Light through icicles

I thought last winter was hard but despite our November holiday in Spain this one has been far worse for me, not because of the weather – it hasn’t been harsh at all – but because of the wearing lack of light. In the southern parts of the country where we live the sun hasn’t been properly visible in weeks.

Today, we were finally shown some indisputable signs testifying that the centre of our solar system is alive and well after all. Its bright light shimmered through the heavy layer of grey for a few short moments in the afternoon. A strip of sunlight actually entered the kitchen diner and dazzled me for a second or two, several times. More of that for me please!

Coffee with a friend

‘A cup of coffee can be the beginning of a life-long friendship’, reads this aphorism painted on the wall of a roadside café diner somewhere along the European route E4 in Sweden. We happened to stop there when driving from Stockholm to Helsingborg on our way to visit friends in Luxembourg several years ago. I believe the red wall is still there brightening the break of all kinds of random travellers. There’s no need to redecorate when you have this conspicuous a guarantee to make your customers’ day.

I hope you will be able to have a cup of coffee or a nice cup of tea with a dear friend today. And if you ask me it certainly never hurts to have something sweet on the side. A small muffin, just a tiny piece of cake, some ice cream or a little bit of chocolate perhaps.

Happy Valentine to you dear reader, random or otherwise!

Men in white

Saturday morning, we did have a reason to drive to Helsinki: to take my sister the dressmaker and her daughter to the Tallinn ferry and to fetch a few books we had ordered from the bookstore.

As so often in recent winters, there is a lot of snow in our capital but in the main shopping area the streets and sidewalks are heated and therefore snow-free at all times. Yesterday morning they were also completely dry as snowfall was at a halt for a change. The pedestal of the statue at the Three Blacksmiths’ Square, which is probably the most popular meeting point in Helsinki, looked like a huge layered cake with whipped cream icing. 

This blacksmith has the face of the sculptor Felix Nylund himself.

The Three Blacksmiths themselves were wearing a white little side cap and a rabbit-fur-like collar or shawl of snow. I had to shoot them. It’s not that often you have a chance to admire well-built men wearing nothing but a couple of light accessories.

Knitting by the screen

When I lived closer to ‘civilization’ I was an enthusiastic moviegoer. There was a period in the 1990s when I saw practically every quality movie they showed in the theatres here. I had a part-time job in downtown Helsinki and often arranged my comings and goings so that I could leave the office early and pop in a matinee on my way home, most often in a cinema a couple of minutes from the office. Now that we have a 45-minute drive to the theatres and no longer any reason to make the journey on a regular basis I’m afraid we only see a handful of movies on the silver screen annually.

Yet we do see quite a lot of films on our own white screen. A few years ago, my husband invested in a first-class home cinema system, which has certainly proved to be money very well spent. It is in rather constant use this time of the year. We watch through the projector not only movies but also the few series we both follow. In fact, spending time by the screen is our main hobby during winter evenings and is helping us endure this – so it seems – never-ending cold and dark season when you don’t even need to pull down the blackout blinds no matter how early you are switching the projector on.

But it would feel a total waste of time to sit by the home screen idle. I would never feel this way in a cinema where I want to concentrate 100% without any popcorn or other disturbing refreshments, but at home I no longer feel at ease unless I’m knitting. As sitting by the screen is virtually the only time I’m knitting, it means my patterns must be simple and preferably in just one colour not to take too much of my attention. So it has been for the most part socks plus a couple of hoods in a simple knit 3, purl 3 rib.

Actually, there are two more screens by which I’m often knitting these days: the windscreen when we are driving somewhere during daytime (the above photo is from last winter; we haven’t seen this much sun in ages) and the upstairs TV screen when I’m watching something I have recorded for myself and it’s past my husband’s bedtime. 

Currently, I’m hooked on two Danish series, Forbrydelsen (the American remake is called ‘The Killing’) and the political drama Borgen (an NBC remake to follow). We have seen so many brilliant series from Denmark in recent years it’s no wonder they have gained wide international acclaim but I don’t believe in remaking something that’s already perfect. I’m definitely skipping the remakes. Well, I did watch some of the British Wallander episodes, much thanks to Kenneth Branagh but also because they were very well done. After all, the original Swedish series was only great, not perfect.

Art from Oaxaca and more

Lamp shade crafted out of handmade bee wax candles.

There was another reason for our recent trip to Riihimäki besides the visit to the factory outlet. I wanted to see the two Mexican exhibitions ongoing at the art museum there. Both present culture from Oaxaca, a state with a population of close to 4 million located in the southern part of the United Mexican States (which, by the way, is formed by 31 states and the City of Mexico and has an estimated population of some 113 million!).

‘Luz y Color de Oaxaca’ shows works by 10 young artists. A few light and bright details are pictured below.

But it was the second exhibition entitled ‘Objeto transverso’ that I was more interested in. It displays objects that were created in workshops bringing Oaxacan artisans together with designers and artists to renew traditional thinking in handicraft work. It is a project by the Oaxaca design centre, the Centro de Diseño de Oaxaca, which is “the first public institution in Mexico to promote design as a strategic tool for fostering social, economic, and cultural development”, as described on their website.

The exhibits include glass items and molded bee wax candles;

accessories and table textiles woven in thread and wire on traditional back-strap looms;

woolen rugs, clothing and other items woven on pedal looms;

as well as tinware and items woven by hand out of palm leaves.

I made a peculiar observation: the crafts and designs considered traditional and characteristic of a particular part of the world have become astonishingly global. I felt any of the objects could have been created by a local artisan, excluding the tin and palm leaf items, which, in turn, could have been from India, for example. The methods and processes may differ but the language of handicraft seems to be startlingly universal.

I must add a few words about the museum itself. For such a humble town with a population of less than 30,000, Riihimäki has quite a notable Art Museum founded in the 1990s thanks to a donation made by a prominent Helsinki-based art and antique dealer. His remarkable collection of a good 2000 pieces consisted of more than 1000 paintings, some 200 sculptures, 400 prints, drawings and watercolours, and 500 antique items.

When a collection is this vast only a small fraction of it can be on display at any given time.

The present exhibition shows a few dozen domestic works, mainly from the early decades of the 20th century, including 12 of the collection’s 36 paintings by our beloved Helene Schjerfbeck, one of the most celebrated and renowned Nordic artists. This was a delightful surprise as we were unfortunate enough to miss the extensive exhibition that marked the 150th anniversary of her birth at our national gallery the Ateneum Art Museum last year. (I can’t believe we actually managed to miss that.)

Schjerfbeck has become such a major star, such an untouchable I couldn’t even imagine taking my camera out of my pocket in front of her work. But I did shoot a few of the other paintings. Those pictured above (from left to right) by Jalmari Ruokokoski, Hugo Backmansson and Ingrid Ruin are the ones I found the most energizing in the present show, in addition to the Schjerfbecks, naturally.