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.

Photos of fat tanning

More pics added to Flickr’s leather and tanning -section.

Stirring the bark bath

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…

Scraping skins

Couple of days ago I scraped half of a cow, three goats and two deer skins. Their skin sides have now thick layer of lime. Hair should begin to fall away off during the week. When they’re loose enough I’ll scrape all hair off and begin to tan goats and deer with fat, which will be either brains or seal train oil. I’m probably also colouring them brown with willow bark before tanning, because without that they’ll be all white. Goats, deer, and couple of sheep which I will get later will be my frock.

Pics are here.

Beginning with the hemp fibres

I’m beginning to get a faint picture about what I’ll be doing during this autumn. I have spoken with both Aja and Ellinor. It seems that I really have to work quite hard, which I will absolutely do – the only problem is that I should not only remember, but also _do_ something to my university studies while being here…

Yesterday I started to work with hemp. My another apron will be made of hemp, another of leather. I have been mostly taking the leaves off from hemp, which is a very, very dusty job. That means that I’ve been sitting with a scarf on my nose and mouth on a small bench drawing hemp through iron spikes (rohkiminen). Dull and dirty job, but podcasts help me to amuse myself while working. I have couple of buckets left, but I should be ready quite soon. Then I can put those hemps to Ljusnan-rivers water for soaking (liotus/rötning). Books about linen and hemp tell that running water should work badly with soaking the fibres, but my teachers say that there has never been problems here with that.

I also set yesterday a half of a salted cow (only the hide, not the whole thing…) to a water bucket. I have to change the water every day, but it may lay there to next Monday, when the salt has melted and I can begin to scrape the skin. After scraping I’ll put it to lime water for getting cows hair off. The skin will be very, very thick. I’ll be using it for the shoe soles.

Soon I should begin to take the hair off from 6 another hides too. Those will be my frock (alusmekko), which I will tan with fat.