She was aptly named...

When my brother was just a baby, my dad started building a sailboat with his friend.
It was designed to be a racing boat and the model was called MACH 1.
Not that it ever broke the sound barrier.. ;)
It did do well in some races though.
Five of these were made.
Beautiful mahogany boats.

There's the captain, my dad.

Ours was named Brunette.

We were out sailing two to three weeks every summer.
There was room for six people to sleep comfortably, eight if necessary.


The roominess came from her having wide hips :)
I always loved the wideness, made her look sympathetic somehow amidst all those skinny boats.
Plus she was by far the prettiest.

These pictures are from July 1982.
We started off in Hanko, the eouthern most tip in Finland and sailed right over the Baltic Sea to Gotland, Sweden.
36 hours straight.

There's Petri again in red, and Petri's dad Reijo at the helm.
The previous fall a soviet submarine had ran ashore in Sweden, and since then there had been a massive submarine hunt going on.

I remember setting off from Hanko, Reijo called us kids out to be on submarine watch... and laughed.

It was just the four of us, my mom refused the long open sea travel and took a ship with my brother and met us at Visby. A quaint little town filled with roses galore. If you are ever in Sweden in July I recommend the trip.


Now this is another thing I remember.

We had the ugliets spinaker sail on the planet.

Seriusly, orange and black??!?

Others had lovely colors, oh the prettiness we came across...

People would meet us at various harbors, look at the boat and say: You guys have that orange and black spinaker, right?

Why was it that color?

sigh... my dad got the colors cheap... I wonder why? Left overs from lovely spinakers.. no doubt one orange, yellow and white and the other white, blue and black.

Now you might have noticed that the spinaker is up upside down and we're docked :)

We are drying the sail.

Earlier that day a thunderstorm burst very quickly, soaking us, and we had to stuff the wet sail through the front hatch into Petri's and mine sleeping space.

The orange lump on the boom (the metal bit sticking out of the mast, for you landlubbers...;) is sleeping bags, inside out.. also drying.

I have no idea where she is today.

My dad sold off his half ownership after the other owner ran her on rocks and she sank partly. She was repaired, and I do hope she's out there still.

For some reason I can't remember our sail number, even if a boat changes name the number remains the same. There is a register to check... if only the numbers were properly visible in that photo..

Oh heck.. now that will bother me all day...

Back from the way way past...

...to the more recent 70's.
My childhood.
No scandals here.
*grin*


That's me with the curls feeding a magpie.
I must be four as the curls were cut by the time I was five.
That's my childhood friend Petri beside me. Our families spent lots of holidays together.


This was at the Canary Islands.
I'm wearing a brand new dress I got that day.
I still have that dress... neither of my girls would have been cought dead in it though :D


Who's idea was it to paint bedroom walls deep purple??!?
[shudder]


The Christmas tree looks a bit sparse...
But I have a cool barking and jumping dog toy in my hands!
I also remember that little white mirror drawer (in finnish we call it piianpeili).
And I wouldn't mind that print on the dress.. I like it.
The yellow/brown wool rugs though....
Ugh... we had those well into the 90's.
I remember the day I helped to throw them out.


Petri and I again.
On some island of the vast archipelago here.
We spent many summers sailing.
I'm sure the grass is supposed to be green here as that skirt is supposed to be red and my cardigan sky blue.
Love the knee highs... so cute.


On my parents' bed.

I was trying to count the candles on the cake, not an easy task... at all.

A lucky guess and those bangs bring me to nine.

Five months before my brother was born.

I'm wearing an authentic Austrian dirndl-dress my dad brought me from a business trip.

And that wallpaper is ugly in this pic too.

The wallpaper went before the rugs.

Sometime in the mid 80's...

Flashback

I was out taking my walk just now and came across a house that was being torn down. I'm not sure what it was, the smell of the old insulation or other building materials from the 1950's but it smelled just like my grandmother's house.

So very odd.

My nose took me about 30 years back. To memories of my cousin and I fresh out of the sauna mid winter. The sauna was in a separate building and we walked the 10 meters or so up the stairs in the snow to get back in to the house. My grandma would clothe us to look like Michelin men for those few steps. I so clearly remember the discomfort of having on my pyjamas, woollen cardigans and probably two coats to boot and having to sit inside for a good quarter of an hour like that. And that house was warm. It was always at least 25C/77F, summer or winter. My point being that we were already red with the heat from the sauna... she never did know about the importance of cooling down afterwards.

But all was well soon enough when we finally got to toss those coats aside and eat sweet buns and drink strawberry juice.
And if we were really lucky she made us crepes, thick lovely crepes. Served with sugar and strawberry jam.

I might just have to make some jam this week.

A [smallish] CHS reunion

Suski and Jenny.
We were exchange students at Capital High School in Olympia, WA 20 years ago.
All these years we've kept in touch.
And visited each other (she lives in Germany).
She and her daughter were my guests last week.

You know what was really funny?
I met them at the airport, drove home and when I checked my mail, I found this:

Talk about good timing.

So naturally we got on the website and dug out my old yearbook.
Put names with faces, really kinda wished we could go, but only if our sweet, bohemian lunch corner group was going:

(Tawny, you'll remember my weird crowd...)
We never ate in the lunchroom.. noooo.. that was why this lunch corner evolved.
Shawna, Deb, Heidi, Greg and Chad...and a few more names.

We had a good time reminiscing. And laughing...
(And trying to decipher that full four pages you wrote in my yearbook, Tawny girl... no wait, make that five..)

But it wasn't only our reunion.
Our girls last saw each other a year ago when Saara visited Hamburg.

Saara is only four dys older than Fenja.

They played Sims.

On our picnic to Suomelinna we met some curious young ducks.

We got some sun that day... I came home resembling Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer..

My nose almost glowed.

We also got sun when we visited Serena Waterpark.

No photos from there, but the kiddos had a blast.

We saw some happy horses bouncing around my yard.

Or bored little horses...

..and one proud trainer.

Look, they match!

We hit the final sales and got the girls some fabulous deals at 70% off.

All in all it was a good week.

Now who would go be a fly on the wall at that reunion for us though....

circa 1975

That's me being coy at my uncle's wedding.
Cute outfit, eh?

Fast forward thirty odd years...

I found the outfit while cleaning my mom's house.
And it's just the right size for Niina.
She really wanted to try it on.
Still cute.

Only...

...then she realized you could see her undies through the lace!
Now I wonder why that never bothered me?
I guess it simply wasn't an issue during the decade of real short mini skirts.

Because if you look closely at the photos, you'll realize the hem is in fact shorter on me...
My mom must have crocheted a few extra flowers to the length!

I figured it out...

What, you ask?
Where I inherited this procrastination gene... or why I have ten unfinished projects hanging around.. (ten..ha! I wish...)

Found in my mom's closet:

A very trendy crocheted bikini... almost ready. By the look of those patches, she might have been making two tops? A regular one and a teeny one, heh.

Want to take a look at the cover of the magazine?
Go ahead.. and feel free to giggle.

Check out the year...
1973.

I'll stop wondering now.

...de-de-de-deeeeee... welcome to the Twilight Zone...

Just how creepy is this?

This is from the 80's, I just found it in my mom's closet...

I swear the hair in the back of my neck stood up.

[shiver]

Photos, as promised

Spanning all the decades of her life, in no particular order.

(click to make them bigger)

They make me smile.