Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol

Fa la la la laa, la laa laa laa. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, even though there's not much snow in sight this year, at least not in this part of Finland. I'm visiting my parents in Ostrobothnia, and have enjoyed a walk with Fia the terri(fi)er, followed by a traditional Finnish Christmas sauna. Dinner is in sight, and Faith, Hope and Charity (or Love, as it's called here) is lighting up the darkness. These lighted symbols are very common in these parts at Christmas, and have become almost synonomous with the town of Jakobstad/Pietarsaari.

As you can see below, the Doodlendar is finally completed. Working on a small scale like this worked very well for me, so I will continue in a similar manner for a while. Perhaps that will help me form a habit of drawing regularly. I'm also thinking of making a small stamp a day in January, unless that's too ambitious. But first I'll enjoy a Christmas holiday with lots of rest.

To all my friends and readers:

God Jul

Merry Christmas

Hyvää Joulua

Fröhliche Weihnachten

Joyeux Noël

Feliz Navidad

Thanks for visiting my blog and hope to see you again soon!

12 Days Gone, 12 days To Go

We're halfway to Christmas Eve already! For those of you who are unfamiliar with Finnish Christmas traditions, Christmas Eve is the day when Santa brings us Scandinavians our presents. I guess he needs to start here if he's supposed to make it in time for Christmas morning in other parts of the world. Everybody knows of course that Santa lives in Finnish Lapland (in Korvatunturi, with a second home in Rovaniemi, on the Arctic circle), and let no one tell you anything else.

After 12 days, my Doodlendar is starting to look interesting, and I'm enjoying it. I try to vary the patterns and to avoid the ones that I usually doodle, in order to make new discoveries.

On Saturday I went to a Christmas fair in Ekenäs, in the southwest of Finland, an hour by train from Helsinki. It was raining all day, so the spirit of Christmas wasn't very strong. I found this cute dish cloth, designed by Lotta Glave. I fell for it immediately, but it wasn't until today that it dawned on me to take a look in the broom cupboard. I have two dish cloths from before designed by the same artist! Without knowing it myself, I seem to be her biggest fan.

On the train journey I worked on my peonies.

Look at the hyacinth my mum brought me when she visited me. Isn't it pretty? Apparently it's a new sort with multiple stems from one bulb (a bit like a garlic bulb).

Doodlendar-time is here

Today is 1 December and, as promised, here's the first square of the Doodlendar filled with pattern. From now on I will upload the Doodlendar only to Flickr, where you can follow my progress by clicking on the thumbnails in the upper left hand corner, or by following the link to my Flickr photostream, which is located under the thumbnails. I have also created a separate set for the Doodlendar, where the pages will appear together in an orderly fashion.

Tomorrow's Friday, my Mum's coming over for the weekend, and I have 4 days off from work to enjoy. Great!

Advent Doodlendar

I’ve been thinking about getting an Advent calendar. I’m childish enough to enjoy that sort of thing. “But what type?” I ask myself. I have been assuming that it should be one that contains chocolate, but I haven’t been able to make my mind up what to buy. The chocolate in the kiddy calendars isn’t very good, and I felt that an ordinary box of chocolates was a bit boring. I’ll get enough of those anyway before Christmas is over. And then I had an idea: I’ll make a Doodlendar, i.e. a calendar with a doodle a day until Christmas. Next I remembered one of the exercises that Melanie Testa suggests in her book Inspired to Quilt. In the exercise you draw a grid on fabric and fill the squares with quilting patterns. Some of the areas are left blank, and those areas form a figure (in the book a flower stem). I’m going to apply this exercise with paper and ink, and fill a square a day until Christmas. By 24 December I’ll have a completed page with patterns and an image formed by blank spaces. I haven’t drawn much since July and this will be a simple and fun exercise for me to get accustomed to holding a pen again. I will upload the Doodlendar to my Flickr account daily, where you can follow my progress day by day if you wish. That’s my Advent calendar to you, my reader. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Here’s the Doodlendar waiting for its first square to be filled with pattern:

 And now, to offer you something more to look at than an empty paper with a grid, I also offer you these crocheted cuffs that I recently finished. They’ve been living in my UFO-basket for quite a while, until I took pity on them and finally completed them. The pattern is from the book Virka muddar! by Maria Gullberg - a book filled with cuffs inspired by the crocheted wrist warmers that were used by both women and men in 19th century Scandinavia.

Thanks for visiting and see you again on 1 December!