TheRooster

Traditionally we don't see Easter Bunny or have Easter Egg Hunt. Traditionally we place a fur hat at the end of our bed, under the bed or somewhere nearby. During the night the rooster steps in and hatches in the fur hat. Because it is a rooster it never can lay ordinary eggs like hens. It lays chocolate eggs. And only on the Easter night. And that's why there was chocolate eggs in the hat again this year!

ThisEaster

My Easter and Spring are snowy. Today we had a small snow storm and my garden is still 100 % covered by the snow. Still it is spring and the first swans have arrived already. Still it is spring and time for outdoor adventure and Easter decoration. More about decorating the willow twigs for the witches who make good fortune spells you can find here.

I usually dye the eggs by onion peels but this time I tried out two different kind of onions and a tea bag. I included some chamomile with the yellow onion peels. The egg shells impact on the shades so the plants give different shades on eggs than on yarns. Anyway its fun scale of brown.

Of course I did also some spinning. You can't avoid that if spending traditional Easter and follow traditional lifestyle at this corner of the world. 

Our special family tradition is try out something new every Easter. It may turn out a disaster or discovery. This year it turn out discovery. It is traditional Swedish bacon pancake. Poor Pii who had her 4th birthday almost starved because she really was not allowed to taste despite it smelled so good! The recipe is very simple also for gluten free baking. We will definitely use it many times in the future. 

Gluten free bacon pancake

approx 200g bacon

chop & fry

pour over a baking tray covered by a baking paper

4 eggs

1 liter milk

4-6 dl gluten free flour mix

1 tea spoon salt

mix well together

pour over the fried bacon

cook in 200 Celsius degrees until beautiful color (30-40 min)

notice pan cake seems and feels a bit raw when you take it out from oven

let it cool down so it gets its final form

serve as cold with lingon jam (or your favorite)

Happy Easter

My Easter is always filled with wool work. I finished spinning 100 g of natural white Finnsheep wool with Liinu. Another 100 g to go and then I can ply it for further use. I also blend Finnsheep autumn shades to create some SleepySnowyAutumn yarn for a project I have in my mind.... I have started to spin that yarn by a drop spindle. 

I also found some time to use my stamp collection to create writing paper for my letters. The shade of this paper is pastel blue. Unfortunately the picture fades away that shade.

I usually am dusting my (and others') sewing machines and empowering them to keep going on. This Easter I participated on dusting old typewriter Olympia 8. It's YoungLady's new laptop which she loves over the moon.

Because it is Easter and we had several reasons to celebrate I -of course- had to bake a cake. It was delicious and just enough. I -after all these years- have learnt to bake smaller cakes! I am very proud of myself! 

See how I used the extra left over edges to roll up narcissus to decorate the cake! If you try out to do the same just make sure there forms out enough wrinkles when rolling up the left over pieces you cut off. I did't tidy the outer edges and let them be "broken". It creates even more narcissus like expression.

I used yellow sugar mass instead of almond because the local shops had ran out of it. I used just a tiny drop of rapeseed oil when I started to work with it. I feared the sugar mass dries up but this oil helped to avoid that.

Easter/Spring 2020

I just found pics of Easter/Spring 2020 cards which I had not posted here when adding few pics by then. You can seen them below. 😊

 

Happy Easter

With these cards, I designed and made from recycled materials, I wish you all Happy Easter!

Yarn on Saturday

Traditionally Holy Saturday is called in Finnish as "lankalauantai". It consists of two words: "lanka" and "lauantai". "Lanka" means yarn and "lauantai" means Saturday. Traditionally they have done all the rest of the wool works that has been left from the past winter. In Finland it still is not time to shear the sheep but it is time to sort out, spin and dye the remaining wool.

We did a great job to wind up 25 skeins of different kind of yarns for the further use. Now I have many balls waiting to be knit and crocheted away!

HappyEaster!

EasterTime has included chilly mornings. The warmth of the day turns the thermometer upside down so the sun can melt the snow. One of my flowerbeds can be seen already. It doesn't snow so much anymore so we can easily see who was there and walked through my garden!

TheSpring is here. Despite the snow still covers my garden the bare ground can be seen on few places, like under my oldest & biggest currant bush.

I really wish you all had wonderful EasterTime with a lot of sweets & chocolate! This is MrW's bag. He is visiting us over Easter so I made him a small back to be taken home.

As you may already know in Finland rooster lays eggs made of chocolate. The best place for the rooster is a warm hat that reminds him about a nest. He comes during the night between Easter Saturday and Sunday when everyone are sleeping. If he was there you can find chocolate eggs on the Easter Sunday morning from the nest you made for him.

Time to Seed!

Despite I woke up today morning with -17 Celsius degrees frost outside it is 

S P R I N G !!!

It is time to seed! It is time to dream!

I had difficulties to find herb seeds. I still miss oregano, lavender and some other. Well, I must keep on seeking them. I do love to grow our own herbs. My veranda is perfect for them. I also re-plant flowers I got by last Christmas. I was surprised these green plants are still alive despite they seemed to be painted for Christmas season sale. I let them be only to be curious to see how they will suffer and die because of the painting. But so little I know about BigBadWorld. They do seem to have plant friendly paints out there. I was very excited to see they didn't die but decided to grow. They look very spring at the moment with green "blush".

Easter is not far away so tiny card factory has been around.

This year I was using my old storage to create the cards. These Easter cards include recycled ribbons, chocolate box covers and cut outs from junk mail.

Tomorrow morning I will go to MyVeryPrivateCarMechanic. I know HisCuteLittleKids will be awake so I am going to spoil them by bringing them some Easter Eggs. These are very special eggs laid by Rooster. Yep; R O O S T E R. In Finland Rooster lays chocolate eggs by Easter. No rabbit brings them. These RoosterEggs are my favorite; no gluten, no milk... They are Fazer's Mignon Eggs. Here you can see how they are made.

Easter time craft

My day started with home made tea. Meaning the memories from the last summer. These are self picked raspberry leaves which we dried up. It really makes a good pot of tea. So I made the pot of good hot tea and carried it to my veranda where I still am having Earth Hour Day.

Which means I had to wear woollen pullover over my pyjama, wrap myself in wollen blanket and set my feet into my fur slippers. Yes, my spring really may be different than yours. :)

So, with the tea I carried my gluten free home baked bread with ethical produced eggs...

...a little bit of chocolate for adult's taste and my carry on project.

Meanwhile adults were in the veranda and teen still sleeping Little Lady was camping on the living room's floor having a picnic. She sits by the electric radiator, on a woollen carpet, wrapped herself in a woollen blanket and wollen shawl which Santa Claus brough her last Christmas and she simply loves it (it is my design). Yep, it is still the spring and there is still the heating system going on. Just to save the nature, we keep it at +19 degrees and get warm up in other ways.

I decided to finish my carry on project today. I did the base and edges.

And I did the pockets...

I decided it needed some decoration. Because I got lazy I went to my storage. If you want to crochet but don't know what or don't have much yarn; crochet different kind of flowers for further use.

Crochet flowers will do just fine in many different kind of places and purposes.

Ta-dah, here it is, a case for hooks and needles. My own design for my very special friend K for her very special day. :D

How to dye your Easter eggs -tutorial

There are many ways to dye your easter eggs. You can use water colours, pens and what ever. One easy and simple way is to dye them like yarns or fabrics. Except you don't need to use toxics to fasten the colours. You can use what ever natural dyes. Here in the example I use onion peels. But blue berries, coffee, tea etc. will do just fine and is interesting.

Peel off the onions. Put the peels into the pot. You can use the onions for cooking later. And with the time they will make new peels. :)

Add the eggs into the pot.

Add the water. The peels will float. Boil the eggs as long as wanted. After cooking the eggs leave them into the water with the peels. Let the water cool down. Later on take the eggs away and let them dry in a stainer for example.

Onions give this kind of shade.

Here comes Easter

Today we did something special at home. Something you do just once in a year. Of course the cat herself was very curious and interested about the craft. She knows she is not allowed to touch; but hey, it is just once in a year... if we forget the Christmas tree...

You need willow twigs, coloured feathers and perhaps somehting else too. This time we used also yellow paper twine.

The willow twigs should be collected days before using and set in a vase filled with water. If it is cold spring you need to take them in much earlier; over a week or even two. This spring has been warm so we collected the twigs just on the last Tuesday and they'll be in use tomorrow on Palm Sunday. We want the twigs to have these soft cute little things which English name I don't know. Here in Finland we call them "Willow cats" because they are soft as kittens' paws.

There's many ways to fasten the feathers but I like to do it with wire. You can use glue, tape or anything. But I have learnt that in my house easiest way to do this is to use something with wire. The paper twine we just fastened with a knot and opened the remaining twine.

More about traditonal Easter in Finland at Helsinki Times and This Is Finland.

Finally finished the Easter cards

Yes, I never thought making 10 Easter cards would take this long time before I finish them!

I don't send many Easter cards. Just few for relatives and families with children. The Easter card factory is always smaller than Xmas card factory but somehow it seems to take much more time. Why is that?

In few days I have not had time to stitch or do anything else a lot. Hopefully tomorrow morning I can steal an hour for myself...

Here's Easter cards 2014. I used stamped figures which I coloured and cut off. The dots are done by glue that glitters. You can buy such a dots as stickers but they are really easy to make so why to waste your money. The butterflies are actually from a bag; I took them off before I put the broken bag into the trash bin. I am against of the idea you need to buy everything to be able to make crafts. It really is not so. The world is full of useful materials. You just need to look around.

Easter Bunny (free chart)

Here we go! Happy Bunny Easter Time!

This Easter bunny & basket is my own design.You can stitch it to be a card or something else. This time I made a case in which my friend can store her mail, letters & cards. It is seasonal design and makes good change to home decoration. Materials don't cost much and you are able to use loose ends and left over fabric and lace.