Hi there!
I am Tuula and my passion is carved plants that I make myself. Crafting plants is a good hobby, but it can also be part of presenting dishes.
I am very grateful that You are interested on topic and reading this right now.
I am a grandmother, mother and wife living on a countryside. I am previous agriculture-entrepreneur and current ”I do what I want”. I am goal-directed and determined and I won’t give up easily.
With traveling I got to know the secrets of crafted plants. From there on started a hobby that I want to share with you now as well!
Where everything started!
Have you ever got in the situation on your life that stops you completely. That happened to me when traveling in Turkey on a sight-seeing. In the first morning I almost forgot to eat the breakfast and was almost late from the bus.
The breakfast buffer in the hotel was decorated with absolutely fantastic crafted vegetables. Immediately I felt a need to rush back to the hotel room to fetch my camera. At home I noticed that most of my holiday pictures were about these wonderful foods along with their decorations.
As a foreigner tourist when you travel you get to know better and better crafter creations. This happened to me again in Thailand. When the same thing repeated many times, I started to wonder: ”someone must prepare these?”
I have always had many hobbies at home with handmade things. From that follows the ideology and the ”sight” of seeing things the way they are prepared.
Little history
As I child my mother had sewing machine and loom in hard use. In my childhood home we also planted food ourselves and lived there almost with only our own food. All of these same habits followed to my own family-life.
World modernized and not everything was anymore about getting the income and satisfying the family needs. I got the possibility to have a hobby so sewing and weaving got a new dimension. Fashion had come to the countryside.
Same happened to groceries and the food wasn’t only nutrition. Also different plant species cultivation have got much more diversity in Finland. The food is yet good food for us, but now also eye candy which crafter plants also represent.
World usually is ahead of Finland in everything. I got to know wonderful crafted plants in our travel and my husband also found new recipes.
My huband’s cooking hobby had reached ”wok”-level. Convenience food never landed in our family so at home we have around a lot of different kind of plants.
When you combine all of these together: handicraft, perseverance and curiosity, was a new hobby already waiting.
My husband’s hobby is to fill crossword puzzles. We sit together often in front of the kitchen table, both focused in our own hobbies. He is wondering why I bother to waste my time on turnip and I correspondingly laugh to his word puzzles.
There my journey started to the crafter plant decorations, of which I write in my blog.
”I gave my little finger, it took the whole hand…”
”I gave my littlefinger, it took the whole hand. I started to play with fire, I did it hidden. Now my heart is on flame….” sang Aki Sirkesalo in his times. The quote is directly like from my steps with my hobby.
During the journey I have find many kinds of products related to crafting plants. In Finland the offering was quite weak, so started to seek for good tools on foreign countries. During our trips I have always had a project to find material related to the matter.
From bookstores I have found literature, even though it has been quite difficult to find any as I only speak finnish. My first ”real” knife was quite a project when nobody really understood what I was looking for.
At start at home I tried carving as a secret and nobody else knew about it except my husband. I always cut my failed plants to be used as food. This continued for a while until I started to succeed more and more.
When I am thinking about it afterwards, I am wondering if the mistake that I made really was so big. It was quite meaningful for achieve the end result and I failed because of it.
When I finally learned the technique, feeling the joy of success was breathtaking.
Grandchildren have been eager to try the new hobby of their grandmother. Quite a lot of time has passed with them crafting plants.
The same joy of success I have seen in children as well. They of course didn’t have to learn it the hard way as I did, because I was able to teach them how to make it.
I have told to everybody that anybody can make crafted plant decorations because even the children did it.
What did you think about this post? I would be very greatful if for all feedback and I would like to hear your thoughts. You can send me feedback by email info@kaiverrakukka.fi or on this page on contact form.
Welcome to the common journey with us!
Tuula
I am happy if you experience this post interesting and that you share it on social media. Thank you!