What to do on weekend

Next weekend is filled with events - either very affordable events or totally free of charge. All of these have been advertised in English, so I'm quite confident that they work for non-Finnish-speaking too:

1. Restaurant day

On Sunday anyone can open a pop-up restaurant. The concept is expanding outside Finland too! Check out the restaurant closest to you on the map.


2. Helsinki Design Open

Image: Rauno Träskelin

Pop-up concept store / exhibition / café about Finnish design at Iron house, right opposite to Stockmann at city center. Open only until Saturday (9 AM to 2 PM). Quality pieces, beautiful architecture.


3. Robot workshop

Build your own robot at Kaapelitehdas. Instructions and material are on the house. Workshop is running on Sunday from 11 AM to 3 PM.

So many things to do, so little time...

Fiskars Ruukki

Today I visited the Fiskars Ruukki for the first time. It's one of the attractions that has been on my to-visit-list for long time, but finally I managed to take the time and get there. The trigger for visiting Fiskars this week was the flower exhibition that my sister participated. She had two pieces on the show, this one being themed in a futuristic way for the Paper House of Fiskars - she had made the frame for the flowers from 800 paper circles! Unfortunately my camera run out of battery, so I didn't get a picture from the other piece. But I'm a very proud big sister.


Detail of the flower setup made by my sister


River being calm

The story about flower exhibition actually explained already what Fiskars Ruukki is all about today: art and handicraft surrounded with beautiful nature. Many artists have residence in the village, and there are shops selling handicrafts. Unlike in many tourist attractions, the food in Fiskars is good too. We had a delicious lunch at Restaurant Kuparipaja (Copper workshop) by the river, and coffee at Petris Chocolate Room. Petris Chocolate Room is something I can warmly recommend: beautiful handmade pralines with perfect chocolate and smart flavor combinations. My absolute favorite was the black currant praline. Petris's artisan chocolate is available in Helsinki too, the shop at Museokatu 11, Töölö is open on weekdays, and they'll have a chocolate bar at Helsinki Design Open event in couple of weeks.


Petris Chocolate Room

Delicious pralines: black currant, lime-coconut and pistachio

Fiskars Ruukki used to be an iron mill, it was founded in the 17th century by the river. All kinds of iron tools were made there - so that's the home of the orange Fiskars scissors too. The beautiful old industrial buildings have been nicely renovated and many of them serve nowadays as shops or exhibition rooms. One of my favorite details in the industrial buildings were the dark bricks in some of the houses: they were made of the blast furnace slag - recycling the industrial waste of the mill. The wooden houses were built for the workers of the mill, and some of them are still in residential use.


Black bricks


Residential buildings


Another residence. The lady of the house at the door (too bad there are no other bees in the pic to give the scale)

Nice experience. I recommend visiting Fiskars for anyone who's staying in Finland for a bit longer, and for the locals as well.


The trees in Fiskars were amazing

Design machines

As I wrote earlier, it was a surprise for me that the ice hockey world championship games were hosted in Helsinki. I was equally surprised when I saw the construction work of European athletics championship at Helsinki Senate Square - are we hosting those as well? Obviously I'm not the primary target group when marketing sports events, since these Helsinki sports events keep coming as a surprise to me.

The Helsinki happening that I haven't missed is the World Design Capital year. I've spotted WDC logos, ads and events everywhere. But that's ok, I feel I belong to the primary target group of WDC fuzz. To be honest, I think the WDC marketing has been even a bit too active, I think they've tried to put word "design" into places where it doesn't belong to.

Anyway, today I visited HI Design exhibition at Kaapelitehdas. The exhibition is part of the WDC and it presented design, industrial art and wonderful Finnish machines. There were automatic forklifts, nice elevators, new tram, building automation system running on solar power, the device history of Nokia phones, etc.



There was also an armored vehicle. I believe for many Finns it is perfectly normal to present a tank as a crown jewel of Finnish design. But I can also imagine that armored vehicles in general may not be 100% politically correct piece of design in some other cultures. Well, in some cultures you don't consider tractors either as top design - but we do.



The exhibition is free, and it's open from Thursday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm until September 2nd.

Maiden of Finland

Geographically Finland reminds a bit of a woman. If you look at the map of Finland it reminds of a lady: you can see the head, arm, waist and dress. Maybe because of the shape of the country, "Maiden of Finland" has become the personification of Finland - a bit like Uncle Sam is the personification of United States.

Graphically Maiden of Finland has turned into young blond woman wearing Finnish folk costume. She has been popping up everywhere: in art, comedy, even on the label of oatmeal (image above). Couple of weeks ago the embassy of Finland in Tokyo announced an illustration contest about "updating Maiden of Finland". The result: 35 adorable manga figures!

I'm amazed by the outcome of the contest. Why? Because the illustrations are so cheerful! That kind of a playful approach didn't even come into my mind. If you'd give the very same updating task to a Finnish artist, the end result would be either a melancholic adaptation or a clear statement. Joyful adaptation is just not part of our "artistic database". I'm refreshed in a positive way.

Draining cupboard

Meet a marvelous Finnish innovation: draining cupboard. It's a kitchen cupboard without bottom, having only metal grids as shelves. You can set your hand washed dishes into cupboard to drain. The water will fall into sink as these cupboards are always placed on top of the kitchen sink. You don't need to sacrifice the precious table surface for clumsy draining racks, and you don't need to roll your precious porcelain around with a towel.

A cupboard with sealed bottom. Luckily the dish washing machine reduces the need of the cupboard.

It's strange how come this innovation has not become popular globally. Maybe it's due to the big kitchen dealers and their bad adaption of the cupboard: for example Ikea and Kvik have sealed the bottom of the cupboard - which means that the water stays in the cupboard and air cannot flow freely. Which again leads into one thing only: mold.

The sock pimp

Some years ago there was an intense media discussion about a problem that presidential candidate Sauli Niinistö had: he was frustrated to spend time in finding the matching pair for the countless number of black socks after washing them. Sauli, may I introduce a Finnish innovation to simplify your laundry circus: Supi the sock holder.

Store the sock pins close to the place you collect the dirty laundry.




Unite the socks with the pin before you dump the socks into the laundry basket. Throw the pinned socks into washing machine. Let it roll.




Use the little hook on top of the pin to hang them drying.