snow

I thought I should give a quick update - the predicted snow did come. I think we had about 15cm, although it's difficult to tell as the storm was quite windy as well (and thundery in some parts of Espoo). Some of the snow had fallen before David got home with the tarps, but he battled the snow, wind and dark to better cover the piles before the rest of it fell.

So that's a good start - our neighbour tells us it's too soft for skiing, but if we have a bit of rain and then some more snow it should be good. At least it looks more like what we expect Finland to look like this time of year, and it's so much brighter outside now which is much better.

wood

The changing seasons see us using our outside space in different ways. Where we'd previously had tomato plants is now being used to store fire wood.

This isn't our only wood pile - after 3 cubic meters was delivered yesterday we've now hopefully got enough wood to keep us going this winter.

We haven't had a lot of snow yet, but it's definitely colder than this time last year and there is snow forecast for later today (hopefully after David comes back from work with more tarps and we get the piles properly covered).

I have my fingers crossed for the Finnish winter experience we missed out on last year with it being too warm. Items at the top of my list include seeing the sea freeze over and the ice breakers in use. I'd also like to have a proper white Christmas - an occurrence which so far has been lacking from my life due to the southerly or temperate climates I've lived in, or from sheer climatic bad luck (in the case of our time in Norway).

Tampere handicraft fair

Yesterday I took a trip to Tampere - not that I saw Tampere, but went to visit a handicraft fair there. I went with Cecilie and a few from the knitting group (Midori, Satu and Niina) on the train. The fair was pretty big and absolutely packed. I made a few yarn purchases - although on the whole I was pretty restrained.

My first purchase was some merino lux from toika, it's a 50/50 merino and tencel mix, 4ply weight yarn and I bought enough to hopefully make a jumper at some stage. There isn't really enough light in Finland at the moment to show the colour properly - it's a bit more blue-grey than shows in this photo and has a lovely sheen.

The second I purchased was some sock yarn called Arwetta, according to the label it's 100% super merino wool AND 20% nylon, no doubt these will become socks at some point. I got it from the titityy stand.

And that's all I got... I said I was restrained!

back north

We had a great week in Barcelona last week - a very interesting city to wander around and explore. We took loads of photos, which David is currently weeding through and will no doubt be uploaded to flickr at some point.

Now we're back to Finland, which is pretty grey and dreary at the moment. The fire has been kicked into action, so we're nice and cozy despite the weather. Unfortunately the car's still giving us problems no doubt another trip to the car doctor will sort it out and make us poorer - still hopefully cheaper than buying a new one.

I did a little knitting while I was away, but not that much and we visited the three yarn stores I could find addresses for although I was good and didn't buy anything. Depending on how much work I find to do next week I'm going to make a concerted effort at getting some more of my City and Guilds course progressed.