My purpose was to take goat skins out from the willow bark bath today and begin to tan skins with sheep brains and egg. Nevertheless, I have been reading the last Harry Potter whole weekend. Because of that I haven’t done anything else than stirred bark bath here and then and sank deer skins to Ljusnan river (rinsing the lime out takes so much time that it’s easier to let running water do most of that work).
Willow bark seems to give a quite nice, reddish brown colour to skin. The bark bath doesn’t have any tanning purpose: only reason to put skins into it is the colour. I have been running to the Handicraft house and back again: if I don’t stir the bath often enough (= after couple of hours), goats will have lighter and darker spots, which doesn’t look so nice.
I’ll take goats up tomorrow and put deer skins to the bath instead. Means lots of time spent in Handicraft house and lots of stirring. I’ll take my wool with me so I can spin and be productive.
My cow is still in the lime bath. Hopefully I can scrape the hair off on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Only 160 pages left in Harry Potter…
