The Egg

I have recently made a commitment to start biking again. This has resulted in 3 things:

1. I now arrive at meetings wet from either rain or sweat. At the same time my work partner Marika has developed a habit of wearing Nanso night dresses as day dresses so we make an interesting combo.

2. I have allowed myself to eat fries at lunch.

3. We have had to resolve the problem of transporting two kids with one bike.

I wasn't always an evil car driver. I used to bike daily but then the child transportation problem came up. I did find the perfect solution, a dutch Bakfiets cargo bike, but it took me several years to realise that I wouldn't be making that kind of money in the foreseeable future. So we decided to lower our expectations and look at trailers which I think are mostly quite ugly.

It was my husband that spotted this Lokari trailer (Finnish design!) somewhere and it was the first of its kind that I felt I could live with. We hunted for it for a few days and found a used one for one tenth the price of a Bakfiets. So I'm very happy. We have nicknamed it "The Egg".

Apparently it's very comfortable as one passenger has fallen asleep. On warm days the top slides off.

The following are views from the Egg from the perspective of the passengers.

Happy in Hakaniemi

Maybe one of the last warm days of summer. Coffee in a paper cup. An inquisitive  six year old asking how many days we've known each other (2021 days). Three gentlemen playing finnish evergreens. The orange tents that are always the same. Manna porridge with butter at the Kahvisiskot tent when it get's cold. Hakaniemi market is my happy place.

Secrets of 'Southern Helsinki'

A few years ago, I guess it was in the 1900s, I worked in a project with a Finnish company. One of their staff members used the phrase 'Southern Helsinki' when referring to their manufacturing taking place in Estonia. I clearly remember his face when saying this. He really thought that he was cracking the best joke ever. I never found that funny, and it didn't get any better as he repeated it too many times (secret number 1.)

This summer I went to Pärnu for a few days with friends. Pärnu is a well-known spa city in Southern Estonia. It was my first time there and I have to say I fell in love with the place! It is an attractive, calm seaside city with beautiful long beaches - just a perfect place to recharge your batteries. Only 1,5 hours from Tallin by car. It is time to finally forget Lanzarotte. Pärnu is definitely the hidden gem of Northern Europe (secret number 2)

Rannahotell Pärnu is one of the landmarks of Estonian Functionalism. Just perfect atmosphere and located right on the beach. Rooms with beautiful balconies overlooking the sea were attempting but we only had some nice cocktails in the bar. One of our trip’s themes was to support local small businesses so we preferred a small B&B over the Rannahotell as it is nowadays part of the Scandic chain. During off-season (October-April) you can rent the whole Rannahotell for less than 3000 Euros! 60+ rooms, staff, and the whole building is reserved only for you and your guests. (secret number 3)

Get spa treatments, do sports and be healthy!

Seven different rhubarb dessert, Ammende Villa

Finnvasion at DMY Berlin

Three months in to this project and we finally get to design in the traditional sense of the word. I spent last week in Berlin at the DMY festival. The festival was very much like Berlin itself - young, experimental and unconventional. They had a finnish focus this year which resulted in a mass invasion of finnish design and designers. I am only able to scratch the my surface here in my official report.

The festival took place for the second time at Tempelhof, the famous ex-airport, and may I just take a moment to say how jealous I am of this space. Huge, empty, beautifully lit space practically in the middle of the city. Maybe we could dismantle a hall and ship it to Helsinki.

First up: Jesse Pietilä seen through his Sheer Wall. Because we promised "design, tips & secrets" up there in the header, I will now tell you a secret. Jesse is actually not Jesse, he's Markku. I only know that because when he was applying to study at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, I was the student monitoring the entrance exams and I took notice of him because he was consistently getting the highest points.

Salakauppa (Secret shop) is a super nice project, and a real shop run by Aamu Song and Johan Olin. They have scouted around Finland and Korea for small companies making great products and have done collaborations with these companies. Here an icelandic designer with very stylish stockings is modeling their latest design - a two heeled shoe.

Honorary Finn Jakob Schenk was showing his diploma project from the University of Art and Design (It's really called Aalto University nowadays but I have difficulty adapting). It's called Ticks and it's a pair of "table clips" with which you can turn any piece of board into a table. So clever, and that's why it's going to be a part of Protoshop in September.

Another honorary Finn Satoshi Yoshida and his equally clever book shelf. It's very narrow, only about half the depth of a normal book shelf because of the angled partitions.

Päivi Raivio and Veera Kulju make these wonderfully dark textiles out of discarded leather coats. Here Veera is cutting the leather bits into smaller strips. I got to try as well and it was quite therapeutic - they should sell a kit where the finishing is done by the buyer.

Pinch by Mikko Koskinen and Miko Laakso is a lighting element where the clips become small spotlights for photos or messages when attached to the rail.

Mikko Laakkonen and Klaus Aalto have similar taste in shoes (secret number 2).

I also had an own satellite exhibition in Berlin with the above mentioned Klaus Aalto but believe it or not - took not a single photo (zero). I even gave a talk at DMY underlining the importance of remembering to document everything well but failed to take notice myself. However, some photos and even words can be found here courtesy of Minimum blog.

Frugality week

Last week I heard on the radio that it was frugality week (nuukuusviikko) so I decided we would maximize the challenge and eat for free. So off we went my children and I looking for nettles in our semi-urban neigbourhood. I have a book called "101 uses for stinging nettle" and I don't remember what the other 99 uses are, but you can eat it and you can make a very potent fertilizer by soaking them in water. Nettle tastes a lot like spinach except better and it has a lot of iron. I've previously used it dried and sprinkled in just about anything but I'd never made the big nettle classic: nettle soup. To get the other needed ingredients we decided to gather empty bottles and return them for the recycling deposit. There is a big park near our home with people engaging in a Finnish summer pastime called pussikalja (drinking beer from a plastic bag outdoors) so we were sure we would find bottles, but we had bad luck. It was a few days after May day and the park had been thoroughly emptied of all trash. So as we couldn't cheat and use money, we called my sister and asked her to bring all her empty bottles to a near by supermarket and trade them in for the missing ingredients.

As she already had vegetable stock, butter and flour we only had to buy cream, milk and bread (the milk and bread were mainly incase the children would refuse to eat the soup).
My sister acted as head chef so I cannot give a precise recipe. Basically the nettles are boiled in water, pureed and enriched with cream (we chose to boil the nettles and change the water once because nettles grow in very fertile soil and in cities soil is often made fertile by dogs).

The soup was very good (and the children did end up eating bread for supper).

When we were leaving my sister showed us some ancient graffiti on the rocks near Kaivopuisto. This one was from 1889, supposedly by P.Leander. Super nice. And proof that you can always learn new things about your home city.

Särä in Lemi

 

In Finland we have a thing called kotiseutumuseo (roughly translated as home area museum). Every rural village seems to have one and they are fascinating places for people who have a thing for folklore (note that I am very easily moved by everything related to folklore, 95% of people could find kotiseutumuseos pointless). The museum in Lemi is especially fascinating because they have upheld a 1000 year old tradition of preparing a dish called särä. Särä consists of lamb and potatoes slowly cooked on wooden platter in a wood heated oven for up to eight hours. The only seasoning in salt.

The museum offers särä on certain set dates which can be found on their website. For groups of 10 people or more its possible to organise a private feast. There is also another restaurant offering särä in this very very small town, but I'm completely biased towards the museum restaurant. Lemi is about a 2 hour drive from Helsinki. In Michelin terms I would definately say it's worth a detour for the overall gesamtkustwerk appeal.

My two favourite things in Lemi (beside the food) were this beautiful ryijy (a traditional rug-like textile) and the fence below. The fence is also a very traditional design which I love because:
1. you can use thinned out wood from the forest to make it
2. there is very little work that has to be done to the wood
3. the fence will look better the less measure (unevenness and asymmetry look better)
4. after having served you well you can heat the sauna with it.
I think I want to make one.

Salo Fleamarketing

When I was a child my parents took me to see a lot of vineyards in France. Although this does not sound like the worst of fortunes, I developed some kind of trauma towards all those vineyard parking lots. It's possible that my children will develop a similar relationship to fleamarkets.

It can be difficult to make a really great find in Helsinki fleamarkets. For the best in second hand treasures, one should head for the small towns. Salo is a small town roughly half way between Helsinki and Turku. On a street called Raitalankatu in an industrial area you'll find three big fleamarkets in a neat row. The first is called Salon seudun suurkirppis (aptly translates as The Great Fleamarket of Salo). It's so big that you can go in thinking you need size 34 rubber boots and a bread knife and probably come out with both.

I have a soft spot for anti-design. When something is really wrong it magically becomes more than right. See exhibit "A" above: the cafe of Salon suurkirppis. In the summer this is a kind of terrace. The inside part also serves pulla and ice cream in winter.

Next to Suurkirppis is Kirppis Basaari which sells furniture in addition to smaller things. These lappish boots were quite nice (size 43, they might still be there). Last time we went to Salo we happened to be there with a van so we didn't have transportation worries to get in the way of our shopping spree. My husband bought two record players (he had asked our six year old son how many record players a person should own and he had said 24 so now we have 8). 

In addition to a cupboard, a training bike and some children's spring gear we found two Pippi Longstocking story cassettes (our car is from the 90ies) and this plastic head for 1 euro! (the fencing helmet is model's own). My husband also fell in love with an old piano but even the salesperson thought we would never be able to carry it anywhere by ourselves. But after three days of long distance yearning, he called Kirppis Basaari today and arranged to have it transported. He is also slightly opposed to this post saying that you "shouldn't give away your best mushrooming places".