Saturday 31 March 2018

MÄMMI TIME!


Altough being stacked up in every store for the moment, it still seems I am in the minority of Finns actually rejoicing that mämmi season is here! Well at least if you ask my Facebook feed, that is. It is a short and sweet (and a bitter one, if we are being literal and going after that taste here) season, lasting only for a week or two around Easter. Once my parents did this thing though where they froze mämmi and had it for midsummer dessert. With  Christmas dishes for dinner. (It tasted wrong on so many leves, but was rather fun of course)

Traditionally meant as a dessert, I like to have my mämmi (or memma, as we say in Swedish) for breakfast. I buy the version without sugar that is somehow sweetened slowly by itself. Don't ask, can't explain how it's done. As I posted here some seasons before, I started having mine with fruit and quark instead of the traditional cream and sugar. So I can both piss off people by saying I actually like mämmi, or then the tradtionalists by having mine in new ways. However, this year I noticed a version selling mämmi with quark in a duo-pack, so it is not just me! Or, then it was because of me.

I think the quarks with lemon or vanilla flavours taste best with mämmi, which makes it somethng of a double-easter thing, as I think flavoured quarks tend to resemble pasha, which we also have for Easter,  in taste. Pasha is a dessert that is served in Eastern Orthodox countries but also in Finland (having been part of Russia for 109 years just up until our independece in 1917 there are both linguistic and culinaristic remnants from that time) and, is unlike mämmi, perhaps easier to like. Kind of like it tastes good without having to think about it twice. It has quark and butter and cream in it with fruit and nuts and you get about all the calories you need for a week to survive in one serving. (BRING IT ON!)

Mämmi is bought in carton boxes made to resemble the original birch bark bowls it was stored and served in back in ye olde days. The dish is made out of rye flour and malt and baked in the oven. So it has quite a lot of protein and fibres and keeps your stomach full and well-working. Even though do I like it could still be described as what disappointment tastes like, because as I kid you'd picture it was some kind of chocolate pudding and then BOOM it was so much not that. However, if you ever find ourself over here at this time of year I do urge you to try this only-in-Finland dish!



Wednesday 28 March 2018

YOUR EASTER WITCH



Ok, perhaps not exactly. But suitably for a time of growth, flowers, resurrection and Easter witches Asko and I did a photoseries for my act Happily Ever After, which is something of a reversed Sleeping Beauty ghost story.

Photos by Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan Photography
Concept and muah by me.

Sunday 25 March 2018

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW - IN THE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE


Four things right-right now.

The books above my head.

A cat in the after noon sunshine.

Reading the Egytptian Book of the Dead (but now I got distracted with a documentary on Marie Antoinette's coiffures.)

I want Mikael Hadreas pants.


As a side note; this was the first time I made a post in one sitting without moving anything else than my arms to take photos and grab the laptop. So now we know that!


Saturday 24 March 2018

EASTER BRANCHES - VAIHTOEHTO VITSALLE


(Half of the headline is indeed in Finnish in case you had to look twice. It gives the content of this post away.)

Easter is just around the corner and over here, if you have kids, it's time to decorate some branches!
(If you can find some, that is, as winter has lingered around longer than usual this year...)

The branches are for when the small ones go out "witching", which can be compared a bit to trick or treat on Halloween, altough here no tricks are involved, just wishing well for the year ahead.* Tradition is to decorate the branches with feathers, but I tend to go for animal-free options, and often just a make-do of what I happen to have in the cupboards at home. I just saw a pretty funny video from one of the big supermarket chains though, saying their feathers are a certified left over product from the food (=meat)  industry, which I think is good; to take as much as possible into use as long as it's there. But I'll stick to my alternatives anyway.

Here are some ideas -

Wrapping ribbon.

Folder paper...thingies. With more wrapping ribbon.

And pom-poms!
As the old wisdom goes: when in doubt, go for pom-poms.
Ok perhaps that was just made up right now but pretty sure it works.

I just got this idea to make bows out of chocolate bon-bon wrapping but that would mean I'd have to go trough a whole bag myself and...OK, it is so going to happen.

*) I've written a few sentences more on the tradition of small Easter witches, which combines both pagan and Orthodox believes, before; you can find it under my Easter-tag.

Friday 23 March 2018

MY TWO-DECADE CARDIGAN


The other day I realised that the oldest piece of clothing in my wardrobe, apart from vintage, is a cardigan I bought in 1997 that I still use.  I was a bit impressed actually, as we seldom tend to think of clothing of today to last for that long. And cardigans tend to get floppy easily; this one not.  I remember the store I bought it from (which is no more), and was looking at it twice or three time before actually buying it as it was expensive at the time at 120FiM, which nowadays equals to about 20€. But back then that was a lot more. You could really get a lot for the green one hundred bill, with a stubborn Sibelius on it.

There was also this little episode when this cardigan went missing for about a year and a half or so after I moved away from home and I was certain I had not lost it anywhere. It was later found in a bag under my teenaged sister's bed, as she had borrowed it without asking and then hid the evidence. Nowadays she thoroughly denies this ever happend though. Now that I remembered this again I have to tease her a little about it.


Tuesday 20 March 2018

SUPPORT THE ATELIERI O.HAAPALA BOOK!



Anyone who has rad my blog troughout the years would by this point be familiar with Atelieri O.Haapala,  the neo-victorian portrait studio by Saara Salmi and Marco Melander! The project went on for a decade, and there were many amazing themes, backdrops and set ups, with thousands of beautiful pictures as a result. I've had the pleasure to have my photo taken several time during the years, both in studio but mainly at the pop-up events.

And now they are aiming to make a beautiful and elaborate book out of it!

You can pre-order the book by supporting Atelieri's Indiegogo campaign, or support the book with smaller printed perks. And please do! You will love it - and I definitely want my copy too - so lets make this happen!

You can find most of Atelieri O.Haapalas photos in their Facebook albums.

Oh, and the image you see being edited at one spot in the film?
This is the final version; from Helsinki Burlesque Festival 2017.



Friday 16 March 2018

WONDERLAND


Tonight! At our studio starting 18hrs - Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki presents: Wonderland! Come and draw and enjoy the nice setting, music and atmosphere.

Photo by Neil Kendall.

Wednesday 14 March 2018

I GIVE IT A DAY OR TWO


Ah, the joy of a clean surface.



Especially since it looked like this moments before:
To be honest, half of this is on the floor now but the mind rests so much better with at least one level done.

Monday 12 March 2018

FROM FROZEN SPARKLE TO SEAGULLS


Today I heard the first seagulls - winter will be over soon! Here are, however, some pictures from last week when it still was very much winter.

And here I am aswell! Slowly returning as the light slowly increases here on these latitudes. Like a Moomin troll I have hibernated from the blogosphere during the darkest months. (I always liked the Moomin winter book the best -well that one, and the one with the flood and the drifting heater - how he, against his nature, wakes up one winter and finds the world totally different with different creatures existing around him).
But as much as I sometimes can love winter, I do long for summer, for everything to wake up from around me. This year it feels specifically significant, as I feel a lot of things have been resting under snow so to say, for now to finally move on and be able to enjoy the sunlight. 

This year winter came late, so late that the snowfall now in mid-march does not bother me. The end of February was super cold, colder than usual for the time of year, but so beautiful I had to stop every now and then and just gaze with my mouth open. And then close it rather quickly again, as you may now it does hurt a little to breathe when it is below -15C. But really, it was like the winters from my childhood and even more - everything coated in a white glittery layer, sparkling in the sunshine, sunshine with a hue that gives everything this cold golden-turquoise shade. The air actually sparkled, as ice crystals slowly fall down from the clear sky.  (There was more sparkle all around than the backstage floor of a burlesque show and for those who know, that is A LOT) So inspiring. Photos can not do it justice, and actually can’t do at all, because both my phone and camera shut down due to the cold. Winter is so quiet, everything is padded in snow, like sound isolation, and you can listen to the silence. The other however week I heard something that I have never heard before - the tingling sound of the ice crystals falling on the hard, frozen ground. Pure Narnia; better than Narnia, because this is real! (I, amazingly enough, managed to get a little bit of it on my phone, which you can almost hear on instagram, before it shut down.)

Look! Everything sparkles.

The past year I’ve read up on my old interests of space, physics and cosmos in general (maybe because my interests moves in waves and comes and goes, perhaps it has something to do with ageing to choose this topic again, not sure) and I think about all the things that grow and exist on this planet and how versatile it is and what it would look like if someone from another existence would enter and if they would be amazed at what they saw. I also think about the face that some people, many, will never come up to these latitudes, or feel cold like ours, and never get to see how this looks and feels. Just like there are many other places and phenomena that I will not experience elsewhere.

We usually get this kind of cold once a year, or every second. The tabloids do mention it all WINTER IS COMING-style each and every time when temperatures are about to drop,  but this year “the cold from Siberia” got a little extra coverage. Since Siberia actually is our north-east neighbour, it is not that strange, and since it does indeed get below -20 every now and then it felt rather exaggerated to make a big fuzz about it. This year there were even warnings not to go outside, as some cold days were windy (which lower the temperatures even more.) at which point I clearly knew I have gotten old(er), as I find myself thinking that “back in my days when I worked out side in the harbour nobody came with any warnings to us No”! Or perhaps they even did, we just did not have the internet, glued to the palm of our hands all the time, to check from back then.


Lets insert this picture of a branch covered in beautiful frosty flakes of ice here, so that there's not too much text all at once.

So last year was busy, the last years have been busy, as have been noticeable trough my blog hibernation. But I have been here for over ten years; 2018 marks is eleventh year blogging - that is such a long time! Blogging is so different nowadays - of course, everything develops and changes with time. I never thought I’ die blogging still. Or, I never thought that I wouldn’t either, I just did not think about it that much, no plan. That’s the whole thing with everything, you never know what will happen and how things will turn out. I did not think, ten years ago when I started with burlesque, that performing would be my main profession within a few years, and that I’d be running a burlesque school. I couldn’t even have imagined that. Eight years ago a burlesque school was the dream, but it sounded so crazy; we thought it could never work over here. But - here we are. Not exactly getting rich but getting by, somewhat. But more on that topic another time.
I did think that ten years from then I would have children but not only one child.  Not all things can be chosen. I never thought I’d live out in the countryside either. Or marry a farmer. But, again, here we are.  (I did remember thinking maybe it was time for someone more academic as I was getting tired of all those rock n’roll and Big Artist guys, and without doing that much more about it still I ended up with my farming geophysicist. That’s how things sometimes go, premonition.)

Deers on a morning walk, a rather daily sight when you live out here.

No I never thought I’d live on a farm but here we are in midst of fields and forest. Still less than an hour from town, so in some ways I guess it’s the best of both worlds. We still have a labyrinth of boxes at home, and a renovation that is happening at such a slow snail pace it’s frustrating. Both Eddi and me work and travel a lot and when we are home relaxing is so much more tempting than emptying out past generation's stuffed-away-stuff from the attic or tearing away and old roof. The living situation has thus been very un-inspirational since we moved away from Tapiola, and unpractical. Which, apart from having approx. 12 hours too little per the daily 24, is also one of the reason for my little time-out. But some things have actually happened here at home, bit by bit, and it feels like we are actually starting to get somewhere, that it will soon be nice to hang out here again. Along with the light starting to flow in from the windows in the morning, I feel a lot of other things as well are moving forward. Something feels different and new.

Spring is coming, summer will soon arrive, the seagulls are shouting already. Lets see where we go from here!

Thursday 8 March 2018

THE VINTAGE REALM


Ok everybody!
Long time no internet, and happy we-are-totally-living-in-what-was-once-sci-fi-future-2018!

So, last year I was working in this production that will now be on TV1 starting March 29; Vintage-valtakunta:




Here's the teaser clip! Sadly it won't show abroad, Finland only:

Vintage-valtakunta | Teaser | Vintage-valtakunta