The Easter Treasure Hunt!

Every Easter Minerva prepares something for the Easter Bunny... this year it was celery.
And in the morning the celery was gone, and there was a rolled up piece of paper... Clue 1!

There was a poem, and a riddle, which took us to my car!






















And Clue 2... with a few eggs...

Clue 3 was down in the garden... all four kids ...      

This took us to Clue 4, which was in my sewing box!!!

... and then in the shower!!!

            ... and finally to our kitchen door...

                     above which there were four beautiful Easter eggs!

  

Embroidery

When I first moved down here to Puglia I didn't know how to embroider at all, and when I had my first, second and third child, one after the other, I never had lovely little embroidered sheets for them, nor did I have time to even think about it. =) I bought books on the subject though, and started to learn...
So when I was expecting my youngest one I sewed up some sheets (strictly by hand) and embroidered them!

Sheets and pillowcases for the baby-carriage:

Clowns:

Romantic flowers:

And little birds:

   My grandchildren will have all the embroidered sheets they might want, I've learned a bit of     embroidery...

Graffiti!!!

This is what I did today... we had fun, the cave-man and I, and there will be more...

The kids think we are nuts!

The one on the left is a bougainville and it's going
to look great when the flowers come...

My Little Artist

Lately my youngest, Minerva, has been drawing a lot and I love the way she really concentrates. This started off as a study of different animal's colouring, and then evolved into a lion and a dragonfly and a gorilla. Then she drew The Mad Hatter, and she has not seen the movie...

Next she drew Michael Jackson doing his moonwalk,

and then yesterday she drew and coloured and glued and used scotchtape and came up with this:

It actually has water inside , in front of the fish, but there is no way I could photograph that! =)

What fun and she's only nine... I think we'll see a lot of things still...

Majacraft Little Gem

I ordered this with a friend in Finland, and it will live there, and it is going to be so nice to be able to get help from spinning friends and learn all the secrets!!! I can't wait...

This means that I have sworn to not buy yarn for atleast two months, maybe three and I must say that I feel good. My stash has been growing too much, and I really need to knit some of it away. I actually feel a strange sort of calm, knowing that I AM NOT BUYING YARN! Ofcourse the fact that the local yarn store is getting only summer yarns at the moment helps... I don't yearn for those. =)

I only wish there were more time to spin and knit... real life gets in the way at times.

Rav-exchange/ KuTu-vaihto

I participated in an exchange among finnish knitter's and I received the most wonderful package from doksi! The theme was Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the chocolate factory' and boy were the kids happy!!!

A nice long letter with exerpts from the book, and a Rolli card, whuich she said looked like her ravatar... (It actually helped my guessing)

And all these lovely things inside:

Two skeins of Pirkka yarn , the colour
of the chocolate river,

a skein (hand-dyed?) of blueberry coloured yarn, the colour that Violet turns,

and two skeins of green Drops Alpaca, the colour of the 'grass' in the factory,

three bars of the world's best milk chocolate (Fazer), and an insane amount of salmiakki and licorice!!! (bars and lollipops)

also a Harry Potter (my other favourite) lucky coin

Absolutely perfect package, especially since I started a yarn diet... more about that at a later date...) Thank you doksi!!!!

More Shoes!

My mother went to Paris for four days and happened to go to the Camper shop with sales going on....

purple for me, orange for Luca and ballerinas for Aurora

Happiness is a mother who understands Camper shoes!

My New Boots!

I bought these on my last day of Christmas vacation in Finland... it was love at first sight and they were on sale...

Now I'm waiting for some drier weather to be able top wear them without worrying about the wet...

They are from here: http://tarsala.fi/

PACKAGE!!!

My package arrived!!! I participated in an exchange on Ravelry, among the Kahelit group, and today the postman brought me a lovely pink package from Turku!!! All this wonderful stuff was inside:

250 grams of Cascade Eco wool in a bright fuchsia, my first Cascade! A lovely little skein of lace weight yern by Ornaghi lane, fazer chocolate, salmiakki, LOTS of buttons (wooden ones and some that seem vintage), a package of Hello Kitty paper handkerchiefs and a nice card!!! Thank you Tui, lovely package! =)

Spring is in the air!

                                                        This is mint growing...

                                These are crocuses that are coming out on the terrace...

                                                                And a little hyacinth.

And these are 'laskiaispulla' which I made on Tuesday (they disappeared rather quickly! )

James Dean

08.02.1931.... James Dean was born... I still remember his birthday every year! (I had his posters allover my walls as a teenager )

LUCA 18

Saturday, January 23rd 2010, my little boy turned 18! It seems like yesterday when I first saw him and held him!!! I love you!

The girls in his class gave him a buch of yellow roses and a black G-string with a fuzzy duck on the front... =)

I made him a big pot of Chili and a huge chocolate cake and he dined with his best friends! He seemed happy when he came home at 3am... =)

2010

A New Year...
Christmas was beautiful, wonderful. I can't remember the last time that I saw that much snow and we were fortunate enough to see the temperature rise above 0°C only once and very briefly, so the snow stayed white and everything looked SO gorgeous! But photos of all that later, and of our lovely trip to Tallinn as well...

I finished some little things... Ysolda Teague's Snapdragon tam in Rowan Pure wool DK:

                            Jared Flood's Laurel on Filatura di Crosa Zara Solid

Ruffles Scarf in Noro Silk Garden for my mother's friend Liisa,

And Ysolda Teague's Veyla gloves for which Aurora chose buttons from Stockmann.

These were all actually completed before returning here to Italy, and now I finished the Noro shawl that I had in my bag throughout the vacation, after finishing the ruffles scarf... It's done in Noro Silk Garden Sock and Kureyon sock, alternating the two:

I hope this year will be better than last year... or atleast easier, and I thank Ravelry for the great people that I have crossed paths with through it's pages! Mari, my life would be harder if you weren't there, and to the fun ladies I started to get to know at Ursula in Helsinki! Looking forward to my next vacation! (what's six months, huh?) And Suvi, you're coming to Ursula too, and Nina, we will meet!!! =)