Day off

I am exhausted! For a week now (except for Saturday) I've been doing nothing but packing, painting, organizing, cleaning and searching for new furniture, curtains and mats. You know, anything and everything to do with moving. From the moment I wake up to when I go back to sleep (which is way too late). I always become very anxious when things change (even if I want them to) and I can't stand living with things not in their right place but a bit here and a bit there and a huge pile over here. So, I am still utterly happy about moving into our new home (and I love how it's turning out to be), but I'm also so very very tired.

Today we are taking a day off. DH is at some work event all day and I get to have some free time in the evening. I still have to pack a lot during the day and also somehow miraculously have this aparmtent in a presentable condition when potential new renteres come to see it this evening. Which otherwise wouldn't be such a big deal to me, but as it is, we are obliged to pay the rent next month unless they find new tenants. So, keep your fingers crossed that someone will soon take this, because if they do, we save quite a lot of money.

After all that has happened, I will take out my sewing machine and the fabrics you see above and make an apron for this months tie one on and an "fall wardrobe item" for Sew Retro (links on my sidebar). Somehow I've also got to make time to get into to town as I need to buy a couple of things and today is a Night of Art in Helsinki and there's all sorts of fun and free events all over town. I know I'll be too tired to stay for long, but I hope to at least be able to visit one of the museums that are open and see one or two performances..

A feast

DH works with a really nice bunch of people and this past Saturday they all got together to have a little end of summer feast. Spouses were invited, too.

The main item on the menu: crabs.





Actually, I don't think crabs are worth all the trouble you have to go to, to get to the edibe bits, but as an event, gathering around the table with good company, it is a lot of fun. And we did have a lot of fun!

Packing and painting etc. really effectively takes up most of my time now as you probably have noticed, but I did manage to squeeze in a little project.



The doily is one I've made years ago and it has been framed in this frame for years. It used to be plain light wood and I had glued some pretty beads to the corners and with a purple cardboard as a "mat". I hadn't hung it up in our current apartment at all, as I didn't like the set-up anymore. Now I was promted to do something about it and so painted it white and glued some light colored buttons to the corners. And put in a pink mat.

Catching up

The suprise item I was working on and send off last week, is, tadaa, this bag that I made as my "something stitched" for Melanie. I know she has received it now so I can post a picture. It's the same template as the one I made for myself, just with the stitching.

Now I have a desperate urge to finish some of my WIPs. I'm currently working on the Veronik Avery tube top from last fall's IK. It's what I do when and if I watch TV in the evenings.



Then there's the Sunrise Circle Jacket (available from the IK website) which is missing one sleeve-front piece. I haven't gotten the instructions printed out so can only work on it in front of the computer. Which means I have to do it during the day when DH is at work. I usually listen to podcasts at the same time, which is fun. My favourites at the moment are Knitcast and CraftyPod.



And I so want to get this picnic quilt done. I planned it and bought the materials before we left for China, cut them a while ago and am now piecing the top together. This is going to be big! I'm using old curtains and sheets and such bought from a thrift store.



But now I'm going into the kitchen and make a simple dinner (omelets) and wait for DH to come home. Then we're going to go over to our new home for the first time as the owners (we signed the papers today and got the keys!). We're going to clean a bit (there's always dust) and take measurements and the like.

It's still summer, right?

To me, August is still definitely summer. And I just finished this summer top (cotton yarn) and have already worn it once, too. The pattern is from Moda (a Finnish sewing and knitting mag) and made out of Novita Tennesee yarn. According to the pattern, the stripes were supposed to be equally thick with 150g needed of each color. The yarn, however is sold in 100g balls. Eventhough I found the yarn on sale (discontinued colors or something) I was being a cheapskate and figured I could change the widths of the stripes and bough just 3 balls of yarn, 100 grams of the pink and 200 grams of the navy blue. And it worked! I didn't run out of either color and I had hardly any left-over yarn.

Despite it still being summer and having just knit a summer top, I must admit that clothing-wise, my thoughts are beginning to turn autumnal. I've gone through my knitting patterns and written down what I want to do for this coming fall and winter. I bought the new Vogue Knitting and found even more things to add. I'm also looking at the new Rowan mag and some of the new RYC books and plan to order some (hopefully) soon.

Fun day out

My mother was in town for a few days and stayed with us. On Thursday, my brother drove here as well and then the three of us went on a little trip my mother had organized for us. We went to Tallinn, Estonia. It's just a short boat ride away (less than two hours). I've been there few times before and I love love love the old part of the city there.



We spent a good part of the day there, visiting many small antique and handicraft stores, a lovely cafe and an excellent fish restaurant. Another big part of the day was spent looking for fabric and yarn stores (we had a list of addresses taken from a Finnish magazine) and actually did find most of them (despite our list being three years old). At first it seemed that I would find nothing to buy, however. Most of the stores we visited had a lot of fabrics for evening gowns and the like and I was looking for cottons and linens mostly. And if I did happen to find something I liked, the price was too high. The last place we went to was a bit of the beaten track and a true gem :) The selection wasn't particularly large, but especially yummy :) Both my mother and I bought a big bag from there. Oh, and the prices were excellent. I got 7,6 m of cotton fabric (width 1,4 m) for about 20€!



I bought enough of the first two fabrics in the picture to make dresses (if and when I find the perfect patterns) and the last one was just too great to pass by. It's too heavy to make clothes from and it absolutely does not go with our decoration, but I couldn't resist it. I got one meter of it to look at and hope that a "made for it" project will show up one day :)

Plans are forming

Thank you every one! We are indeed very excited about all of this :)

I got my secret project done and mailed to its recipient. Will post a picture when I know it has arrived as I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Otherwise, my free time is pretty much spent thinking about and planning for our new home.



Paint brochures are being studied. We're thinking blue for the study, green-ish for the kitchen and cream or other off-white color for the living room. I'm also going through all of my decorating magazines. Below are my favourite titles.



And there's plenty of them. I'm quite obsessed with magazines (in general and in this particular genre) and have bought them for years (even before I could really even begin to dream about possibly owning a home someday). We already know the general direction we want to take, but I'm picking up every little and big tip I possibly can. I'm so enjoying myself!



The photos are embarrasingly blurry, I apologize.

Home

We bought an apartment! We're moving in by the end of this month (so I'm going to be busy, busy, busy again) and we're so excited! This is the very first home we've actually owned and it's all so wonderful (it'll be our very first mortage as well, not so wonderful). I can finally paint and wallpaper the walls however I please and hang as many pictures as I want to.

The apartment is in great condition. No renovations whatsoever are needed. We are going to paint and wallpaper the rooms, though (see previous paragraph), before we take all our stuff there. And I want to change the doorhandles and cabinet and drawer pulls into something nicer and more individual. Everything there is so very, very basic.

Learning a new word

Yesterday I learned a new word: trivet. I received a lovely package from Melanie, my seasonal exchange partner and in it was this:



Beautiful, right? Well, I enthusiastically told her DH and I both loved it and were trying to find a place to hang it from. She patiently told me that it wasn't meant to be hanging on a wall (silly me, I had ignored the back of the piece where this would have become obvious) but that it was a trivet (and what it was after I asked her). I still think it is far to pretty to be placed under hot dishes, but I promised her I would try to use it as a trivet, so I came up with a few possibilities I am comfortable with :)



Under a glass (so you can see through it) water jug.



And under tealight holders. Actually, I think I could just put the tealights on it by themselves. One idea she suggested, was to keep salt and pepper shakers on it, which I may also do. When not in use, however, it's going to sit propped up on a shelf :)

Other treats in the package were a Sweetheart Tree kit and a big bag of Hersey's dark chocolate (yummy!).