flu and its comforts

Back to school and the turning season seems to have a side effect on me - I catch a bug every time.

There were supposed to be some nice posts up this week, but instead of composing sentences and editing I was coming down with the flu. It's quite clear that this weekend will be spent with recovering from it, but hey at least I have my flu comforts to which I can turn.

I have a very nice camphor cream to help me breath and prevent that painful tissue-rubbed nose, there's of course Masterchef to watch, and I can slurp my hot pho or its lazy version the clear soup while trying to imagine the flavour combinations the competing chefs come up with during the program.

Hopefully I'll have some energy during the next couple of days to prepare some blogposts as well as a lot of clear soup...

I hope most of you don't have a bug to battle with this weekend but just in case you do, here is this super simple soup in recipe form to help you along.

thrifty new layers

The season is turning - it's still reminiscent of summer but the coming autumn is tangible.

This week I thrifted a couple of outfits' worth of new-old clothes. A red and white checked shirt with pearly poppers, some high-waisted dark denims, a pair of snow-washed drainpipe denims, a mottled khaki top, a boucle wool jacket, and a silk scarf in oranges and browns. Everything goes with everything in this batch.

During the last few thrift rounds I noticed that my attention is turning from bric-a-brac to clothing more and more. I guess it's brought on by the change in the weather. Suddenly I have a long wishlist of items I would really like to find in the thrifts - all clothes and accessories.

I've been hanging on to a fashion page that I ripped out of a french magazine ever since that little trip back in January... I'd love to compile a similar look for the coming winter for myself. I'm hoping to find a nice and thick vintage wool coat, some great oxfords, and some nice tops to layer... I feel not a bad start, for now!

In other news, I'm enjoying my course quite a lot! A great group with nice people and good teachers. I ride my bike to school and and back every day. I decided I will cycle right up until about late October, when the ice starts taking over on the roads.

The restaurant day I mentioned went rather well - we sold most of our food, and got great feedback. It was a fun but very, very busy weekend.

This weekend I will take it totally easy, and quite possibly go and look for some outfit building pieces in my fave flea stores.

What are your plans for the weekend?

perfect

I started a new language school again on Monday. It's nice to learn this hard nut of a language again in a group, in a structured manner. Also nice to meet friends from the previous course and nice to meet new ones too.

We went on an outing on Friday (yesterday) with the whole group including the teacher. It feels funny going on a school outing as a grown-up with other grown-ups, strolling around in small clusters, playing beach ball, playing language related games like searching for items on the shore and among the sand dunes after being given a list of new Finnish words.

I have to say the weather was just perfect for a seaside outing. The light and the colours were wonderful, beautiful, nurturing, calming. The steady but gentle enough breeze rendered the waves and the sand into tidy little rows. The sun was a light balm on the skin and the sea air a delicious refreshment in the lungs.

I felt so relaxed and happy, the conversation was flowing effortlessly - in that hard nut of a language. What a perfect day.

The perfect interlude to a very busy weekend, in fact. We are hosting a pop-up 'restaurant' on Sunday for restaurant day! We are making vegan falafel sandwiches, with home-made falafels, hummus and tabbouleh salad. I'm very excited, hoping that people will come and that the weather stays good.

Wishing everyone a beautiful, happy weekend too!

the first sneaky peek...

The long-awaited sneak peek of the long time in the making Craft It Forward 2013 project.

Very enigmatic pictures I know - I don't want to reveal any more for now. All I will tell you today is that I'm doing something with these pretty fabric swatches. Some more clues coming soon!

poppy plates by the Johnson Brothers

My favourite flowers are wild flowers. I grew up in the countryside surrounded by big natural meadows, which offered a lot to marvel at all spring, summer and autumn. If I close my eyes and think of summer meadows, I still see the delicate heads of poppies nodding among tall grass where the cattle and sheep hadn't been to graze yet, just a short stroll from my mum's house.

You can imagine how fast I fell in love with these plates when I spotted them in the thrift the other week.

I have no idea if they are vintage or not, but the colours and details in the decoration just swept me off my feet. I don't think I've ever seen such a bright red set against such a perfect duck egg blue background. If you wonder what they cost me - I had to part with a single euro for this trio, that was all.

I did my usual research and was particularly interested in finding out more about this Chelsea Collection King's Road series but couldn't squeeze any solid information out of the internet...anyone out there knows any morsels of info? If you do, please share in comments!

But hey, even without any knowledge, the poppies under my pasta keep me very happy all the same.

the museum of everything i like

In my previous post I promised to take you for a proper tour in my local heritage house.

There's something amazing about being in an old house filled to the brim with wonderful vintage items, and to be able to see back in time and feel the spaces in which people spent their home lives in long gone days.

The date of those long gone days is the 1940s and 50s (I got that wrong in my previous post...). In this museum-like space nothing is like a museum, nothing is behind glass, nothing is cordoned off.

There are not many pictures of whole rooms and spaces - I got lost in the beautiful details, you see. I still hope that the virtual tour of beautiful details will be interesting enough.

I've been thinking about why it feels so special to visit such a heritage house and to be able to walk around among those rooms full of old objects. The first thought that came to mind was that being a flea market treasure hunter, my thrifty soul relishes being in rooms full of perfect vintage finds and feels right at home.

Then on further thought, I think I might have found the answer: all those items that I covet and am interested in, the vintage pots and pans, chairs, linens, wall hangings and nicknacks are there in their original context, together. It is rather special to see any of them in flea markets when they turn up (and even more special if they are affordable). However, in their true environment, together, they tell much more of their full story.

If you are not a flea market or vintage enthusiast I hope you will excuse all the gushing and the tremors of awe that may transfer from my writing. I really feel I stumbled upon a big treasure house... the museum of everything I like.

There's another great thing about this heritage house - in their shop they sell reproduction vintage wallpaper, made to order. I hope one day I might be able to have a reason to go and purchase some. Here's a few that I liked, from the piles of big books of samples there.

And one more thing - there was this little guy roosting high on top of an enamel lid above the kitchen range. He is so charming in his perfect home-crafted potholderness, that I decided to make one soon, once I have finished other on-going projects.

I hoped you liked the tour! By the way, what name would you give this potholder rooster? He looks so full of character that he really deserves a name! :)

mellow yellow august

I'll be early this month joining the bevy of the Colour Me Happy-ists, matching the month's yellow theme with the perkily coloured barn of the local heritage house.

It's a big old wooden house in the middle of the old town, preserved lovingly in its original state, filled to the brim with period vintage from the life of an average 1950s Finnish household.

I'm posting a full separate feature on it in a couple of days, on Wednesday if you are interested. 

Apart from yellow barn walls, I'm also going to show you a yellow tassel in-the-making. Early stages, very early stages...I cannot believe how slowly I have been going with projects all spring and summer - I have vowed that this month I'm really getting down to business in the crafting 'department'.

neverending summer

Without many words, I'm hoping that the hot summer weather will last for a long time.

fat lava score

It's always a lot of fun when me and the boyfriend go to browse the flea markets together. We found these two West German fat lava vases on a quick in-and-out kind of trip to one of our favourite spots. They came incredibly, irresistibly cheap - the total we paid could probably buy a coffee and a bun.

The cream one is by Strehla Keramik. I think it is slowly becoming my favourite out of the two, the more I look at it. It's kind of understated, the stripes are rather fascinating and there are really nice colours to discover when you look closer.

Then of course, how could I not like the orange one - it has the classic 70s fat lava look, in typical colours. The maker of this one is Jasba Keramikfabriken. I almost remember someone in my family having a similar one in their home - it might even be my mum... I have to ask her.

The way this vase is decorated won't be to everybody's taste, but I'd like to point out that there's more to fat lava and its bubbling oozing decorativeness than just how it looks. It's really nice to handle these vases, this orange one for example has a smooth high glaze, a smooth matt glaze and of course that bumpy fat lava in between. It makes me want to read up on how all these different textures are achieved, but that will have to wait until another post.

For now, I let the pictures talk for themselves - we are going away for the weekend and I have packing (and washing up) to do still! I hope the sun is doing a good summer job too where you are - have a lovely weekend everybody!

plates from soviet Russia

This flea friday post is a little bit like a special edition in the short - it's all about my collection of Soviet plates.

I love that I am able to collect something while on a shoestring budget. The reason I like them is not just about their look.

They are also useful. In fact, every piece in the collection is a working plate - we eat from these every single day. Another reason I find them very easy to collect is that they are dirt cheap and pop up fairly regularly on the shelves of most junkshops and fleamarket stands. As a bonus, they seem to come in many different patterns, but mainly in blue and brown, so a collection of random pieces still looks like a set somehow.

Without exaggeration, I can spot a ZIK plate by a mile (6th sense?), but the easiest way to tell is to look on the bottom for the stamp - a sort of V-shaped pine branch sitting on top of the name ZIK in Cyrillic which reads a bit like 3NK.

From time to time, I try to research the maker and this particular series a bit more, but there's not a lot available online about them. All I know is pretty much from this article: ZIK is a studio of the Konakovo Faience Factory. The company was founded in 1809 and still exists. They produce tableware, figurines and tea sets in faience and utility grade porcelain.

I haven't been able to find any information about these actual plates themselves. The stamp of 'Made in USSR' in English suggests to me that they were made for export. The mighty USSR existed between 1922-1991 - I reckon my plates date from the 60s or 70s; one reference here to a similar looking plate from the 60s seems to confirm that.

That's about my ZIK collection in the short, but what about you? Do you like to collect old things that you can use in everyday life? Or do you prefer to keep your collections out of harms way behind the safe glass of a vitrine?