Last Saturday I arrived in the Netherlands to be with my boyfriend and visit family and friends during Christmas and New Year. It's been lovely to be in my own home again and spend time preparing for Christmas. Putting up decorations, wrapping presents, opening Christmas cards, and baking cakes for my family.

One of the decorations I've put up is this Christmas wreath I made last year. The stripes are crocheted, just like all the flowers and leaves.

Last week, before I came home, my mum and her partner went to a Christmas market in Germany. She bought this owl with Christmas hat home for me and my boyfriend. Isn't it a cutie?

This is our Christmas tree. We kept it in the garden during the year so we only needed to get it inside and decorate it. No need to go out and buy a new one. I love Christmas trees, but choosing one is not really my favourite activity. All the trees and you pick only one, so which one is the prettiest? And what size do you want? Also the trees look a lot smaller outside, and it's very hard to picture how big it will look inside. I loved not having to think about that this year. 

Lastly, I want to wish you all a merry Christmas! I hope you have some lovely days. 

If you live in Finland you soon learn that this is the country where Santa Claus lives. There is some controversy about this subject though, because many people outside Finland think Santa Claus lives in the North Pole. Not Finns, for them Santa Claus lives right here in this country. Maybe that's why they are so crazy about Christmas. The last weeks I've had 'pikkujoulut' (Christmas parties) and I went to different Christmas markets. The nicest Christmas market in the city is definitely the one in Senaatintori. 

Vendors on this market sell all kinds of stuff. Homemade items, like knitwear, leather gloves, candles, and cookies and bread. There's even a blacksmith! But you can also find vendors that sell well known Finnish brands. 

There's also a carrousel for the kids. Or if you're young at heart... Because in this picture the only ones riding the carrousel are two grown up men. Completely normal here in Finland of course. Or maybe they had kids with them but you can't see them in this picture.

The yellow building in the background is part of my university. All my lectures are in that building. I went to this Christmas market between two lectures. Isn't it amazing to be able to do that? 

Another great Christmas market in Helsinki is at the Cable Factory. There you can buy all kinds of handmade stuff. I didn't take any pictures there because it's inside and although the vendors sell great things the atmosphere isn't as nice as above.

Hello again! Since I posted my knitted Christmas decorations for the last two Advent Sundays, I thought let's make this a sort of tradition. So you guessed it right... more Christmas decorations coming up! 

Here is my finished red star! 

And here are my three stars in a row! 

I made these crochet snowflakes. The big one I made first with a bigger crochet hook and I thought it looked a bit weird. So I tried a smaller hook and the result was the smaller star. Which I think looks much better. I don't really know what I'm going to do with these stars and if I'll make more. That's why they are in this unfinished state. If you have any good ideas, let me know!

All my knitted Christmas decorations together. I put the nicer crochet snowflake on the red star and think it looks quite nice. Maybe I'll sew it on there. 

The term at the university is over and I received my first grades. All of them were good, so I'm really happy with that! This also means Christmas is really drawing near and soon, this coming Saturday in fact, I'm going back to the Netherlands for three weeks. To celebrate Christmas with my boyfriend and family. Therefore I don't know if I have time to make another Advent Sunday post next week but I'll try and do my best, ok? 

For the coming week I have some other posts planned though. So I'll not be absent for long!

Last week I've knitted some stars to decorate my  Christmas garland. They're really easy to make if you can knit in the round. First you make the body of the star and after that you work each point separately by decreasing. 

The pattern for these stars can be found here. Because I'm also working on a Christmas gift for someone I haven't made that many stars and the red one is still under construction.

As you can see there's still quite some red left but I almost ran out of white and green and also wanted some blue for my decorations. So I bought some yarn from an Icelandic brand called Léttlopi. I haven't knitted with this yarn yet so I can't tell you my experiences when it comes to that. But I really like the colours, they look very natural in a way.

Hopefully I can so you some more Christmas decorations next week!