WHITE WINTER FOREST WISHES

Warm winter wishes to everyone! 

Thank you so much for your sweetness this year, through your comments, emails and even letters and postcards, they have made me so happy!

Greetings from very white and frosty landscapes in Eastern Finland. Have beautiful and calm days enjoying!

BOWS, HERE AND THERE

Radio playing silent songs. Snow, more on every glance outdoors. Someone brushing it away behind windows. Small secrets here and there, wrapped and hidden, sent away. Afternoon break, light disappearing. The moment when the coffee starts to sing with steam.

Tea for Five in Sekret Firmy magazine.

Have a sweet, warm new week!

BLUE WINTER, HELLO

Powdery snow. Green tea with orange scent. Pancake parties and long walks. The sweet neighbour gentleman making all the snow work, mailboxes always so well cleaned. Just a bit more than one week and the sun starts to rise again. Mid winter and blue light, so beautiful. In sounds, on cheeks, on nose, inside warm woollen socks. Pine tree scent on my balcony. Winter flower blooming inside, purple flower, like the sunsets on wintery cloudy afternoons.

Still time to order gifts from my shop or Garden of A Moon Gazer from here.

A small interview in Beijing Youth Weekly magazine.

Winter shoes calling me for a long walk, sauna heating up. Warm soup and candle light.

Have a sweet calm week!

MAIDEN IN LACE, 95 YEARS OLD

We call our dear country The Maiden of Finland. Can you see the delicate laces of her winter dress? 

Happy 95th birthday Finland!

...

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää!

SUNDAY, SNOW, SWANS

Hello sweet December, hello sweet you!

The weekend covered everything in cold air and a lot of snow. Windy winter city to explore. Exhibitions, ballet, theatre. Snow blowing from behind corners. Tiny shiny snowflakes dancing. 

This morning frozen, slightly sunny light blue sky, when 14 swans in a formation flew over our heads as me and my Mother were drinking hot coffee in -12 °C outside, queueing for a pancake that were baked in a bonfire.

1. It was pink winter food.

2. The most beautiful painting in an exhibition, someone playing guitar on the background.

3. Bike Caravan featured in Sekret Firmy magazine, winter light, candles.

Sunday evening to hide a bit under a wool blanket, to read and to pack orders. Please remember to order early enough if you want something delivered for the Christmas!

Sweet melodies, carrot cake scents, have a calm new week!

STORY OF A PORTRAIT

It has been such a long mild autumn taking space from the winter, even the first snow already was here and left as silently as it came in one night. The lake is reflecting the morning colour of the sky, today some pale grey with little bumps of waves. A little wind waving the last rowen berries. Everyday routine, four to six Common Pheasants walking sneakingly around behind windows, usually queuing behind each others. From bush to bush, a nap in between under pine trees.

Last night sweet Freya sent me a story about her boyfriend´s birthday gift. It was the portrait of the two of them that I painted last month. The story made me so happy, including some coincidences in the middle of Amsterdam, but also a lot of warm feelings. Thank you Freya for telling the story and for the photo!

A hint of light blue on the sky, bicycle ride greetings!

(The second image is by Freya.)

PINE NEEDLES UNDER YOUR SHOE

Wind singing in a chimney in the East Finland. Small early winter storm. Heaps of melting snow here and there, the ground has the same colours as the wool on my knitting needles, small earthy dots on natural white. Fire crackling.

Beavers are trying to build their home to one of the creeks close to the surrounding forests and fields. Such delicate work of branches, moss and clay.

Thank you to Design*Sponge for featuring my new items in my small online shop!

Thank you also to everyone of you for writing to me, for your orders and kind words! So happy.

The two pictures above are small details of a painting that I painted not that long ago of a sweet couple. Smiling greetings to London!

Happy new week, calm moments and first scents of hot apple juice with cinnamon!

ONE WINTER NIGHT

Forest Cuckoo -print

12 Greeting Cards

Blossom Sailing -print

It can happen sometimes, at 23:02, just when you are brushing your teeth and have just switched on your reading lamp by your bed and are eager to get in between fresh clean sheets on a cold first winter night, that you get the idea that you were searching for for the whole day. Then it naturally happens that your reading lamp shines lonely and you find yourself toothbrush still in mouth sketching fourty-five minutes later. 

Written on my sketchbook last week with drawings of trees, birds and snowfall.

Two new prints, Forest Cuckoo and Blossom Sailing plus some new greeting cards in my online shop. Hopefully you enjoy them!

Silently the first snow came, silently it also disappeared other night. Thank you for the comments in the last post, it became such a nice dictionary of the word "snow". Rain on the calendar with hints of sun rays.

Have a good last day of October, welcome November! Warm evening greetings with dark cloud silhouettes on the sunset sky!

LUMI, SNOW, SNJÓR, SNÖ, SCHNEE, NEVE, NEIGE

Hello winter!

A morning walk with new sounds under steps in daybreak. Everything was more silent. Tiny steps of winter beings visible, they have been busy. The wind very sharp, the lake is still wavy.

Have a calm weekend, stay warm!

ONE FOREST STORY

One day the one that whistled in a tree, early in the morning, was found behind a window in the afternoon.

Forest walk, tummies full of berries after a cold dip in a lake. Sun shined and the moss looked warm and soft. Pillows, I saw, and mattresses, sofas and armchairs. Handfuls of berries to reach, to drink and eat. There would be everything. Dense pine branches as a roof, the hill to see the first sun rays and wave good bye to the last disappearing ones.

Trumpet orchestra of the forest hummed a slow windy song all around. 

Trees, small and tall. Some smaller, but denser ones were tickling curiosity forming a nice beginning of a path. The blue sky would not be visible under those branches.

A tree to hang your beard into. Or a tree to borrow a beard from to dress up for a royal forest dinner.

The waves rushed to the shore, the clouds to the left. Crackling fire was waiting inside with a blueberry pie. Turning bike and bicycling back home on a sunny autumn forest road. Pebbles making a nice rhyme under tires.

Warm cloudy morning greetings!

NORTHERN HUT IN A TREE, IN TENNESSEE

Morning tea in candle light. Yellow leaves glittering on dark wet asphalt. Like reflections of the stars from the sky. Slowly the day breaks. Small patches of pale blue sky. 

Almost a year ago, Erin Rae wrote to ask if any of my paintings were available for her first EP cover. The 16th of October Crazy Talk will be published with Tree House on its cover. Meanwhile you can listen Erin´s music here. Going Away video is like a postcard from Nashville, Tennessee where this small Northern hut in a tree has traveled. Congratulations Erin!

Tree House available also as a print.

Morning bicycle ride to the post office, who did send me a surprise package?

Have a sweet day!

(Painting by me, design by Erin Rae and The Meanwhiles.)

AFTERNOON BREAK GREETINGS

Milky sky and yellow leaves. The air is standing, is it the calmness before rain´s hum. Paper piles and someone walking on the roof. Whistling a happy melody in the staircase while hammering. Thank you for the new roof you happy workers!

There might be something almost finished on my floor. Is it really two years already. In those two fitted a lot of things, forgotten piles and many other paintings.

New brush strokes and black narrow lines, cinnamon buns and dreams of the small train trip tomorrow. 

Have a calm weekend, stay warm!

Happy birthday Mom ♥ 

ASPEN YELLOW

Black landscape to bicycle in the evening to a summerhouse. Rain looked in the light of my bicycle like snow. Long white lines from the sky. In the morning all the tones of yellow in aspen trees. Light playing and colouring them in neon, in earth and transparent tones. A morning swim of a moose calf, passing the dock and vanishing behind the lake tule.

Raking a bit, colouring the landscape back to green from all the yellows. This morning the rain greeted and the ground was yellow again. Nature likes its own order better. I like it too. First small dots of yellow all over, then a thick carpet.

Have a sweet new week!

POCKETS, BASKETS, BAGS, HANDFULS

Mushrooms all over. All size and colours. Some hiding with their colours, some waving with their brightness. Baskets, pockets, bags and hands full. Buckets of apples. Chilly autumn air that is filled with scent of apples and cinnamon.

Bicycle Caravan to friends. Available as a bit smaller print in my shop, too. 

How lovely to get home after long walks and bicycle trips, to feel the warmth of home while stepping in. To get nose and hands warm again and turn on lights. The mornings are traveling further, they come later. The traveling birds too, migrating. Imagining suitcases to them with swimsuits and beach towels. Au revoir, see you next year the winged ones!

Stay warm, have a calm week!

GONE ROWING AND BICYCLING

Oh, those rattling yellow leaves of aspen. Swimming under a starry night at a summerhouse. A lonely swan flying.  Sounds of firewood. A blueberry pie. 

Sunny autumn greetings!

FIRST SILVER FROST

First glittering frost over roofs and grass early this morning. Many beautiful starry nights to wonder what are there behind our stars. Trying to learn new constellations. Hundreds of years ago, how did it feel to sail in the sea and navigate towards the North Star, to home.

Greetings from my painting table. A sketch from the summer and a detail of a painting to it. Many orders packed too, thank you so much! They will be sent today.

Have a warm and calm weekend!

AUTUMN FOREST WALKS

From dark to light green. All the different colours and their different levels in autumn forests now. Purple, yellow, red, orange are also appearing every day stronger. Wind rattles the leaves in a different melody. Plays them like different instruments. 

Lingonberries so sweet and carpets of moss so soft to sit on and touch. On a small moss covered rock, the last Twinflowers with their gentle scent. Magpies and their songs up in the blue sky.

Starry skied Sunday evening greetings from my balcony, wrapped in a blanket, have a good new week!

ON AN ADVENTURE

An easy way to travel is to look up to the sky. To see the clouds chasing each others, to see the stars to blink even they are stone and gas up in the space, far away. To see airplanes flying and the flapping wings of birds. Dragonflies, so many these days, with their glimmering bronze wings in the sun. Lost balloons and a yellow leaf of this autumn whirling in the wind.

Two photos through my windows of these yellow autumn days, one photo (detail) of a painting Adventure on A Windy Day, available at BSDA.

Warm golden moments, happy September!