Throwing the cold stone

One of the things that often suprise people moving to Nordic countries from other parts of the world is that every day of the year is dedicated to to a specific name or a couple of them. These vary from country to country but the idea is the same. For example in Finland Laura's name day is the January 18th.

More interesting is that there are heaps of old beliefs connected to certain name days. For example it was believed that if you wanted to have a good crop the next year you should not do any work on the day of Martti in November.

One of the beliefs that still survives is that the waters start getting cold on the day of Jaakko. It is said that Jaakko throws a cold stone into the lake. As it happens, my boy friend is called Jaakko and his name day was yesterday. I hope he didn't sneek out to throw any stones because I still intend to do a lot of swimming this summer.

Tomorrow is also special but for another reason. It is called "unikeon päivä" which means the sleepy head's day. The person in a household that sleeps the longest will be the official sleepy head. Since I'm on sick leave because of my flu, I'm afraid that will be me.

Cushion project

For about a month now we have had cushions that I made out of Marimekko fabric Elsa. I fell in love with it when visiting a Marimekko store and since it was on sale, I just couldn't resist. How ever, I haven't been able to get over how christmasy the bright red, gold and silvery gray feel to me. (You can see the fabric on a cushion lying on the chair in the picture.)

So, when I was visiting a drapery in Helsinki one day and saw a nice light blue Laura Ashley fabric (also on sale) I thought it was time to do something about the cushion situation. When I got home I started to think that the fabric might be too romantic for my taste after all, as most of the stuff from Laura Ashley usually is. How ever, I had some pink left over fabric that I could mix in. I thought that then the cushions would look more exotic than country side. I don't really know why I thought that.

The end result, I feel, looks more Slavic than anything else. Still I think they look quite nice and are going to go well with the pink and blue quilted bedspread that I'm working on. They certainly go well with my Russian matushka dolls, don't you think?

The chair in the picture, which I'm using as a night stand for the time being, is one of my dearest pieces of furniture. It was made by my great great grandfather for his daughter (my mothers grandmother, that is). The lamp foot is from a charity shop near by while the shade is of my own doing. I used Japanese news paper, clear laquer and some glass beads.

Saturday Fleamarket

Last saturday I wisited the Hietalahti fleamarket in Helsinki. It is propably the most traditionaland famous fleamarket in Finland and is located by the Hietalahti market hall.

In the hall there are several antique and second hand shops and I actually would have liked to look at some furniture. But, like almost everything in Finland at this time of year, the shops were closed. From the fleamarket I still found these plates. They are a nice addition to my collection of mismatched blue and white china. There are two of each, since I try to buy most of my china in pairs.

The nightless night

These pictures are from the Midsummer night three weeks ago. I was with some friends in one of the small islands that are scattered in front of Helsinki and surrounding cities. It was wonderfuly peacefull and the boat ride there was so much fun.

I took these a little before midnight and as you can see it's still quite light. The darkest hour of the night is of course at 1 am because of the daylight savings and here in the southern parts the sun does set every night.

I just wanted you to see how beautiful Finnish summer can be. This is also an excuse for the very slow posting. Before long it will be dark when we get up and dark when we come home, so I'm trying to enjoy the light while it lasts. I will keep posting through out the summer but probably the pace will be slow. I promise it will get better in the September at the latest...

Sorry for the absence

First of all, I am shocked and sorry to see how long it has been since my last post. I kind of thought it had been two or three weeks at most. I guess time really flies when you're having fun...

Seriously, the last two months have been absolutely insane. I had to finish all the school work in Sweden (write papers, go to seminars, prepare oppositions, take exams...) and prepare my move back to Finland. Then I had two days here to move into the new apartment, before starting my summer internship in new project with new people. And rest of the June has gone to sorting out all paper work, unpacking, meeting friends and family and just generally adjusting.

All in all, it has been ten times more stresful than I anticipated. I guess I thought coming back home would be effortless compared to moving abroad but actually it is every bit as difficult. Except that here I can communicate in my native tongue, whereas in Sweden I was stuck with my fourth strongest language.

Anyway, now my life begins to be back on track so hopefully I will be posting more regularly from now on. Thanks for everyone who has visited and left comments in the past weeks!

Workspace dreams

When you're suposed to use most of your day sitting by your computer you start wishing you had a good chair, nice table and proper lighting. Right now I really don't. These pieces from Design Whithin Reach have been tickling my fancy lately.

Dordoni worktop table


Eames aluminium management chair

Tolomeo desk lamp

More from Istanbul...

On my trip to Istanbul I read in some magazine about a Turkish photographer Levent Özcelik and his new book "On a Winter Day, (If) I... - A Day in Istanbul". It has beautiful pictures and texts on Istanbul in wintertime.

I didn't have time to look for it in bookstores and the only net shops I can find it in are in Turkish. But I found the pictures and texts at artist's web page in the "projects" part. Here are some...

"I can't exactly remember which day's tomorrow or which evening's preparation it was. What's the matter anyway? It was a winter day and I was in a mood like saying '(if) I were really me, I would just leave home and wander around the city'."

Pictures and quote by Levent Özcelik


I'm definitely going to try and get my hands on that book.

Secto Design

Birch is such a common material in finnish design furniture (for example by Alvar Aalto) but not at all that usual in lighting. I find these lamps by Seppo Koho really beautiful. Secto Design manufactures also floor, table and wall lighting but the ones I like best are these pendant lights.

Secto 4200 (left) and Octo 4240 (right)

Victo 4250

Such a big part of the magic of these lamps is the way they look when lit and the kind of shadows that they throw.

In my opinion even this picture doesn't really do them justice but I hope you can kind of see what I mean. It's from Restaurant Kastanj in Oslo.

All pictures from Secto Design.

Some Strange Activity

Okay so first of all I have been blogging way too much today. (I really have some actual work to do but I just can't get started...)

Anyway, a minute ago I checked how much visitor activity my blog has had lately and the amount of visitors has increased about tenfold today from normal average. That's a bit odd isn't it? Even odder is that all the extra visits are from all around US and results of google search of "city at latitude 60 degrees" or something similar. So what in the world has made the Americans google our latitude so frantically? If you know and/or are one of those googlers, please let me know! This really intrigues me, I feel as if I'm cracking the Da Vinci code or something.

Picture: perso.orange.fr

(I only just came up with doing the same google search myself to see if I find some answers there. I seem to be a little slow today... I still have my holiday brain on.)

Tin Can Mania

Lisa at Mitt lilla hus had a post about her tin can collection the other day. It inspired me to share mine with the world as well. These are just the ones I managed to "smuggle" to Sweden as the biggest part of my collection remains on the other side of the Bothnian Bay. Once they have all been reunited later this year there will propably be another post on the subject...

I only now realized just how international this collection is. Two of the tins have been purchased in Netherlands, two in Japan, one in Britain, one in Hong Kong (I haven't actually been there, my dad brought it for me), one in Turkey and only four of them in Finland. Impressive :)

Istanbul the way I've seen it

Back from Istanbul

So I am back from my holiday trip to Turkey, more accurately Istanbul. It was a wonderful trip and Istanbul is now definitely among my favourite cities in the world. Only when I started to unpack my suitcase I realized just how bad the air quality in Istanbul must be; all my clothes reek as if I had lived past ten days in a very dodgy bar.

We have tried to count exactly how much money we spent and on what and it seems that about one third went to kebap, one third to entrance fees and one third to my souvenirs. But it was all definitely worth it.

I had actually been to Istanbul once before but I was about ten years old back then so my memories were not that clear. The city proved to be much more modern and European than I had expected and at the same time much dustier, busier and larger than I could have ever imagined. It always impresses me to see how people are living their everyday lives on top of so many layers of ancient history.

I am going to post some pictures from my trip soon but here is one already.

The top picture from LivingEtc, the bottom picture by me.