PLUM, DARK BLUE, AND ALL THE COLOURS OF AUTUMN

You've seen me talk about it trough the years - my love for autumn. I do enjoy all seasons (except perhaps for spring, as spring in Finland often turns out rather not only short but non-existent; two months of disappointment. Sadly), but while I always long for a short (hah!) snowy winter and feel most alive during summer autumn still turns out to be my favourite time of year. And this year it has been magical! Like you would have wanted to walk around with your mouth open all the time and just do a constant 'Wow!'.

 

Ah, the light, and all the colours!

My colours for this autumn turns out to be plum and dark blue. And all things checked and plaid, as usual.

But the bye-bye to all of this this is around the corner; the inevitable will soon come – no more light, no more colours.

It's a good thing we have candles, fairy lights and red wine to battle the Mordor-months with! Bring it on!

COLOURS AND FROST

Today it's the gloomy Halloweenish weather one would expect with mid-October approaching (already! What? How?), but yesterday we woke up to a breathtaking colourful frosty sunrise that I even tossed out barefoot for to try and catch with my phone -

The view to the south is often like a painting. This is also the bathroom view, and one day eventually the view from the study-to-be; the brown room which for the moment is just (you guessed it): boxes.

Colourful trees to the west! And the old barn of the farm peeking from behind them.
The study will be the only room in the house, apart from the living room, with windows in two directions. That actually makes it the nicest room in the house. This, plus an apple tree in the front, would be the view from the second window.


Amazing colours to the north!

And the rising sun in the east.

I really love crips autumn mornings like this, when the air is fresh and cold and the light makes everything magic.  But give it a month and we will be up earlier than the sun, wake up to dark mornings, when the universe evens out all those light days we got during summer...

OCHRE AND WINE RED

Last spring before I went to France I quickly made this yellow ochre-coloured A-line skirt (like, the actual night before, because that is what insane people like me do in order to maintain a maximum stress level). I had had the fabric waiting in my to-do pile of fabrics for a few of years already and decided it would make a great and comfy travel skirt. With large pockets, of course.

Skirt-show-off walking, as one does.
Dark yellow is a strangely versatile colour that pairs well with many others, and I especially like it with wine red. Maximising the level of autumn-points.

Photos by my friend Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan Photography who takes amazingly creative pictures.

SUPERWOOD

Today I am traveling to Strasbourg to perform at a festival (at Elsass Rock & Jive) in warm and sunny weather!

So, logically I thought I’d look back some six months ago to to a very different kind of season, festival and ambience - Paola Suhonen’s SuperWood Festival.

The very first Superwood took place late last October just east of the Helsinki city centre in a now hotel, then 1960’s bank conference building; Hotel Rantapuisto. In all it’s 60’s design glory is a prefect base for the event, which, as one would expect when created by Paola Suhonen / Ivana Helsinki, mixes music, art, design and Finnish nature.

It’s a rather grown up festival, in a good way, with nice dining and movie screenings - forget muddy fields and tents, and enjoy lounge bar concerts with a living room feeling design hotel rooms - with a twist of spooky woodland vibe:
(Photo credits at the end of the post)

I only attended the first night but immediately regretted not booking the whole weekend. I managed to miss my old pal’s Suad’s sunset concert opening the night (Finland, October, it sets early) but got to listen to a truly magical Mikko Joensuu auditorium set, and then join the wood tour, which Paola put together of different musical performances and installations in the woods surrounding the hotel. A super idea although a bit over crowded, but let’s see how they do it this year.

The hotel restaurant had put together a vegetarian buffet of which lots of the ingredients were picked from the backyard -like sugar coated lichen decorating the dessert. And Pekka Haavisto (Finnish presidential candidate) was DJing! I ate so much I had to lounge on a pile of cushions to get over my food coma while watching one of the feature films.

Looking forward to this upcoming autumn to see how the second year of the festival will turn out!

Photos from the Superwood FB page by
1. Aleksi Tikkala - 2 & 5. David Jakob - 3. Tero Kiiski - 4. Mira Lintunen - 6 & 7. Paula Hiipakka

Square instagram photos by me except photo of Pekka Haavisto from @pekka.haavisto

LIGHT CARNEVAL AT LINNANMÄKI

Eddi is in Iran for a month, and I am working on a lot of projects, but I've tried to come up with some bigger and smaller quality-time things for me and Dag to do when possible. We've played some word games and made late night apple pie, and the other day we went to  Linnanmäki with my sisters and their boys. The amusement park normally closes after summer, or is open just a few hours in the afternoon, but throws a light carneval each October with evening opening hours and different programs and light installations. (Light is an often recurring theme -and subject- in happenings over here, as we tend to go towards darker days, and there is an acute lack of it...) Last time we went to the Light Carnival was three years ago when Dag was just a baby.

The park really looks pretty with all the lights of the attractions on (in summer it is so light so they don't really show) as well as the trees illuminated, led-light infused cotton candy, and light installations and performances all around.

There are a few attractions for smaller kids that are free of charge, which is a welcome feature, but we of course had to buy tickets with Dag for the old carousel too. This time Dag rode the giraffe.

Tonight is the last night of the light carneval!

DRESSED UP FOR OCTOBER

I went to a Octoberfest-themed party in the weekend and dressed inspired by myself in 1983.

(Even though I remembered my tiny dirndl had the colours the other way around, with a red skirt.)

I did not have that much time to put together an outfit and also wanted one just inspired by the look of a dirndl, not to create one. But if there's a next time I'll sew myself a pair of high waisted lederhosen-inspired suspender shorts (or skirt) instead!

This is a selfmade skirt and the waistcoat/corselette is one I use on stage as part of a very differently themed outfit.

This was also a great opportunity to get to use one of my petticoats! I seldom wear them nowadays.
I should go to parties more often I guess (not just perform at them).

AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON

I was working from home today and took a long lunch break to go out on a little adventurous walk with Dag.

He had all his gear with him, and warned me not to step on the fallen leaves, as those would trap you and suck you right down to the hot lava core of earth.
(Good to know!)

It got a bit colder here in between and nature shifted colours so quickly - but now wonder; it's almost October by now!

Autumn textures.

Autumn leaves.

Autumn trees.

 We sat down on a rock for a little picnic.
The cats joined in; they often follow us around when out on walks!

 Everything tastes better when outdoors.


The sandwhich was so big for Dag he had to close his eyes in order to eat it.

And then we continued our little afternoon adventure in search of magic trees, watching out for dangerous rock-bombs dropping from the sky, evil cows and all the other things the vivid imagination of a four year old can come up with.

APPLES, THE BLACK BERET AND THE PONCHO

It's that time of the year! The beret is out and the poncho is on and you can totally wrap yourself in it and there are apples everywhere:
It's autumn!

THAT ARTSY COAT

The good thing about going trough and organising your closet in deep-mode (OK; I can actually think of many, but let's start with this one) is that you may re-discover objects and pieces you had totally forgotten about. I am going trough stuff in the city apartment and found this old coat of mine, which is rather cute with an artsy vibe and just right for the weather we are having right now.

Last time I wore it was when I was pregnant, actually. And I found some beauty store vouchers expiring in 2010 in the pockets! (Damn, 2010, that was so long ago already!)

The coats is from ModCloth from years back, velvet leggings some randoms and shoes old (do anone even care about these things anymore?) I do get a lot of questions about my turban, which nowadays is as high up on my can't-live-without-it list as my black beret, especially for those days when I have curls waiting underneath like now: mine is made of in terrycloth and from Kuokkasen Peruukkiliike; you can find these from a lot of wig shops. It is also rather easy to make your own!

Well, time for me to coat along now, ta-ta!

MINT GREEN, WINE RED AND KITTIES

When it's dark and grey outside I easily tend to wrap myself in a lot of black but the opposite can be quite soothing for the eye as well, strong colours in the middle of all desaturation around.

Lately I have been living with such a schedule and activities that I don't really get around using any of my "normal" clothes anylonger. It's most often just studiowear. Reminds me of when I was studying my first year of painting and I used to sew lots of clothes to myself that I also never really -well other than at goa parties - got to wear. (With no internet back then like now so nowhere to show them off! hastag: backinthedays. Or something...)  We just painted all day long at school and I'd wear an old bathrobe from the seventies with a long zipper and mushrooms on it (well it was actually a pretty cool bathrobe) to cover  my clothes and then after school I'd work in the harbour in work wear.

But ta-da! I just blend in my studio wear with my regular way for the in between moments!
With a kitty romper under my skirt.
Also, kitty rompers make grey November days a litle bit better.

The kitty romper is from Coquetry Clothing. The shoes are those water proof ones from Melissa.
I have to say though, that the jacket,m as lovely as the colour may be, is made from such a wool blend that makes the texture look totally awful after less than two months of wear. Booh.

Also, as I mentioned the studio, all our spring classes are now 5% off until Christmas with the code JOULU5! Shopping shopping from our webstore!

SANDRO, SUN AND CIRKUS ART

A few Sundays ago everyone had managed to have the day off together and get together for  a big family brunch. We celebrated a couple of birthdays once we were at it.

Dag had been very excited the whole week over going to  brunch. (As you can see this was obviously before his haircut.)

I got a belated birthdaypresent. A cherry dress!

I had been dreaming of Sandro's brunch for some time already, because it's definitely the best brunch in town. Northern African and Lebanese food, champagne, mini smoothie shots and lots of cake, plus awesome service. On Saturdays the brunch is vegan and vegetarian and on Sundays the warm options also have meat and fish (while the cold dishes, apart from the tsatsiki, all were vegan).

Happy food death. The pickles, seriously.

And even happier mint-tea & cake death.

Cousin Feke can't enjoy that quite yet though, although he would very much want to.

After brunch we went over to Kuusisaari, where I had managed to lure everyone over for an art exhibition at Villa Gyllenberg.

Helsinki as seen from the "side".

It has really been such a beautiful autumn so far!

The view from the villa's garden is rather impressive. Tapiola, where we (or, nowadays just me and Dag...) live when in town, is just across on the other side.

Villa Gyllenberg is an art deco villa that after the Gyllenberg couple's death serves as an art museum featuring their vast art collection. I have actually never been there before, and it was worth a visit!

I wanted to go there because of their exhibition of art portraying street art and the circus. Here's a postcard of one of the paintings. The actual house and it's own collection turned out to be more interesting though, and we were lucky enough to have an friend of my sister's husband working there who showed us around talking about the history of the house and also interesting details on some of the pieces of art there.

There were many works of Schjerfbeck.

But among renaissance art and dynasty vases it got a bit nervous to walk around with a three year old.
So outside he got to run his well behaviour off a bit and found this giant leaf pile.

Which I also eventually climbed into. Autumn joys!

And then we saw this little fella who had just fetched lunch!