A House Called Nut - Life in the backwoods of Finland

From the other side

A wild currant bush on of the lake's little islands

Good things are happening. It's been raining, and in the best possible way. Huge downpours that give way to gorgeous, sunny days. We even got a trickle of water from the faucet, and I'm hanging onto hope that the well will make a swift recovery. Another wish was granted, and cold weather has swept through, ushering out the mooseflies and leaving the forest a welcoming haven once more. 

Over the weekend, we paddled in the rowboat to the opposite shore and oohed and aahed at the fall landscape. I can't believe how soon the lake will be frozen and boat rides will have to cease. I can't believe how completely different each season is and how distant summer already seems.

Here are some photos from our little boat excursion.

Every now and then we see hot air balloons over the lake. I wonder where they're headed. 

This hungry woodpecker was lodging a pine cone into a notch in an old tree and then hammering away. You can see the pine cone in the second image.

View from the opposite shore.

Now I'm off to prepare for a mini holiday we're taking. Details to follow. I'll just say I'm very, very excited! There will be a couple of blog posts in the meantime, but I'll mostly be away from the computer, so please excuse me if I'm slow responding to comments and emails. Colorful, autumn wishes to you!

Knitting, my old friend

This weekend we celebrated my passage into the last year of my twenties. It seems there is no avoiding adulthood. Though so far I can't say I suffer from any of that famed birthday anxiety-why spoil it to mourn the inevitable? Around here birthdays are celebrations, they're a time to take stock, connect with loved ones, and, of course, they're a time for presents. And I love presents, both giving and receiving.

My sister Laura has always been a fabulous gift-giver. Year after year she manages to choose better gifts for me than the ones I might have chosen myself. This year's gift is extra special because it's made by both of us and my little niece too. 

Two knitting patterns and yarn to go with them, all from Seattle's excessively wonderful Acorn Street Shop (if you live in the area, you must stop by). It was Laura who taught me to knit in the first place and she's still the person I turn to for all my knitting trials. Whenever I visit her, we take a trip to the Acorn Street Shop and she helps me select yarns to match my patterns and ideas. It doesn't look as if I'll make it out west any time soon, and I'm so happy that the essence of our little fiber excursions could be packed in a box and mailed across a continent and an ocean.

The first pattern is for socks, which is a very good thing because I made promises about socks in my About page and so far haven't delivered. And the second is for my favorite accessory, wristwarmers. But wait, what's in that little box?

Well, naturally I needed some hand-beaded stitch markers to go with everything else, but I'm afraid I can only accept them if they come in adorable boxes made by my niece.

Jewelry for yarn.

It feels so good to be knitting again. It's a beloved hobby that I always seem to drop in the summer months, when it seems like centuries before we'll need woolly hats and sweaters again. I love that my hands know exactly what to do as soon as the cold weather returns. Thank you, Laura! I can't wait for the next time we visit the yarn store together.

Wishing on the equinox

Autumn craft supplies from nature

Fall leaves, always magical.

Is it really here? Could summer have left us already? I'll admit to some summer nostalgia brought on by the numb limbs that come with September swims in Finnish lakes, but this year I'm happier than ever to welcome my favorite season.

Usually, I have three simple wishes for the fall: abundant mushrooms in the forest, as many sunny days as Mother Nature can spare, and just a bit of balmy weather. It's counter-productive, wishful thinking most years, since the Finnish fall is all about wet and cold, though the fungus usually delivers. But this year I've amended my fall wish list: abundant mushrooms in the forest (ok, that one's the same), rain (lots), cold (bitter). The rain and cold, you see, will deliver the residents of this cottage from two small afflictions.

Janne and I recently watched a movie in which a girl flicked on a bathroom faucet and (ta-da) water came out. Pretty pedestrian, right? Not around here. In unison we gasped "water!" You see, we do what that girl does. We do it every single day in hopes that even the smallest trickle will come out, but, alas, the well is still dry. I'm not sure what it was about that faucet scene (I mean, we've both ventured into the outside world of running water in these two months), but ooh was it exciting. So, rain. Rain! Please come. Pour down. Fill up our well. Bring me hot showers and I promise I'll never complain about doing dishes and laundry again!

Now, the cold serves another purpose entirely and is intimately connected to another item on the list, mushrooms. In these parts, gatherer instincts surface in the fall, when the forest undergoes an enchanting, edible fungal blossoming. This year's foraging has been rudely interrupted by the deer keds (or "mooseflies" as they're called in Finnglish) that are congregating in our local forest. Here's what they look like in case you're wondering. Ah, mooseflies. Not even tightly wound headscarves worn under hoods so snug that only eyes and nose remain uncovered will keep them out of my hair. If I had no hair, or less hair, I might mind them less. But icky, hair-burrowing, egg-laying, biting flies are more than this girl can take. Mooseflies, happily, are very sensitive to cold and one good frost is all that's needed for the forest to be hospitable once more. In the meantime, there are lingonberries ripening and mushrooms sprouting and I'm longin' to go a-pickin'.

At least the apples are still keeping us busy!

Do you have any special wishes for the new season?

Color, light

We take a lot of photographs around here of which only a handful appear on the blog. Sometimes the need to coordinate words and images means that pictures I'd have loved to share instead end up collecting dust.

Here's the first assembly of neglected photos--a few of the many rainbows we were audience to over the summer. Happy weekend! Mine will be devoted to apples! What are you up to?

A conclusion to the sad event

Over the weekend, a neighbor showed up at our door asking if we'd seen the notice in the local paper (we hadn't): the humane society was searching for the person who had tried to save the drowning dog. A few phone conversations later and the story finally came together.  

A woman and her elderly dog, Ville, were visiting friends who live in a farmhouse up the road from us. Ville was a black Tibetan terrier, two months shy of sixteen, blind, deaf, and somewhat demented. He was lazing around in the garden when they last saw him, seemingly safe amidst fields and forest. We don't know if Ville fell in or purposefully went for a swim--he'd just taken up swimming last year. But his vision impairment and dementia explain why he got trapped in the water and why he was swimming away from the shore when I spotted him.

I'm glad that Ville's human friend at least knows what happened to him and I'm somewhat comforted that his time came at such a respectable age. Once she has recovered a bit, she might come visit us to pay her respect. She feels very guilty, but I hope she won't blame herself too much. Dogs can be marvelous escape artists. I was once the only witness when a German shepherd crawled out of the tiniest gap in a second-story window, leaping down to freedom, and another time I saw a squat, elderly hound scale a six-foot fence (happily both these captures and returns were successful). Sometimes caution and common sense just aren't enough, and chance, instead, is decisive. But it's clear that Ville is very loved and missed, and I feel sure his long life was a good one.

A secret in the basement

There are so many crafty (and foody) bits and bobs I'd like to share with you right now, but most of them are gifts and therefore top secret. Here's a little glimpse at one of the thingamajigs I've been working on behind the scenes.

You can see I still haven't run out of old jeans or the motivation to refashion them. More on that to follow (hopefully) soon.

And how about this secret in the basement? Well, I'll just show you.

That's right. It's a loom! I had been planning to purchase a little rigid-heddle loom since learning to weave on one last year, when Janne's Savonian grandmother hauled this out of her attic. It was handcrafted by the man who sold it to her some fifty or so years ago and had been collecting dust for over a decade. I just love how it's a bit wonky and worn.

With the help of my father-in-law, who charitably transported it hundreds of miles south during his  summer holiday, we've managed to assemble the frame and all the biggest bits. Now we're furrowing our brows at labrynthine diagrams in library books, trying to make sense of all the small, mysterious doo-dahs that don't seem to fit anywhere or are simply missing. It's like some sort of twisted Ikea challenge. But, hey, I'm not complaining. I have a loom! And one day soon I might even get to weave.

Windfalls

Pruning the apple trees in the spring turned out to be a good idea, because, wow, do we have a lot of apples. Last week was brimming with good, apple pickin' intentions, but I'm sure you know what can happen to good intentions. And those stubborn apples continue to ripen with total disregard for our schedules and deadlines. The nerve. Until I finally make it up the ladder to do some real harvesting, the windfalls are keeping me on my toes (or crouching on the ground, more like).

So far Janne and I (and lucky, apple-loving visitors) have enjoyed apple pie, apple cake, pumpkin and apple soup, and apple juice--all from windfalls. The apple juice rescued us when we realized there were three buckets of apples in the dining room and something had to be done. Enter the steam juicer.

Now, steam juicers are quite an ordinary appliance in Finland, but since I've yet to come across them elsewhere I'm not sure how common they really are. The beauty of a steam juicer is that there's little or no prep involved. We quartered the apples before placing them--skin, seeds, bruises and all--into the juicer to speed up the process and hopefully extract more juice, but we could have just as easily thrown them in whole.

Apples go in.

Juice comes out.

I made one fresh, unflavored batch to enjoy now, threw some cloves and a cinnamon stick into the steamer with the remaining batches and canned them for later. It's delicious. Thank you, steam juicer. The cooking process took the better part of the day, but only demanded our attention for a few minutes here and there. So now we have five quarts of spiced apple juice and probably a fresh bucket of windfalls playing hide and seek. Can you guess what we're doing this weekend?

Hello September

I think it’s now safe to say goodbye to summer and to welcome in the new season. Light and temperature change so rapidly in this country that I always feel like I’m adjusting. These days the sun sets “so early” at 8:30, and often by the time I get round to an evening dip in the lake (yes, still swimming!) it’s already dark and cold, and no longer seems like such a fantastic idea. Each season comes with its own joys. In these next few months we’ll enjoy migrating geese, apples, plums, three more months of mushrooms, and the forest’s most colorful performance. Daylight will grow scarce and we’ll spend more time inside with books and projects, pen and paper, and eventually we’ll hope for some real snow and cold to brighten the scene. Once all the leaves have fallen, the landscape will open up and the forest will release this little house from its tight embrace.

The bird cherry tree is leading the march towards fall in our garden.

Rowanberries are another seasonal joy. My friend Helen, partner in cooking and eating well, told me about a crabapple-rowan jelly she’d made and I’m vaguely considering following suit. Do you cook with rowanberries? What do you make?

Until that’s decided, these berries, now drying in a sunny window, are destined for some creative projects. I’ve seen some inventive use of the berries as beads by Swedish Etsy seller Birribe (see here and here), and would like to have a go myself. I have no idea if drying the berries in a windowsill will work...we'll have to wait and see.

Happy September!