Grandkids

Everyone wonders about my grandkids, and I never seem to have pictures of them. I'd like to say that is because they are all moving so fast that my poor camera can't keep up with them, but the truth is that I seldom remember that I have a camera at all. However, I happened to arrive prepared, with camera, when my daughter Funlayo was doing the kids' hair.
Here's Lilja the eldest already finished and reading. She'll be 10 in September.


This is Joakim the youngest. He turned three in April.


Here is Sofia the second eldest and she is holding on to a squirming Joakim. Funlayo is busy tackling Sofia's hair. Sofia will be eight in October.


This munchkin is five and a half year old Anisa. She likes hats. She has ALWAYS liked hats. But it does make doing her hair a bit difficult.


This is Anisa without a hat. Funlayo is squirting water on her hair so it will be easier to comb.

So now you see them: my grandkids!

My Garden

This year I took a "garden plot." These garden plots are rented from the city, and mine happens to be a three minute walk from my home. It is also a "multi year" plot which means I can plant things like fruit trees and berry bushes. It is 70 square meters (10 x 7 meters). This particular plot hasn't been tended in at least the six years that I've been here and possibly much longer so it is basically wild and would all look like this:

If you look closely you can see I've beaten a "path" through here. It goes to the left corner of my plot where I put my berry bushes, which you cannot see because the "weeds" are taller than the bushes. That corner of the garden is my next project.

Here are some wild flowers. The closed cup-like one I have not been able to identify. Some of the weeds, like this one, I am transplanting to another area so they can continue to grow.


These have not yet bloomed and I don't yet know what they are. There is a nice mass of them here and I am debating moving them or just leaving them where they are obviously very happy. Leaving them would be the easiest thing.

This last picture is toward the one third of the plot that I have begun dealing with. You cannot really see the "sea-buckthorn" bushes that are planted in the right corner of the plot. They are only about 10 centimeters (4 inches) high, but in time will grow to about three or four meters and will have wonderful berries. You can see the two trees. the closest one is an apple tree and the other is a cherry. I will trim them each autumn to keep them smallish. There are a few other things I have planted here. This year I am more in the hopes of "having some fun" rather than expecting results. Yes, just digging is fun especially when the mosquitos aren't too fierce and the weather not too hot.

Scenes from morning walk

Generally speaking I get up around 5 every morning and take the mutts for a walk. Amost inevitably we take the same route which wends behind houses with views through the forest to the lake and then heads up between the back yards of more homes which are all descretely buffered by natural woodland. It is one of the most soothing and wonderful bits of my day. Recently I took the camera with me and took photos along the way. These five are the best of the lot.

July 16 2010

It is almost "hot" - humid to be sure. We finally had rain last night and that cooled things off a tad and raised the already high humidity from 35% to about 45%. At least I don't need to water my garden today. But it's been too hot to spin, too hot to do much - except work in the garden in the earliest part of the morning. But today I am not working in the garden.

My neighbor Taina has provided me with a means of transporting water from the lake to my garden more easily. She converted a baby buggy into a "transport" wagon.

Tuesday I bought an apple tree and a cherry tree. I got the cherry tree planted on Wednesday and am still preparing the ground for the apple tree. There is lots of crab grass to dig up. The root systems on that crab grass are so dense and extensive that, if I do not get most of it removed from the area, it will just move right back in and could strangle the two new trees before they get established. The crab grass would also make it impossible for me to plant flowers under the trees. I plan on planting flower bulbs that will be in bloom from spring to late summer as successive waves of flowers come up. Hopfully in the future, once the trees and the bulbs are established, which will take about two years, their roots will be enough to keep crab grass away.

My "garden" is about 200 meters from my home. It's only 70 square meters and no one has been tending it in at least the six years that I have been living here. I'm renting it from the city for small fee. Most of my summer has been and will continue to be just digging up the "weeds" that are growing in it. Some of the "weeds" are ones that I will save, such as stinging nettle, tansy, and yarrow. First I have to prepare the area that I will put them, so that when I dig up the area that they are in, I can just move them to their new home. There is an area of something that hasn't yet come into bloom, so I still don't know what it is, or whether I want it. There are plants there that I have not been able to identify even with a good "wild flower guide" book. I will continue digging and preparing the ground for next year, even though I am trying to grow a few things already this year.

Today I will do some grocery shopping, then I'll be home the rest of the day - except for walking the dogs. I have to go into town so I can get dog food, otherwise I would just go to the tiny shop at the end of my street. I'll continue reading a book on Finnish castles and considering the word "fortress".

My spun silk

Here are two skeins of silk that I spun. I was excessively pleased with them, so I decided to send them to my spinning mentor Heather McCloy (who is also a judge of handspinning) for her comments.
The purple on the left is spun from lovely predyed silk brick or top which was a gift from Heather. The blue on the right is spun from predyed silk caps (I dyed them, the caps are from Ashford Handicraft and were dyed with Ashford dyes). Click on the photo for an enlarged picture.

The review of my spun silk is now official. The blue needed more twist in the singles - good to know because I was afraid it was over-twisted - and it needs a better washing because it smells "fishy" from the seratin. Heather sent good tips on that too.

But here goes an edited part of the review of the silk top: "This yarn is *gorgeous*! To be honest, I had to look at it a second time; I really thought it was machine-spun... Single is excellent with only a very few places where the single is uneven or underspun, which causes the variations in the ply - which, trust me, are minimal. This would be a blue-ribbon first-place winning skein at the GA National Fair, much less at an SCA guild entry..." (Heather McCloy via email).

Am I happy! YES! More spinning awaits me!

Turku Middle Ages Market 1

Me by the Finnish Spinning Guild's pavillion. Note I'm wearing my token from Mistress Siobhan.

Sirpa spinning flax.

Kirsi using the moose jaw to finish breaking and hackling flax.

Kirsi organizing moose jaw and some prebroken flax.

Wild piglets

Tuohi merchant's stall

Merry go round for children and some ladies doing kinnasneula, kumihimo and tablet weaving.

Loop the peg game - sometimes you just gotta get close.

Dyers real fire and real steam. The one on the left is using lichen.

More dyers.

Carving horn
Three of flax breaker one's blades. There are two more.

Three metal edges of flax breaker two's blade.

The black smith.