MAY IN HALF A MINUTE

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

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THIRTY SECONDS OF APRIL

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:

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FOUR THINGS THIS SUNDAY

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! But the things I have learned, or come to realise from watching various shows with Grylls are:
1) I would so die in no-time and
2) not sure I ever want to get more than a hundred meters away from any main road, ever.
(Ok, I do live more than 10km from a main road, but the Ingå wilderness I can survive.)

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW

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.

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AND THEN WE HAD MARCH

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.

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TWENTY EIGHT SECONDS OF FEBRUARY

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!

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THIRTY-ONE SECONDS OF JANUARY

The first month of 2019 went by, lets see how the rest of 2019 goes!

This year I started with the collect-one-second-a-day-clips, which a lot of my friends did last year. (I coudn't start then as I missed the first month and my inner system would not allow me to not start on January 1.)
A fun small way to gather memory snippets.

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SUMMER 2018

Summer 2018! And what a summer it has been!

   


           

            

Never before has it been this warm - hot and sunny since May, and such weather for over a month that even a +25c felt like "oh, it's a abit colder today". It has been like the summers of my childhood, warm and sunny forever! But whereas those memories are, if not sugar coated but rather sun-coated, this summer has actually been the warmest ever recorded with around +30c daily.

Not that is is over quite yet, but school started today, and just as the summers of childhood ended as school begun, it still does so today; on a mental level at least. While the weather has had it's downsides (drought, bad crops, perhaps a sign of an alarming change to come) and not everyone enjoys the heat I however bask in it. I said a big F to gardening this year, and haven't thus even felt bad for dead flowers and cherryless trees, but took had the opportunity to spend en exceptional large amount of time with family, visit my close-to heart summer places as well as had a fabulous trip to Italy, while still managing to squeeze in some work in a not-too-stressful way.


My pocket calendar is of such kind that it begins in August en ends at some point of the summer, and I also tend to think the year along the schedules of school and also the studio's school year, which means we are soon in for a new one. There is lots in store for autumn on different fronts, and lets see if I manage to make some of them appear here as well!




Hope you all have enjoyed a wonderful summer, and lets hope the last weeks of it, whatever may have been the case, will be just as good or even better!

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ITALY!

Hello! Even though it may not always seem like it, I am still here! At least for the joy of all of those marketing SEO- and escort services, who I know from the comments are the ones that for sure still visit ("visit") my blog.
But this is however a quick one, because now I am off to Italy to enjoy myself! But I did manage to schedule a couple of small posts so the spambots have something to dig in to.

Happy midsummer!
(...and for all the Finns, the greeting you have to add to this holiday: take it easy and be safe!)

Vintage travel poster by from ze interwebs - the artist  is Mario Puppo, who did a lot of travel posters in the mid 1900s.

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SUMMER CELEBRATIONS: THE SHANGRI-LA SUMMER SHOW JUNE 8!

If you want more sparkle in your life, and even if you don't, but just want to have fun and be entertained, come watch our studio's Summer Show Friday June 8th at Sture 21!
Coming to a show is always a win-win -  you have a great time and help put bread on the performers' tables. Plus get your daily/weekly/monhtly dose of sparkle and (biogradable) glitter.

It is already the 5th summer show we organize, and as usual we feature both students and teachers as well as resident Shangri-La performers. And a lot of other fun stuff! It's a bigger show than our regular clubs, and we turn the madness down a little bit (just a little) when hosting.

Find out more on the event page, and get your tickets from our webshop here: Summer Show tickets.

Also, a small reminder that I have created a discount code for my blog readers to our studio which gives -15% off pretty much everything - also summer show tickets! We have several summer classes and courses coming up in June as well so have a look at our studio's webpage (still only in Finnish I am afraid, although we do teach some classes in a multilingual style Finnish-English-Swedish).

The special only-for-you-discount to our webshop is FREELANCERS15

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520 SUNDAYS

Considering how rather unstructured my day-to-day life's routines are, as in not-really-there and lets-see-what-happens-next-week-in-life, and supposing it is not the first impression I tend to give, I am actually rather un-enthusiastic about change.  It's not that I am reluctant to change, just lazy about it. Mainly small everyday bits, perhaps as a balance to even out the lack of certain routines and certanties. When the big thing is messy and loose around the edges, keep the smaller things intact.
Like tending to stick to one and the same lipstick or nepalese dish or handbag once noticed that it works. (I'd probably always do the same nails too if I would not force myself to get a bit creative there.) You know - if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

And thus I have been adding to the same playlist for ten years. Ten years folks!
That is some 520 and Sundays! It is weird how time flies, isn't it.

But that is because it is the best playlist for soft and mellow, daydream-filled Sundays there is:
Soft Sunday.
With some 11 hours of music I usually tend to listen only to parts of it; often the latest ones that I felt like adding now, or a section that reminds me of a summer a few years ago for example. Sometimes I think about taking some song from that list away, but then I don't because they all had a reason to be added back when they were. And I just can't make a new similar list, nope, that would be cheating.

Here's the latest addition to the list, a video that I really liked back when it came out, but then forgot about, and that fit the mood and Sunday-test today:

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DIRT & DIAMONDS

I just drove my husband out to his tractor on the field to work. It is so dry and dusty everything gets coated in a layer of dirt. And I laughed a bit at me driving trough the fields because that was that one thing I never saw myself doing earlier in life.

Never say never and all that.

My nails still look like this though, and that won't change.

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BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY

Waiting for November then!

Queen was the first band I was an actual fan of! I did my first presentation ever in school about the band. My mom helped me put it together. That was a terribly long time ago already.

Biopics like these can either be a hit or miss (and sometimes going back and forth between either one), but lets hope this one is good! So far I like how the song mix for the trailer is made, so lets make that a god sign.

Ze interwebz told me the movie has a campaign where you can sing Bohemian Rhapsody karaoke-style with your phone and perhaps get your voice in the films (guessing ending credits?) and apart from the looking-for-a-shot-talented-singers I keep thinking of the thousands and thousands of terrible ones that have to, just have to (forbidden karaoke songs: immigrant song by Led Zeppelin or Bohemian Rhapsody) happen. And that somebody has to listen trough. Give me half a bottle of red and a late night and I'm in! (No, please don't).

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FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW: AND SO IT WAS SUMMER

This week I was in Strasbourg with  +27C and I was prepared to come home to boots and jacket-mode still but alas! - I brought the warmth with me and we celebrated  Mother's Day in +25C and sunshine. Weather is always such a factor here.

First outdoor breakfast (mmmm, ok: lunch) of the year! Which I made myself altough offered otherwise; oat-chia pancakes with peanut butter and berries. Not the prettiest, but more yummy than one (me) would think!

The outdoor-summer-renovation-mode for the house has begun. This home is in a state of renovation both inside-and out.

 Flower-mode is also on; in just a few days the leaves have turned green and flowers are blooming!

Flowers were also blooming in the pretty Mother's Day-sugar water painting Dag gave me!  Altough he nonchanalntely said that they were not really flowers "I just dotted some paint there".

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SUPERWOOD

Today I am traveling to Strasbourg to perform at a festival (at Elsass Rock & Jive) in warm and sunny weather!

So, logically I thought I’d look back some six months ago to to a very different kind of season, festival and ambience - Paola Suhonen’s SuperWood Festival.

The very first Superwood took place late last October just east of the Helsinki city centre in a now hotel, then 1960’s bank conference building; Hotel Rantapuisto. In all it’s 60’s design glory is a prefect base for the event, which, as one would expect when created by Paola Suhonen / Ivana Helsinki, mixes music, art, design and Finnish nature.

It’s a rather grown up festival, in a good way, with nice dining and movie screenings - forget muddy fields and tents, and enjoy lounge bar concerts with a living room feeling design hotel rooms - with a twist of spooky woodland vibe:
(Photo credits at the end of the post)

I only attended the first night but immediately regretted not booking the whole weekend. I managed to miss my old pal’s Suad’s sunset concert opening the night (Finland, October, it sets early) but got to listen to a truly magical Mikko Joensuu auditorium set, and then join the wood tour, which Paola put together of different musical performances and installations in the woods surrounding the hotel. A super idea although a bit over crowded, but let’s see how they do it this year.

The hotel restaurant had put together a vegetarian buffet of which lots of the ingredients were picked from the backyard -like sugar coated lichen decorating the dessert. And Pekka Haavisto (Finnish presidential candidate) was DJing! I ate so much I had to lounge on a pile of cushions to get over my food coma while watching one of the feature films.

Looking forward to this upcoming autumn to see how the second year of the festival will turn out!

Photos from the Superwood FB page by
1. Aleksi Tikkala - 2 & 5. David Jakob - 3. Tero Kiiski - 4. Mira Lintunen - 6 & 7. Paula Hiipakka

Square instagram photos by me except photo of Pekka Haavisto from @pekka.haavisto

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BLUE MONDAY

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 absored in music. But well, why not:
Let's end this week with some creative musication shall we?

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HAPPILY EVER AFTER

You recently saw a couple of the photos we took with AskoJonathan Photography for my Happily Ever After-act.

Because behind-the-scenes photos always make things better here's the set up for the series.

A lot can be, and is done by photoshop, but the more you can put into the set organically the better.

So I had the other photoshootees of the day functioning as ground for my rose bushes. As one does.

Obviously the raw shots where there's a faun peeking out under my elbow are the best ones.

Here are some shots of how the actual act looks on stage -

photo: Bernhard Miettinen

photo: Minna Jerrman

photo: Bernhard Miettinen

It's my most Burton-esque act, that even though it begins eerie and sad, sort of a too-late Sleeping Beauty scenario, actually is rather humorous. In a tragicomic Burton kind of way. It started out as an idea for a quick Halloween act for our own event, where I wanted to dance with, what I first just planned as a ghost out of fabric, but then came up with - a skeleton (that you could see me craft on the kitchen floor in October...).  And then of course other things happen, as they tend to do in burlesque.

Some acts I plan for years before I start working with them practically, and some I work on for a year or years before they're out, but sometimes I get the idea and song on spot at once and can get practical right away, which was the case in this one. This act got to jump ahead in the queue (I usually have several acts in the making in one stage or another at once) and was stage ready in a month. Is is a lot of fun to perform (and my bony friend here has a great smile), even though the beginning got so sad I always get a little moved by it myself. Haha.

photo: Asko Jonathan Photography

And tonight it's on at the last ever Pirates Pleasures club: Witch Please!

Sail with me onto dark water at Wäiski!

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BLACK CATS AND OLD EASTER DETAILS

Happy Easter!

Here is my little black cat on this year's Easter-ing tour (or whatever we shall decide to call it in English).

As our house still looks like shit I'll post some old pictures of how it looked this time of year back when it was stil nice.

Enjoy your chocolate!

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YOUR EASTER WITCH

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.

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