Summerummerummer

Look, I have a blog! I've been in Finland for exactly one month today. This blog will probably be more or less hibernating during that time, due to me working, seeing people, enjoying the summer and so on.

Thanks for putting up with me though it's been slow on this front. Sometimes it's hard to find balance when a new daily project comes into the picture. Sometimes it just feels as if nothing particularily interesting happens, apart from saturday meals I forget to take pictures of because I'm too busy eating them. (:

Anyway, have a great summer, you. Unless anything really cool happens, and I realize I could write about it, I'll post again in September.

Runeberg

Well well, Runeberg's day (Finnish national poet) came and went (5.2) and, as always with celebrations that give you an excuse to make something nice to eat, we seized the opportunity and baked some Runeberg's Tarts:

 Who could say no to something with both icing and jam?

 Quack quack!

The greenhouse (space between curtains and window in living room) has started to show some signs of life! How unexpected.

Cress in a hurry.

Alas, the weekend is drawing near. Tonight is there is indian food on the menu. Homebaked naan-bread, homemade raita/tzatziki, home-marinated chicken pieces . . .

Gimme an S

Our bathroom window is.. how do you put it, well it has a broken surface (intentional), some kind of relief pattern, so you can't see through it clearly. Moving on, looking through it I wondered about how both of our neighbours manage to dry a lot of white sheets at the same time, until my sleepy head realized that the "white sheets" in the middle must be our lawn and the roof of our shed. Then I realized it must be snow.

And snow t'was.

We're having a friend from school over for lunch today (a young British lady), let's hope she hasn't run into too many problems with her bus and train. Britain usually doesn't take snow very well.

Exhibalibur!

Long time no sign of life. Truth is that my summer job has been pretty much eating all my free time and energy, it's as simple as that. I'll have plenty of time to catch up with things later, now I'm just doing a quick update about my upcoming exhibition here in Finland (the second one this summer, actually, I've been meaning to post pics from the first one. . .). 

Anyway, you're welcome to pop in if you're interested, grand opening's tomorrow between 3 and 5 p.m. the exhibition will be going on until 9th September. The invitation above should give you all necessary information.

Still 15 days of work to go, and then I'm free (and rich, ´cept Roomie will recieve a lot of my hard earned cash as she's been paying the rent during summer. Then there's the tuition fees. . . It'll be a really quick money-bath, it seems.)

Poachers!

 After the museum visit in London ages ago I tried to draw coelacanths from memory. The finished painting below has a more correct anatomy.

 

Anyway, long time no blog. Been really really lazy. I'm back in Finland now, and there's no guarantees for any frequency in blogging. There's a couple of projects going on for me over the summer:

- thoroughly go through all the stuff and clean my old room at mom's place - it looks like a warzone. Really.

- get a job for the summer (in order to get money to pay rent during summer, and at least half of the tuition 

fee for next year would be ideal). I have an interview on Friday, wish me luck.

- watch Game of Thrones season 2

- create some sort of a script for my forest comic - helps me plan the length of the thing a little.

- creating a website would be nifty and helpful for the future

- maybe have another exhibition

- paint and draw

Well, that starts to look like enough things on the list for now. 

Here's some photos from our trip to a friend's place. First, we saw a bit of Sandwich, hometown of Lord Sandwich who invented the sandwich, since he enjoyed gambling and playing poker, so he wanted something he could eat with one hand, so he wouldn't need to interrupt his game whilst eating.

 

 

 

 It's not the size of the garden, it's what you manage to accomplish with what you got.

At the friend's place, we ate a really really nice lunch. The house was beautiful, and it was situated in the idyllic beauty of the English countryside. There were also dogs, and hens! Here's photographic evidence:

 

 

 

  Ta-daa!

 

And see, I managed to hold one without anyone 

freaking out or getting hurt in the situation!

 

Took a stroll and saw some baa baas.

We also got extremely fresh eggs with us as a parting gift. Our host recommended poaching them (boiling without the shell), and since we'd never tried it me and Roomie had to give it a shot:

 

 

At this point we were slightly surprised, because in the cookbook we looked up instructions from the poached eggs looked more like fried eggs,since the egg whites had spread, while our superfresh eggskept their shape.  When we tried with eggs from the supermarket theyspread out like in the book. Conclusion - freshness matters in poaching.

 

It was actually quite different from regular boiled eggs. The egg white had a wonderful, soft consistency. I really recommend trying - and try to get really fresh eggs too. It was very nice with regular eggs too, but the superfresh ones were amazing!


I think I have to eat some for lunch now. . .

Flappety Flap

Roomie left just before 5 a.m. this morning, we'll leave the house about half past nine tomorrow morning. My bags are almost packed. Almost.

The forecast says there's possible snow over here in England next week. It is almost certainly because of us having to leave our herbs outside during the break. Sorry for that, Brits. 

Or maybe I should say Britz. . a posh and teadrinking version of Bratz? Her interests would be the weather, proper scones, damp ghosts and the weather. Her boyfriend could be Prince Charlez.

I just realized I gave away the innovation of the decade.

Morbidly Obese Brontosaur (needs a name!)

Yesterday we had a lot of snow, the campus was, however, open today, to our astonishment.

But yeah, Sunday, we got a president, my candidate did put up a good fight though. In the morning we watched the first part of Melodifestivalen! It's the Swedish auditions for the Eurovision Song Contest, and boy was it a great show, you can always count on them. They take it so seriously, it's so great. Thank you Sweden! Wow.

But now for the best part, me and Roomie built a snow dinosaur using up about all the snow in our backyard. It was worth it though, look how cute it is!

Aha! Suspicious Roomie in the shadows.

It's even smiling! It's morbidly obese, complete with a serious cellulite problem, but it's perfectly happy with it's lot. When you've broken your neck four times, your eyes are balls of dirt and your grasstraw mouth is just barely holding onto your face, what else can you do than smile at the beauty of life.


After that it felt good to have "single guy pizza night", as we came to call it. Pizza, lemonade, runeberg's tart and candy right on the couch in front of the TV computer, watching sitcom episodes. Student life is hard, I know.

Chocolate Is A Girl's Best Friend

There's some crazy weather over here. We had a terrible storm sweeping across the land, about 300 000 houses without electricity, some will be for days. On the other hand it's good that it's otherwise warm, but for people with melting freezers even a couple of degrees on the minus side could be helpful.


Christmas eve was nice, and I actually got a couple of the things from my wishlist (and money for the rest, or at least the essentials, I'd say! So thanks to everyone for that). Lots and lots of chocolate and money! Mwahaha!


The morning on Christmas Day was really beautiful. However, it did turn to the usual mush later.

Frosty Wonderland!

It's MAGIC!

Jet

Hum hum, the days are just flying by, especially since I'm still suffering from jetlag in the form of waking up later in the mornings. 10 a.m. is very late for me. Feels like half of the day has gone by then.

Gore

I'm starting to realize that I don't have much time left here at all before flying away.

Woooooo. . .



I came up with one more thing for The Wishlist: A wall calendar would be quite nice to have.

It's raining outside, quite cozy. We watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, I think it was okay and that he has an important point, but living in England has made me posh, so I couldn't help but hear his southern state accent. Oh well.

-----


The Wishlist (updated!!!):

Essential, serious stuff:

Stick blender
Stavmixer
Sauvasekoitin

Won't need that many of them, I hope.




Crisp rye-bread
Surskorpor
Hapankorppuja

You simply can't find essentials like this in the UK




Money
Pengar
Rahaa

Quite essential.




Bicycle
Cykel
Polkupyörä

Might be best to give me money for this one. Quite difficult to ship.

Can opener
Konservöppnare
Purkinavaaja

The normal, sane, cheap version. I'm sorry Brits, but you've got this all wrong.
Or then I'm just too simple-minded for the fancier versions.





Pot (ha ha, very funny.)
Gryta
Pata

Might once again be better with money, quite heavy to take on the plane.

Cash
Fyrk
Mammonaa

I can't stress this enough.




Money for artist's materials (going to order markers online)
Pengar för konstnärsmaterial (tänker beställa tuscher på nätet)
Raha taiteilijantarvikkeita varten (tilaan netin kautta)

For messing around on paper.

Nice, sharp, big kitchen knife
Trevlig, vass stor kökskniv (eller förskärare)
Mukava, terävä, iso keittiöveitsi

Needn't be that fancy, but preferably one that actually functions properly.
The set of knives we bought isn't the best thing that has happened to us.
The knives are whetted so that the edge is askew, in a way we're not used to have knives,
so we find them really hard to use. What I'm trying to say is that in order to
cut something straight, you have to hold the knife at a strange angle.
We don't like that. The big knife from the set is impossible to cut harder things,
such as potatoes or carrots with.

Small, handy external hard drive

Liten, praktisk extern hårdskiva
Pieni ja näppärä ulkoinen kovalevy

Don't really care about the brand, preferably a quality one though.




Wall Calendar
Väggkalender
Seinäkalenteri

So that I'll know what to do and when.

Not so essential, but oh so nice stuff:




Bubble bath
Bubbelbad
Kylpykuplia

Because I'm worth it.

Books:

Watership Down
Richard Adams

Cute bunnies hopping around. Nothing more.




Abarat. Absolute Midnight
Clive Barker

Filled with nice illustrations.

The Witches
Roald Dahl

More lovely illustrations.

Fables vol 2. Animal Farm.
Bill Willingham & Mark Buckingham

Because I like Comics.

A Dance With Dragons
George R. R. Martin

I'd really prefer this cover, it would go together with
the rest of my collection. It's a paperback.




Nerdy section:

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Intense game of investigating and winning legal cases.

The World Ends With You

Heard it's one of the best games for the DS.

Action-packed role playing game with a great story (i heard)

Professor Layton and The Curious Village

Intelligent and unique puzzle-solving game with an outstanding gameplay.

Bastion

Downloadable from Steam.
Beautiful, unique adventure game with flexible gameplay.

Terraria

Downloadable from Steam.
Do what you want; craft items, explore, build, and hunt.

And the most important section - Sweets:

Something I've been longing for, these won't need explanations.

Dumle

Fazerin Sinivalkoinen
Blåvit Fazer

After Eight

Tupla

Angel-chocolate
Änglachoclad
Enkelisuklaa

Mulled wine concentrate
Glöggconcentrat
Glögitiiviste

Would be nice to be able to drink some back in England even after christmas. . .



Last but not least:


Would be nice to get some visiting relatives and family members here
to fill the fridge with nice expensive stuff such as cheese, meat, cake,
chocolate pudding, cheese, meat and pastries.

No pressure.

(Of course it would be nice to show other parts of the house also.
If lucky, I might even show something else than the supermarkets over here!)