botania has freely flying butterflies but middle of February there were only some cocoons to remind of them.





If you look closely there's few grapefruits hiding among the lemons.



Mother-in-Law's Cushion (Have always wondered who named it.)




One of the few blooming flowers in the garden was Bougainvillea.


Botanias oldest plant 1972 sowed Opuntia ficus-indica.

Even though there weren't butterflies and just a few blooming flowers to look at it was fun to spend a day with Sanna taking pictures and goofing around. Evening was spend, surprise surprise, eating junkfood and watching Supernatural (overdosed with 30 something episodes we watched during the week :D ).

Art and it's many forms

Yesterday me and Sanna had plans to go see the Botanical garden but we had to reschedule and went to the art museum instead.

I'm not usually a person who enjoys watching paintings but I have to admit there were some interesting pieces.


"Map" by Anu Torikka

"St. Catherine of Alexandria" by Niccoló da Foligno

Got to see one of Edelfelt's most recognisable painting(or at least it's that in Finland).


"Virginie" by Albert Edelfelt

It's always time to have some fun.


Musician

Also found myself a new boyfriend ;)


Wolf statue at Joensuu market place

Dressing up

It's nice to travel somewhere and at the moment my location is Joensuu where I'm visiting my friend and summer co-worker Sanna.

We are both horror/crime scene genre freaks so most of my evenings here we have been watching Supernatural and other crime series. So now I'm obsessed with bacon burgers, folklore and 1967 Shevy Impala. :D


This is how the nights go

But it's not all we have been done. Yesterday we visited local museum Carelicum, North Karelian museum, where was exhibitions of theatre, Stone age and North Karelian history. All the exhibitions were interesting but probably most fun we had with the theatre one.....


Just like in the movies

Some wicked costumes

Ready to close up

Found my wings

Stone age shelter

Still have a few days here and tomorrow we are going to the Botanical Garden. Let's see if there is still some butterflies at this time a year.

To the kitchen

Finally starting to build my kitchen dollhouse after years of planning. Yay ^^



"Vasara ja nauloja koko rahalla..." And those foam cans and broomstick are for another project, which I will tell more about later.

This is probably going to be the biggest and most complex of my projects on scale to how many hours it's going to take to be totally done and how much I have to learn about building/electrifying dollhouse.

Kitchen's basic structure and scale I took from a book "The authentic Tudor and Stuart dolls' house" by Brian Long and changed it by adding a banquette hall and storage room. Inspiration for those I found here.