Easter hare

We saw this lovely fella in the garden yesterday evening. We believe he's a European Hare. I'd noticed footprints through the snow on a few occassions recently that definitely weren't cat or bird and looked too big to be rabbit, so I think it must have been him. We stood in the kitchen watching him, while he sniffed the air and twitched his ears towards someone walking by about 100m away, all the while we stood in the kitchen undected about 5m away.

With the hare's mythological link to Easter/Eostre I thought it was very fitting that we saw him the day after Easter, I wonder if he was going home after spending the weekend hiding eggs?

musings

It's been a good easter weekend - nice and relaxed. We had a few people over for drinks and food on Sunday. David did most of the cooking, apart from some moroccan flat bread using a recipe from Jamie Oliver's return of the naked chef and some hot cross buns from Nigella Lawson's Feast.

I've not made hot cross buns before and am not a huge fan of Nigella's - I was reading a blog the other day that then linked to another blog that talked about Nigella that made me giggle as I'm pleased to hear there are other people out there that have a similar perception of her. I haven't watched her programmes much, wouldn't go out of my way to watch her, but if I do come across her I probably wouldn't switch over, but would watch amused, as the second blogger I linked to above appears to be, by her - not quite believing that she's real. Anyway, the hot cross buns came out well. I'd like to try to make some crumpets next.

I also think I've been watching too much TV lately - we seem to be watching American Idol... anyway, I've come to the conclusion that there's a certain similarity between Paula Abdul and Sandra Bullock I'm not quite sure what it is, but there's definitely something.

Edit... I posted this but there was a third thing I wanted to mention and in my usual libran way forgot. We were talking about the David and Goliath t-shirt slogans last night.... well, I kind of was, everyone else was thinking I had completely lost it - we'd had a bit of wine and I started talking about the slogans, I think in relation to certain boys turning into toads rather than Princes. Anyway, I looked it up on good 'ol Wikipedia afterwards and thought I'd link to my ramblings. I don't think I'd realised there was quite so much controvesy over the slogans - but thought their range was quirky and fun.

Hanko

Last weekend we spent some time west of Helsinki in and around Hanko . We were very off season, but it was nice to go and relax and explore a little. We saw a castle, interesting street signs, lakes, sea, snow, sauna and our little hut and lots of other interesting things. The area's meant to be really bustling in the summer so maybe we'll go back and see what it's like?

The strangest thing we encountered was a peperoni pizza, which also had pineapple and tuna on it - a very strange combination, the yummy chips we had with it made up for the weird topping. We're meeting up with some friends for pizza and beer this evening, so lets hope there's some more traditional toppings going.

We also stopped at Fiskars on the way home on Monday, unfortunately everything was shut, but it looked really interesting - lots of history and crafty boutiques, so we'll definitely be taking a visit there soon.

In other news - I proudly present my finished spring socks. Yes, I know they're bright! They were fun to knit with the alternating colours. I shortened the foot of the first sock as I mentioned I was going to do and as you can see they fit pretty well. The photo of the tulips below is the inspiration for my colour combination.

Rabbiting on about spring again....

I know I keep rabbiting on about it nearly being spring, and is it nearly spring, and it's not cold enough to be winter blah blah blah. I'm not quite sure where this has all come from. It definitely hasn't been a severe winter, so it's not as if I'm needing it to warm up so that I can dig myself out of a 10m high snow drift, and it hasn't seemed a particularly dark winter - the joys of living a long way north but actually managing to move south and also closer to civilisation so there's more light pollution. I don't usually count down the days to the start of any other season, who knows what's happening in my brain?

So, anyway to continue the where is spring rabbit:

I spotted some snowdrops coming up in the garden yesterday. I don't think there's a lot of bulbs planted in our garden, but these were nice to see. My seedlings I planted the other week are doing OK. There's been lots of germination, some are a little lanky so we'll see how they go. The peas I planted are doing very well and I've potted them up with some support. Everything's still inside though.

I've also nearly finished my spring socks.... nearly? but there's two socks there. Yes, but if you notice the bottom one is longer in the foot than the first one. After I cast on for sock number two I tried on sock number one and decided it was too big, but as I'd already occupied my needles with sock number two there was nothing I could do about it till sock number two was finished. So, now sock number two's done I'll rip back sock number one so they're the same length and re-do the toe. When ripping back a few rows I tend to use this technique rather than just ripping and hoping that I can pick up all the right stitches again at the right place.

It shouldn't be that easy....

I'm still a little in shock.... our friends Jo and Andrew came to visit us last weekend. We went into town on the Saturday to mooch around and also with an underlying mission of finding shoes for me for the wedding. I thought it would be difficult - I usually get an idea of what I want in my head and then get pretty stubborn even when it's obvious that what I'm imagining doesn't exist in my current location or time, but we figured if anyone could help me it would be Jo - who loves shoes. So, we went into town and the first shoe shop we looked in we found the perfect pair of shoes. This is too easy, we both think, so explain to the lady in the shop that we can't buy the shoes as they're the fist pair we've seen and we need to look in all the shoe shops in Helsinki first, but that we'll be back if we don't find anything better. I think we both knew that we wouldn't find anything better, but we did look in lots of other shoe shops before finally arriving back at the first shoe shop and buying the shoes I'd tried on. It still feels as if it was a little too easy, but they are the right shoes.