The Day the Stove Arrived

You know we don't do any designing in class. We go to class for about 20 odd hours a week and none of that is design time, or not so far anyway. It involves sitting around a table with half your class (because the other half know better than to turn up) discussing business things for far too long. I am not used to this at all, that's the point though I guess. Easily a good five minutes was spent today on whether 'Sir' or 'Madam' should come first in 'Dear Sir/Madam'. It can get a little tedious to say the least.

Also the 'Oh crap, I need to do some work' moment has hit. I have a week to produce 3 final designs (it's more important than it sounds). I am a weaver. It takes about about 2 or 3 good days to set up a loom, and that's a loom I am familiar with – these I am not. Safe to say I'll be pulling something out of thin air – invisible textiles perhaps...? I bought some knitting needles and yarn yesterday, we'll see what happens.

The other weeks Scott's ma visited, with her friend, for a few days of taking advantage of the fact that her son was in Finland (you too can take advantage that your friend, me, is here, and are more than welcome to visit). We felt a family dinner was in order – a chance for Scott's ma to meet his flat mates and a chance for me to get near a stove (I'm easily pleased). A spontaneous omelet was for starters (cheers, Carlos), followed by a curry that I did not think was going to feed eight and topped off with a sort of Swiss roll and chocolate and banana ice cream – all very continental you see. Despite our lack of supplies and ability to read food (spice – grrr) labels, we ain't too bad at a little Scottish/British/Southern hospitality.

What I really want to tell you all about though is the day the stove arrived! Rose and I had given up hope of getting one before the weekend (we were rolling up for weekend number three!) and had stopped our routine of running into the kitchen everyday after class to check if there was a new one. So on this rather nice looking autumn day we invited Rachel, Scott and Louise to ours so we could spend our afternoon on the beach (20 minute walk away remember!). On our arrival, it was a leaflet on the counter that gave the clue – a sweet ass shiny white cube that meant dinner was at ours tonight. This was the scoop of ice cream in our sundae glass of an afternoon.

To the beach we headed, barelegged, sun glassed and full of glee where we proceeded to add a little fudge sauce to that sundae...

Dinner time - a backwards feast of crepes and pasta, tasting so good, hot from our new stove. Definitely the cherry on top.

The next day the four of us lackeys felt a little guilty we hadn't hit up much touristy stuff (well you don't when you're living somewhere, do you?) so we headed to the River Aura! A pretty little river running through the city, that freezes over in Winter, which led us merrily along as we once more embraced the fortunate weather (although I did have to buy tights in town, bare legs were a little ambitious). Lots of photos, as proof obviously, of boats and sculptures, a hobo and a giant daisy (or a tiny person? Who knows...). 

 

And like any good Saturday night, it ended with a party – at the start of the night I knew practically no one, by the end I could tell you that: most of the room were either French or German; most were studying International Business; a lot of them live in my building and there's another Scottish person here – woo hoo! Don't even bother asking me names though...

Anyway, I have a lot of homework to do – making some sort of fabric, writing two essays for Finnish class, finalising a press release, emailing companies and then calling them. I feel like I've written more than I've made, I miss using my hands.