Nice Easter to everyone

My Easter grass this year are peas. Just regular dryed peas that I soaked over night, put to soil and now they are growing. Those are really nice on salads and on bread. Also bought daffodils for some Easter decoration. And that's about all the Easter decorations we have this year. 

I wish you all a very nice Easter holiday

Squirrel in a glass house, episode 3

Hey you! Check my new movie Squirrel in a Glass House, Episode Three!

Okey, it wasn't that funny, but sequals never seem to reach the same level as the previous ones. 

See episode one from here and episode two from here.

Evening gown

The Guild of Mechanical Engineering held their yearly banquet last weekend. I have graduated years ago from the University but this year I decided to participate anyway to the banquet. The dress code in the banquet is white tie. I did have one long evening gown that I made many years ago, it does still fit, but I've gotten so bored to it. I think I've worn that same dress in the same party more than five times. Also the old one is like a tight black tube and I just don't like it that much anymore. So I made a new one. I did not really have any pattern and even on the fabric store I had something else totally on my mind but when I saw this fabric I adjusted my plans. The fabric does not drape so well on the back, but that's fine. I really like my new evening gown.

Handsfree reading

When I read a book I tend to read it from cover to cover in one go. And when the book is so well written that I cannot even stop reading when I eat I need an additional tool to hold the pages. In some books the pages easily close or automaticly turn, which is really annoying if you are trying to eat and read at the same time. I have previously used a knife or a spoon to hold the pages open, but in some books the weight of those is not really enough. Now I found the perfect piece of a square metal bar from the scrap bin at work. It's heavy enough to hold the pages, it is easy to move up and down on the page and it cannot roll. Perfect for handsfree reading. I am thinking of polishing it, but we'll see...

Two colour knitting practice

When I was knitting my Icelandic gardigan I searched for instructions on how to do a colour knit. I did start the colour knit on the gardigan without any instructions but when I noticed that I'm so slow with it I tried to learn how to do it the right way. Most instructions I found from Youtube were done in the principle of running the yarn from both right and left index finger. I don't seem to be able to keep the yarn on my right index finger. It just did not work out. So I continued my Icelandic gardigan in my own slow style. Later I found from the Youtube this super cool video about knitting the colours individually. Check the video if you have any interest in colour knitting. It's a very long one, but very thorough.

I love the principle shown in the video but I cannot seem to get it work nicely. It's a fast style but none of my test knits have turned very nice looking. The yarn that runs on the back keeps pushing itself to the right side (see the orange on the blue pattern). I've tried to keep the running yarn tight so it would not show through, but still it's not working. So annoying. I would so like to learn this, because I don't have the perseverance to learn the right way.

May contain horse meat

Have you all heard of the food scandal we have been having all over Europe? From some processed foods was found horse meat, the biggest thing in the whole scandal is that horse meat was not listed as one of the ingredients. For me or for most Finns horse meat is not a tabu of anykind so eating horse is fine, but of course it is alarming that food manufacturers do not know what meat or other ingredients they have in their foods.

I have eaten horse meat as cold cuts on a bread many times. I cannot say it's a reqular part of my diet, but maybe once a year we buy one packet of those cold cuts. Those are sold in the regular store. But I have never seen ground horse meat. Maybe now because of the scandal and all the attention to horse meat A found ground horse meat from a convenience store. He bought it just out of curiosity.

From the ground horse meat we made Greek style meat dish with hummus and oven potatoes. I tried to find a recipe for you, but I cannot find one from the web. Also I'm too lazy to write the complete recipe for you, but just fry good amount of onion and huge amount of garlic with the meat, then add handful of coriander and juice of a lemon. Add spices to taste like curcuma, cumin, ground bell pepper, soy sayce and ofcourse some ketchup for colour.

Our dish had lots of spices so I cannot say we could so easily taste what the horse tasted like, but it seemed to taste quite similar to beef, perhaps the texture was bit more hard, but it's difficult to say. Anyway the dish was good.

Spring jacket, unfinished

I have not had much inspiration lately to continue with the spring jacket I started some time ago. I had to stop with the jacket when I had some trouble finding the right coloured lining and while I was looking for it I found much more inspiring things to do.

I've already made atleast three mistakes with it. First of all I had the fabric op-shopped years ago and I did have a bit too little of it. Then I did not understand the pattern fully and cut way too little pieces from the fabric. In the end that resulted that I had to cut one piece in different thread direction than others. So now when all other parts have the fabric pattern going to the top right the one piece has the pattern going to the top left. A said that is fine and no one will notice and I do agree with him, but I'm still annoyed. Also since I'm now truly run out of the fabric and I would still need small pieces of it for the lining, I need to figure out something else. I know I will be able to do something, just don't know what yet.

So the point of me showing you this project at this stage is to get me back on track. Next time you see this I hope it's ready and spring has not passed.

Window washing

The best weather of the whole winter inspired me to clean all the windows. It was too cold to clean them from outside, but I washed all of the windows I could wash from the inside. 

And it was about time, look at the rag, yack!

Smoke detector

I've understood that for our apartment which is about 95 square meters it is suggested to have two smoke detectors. We used to have only one, it is still on the hallway near the bedroom and the office. But now I got another one and also got it on the ceiling.

I must admit that this might appear as a bit of an add, but the only nice looking smoke detector I found from Finland was the Kupu by Jalo Helsinki. I bought it in light gray. It is not the best colour for our ceiling but I have a dream that one day we will move to an apartment with white ceilings or that I will paint the ceiling of this apartment. So I bought this mainly for it's looks, but I'm sure it also works fine.

Incoming mail slot

Besides some unfinished sewing and knitting I have been very unactive around the house. We were sledding three weekends ago and the sleds are still by the front door outside. I have a pile of Christmas CDs on the coffee table that I cannot seem to put in place. The kitchen is a constant mess and we only finally last week did the basic cleaning we are supposed to do in every two weeks, but I don't know how long it had been since we had done it last time and I don't even want to know. After removing the shelf from the entry and placing the metal cabinet there I've had the incoming mail slot cube on the floor forever. On Saturday that finally found its place.

I screwed it on the wall next to the metal cabinet. I drilled two holes on the back plate of the cube and then screwed it on the wall. I have made the incoming mail cube few years back from plywood to specifically fit the old shelf we had in the entry. The cube has a slot for A, for me, for us together and for unpaid bills. The incoming mail cube has been the best working organizing system we have in the whole apartment, especially the unpaid bills slot. We see in an instant if there is something that needs our attention. The other slots we empty once in a while. It was very important to find a place for this mail slot cube.