Grand opening!

Are you looking for handmade Christmas gifts? Here's something for everyone who loves animals!

Rosie, the knitted elephant

I have opened my second Etsy shop, Colibriknits for knitted toys and decorations made from my own patterns. Every toy is unique and has it's own story.

I'm also having an opening sale during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend, so until the end of Monday 29th of November you can get a 10% discount on everything. Just use the OPENINGSALE coupon code, and you will get the discount.

Hugo, the knitted bear.

Oscar, the knitted wolf

Amelia, the knitted wolf

Aslak, the knitted reindeer.

Knut, the knitted polar bear.

I'm adding constantly more toys, so be sure to check it often!

Coming back

It´s been a long time since I´ve been here... Mainly because I haven´t had time to write, and when I had, I wanted to write about so manyt things it seemed a bit overwhelming. But my intention is statr writing more often again from now on.

These are some of the things I've been doing these months:

Travelling in Chiapas when my family came to visit in June...


Knitting...

But mostly I've been working with this:

My thesis. It's almost finished and I hope I can give it to my committee members by the end of the month. I just want to finish it!

And then there's also The House, that boyfriend and I bought and are renovating. But that's another story and I'll write about it more later.

Also, I'm going to open a new Etsy shop this week, so stay tuned!

Climbing to the highest top (or so we thought)

In January it was our fourth aniversary (well, actually we have been together longer, but we use as our aniversary the day I moved to Mexico four years ago). We celebrated it with a good dinner and a day trip to Nevado de Toluca, an extinct volcano near quite near here.

We left home early, because we thought we woudn't be the only ones to visit the national park on a sunny Sunday. All seemed to go well until about 40 km before the volcano. The signs for the park are quite badly placed, but we managed to find the right way anyway and thought we would arrive early. Well, we were wrong. The road to Nevado was in bad shape and there was a huuuuuge line of cars. The last 30 something kilometres took us no less than two hours! Some idiots had decided to park their cars on the road that already was very narrow, so at some points only one car could pass. The scenenary was pretty, though.


The national park has a parking lot that was full of people already when we finally got there. Even though lots of people visit the place, the parking lot is really badly organized. There are no maps of the walking routes, for example, and no one to ask for either. We wanted to climb to the crater, because I had heard there's a lovely lake in there. Because there were no signs, we just started to follow a path lots of people seemed to use. I'm not quite sure how high the parking lot is (the highest point of the volcano is about 4600 metres, so I guess the parking place must be at over 3000 metres), but after a while, the thin air made me feel bad. My lungs hurt and I started to feel dizzy. Luckily, after resting a while and drinking water I was good to go again. It was strange though, because when we climbed more, I didn't feel the altitude dizziness anymore.


The path passes though a lovely pine forest to the mountain meadows.


I was so happy with the snow! I've missed it. There were also these strange dry flowers.


The shortest way to the crater - climb right up, right?


And so we climbed...

And climbed... At some point my feet just came out on a strike and just wouldn't move. It was not so much that they felt tired or anything, they just refused to take a step even I was telling them to. One step at a time... There's only a little left...



Or so we thought. When we got to the top, we (and everyone who got there) just screamed "Oh noooo!" Because instead of the seeing the crater and the lake in front of our eyes, we saw this:


We probably could have gotten to the crater too, but by the time we were up, it was already almost 4 o'clock and the park closes at 5. There was no way we could have reached the crater and got back to our car in time. So we just ate our lunch, watched the lovely scenes and when we got cold - it was really windy up there, even the sun was shining so hot - we just decided to go back.
Later we heard that if we had walked the old road instead of climbing the paths, we would have probably reached the crater in time. But well, I think the trip was worth it anyway. I loved being in the nature, smelling the fresh air and exercising. We were really tired when we got home, but it was such a lovely day! And a perfect day to go, because there were no clouds at all (guess who got sunburned...).

The only thing we didn't like was the organization of the park. It sucks. The roads are bad (it also took hours to get away from the park, because of the traffic jams caused by non existent organization). The services in the park are really bad too. It's a shame, because it's such a beautiful place and with a bit of work, the locals could get some extra income and the national park could be better protected. But it seems that the state's governor is more interested in glueing his government propanganda everywhere telling what they supposedly have done, instead of actually doing anything.

Coming back

It's hard to start writing after a long pause. Actualy, I have been thinking about writing here for a long time. I just haven't done it. I partly blame writer's block and partly thesis...

I also wasn't sure if to start blogging again about a trip to a volcano or about knitting. Well, even though some of you might prefer the volcano, you'll get knitting pictures for now. There are less pictures of my projects than of the volcano, so it's simply easier. But I promise the volcano pics later!

Even though the thesis has kept me really busy, I have had time to knit too. Maybe it's more like I have taken my time to knit too, it helps me keep sane with all the stress with the thesis. Now more than ever it's really nice to see something concrete to get finished...

This stole I already finished on November to use it in a wedding.

Snowball

Pattern: Melon Stichs shawl/stole from Victorian Lace today
yarn: Lana Stop Reina, less than 50g
needles: 4 mm


I like it a lot, but unfortunately the blocking didn't make it as wide as I had hoped for, so it didn't cover me as much as it should have. This winter I have used it a lot as a scarf though - it's so lovely and light. It was the first time I knit mohair yarn, and I liked it.

Then there's of course the Great Christmas Present for boyfriend that I started in August and finished 24th of December (in the morning, may I say!). Yes, a crocheted blanket.


Otoño blanket
yarn: Novita Puro 2050g, Katia Azteca about 50g, and Ecologico Camel about 130g)
hook: 5mm

It's called "Otoño" or Autumn, because the colours remind me of, well, autumn. It was fun to make (but not to sew together). I just crocheted different sizes of granny squares and then in the end decided how to combine them. I hadn't crocheted in a loong time, but have to say it's quite addictive! I like the rythm of it.

I used mainly Puro yarn, but as my dear boyfriend demanded (as a joke, it results) that he wanted the blanket for his king size bed, I ran out of yarn. That's why I also used a bit of Katia Azteca for some squares and Ecologico Camel for the edge.

I love it and have to say that it was hard to part with, even though it went for boyfriend. I especially missed the blanket during the really cold days of late December and January. But well, when we'll move in together, it will be mine again! Eh, I mean... I can use it. ;-)

Welcome the death

Day of the Death or Día de Muertos is celebrated here in Mexico in the beginning of the November. It's my absolute favorite of Mexican fiestas, so even though it was already couple of weeks ago, I want to show you some pictures I took this year from the altars in Coyocan (my favorite part of the city) and at the University.

The Day of the Death is not like Halloween, although you can see more and more Halloween stuff in the shops, which is a great shame, I think. I much prefer the traditional sugar skulls, cempazutchil (the orange flowers you can see in the photos), the paper decorations and happy skeletons to all those comercial monster stuff.

During the Day of the Death celebrations you see skulls, and skeletons and other symbols of the Death everywhere, but they are not scary. The death come to the Earth to visit their love ones, who build them altars with their favorite foods and drinks. There's nothing scary about that... '


That's exactly why I love this fiesta. The Death is not something scary, it's familiar and close, something that happens to everyone. You can even joke with it, and the skeletons are often represented drinking tequila, partying and doing other earthly stuff. Or smiling gently, as the lady in this picture:

Great attitude towards the Death, colourfull and ingenious decorations and the yummy pan de muertos (bread of the Death, special holiday bun made only for this fiesta) - how could you not love it?

Suomi, part 1

Here I am again... A lot of time has passed again since my last blog update, so I'll tell you about things that also passed some time ago: my trip to Finland in August.



I had actually thoguht about writing here already from Finland, I had a text in my head and all, but there was really no time for anything like that. Normally I'm busiest in Finland when I'm Helsinki and try to see everyone in the last few days, but this time I was running around all time. First due to an extra trip to Helsinki for friend's hen night and then to the fact that boyfriend came to Finland too. Both very nice reasons, though.


It was nice to be in Finland in August. Normally I go earlier in the summer, in June or July, but this time the wedding party made me travel later. That was great - I still got my bit of Finnish summer, but also a nice hue of Finnish autumn that I haven't seen since I moved here.


I have sometimes missed the Finnish autumn here. All the nature's colours (you should see the colours!), the crisp air, the smell of the autumnal forest, berries and mushrooms... The darkening nights, candlelight and the starry sky.

Why, then, haven't I reserved one of my trips to Finland in autumn? Well, it all may sound very romantic, and when the weather is fine, the autumn there is just lovely. But... it can also be raining in the most unromantic way, not always the ruska (the time when the leaves turn from green to yellow, orange and red) is bright and beautiful, and the autumn can be basically very grey and dishearting too. Do I want to take a chance with my trips? No.


But now I got both the summer and the autumn. I got to swim in the lake, eat icecream in the market place, eat strawberries and peas (both tradicional summer delicacies) AND I could also go picking mushrooms in the forest. Me likes!

Updating...

On Firefox the images and everything seems to work, so here you, some updates...

I have spent the past months mainly with the thesis (vacations from the university are for thesis writing, right? At least my advisor thinks so...). But I also had a nice guide/interpreter job in June. A group of Finns came here for a wedding, and although I didn't know any of them before, it was a nice week, even with little sleep. Simultaneous interpreting wasn't as difficult as I thought (of course I didn't have to translate totally exactly, which helped a lot). I also got to travel a bit with them. Most of the places where we visited, I already knew, but I got to know some new places too. And I definitively learnt a lot, as I had to find and learn by heart lots of information that I then told to my group.

Here are some pictures:

The Xochicalco piramids near Cuernavaca were very impressive. I hadn't visited there before, so it was really nice to get there. Not only the pyramids are awesome, but also the view from the top of the hill is amazing.



Taxco, the silver city (there a lots of silver smiths in the city and you can get good deals on silver jewelry), was one of our stops. I have been there two or three times before, but it's always a nice place to go.



Even though the thesis is taking a lot of time now, I have also knitted something. My Wilhelmiina was ready already on the first of June and I'm very happy with it.

Pattern: Neja's Wilhelmiina

Yarn: Novita Bambu

Needles: 3,5mm

I used Neja's pattern, but did some modifications. I added a lot of purl stitchesto the underarms and made the cable part much longer than in the original pattern (it wasn't supposed to be as long as in the pictures though - the upper part stretched quite a lot).

I have also been knitting a wedding shawl for my friend, and started also a top down tunic, but you'll get pictures of those later.