RAINDROP NOTES

The wind and rain outdoors play the most magical instruments. Anything they touch becomes a small echo. Anything they pass, becomes a small note. A cup of tea in left hand, a sketching pen in right one. Light is disappearing, candle flame dances inside shadows. These gray days the colors sleep.

Tiger In A Jar made this beautiful video of a cozy place to spent time, a dinner table. With the first issue of Kinfolk magazine with my painting. Music by Oliver Blank. I think he collects raindrops for his music too.

Silent songs and a little more of apples and that darkest chocolate.

P.s. A small edition of greeting cards is in my shop. A pack of 7 different cards with white envelopes.

(Screenshots from a movie by Tiger In A Jar.)

WHERE THE WIND DOES NOT REACH

Homes of forests. Caves, hollows, tree trunks. A leaf, a flower. Places where the wind does not reach with its cold fingers. Some crochet their home and working place between branches, grass, rocks. Inside and apple, a mushroom. Under a stone, under moss. A heap of fir needles. In a puddle.

How did we learn to build homes with corners, angles.

A beautiful weekend of music and kind people. Sunday to read and walk. To search corners of this home for flour and salt and olive oil and this and that (meaning that only in the end I know what it became) and bake for the neighbors who come for a visit.

Warm thoughts to your Sunday.

(Small custom paintings from last summer.)

FLYING AWAY

Skies of different days are filled with flocks of birds. South reads on their map, but how they find there. Navigating by shores or mountains, hills or forests? Does the wind tell them and take them there. Seagulls, they will stay and only go when there is no open water. Goose flock was having their break in a park, middle of yellow leaves. Maybe they came from Greenland.

Birds at home. One bird who will stay with me through the winters, got a woolen jacket to stay warm. The other ones have always summer next to flower fields. They sway in their flock. The third one is living in Iceland, but I had the pleasure to meet some of them with my camera. Bon voyage migrating birds, have a safe journey!

The small lake behind my window is having white peaks on its waves, it is such a windy day. I wish for sunshine for tomorrow, when friends take mbe to a mushroom forest. Tea in a thermo bottle, cinnamon buns and a woven basket with a wish of a nice treasure from the moss fields.

Warm weekend wishes to you with some golden whiskers of the sun!

SPRING MAIL, AUTUMN BALCONY

Happy mail days continue. Letters, paintings, prints, emails. So sweet from all of you. Thank you so much. Also some greetings from the last spring while I was painting a boy, a boat and seagulls on an adventure.

Kaukana omalta maalta, (Far Away from Own Land), a book by Sisko Latvus with my painting on the cover. So well written, I read the script four times. A sad story with a little bit of magic about old times. About Paavo who was exiled with his family from Ingria at the age of 13. But on the way he meets someone called Mare... Published by WSOY.

Afternoon break, knitting while thinking. On my painting table, on the balcony table. Scratching cardboard for a printmaking class. A breakfast wrapped in wool on the balcony table, inside mist. Autumn light is taking over. Music has more piano melodies, like raindrops. Or crispy yellow and red leaves flying in wind. Branches from a forest of lingonberries. Sea-buckthorns from a square market, blueberry (soya) yoghurt and seeds. Rye bread with pesto of cashews, basilica, garlic, olive oil. Two pots of green tea. Candle light. Always dreaming of breakfasts.

Have a calm new week, wrapped in wool!

Hearts.

SECRETS OF WIND AND RAIN

The first autumn storm is singing as a melody of rain and wind. Bringing many warm colors from their journeys. Long walks to welcome all those yellows, oranges, reds and purples. If a few coins in a pocket, a rendezvous in a café is guaranteed. Some of the baristas come and wrap blankets around if sitting outdoors. In some other places people look inside, me outside. Some hide behind their newspapers. Some behind windows. Some behind their cups.

What kind of secrets there might be to hide. To put into a tea cup, or get forgotten inside a newspaper. Or just mention to a stranger.

A small yellow birch leaf, it did not hide anything. It was in the middle of a street next to an apple tree which had dropped all its fruits down.

So I feel the autumn being, everything is revealed and secrets are told. Then it is time to rest, hide the colors and blush away.

Just the beginning of an autumn, where it will still take me.

Melodies of raindrops to you.

WINDY WIND

Dear all,

The sky and the lake wear the same gray dress today. Wind is collecting the summer greens and hurries them to go hiding. Slowly, but visibly more and more every day. 300 km away from here there were many more yellow leaves during the weekend. Still bicycled with Mum to our summerhouse and swam. A theater play about sea and an island welcomed the earlier dark evenings.

While searching more wool for the colder days, I remembered that I have used wool for other things than clothes too. A small exhibition done in Reykjavík with a small group in 2005. Lovely ladies of handicraft shops gave us bags of small balls of wool. With them we built our own wind with a girl called Nadia. With some red wool I drew a girl so big that she did not completely fit inside. Her hems in the wind. There was a parade outside while we worked. We were locked inside and could only see a bit of the trumpets and drums marching on the street through a window. Later a friend that I had not yet met took a picture of another friend visiting the exhibition. The last picture I found from an old email and it was taken by Þórarinn.

Cold fingers of the autumn are searching their way inside this house. Time to close the balcony door and say bon voyage to the sun traveling further, to the other side. Eager about the new season, the new colors, the new scents and sounds.

Have a calm new week with colors of rowan berries and rose hips (their tastes too).

Hearts, from me to you.

(Third picture by Þórarinn.)

CARDAMOM COFFEE, MELODIES OF THE WIND

On a cloudy day. Feeling like it would already be an evening. A smile comes back from these greetings from Paris. Also the sunshine, if imagined enough. Outside the strong rushes of an autumn wind. Time to find some wool around.

Hot water boiling. Grinding cardamom seeds. A dash of cinnamon. Another one of vanilla. Coffee time. A very early one. Wondering how long I am able to keep those jars untouched. Till the next coffee time?

Oh, the weekend. A light(house) ship, beautiful melodies (a small moment to be back in the treasure island), guiding hands (while writing sms´s in street lights), the longest breakfast (feeling like abroad), walking, admiring houses and boats (especially the lighthouse one and another called Elvira Inga), a small food market, the deepest nap on the way back, in train. Sunshine at home.

Afternoon greetings.

RAINY WHILE SUNNY

Rainy while the sun shines. Sunny while it rains. Showers passing, like melodies. They make everything beautiful and to smell wonderful. Autumn. September.

Bicycled to the town in between those showers to develop a film (and to fetch the Tree House prints from the print shop) that has been longer than a year in my camera. What it becomes when there are no memories of frames taken. Empty pictures grow to patterns, colors, shadows. The raindrops on the window are from a few days ago, the first autumn rain. The sunshine on my hair is from early spring that we call as spring-winter in Finnish. The time when it is still very cold, there is a lot of snow left, but when the sun starts to reach us with its long but still tired yellow beams. That day I walked over the frozen lake from town to home. Afternoon sun of winter.

But now the autumn is here. A book, a dark chocolate bar, (a few candies called Iceland with polar bears in them,) tomorrow a train trip, music and friends. Happy. Maybe some yarn to knit.

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Heippa! Ihana naapurini Julia, joka asuu unikkokedon takana, vei minut kävelylle järven ympäri ja kirjoitti haastattelun kuvittamiseen ja yritteliäisyyteen liittyen. Kiitos Julia!

Two days ago my lovely neighbor Julia, who lives behind the meadow of poppies, took me for a walk around the small lake and wrote an interview with me.

Edit: Now also in English!
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Soft melodies to your weekend. Stay well!