Berry story

There has been news about how Finnish people just let the berries rot in the forests instead of picking them. Estimated 90% of the berries are not picked, although they're VERY healthy and full of vitamins and antioxidants. They're really so called super foods!

We have lots of different berries in Finland and while I was in Kuopio, I picked raspberries and blueberries from the forest and blackcurrants from my mom's yard. Later in the autumn it's going to be time for lingonberries and cloudberries.

Raspberries can be found from thickets, where it's rather difficult to move around. But blueberries grow in many kinds of forests and it's easier to pick them, just that your back might be hurting the next day :)

For the blueberries we (me, mom, Seppo) went to an island accessible only by boat.

Of course we wore the most fashionable clothes we could find! Notice our beltbags and rubber boots.

It took about 20 minutes to reach the island. It was a windy day, so the waves were almost big (scary!) but there were no mosquitos at all in the forest (nice!).

We found a place for the boat and Seppo tied the ropes tightly on the trees, so that we would be able to go home, too.

Earlier I said that picking blueberries is easy. True, usually it is, but this time we chose an island where we had to climb a lot to get to the blueberry lands. It was good balance training, especially when we came down with our full buckets.

So blue! So big! So free! This year the berries are very big and juicy and there are lots of them. In Finland everyone is entitled to pick forest berries anywhere for free but still most of the berries are not picked.

The views from the island were amazing. Combined with the soothing sound of wind going through the leaves of trees and crispy air, it felt very relaxing to be in the middle of nowhere :)

I picked about 3 litres of blueberries with my bare hands (mom and Seppo used "poimuri", kind of tool for picking berries) because I like to feel the berries and bushes. And when we came back, I made this.

Blueberry milk! The best dessert from my childhood.

Today I'm going to the forest again to pick some berries with Yi-Te Lai. Our Taiwanese-Finnish group isn't afraid of the promised rain for today!

Everywhere you are

Birds are singing outside and finally a tiny amount of sunshine. Maybe the warm weathers are waiting for my holidays to begin in July?

I had a fastish weekend in Helsinki. Both of my older cousins graduated from the same high school at the same time and of course I wanted to be there :) Meet Vili and Valdís (and me)!



I've always disliked Helsinki a lot. I don't feel comfortable there, too many people and the atmosphere makes me feel sad everytime. Or in fact it must be just the atmosphere, because I felt extremely comfortable in the 3rd biggest city in the world, Seoul :)

But this time I went to Seurasaari just for a walk and it was special! It was so amazing that I forgot the time and missed my train back to Joensuu...Too bad I forgot to take my camera with me, I saw lots of birds, a girl fishing, old houses, sunshine, green shades, nice small paths, tourists, the most expensive cafe ever (tea 4 euros??? wtf?????) and interesting "art".

I want to thank Mika for letting us to stay at his tiny place for the weekend. First time to meet him and he feels like a close friend already :)

New friends, old friends. Saori, Sora, Chiaki and Hyeonjae left. I miss you all!



These summer nights are the ones I'm waiting for. This summer with Minttu, because Juha is leaving for Canada for 2 months :) I truly hope he's going to bring me lots and lots and lots of tea when he comes back in August!

Blue wings

So I've booked tickets to Korea now! And suddenly tiny excitement is starting to grow inside me, this time I'm really going there for 2 weeks! One travel guide came in the post on Friday and I've been reading it all the time, I also have some (old) books about Korea from the library at home. I'm trying to absorb all the information I can get before going there!

But that's all from my plans. Except that I'm going to watch Lost in translation this evening, just to enjoy the sceneries, which are similar to Korea :) My 4th time to watch the movie, which gets better every time.

(and I was cleaning today, also washed sauna for the first time. I never want to do that again, please give me just public sauna where I can go once a week and I never have to wash it!)

I keep my blog so that my friends and relatives can keep up what's going on in my life. But which blogs are my favourite ones that I read often? Or which pages I check almost every day?

1) Grand Narrative tells about Korean pop culture in an interesting way. I accidentally found this blog in summer and I've been reading it since. I like especially the writer's bloggings about Korean women and the world they're living in.

2) Liivian Talossa (in Finnish), just because I like the photos :)

3) Ravelry is for knitting addicts, countless amounts of patterns that are just waiting to be made for someone or for yourself. I go there and dream that I had more time to knit.

4) The Ecologist was a magazine which came to me until this summer, but the paper version was turned into e-magazine so I have to take my daily dose of Ecologist from the net these days. My favourite part of the magazine is "Behind the label", which explains everything you need but don't want to know about basic products, which are not good for you or the environment.

5) Blogilista (in Finnish) is for those days, when I don't have anything to read. Then I check for some fashion blogs (and it just can't stop amazing me how some young girls are so interested in fashion!) or any blog that has been updated that moment.

and finally

6) Osmo Soininvaara 's blog (in Finnish) is one of my favourite's because I like his books and most of the new ideas he has. The best part is the lively conversation which brings lots of different perspectives to the things he's writing about.

and

7) Kemikaalicocktail (in Finnish), which is just basic stuff for people, who are interested in environment and their own health.

Tomorrow there might be snow on the ground, so maybe these are the final times of taking this kind of colourful, stormy and leafy photos :) I'm waiting for snow SOOOO much, so let's hope I'm surrounded by white in the morning...

October moon and big plans

Long time no words.

Busy busy busy b-u-s-y. I hope I had more time to be, like the title of this blog is emphasizing. Photos from Tampere are so old that I don't feel like putting them here anymore.

Besides, it looks like this now.


Not in the centre of Joensuu, but on the countryside. Winter's one breath away. And the limpid air has the scent of snow, which I totally love. Snow snow snow!

Earlier, I spent time with the children of my brother. Nea is 5, Moona is 4. My brother and his wife were enjoying the sun of Crete and after watching the aeroplane leave, I was adventuring with the girls a bit; first by train, then by bus and finally by car. We also visited the library, which was also a big adventure for all of us ;)




On the last sunny day of the autumn we walked to a local bird tower, everything was so blue and water was low. Huge reeds were filling the beach and we saw no birds. It was +19 celsius that day and the next day the weather changed suddenly, only +5.





To get through these busy times, I have something to wait for. I'm going to travel to Korea (please don't ask if it's south or north, everyone should know that it's (almost) impossible to travel to north!) in January. To spend time with my lovely friends, to experience the huge masses of people, to visit Panmunjeom, to eat kimchi and drink tea and soju (oh, the taste is so horrible!), to adore old buildings and temples and yes, I thought about stopping by at the local library :)


(photos from here)

I'm not so fond of travelling, I consider myself more like a person who likes to stay at home (and besides, flying is very bad for the environment...) and find interesting things from everyday life. I was travelling a lot when I was a child, I was in an aeroplane for the first time when I was 3 and I've been flying around in Europe at least 20 times. It's not much compared to people, who fly A LOT, but for me it's much.

All this time I've had bad conscience that Hyeyeon and other Korean friends have been telling me to come for a visit, but I've never had enough money or will to decide that this time I'm going...until now.

I guess you just know when it's time to go :)


"Deep river runs its course
to a warm horizon
shadows of falling leaves
october moon and rusty skies
ever changing feelings
seeds of autumn in my mind"
(Chicane : Autumn tactics)

But now back to this moment, there's apple pie to be baked, hats to be knitted, clothes to be washed.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Thursday. Week almost done, so happy that weekend is coming! Sometimes it's just so difficult to get used to late evenings or early mornings at work. If somebody came today and asked me to continue also next year, I'd say no. It's financially very stupid as well as in all other ways, but that's what I'd answer.


(These photos have nothing to do with my writings, they are from the forest where I was bitten by mosquitos and hit by rain drops, some kind of war monument)

Last week it finally happened, there was one customer at the library who went totally nuts. She almost attacked one immigrant boy, shouted so ugly racist things...When librarian went between them and told to the boy that everything is alright, the woman started calling names of both of them and acted threateningly. Luckily there were also other people at the library at that time and they came for help and finally the woman left.

It's very nice to work alone in the evening shifts, when there is no-one you can turn to if there are any problems. Librarians say that it's going to stay this way until someone gets stabbed or hurt badly...Every year there is talking about how to make work places safer, but nothing is done anyway. It's so different in big libraries where there are many people working in the same building, own caretakers etc.

But well, next autumn I'm trying to have 2 people in the evening shift almost every day. It just means that some of us has to work 3 evenings a week and that means -> no hobbies, no family time. Being home at 9.30 pm.

I bought a new dress! I like the hem :)

And this is something I got from Tanzania, Barack Obama wall cloth! Again lots of thanks to Matti and Merja. Too bad the cloth was too heavy and it dropped from the wall next day, I have to find a way to keep it on the wall :) Matti told me women in Tanzania are wearing this kind of Obama fabrics as dresses and skirts, maybe I should make my own!

But I made my own, this time green socks! It took only 3 months... Knitting is really something that makes you forget everything else. Just as aerobic, singing (I tried to sing this morning in the empty library, nice echo :D) and reading. At the moment I'm reading Rafik Schami's Damaskoksen rakastavaiset (The Dark Side of Love in English) and it's very addictive, it's hard to put that book down and go to sleep in the evenings. It helps a little that the book has almost 900 pages though, so it's too heavy to hold for a long time ;)

Now some tea, aimless tv watching and then reading and then sleeping. Updating this blog takes too much time! I always think I'm going to write about some spesific thing, but it's too difficult. At home I don't have to be in order! I can be as flat as this tyre which exploded last Friday.


PS. I tried to read the last book of Twilight quadrilogy, Breaking dawn, but after violent sex (the best thing that can happen to you when you have sex for the first time [after getting married of course!] is to wake up full of bruises and cuttings! oh gimme more!), getting pregnant (contraception? anyone?) and giving birth to a baby while dying just didn't quite create any interest in me. Oh my, I must be getting old and why I take things so SERIOUSLY!

Truly green

Yay! I finally finished my green green sock (just one...) and the colour is so amazing! It took me 2 months to knit this one, it's just sad that I don't seem to have enough free time these days. I've been reading a lot and of course that time is away from something else. But during juhannus (basically this weekend) I'm going to start knitting the pair for this. Did I already say how much I love the colour? ;) It looks as green as the nature at this time of the year, just more tropical somehow...

When I woke up at 6, it was raining and less than +10 degrees. When I looked outside my window at work, it was raining. And when I decided to go to local hypermarket in the evening, it was still raining. So when I went to the shop, I looked this "cool" (that must be the reason they didn't ask for my papers in local liquor store, no-one under 18 would come to the shop looking this stupid):

It felt like an adventure to walk to the store looking like a ghost. I also kept seeing this boy with red umbrella wherever I went...Thank you Juha for not waiting for me :D




Tomorrow I'm going to cook malesian vegetable curry and bake vanilla muffins with thai basil. True Finnish juhannus food! I bought real English cider to drink with them, because Finnish ciders taste like artificial flavourings. Let's see how Cox apples have been turned into cider by Thatchers and pears by Maguires. Organic white wine is also good especially during hot summer days, so this bottle is going to stay in fridge for a long time...

Speaking of organic, I received a huge parcel from Germany today. It included my BDIH natural cosmetic stuff that I'm using on my sensitive skin. I ordered shampoos, shower gels, moisturisers, cleansers and tooth pastes and paid a lot (I got so many products I'll use these for at least one year), but the prices of these products are half as expensive in Finland. Germany is truly the paradise of all natural and organic products! The webshop I used is Beauty Center Europe, and everything worked well also this time.


The ultimate saviour of my red and flaky (rosacea) skin is this product below. Redness disappears when I use it and I don't look like I have any makeup on, because I don't like makeup stuff. LilyLolo has a stupid name, but it comes in a nice package and works, so who cares about names.

My plants are growing and I have 3 days off! Next week is going to be horrible, only 2 people working in 2 shifts...But I'm not going to think about it yet. Have a nice juhannus you all and enjoy it the way you want to!