Spinning and softening the skins

I am still mostly spinning. I should finish spinning of wool in the  weekend or beginning of the next week and then begin to spin hemp. Hopefully I’m done before Christmas Holiday.

I experimented dyeing with heather and noticed that also the third afterbath is still too yellow, or almost brownish-greenish-yellow. That’s not a colour I really want to my dress! I have to make another try with smaller amount of heather. That will probably happen just before or after the holiday.

I scraped my shoe cow hide today and added more bark. My teacher suggests that we’ll take the hide up from the bath before Christmas that she doesn’t have to come to school during the holiday because of stirring my bark bath… It’s hopefully done then. Softening will happen on January.

Textile course was in the tanning room 3 weeks felting and dyeing, and I couldn’t  soften any skins during that time. Tomorrow I’ll do two goat skins ready for sewing. Probably on Thursday I’ll begin to soften the big deer skin and put at last two sheep skin to the lime bath. Another one will be the front side of my frock, another one the leather apron, if everything goes fine. I’m planning totake all skins with me to Finland and sew the frock during the holiday.

I ‘m beginning to understand how late I actually am (I should do some Christmas presents and relax too) and how much I should work before the holiday period.  Especially the hemp spinning will take it’s time. Trallala, I say.

I’m still here, though too slow

I’m sorry about the silence of these last weeks. First I was very busy here in Bäckedal, because I travelled on 16th October to London for two weeks. When I came back, I got a terrible cold, which is actually still going on a bit.

So, a status update: Because textile course is felting in tat house where we usually tan skins and hides, I can’t do almost anything there just now. I’m only stirring the bark bath of the cow hide every day. It smells terrible, though process goes on fine – the smell which fastens to your hands doesn’t disappear even if you wash your hands about two hundred times after stirring.  Actually, it stays after taking a shower too. It means that I’m continually smelling like a rotting cow to the beginning of January, when I’ll take the cow hide up.

I’m still couching a lot so I try to do light work, which means spinning very actively. I have been way too lazy and, also because of travelling and the cold, have lost more than three weeks of active working time. I also lost some time for felting woollen things for me just because felting is so fun. Trallala. Hopefully I’ll manage to be more energetic.

Hemp stems are also still waiting for braking – the only problem is, that winter has came to Härjedalen and it’s something like -4 Celsius and snow out there, so braking isn’t very pleasant work just now… I can do it inside too, but then I’ll breath all the dust inside my lungs.

I haven’t still taken any pictures about my wool and spinning. I try to remember to do that soon.