fashion blog

Now that we have lived one week of June, lets have a look at May in thirtyone seconds!

Not totally sure whats going on, if I am standing still in space or what, as time seems to go faster day by day and year by year. So just like swish! April went by and here is what it looked like, compressed to one tiny second per day:

In between of being away working on Friday and Saturday, and before starting rather hectic May, this Sunday was a day off, letting the to-do list be for a little while. From snow to flowers in a couple of weeks! Apart from coltsfoot the scillas are always the first to bloom. The cows are also out now. A sure spring sign! Dag's bike is out as well. Practice-time! We haven't really been biking a lot out here as everything is so far away and there is not really much to bike to over here. This summer however I intend to help him ride properly and fix up my old bike  as well (someone stole the saddle the year before we moved away from Tapiola and I haven't ridden it since) so we can bike to the little lake . Then we had a popcorn lunch (because that is awesome!) and made Bear Grylls eat various yucky things and piss on a scarf to wear on his head.  (To keep cool from the heating sun. You learn new things every day! ) It was really fun to watch / do You vs. Wild with Dag though!...

Or, that were today. Long time no smoothie! I have a bit of chaga at home of so I made an antioxidant-rich smoothie out of chilled chaga-tea, mango, some cherries and physalis. Admiring my super huge (1,81m) Mucha-poster that I ordered from the Mucha museum. I saw the original sized theatre posters there when performing in Prague earlier this year but couldn't get it then due to luggage restrictions. I ordered it on Wednesday in the afternoon and it arrived in less than 24 hours on Thursday morning! I will glue it to a board and then hang it in our living room. And then on with a lurex dress and out to listen to music! Went to the Russian centre of culture for a mesmerizing concert of Altai' music with Alexey Chichakov . (He is playing in Heinävesi Sat 13. and Tampere Sun 14., go listen if you have the chance!) And oh! Next week season 2 of Vintage-Valtakunta starts . Tuesday 16th at 20, Yle 1! Finland only I'm afraid.

Not sure how it happened, but apparently the first quarter of this year has gone by already? That can only mean that It'll be Christmas again in no time! But first, lets set our minds on spring and the eventual summer! Here's what the switch from winter to spring looked like, and everything else and  in between, a second a day in March 2019.

Because March is almost over by now, let us naturally (dum di dum...) look at the month before that; one-second-a-day: February 2019 These are so fun to do and I love watching other's mini videos of their months!

Sunday evening moments - Corrected a final seam to a jumpsuit I sew myself last night and intend to wear to the very last filming of Vintage Valtakunta season 2 tomorrow. I also sew Dag a plush seal. It was the first plush toy I ever made. Dag has this new phase where ninjas have had to move over for seals! It's drawing seals x100 and facts and pics and videos about seals all the time.  He had even made me adorable instructions on how to make hime the seal. Now it's hair colour time - roots and ends! I always mix a lot of different hair colours to maintain my hue, but the colour I've used for my roots for the past year and a half is Shcwarzkopf Live in the 'cool rose' shade. And I intend to enjoy some tea, peanut butter-banana sandwhices and reading about space while the chemicals do their thing. How was your first November Sunday?

Today it's the gloomy Halloweenish weather one would expect with mid-October approaching (already! What? How?), but yesterday we woke up to a breathtaking colourful frosty sunrise that I even tossed out barefoot for to try and catch with my phone - The view to the south is often like a painting. This is also the bathroom view, and one day eventually the view from the study-to-be; the brown room which for the moment is just (you guessed it): boxes. Colourful trees to the west! And the old barn of the farm peeking from behind them. The study will be the only room in the house, apart from the living room, with windows in two directions. That actually makes it the nicest room in the house. This, plus an apple tree in the front, would be the view from the second window. Amazing colours to the north! And the rising sun in the east. I really love crips autumn mornings like this, when the air is fresh and cold and the light makes everything magic.  But give it a month and we will be up ea...

Let me first start this by saying that I am definitely and foremost waiting for Halloween (and now that the second week of October is about to start I consider Halloween-season here!). But. While it is as little as 80 days until Christmas (!!!),  it is only 56 until our yearly Christmas show , which this year will kick off the whole festive season: This year we are celebrating at our Rubies-Klubit burlesque club's home venue Sture 21. Tickets are on sale now; get them in time as they tend to sell out ! Poster by me, as usual. Ps. and first Halloween, yes. Catch me at these Halloween events: Horror & Tease in Tampere Oct.13 and our very own Rubies Klubit: Demoniklubi on Oct.27!

Lets end the week with some creative music playing. Or making. Orkestra Obsolete play Blue Monday using 1930s instruments  (BBC Arts) In Swedish there is actually a separate verb for playing and making music on an instrument, more in the sence of performing it or playing together:  musicera, as can you say ' musisoida ' in Finnish. One can refer to that as musicerande  (kind of like something that someone or some people were occupied with, or "the music that they were making" as in the present particle of the word. < I had to look that term up, as it is after all almost 20 years since I last had grammar, erhm). But there does not seem to be an English equivalent for such a word... Briefly and totally non-academically based on how other words and endings are used (for example a demonstration of something - to demonstrate ), I would make the word musicate up, but it already exists on the internet (not in Merriam Webster though) and means something else: to be absore...

Ok, perhaps not exactly. But suitably for a time of growth, flowers, resurrection and Easter witches Asko and I did a photoseries for my act Happily Ever After, which is something of a reversed Sleeping Beauty ghost story. Photos by Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan Photography Concept and muah by me.

Four things right-right now. The books above my head. A cat in the after noon sunshine. Reading the Egytptian Book of the Dead (but now I got distracted with a documentary on Marie Antoinette's coiffures.) I want Mikael Hadreas pants. As a side note; this was the first time I made a post in one sitting without moving anything else than my arms to take photos and grab the laptop. So now we know that!

(Half of the headline is indeed in Finnish in case you had to look twice. It gives the content of this post away.) Easter is just around the corner and over here, if you have kids, it's time to decorate some branches! (If you can find some, that is, as winter has lingered around longer than usual this year...) The branches are for when the small ones go out "witching", which can be compared a bit to trick or treat on Halloween, altough here no tricks are involved, just wishing well for the year ahead.* Tradition is to decorate the branches with feathers, but I tend to go for animal-free options, and often just a make-do of what I happen to have in the cupboards at home. I just saw a pretty funny video from one of the big supermarket chains though, saying their feathers are a certified left over product from the food (=meat)  industry, which I think is good; to take as much as possible into use as long as it's there. But I'll stick to my alternatives anyway. Here ...

Anyone who has rad my blog troughout the years would by this point be familiar with Atelieri O.Haapala ,  the neo-victorian portrait studio by Saara Salmi and Marco Melander! The project went on for a decade, and there were many amazing themes, backdrops and set ups, with thousands of beautiful pictures as a result. I've had the pleasure to have my photo taken several time during the years, both in studio but mainly at the pop-up events. And now they are aiming to make a beautiful and elaborate book out of it! You can pre-order the book by supporting Atelieri's Indiegogo campaign , or support the book with smaller printed perks. And please do! You will love it - and I definitely want my copy too - so lets make this happen! You can find most of Atelieri O.Haapalas photos in their  Facebook albums . Oh, and the image you see being edited at one spot in the film? This is the final version; from Helsinki Burlesque Festival 2017. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atelieri-o-haapal...

Tonight! At our studio starting 18hrs - Dr.Sketchy's Helsinki presents: Wonderland! Come and draw and enjoy the nice setting, music and atmosphere. Photo by Neil Kendall.

Today I heard the first seagulls - winter will be over soon! Here are, however, some pictures from last week when it still was very much winter. And here I am aswell! Slowly returning as the light slowly increases here on these latitudes. Like a Moomin troll I have hibernated from the blogosphere during the darkest months. (I always liked the Moomin winter book the best -well that one, and the one with the flood and the drifting heater - how he, against his nature, wakes up one winter and finds the world totally different with different creatures existing around him). But as much as I sometimes can love winter, I do long for summer, for everything to wake up from around me. This year it feels specifically significant, as I feel a lot of things have been resting under snow so to say, for now to finally move on and be able to enjoy the sunlight.   This year winter came late, so late that the snowfall now in mid-march does not bother me. The end of February was super cold, colder t...

Ok everybody! Long time no internet, and happy we-are-totally-living-in-what-was-once-sci-fi-future-2018! So, last year I was working in this production that will now be on TV1 starting March 29; Vintage-valtakunta: Here's the teaser clip! Sadly it won't show abroad, Finland only: Vintage-valtakunta | Teaser | Vintage-valtakunta

Hi there! I am still around, believe it or not! I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Let's see if we'll see more of each other in 2018, perhaps? Photo: Asko Rantanen / Asko Jonathan photography

The Helsinki Burlesque Xmas Xtravaganza event I performed at all weekend long was truly fantastic but really sucked the juice out of me as well. Here's a Lynchian moment from when the party was over last night, with some go-go bunnies off-duty chilling.

Things are not too busy over here. I know, but meanwhile in real life I am very busy picking cocktail bites from a silvery platter of burnout. I apparently can't seem to both plan posts and actually post them, just either way, but here's a little bit of almost right here right now - Eddi came home after a long stay in Iran and now I am having these iranian cookies wiht my evening tea -  a taste of honey, pistachio and cardamom with rose and orange water, kind of like something very sweet and buttery would be drenched in perfume. But they are strangely good. I am about to assemble yet another Råskog cart for our home . Best little cart ever. But in order for that to go smoothly I had to switch my tea to something a bit stronger. Karen Dalton is the soundtrack for that. And outside the November sky is infinite. (I have been thinking of buying a telescope for some time now. That, and a theremin. And then I'd sit at home with my wine and stare out into the void and play some ee...