Ladybird of Luck

It appears to be ladybird season right now. I saw several while cleaning the clothes line in our backyard, with all kinds of dot combinations. I wonder if they consider it beautiful to have super many or super few dots. Or maybe something in between, or a certain amount. would that amount be six, as the amount of their legs or seven for the days of the week?

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.

Bright

 

Brighton was a nice break, but it's good to be back. Now we've got some unnaturally sunny weather for a couple of days. We also had lovely weather on the first day of the trip (although there was a freezing wind of death ever present), but it kept deteriorating as the days went on. Luckily, we didn't experience much rain. I'll stop being such a weather fixated Brit now and throw some pictures at you:

Brighton has a beach! Who would have known!

 Where there's a windy beach, you'll inevitably find

mermaids with super flowy hair!

 Naturally, an ocean-inspired town is not 

complete without some whale-graffiti.

 The sun sets even in Brighton.

 Guess what? There was a beach!

 This was our hostel. (not)

 Experienced travellers extraordinaire.

Not much interesting to report otherwise.

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 . . .

Bloop!

We have some snow here right now, and according to BBC there shall be heavy snowfall tomorrow. Will be interesting to see what that means. At least it's a sunday, hopefully it will thwart the ensuing chaos a little.

We've been to London on a shopping spree, I found all kinds of interesting things, I shall make a coherent post complete with pictures for y'all to enjoy.

Oh, andI actually went swimming! Now I have a one year membership at the Leisure Centre, so for the sake of money spent I will have to go swimming again (I'm sort of aiming for once a week or something).

It's very calming to live in a house in which the heating starts to slack as soon as the temperature outside drops below the freezing point, i.e. when it is needed the most, really. It's just that the thermostat and boiler experience communication difficulties. If they had facebook pages I bet their relationship status would be stated as "It's Complicated". Thus far waving the thermostat in front of the boiler has solved the issue, so we're still alive, however barely.

TA-DAA

Alrighty then. After being back in England for almost a week, it's a good time to kickstart this blog again! Assessments behind, we still have around two weeks of holidays left, oh yeah!

I've got a project list I'm chipping away at. I've already vacuumed the house, made chocolate cupcakes and right now I'm boiling chickpeas (not really on my list, but extremely exiting nonetheless). Soon to come features are: swimming, building a gingerbread city, and colouring paper.

An eternity project is cleaning the computer and moving files to my new external hard-drive (it's small, and red, and houses one effing terabyte (!) I didn't know you could get such astounding amounts of space in such a small package.

Other christmas presents I got this year include approx 2kg of chocolate (half of which I've already devoured), the comic book Fables 2: Animal Farm, some other books (one about cupcakes, one about How to be British, and one I picked myself: Are You My Mother? (more comics)). I also happened to find a pair of ownerless leggings in my room at mom's. It's a very interesting room in the sense that many odd objects find their way there in one way or another. I also got lip balm in the shape of a moustache from lil' sis. Very handy disguise for avoiding unwanted encounters at town, or appear more British. Oh, and Roomie is stitching a cozy for my warmwater bottle. Also got all kinds of interesting spices. And a set for making raw chocolate (allegedly very much more healthy than regular chocolate, ahem). If I'm missing anything out, it's not because of spit but since I'm senile.

I practically excel at travelling back to England after Christmas break. Last year I had fever and sinusitis. This year, the night before the night before the day of departure I came down with the stomach flu, so I naturally felt a little giddy on travel day. But it seems I managed to get most things with me, and nothing dramatic happened during our trip, so all is well. I felt slightly giddy the next day too, but I managed to submit everything I needed for assessment. In the beginning of February we'll see just how giddy I was.

Not very much else going on, been playing some video games (got a whole lot from my sweet brother (who's travelling Eastern Asia with our cousin right now), and also rummaged the Steam sales. . .), but I tend to more video game and move comments in my deviantART journal instead.

A couple of days ago it was like spring here, now it's like autumn. Waiting for winter, they keep talking about snow on the forecasts. . .

A Modern Myth

I fought a ferocious battle with Roomie's USB stick yesterday, since it had suddenly turned into a monster (become write protected without having an external switch). Many lines in the command prompt were written, but the foul apparition was adamant about its read-only status. Several formating softwares were downloaded and utilized to no avail, since the cunning beast was able to evade them (disk not found). Firing projectiles of reason from behind the crenellations of safe-mode proved useless. This damned, loathsome demon was even able to resist the word of God (tampering with the registry), and the future of mankind (my pride) was indeed grim.

But in the darkest of hours, the ancient wisdom of a hero was called upon. Aeons ago, in a different age, the Lion sage had uttered: If there is no switch, it is a hardware problem, and it won't work. Buy a new one. And the words of the old one rang true, the vicious creature unveiled its true form: it is but the tiniest speck of mundane matter. A reaver of the shadows. Feeding on stolen time, frustration and lifepower. An atrocious behemoth of despair.

Ripped out of the den it is astonishingly defenceless against non-binary weaponry and the culture of consumption. If its unruly, broken spirit could not be tamed, another, more benevolent soul should be sought to replace the abomination. Thus, the contemptible fiend is forever trapped in the eternal void of unconnection between worlds. There it shall abide, dwelling in its own abhorrence until the end of its time, the terminal rift.

In the final strife of the odious horror, it is known to be devoured by one or all of three beasts, whose names are whispered by winds from beyond the abyss.

The Hacksaw.

The Grinder.

The Mallet.

Following its obliteration the very essence of the dreadful miscreation shall be trapped in the endless, everchanging sea known by numerous names, of which but one is truthful:  

Garbage. 

(Certain ancient sources claim that this is indeed not the end of th legend, but that it is still stated that the gorgonian vermin will stay imprisoned until one of two courses of fate will be set into motion. Either it is purged and granted a new existence, restarting the cycle. Alternatively, if the ultimate cycle and the death of time is nigh, the gargantuan sea will oveflow and the universe will drown.)

Moral: Do not engage with dreadful technological pests for more than four hours without retribution, as your spirit will be shattered and bitterness will ensue.

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. . .

It's Finland, Finland!

From one cold and wet country to another! There wasn't really snow here in southern Finland when I arrived, but today we've got some slush, so there's a thin layer of extremely wet and mushy snow in some places. I was just amazed when I was eating breakfast. Everything I could dream of was there on the table. That is ham, medwurst and cheese.


Here's another gingerbread picture. See? I didn't forget about them! Hrrm.

You're beautiful, it's true.

Wuhey!

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!)