TheBooks3

This year I decided to challenge myself to show you what on earth I read. In this blog post I show you which books I've read in April-June 2025. These bags include half of the books. Divided in two. The ones that I still need to read and the ones I've already read. Actually there is exact 47 books I have borrowed in Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian or Sámi at the library for the scientific investigation of my upcoming book. So, in the past 3 months I've read about 23 craft or history books. Yes, I do have a very little free time BUT I am a fast reader. 😅

I've also listened to an audio book The Air Raid Book Club by Anne Lyons (in Finnish, library item). It is warm spirited feel good book despite it includes topics of war and being a fresh widow. I do recommend this book for all who love books, books shops and comfort stories. 

I listened to another audio book by Finnish author Viljo Rauta (in Finnish, library item). It is originally in Finnish and tells about The Great Wrath: the bloody period in Finnish history in 1713-1721. The Russian Tsar's soldiers occupied large parts of Finland. The Ostrobothnia region experienced particularly hard times during the occupation - for example, on the island of Hailuoto near Oulu, Cossacks killed over 800 people in one night. Kemi and Tornio also suffered their share of this bloody terror. This is a science book and can be a bit heavy. But for sure the issue is worth of knowing. Not only WW2 happenings between Finland and Russia made Finland to be always awake and alert for Russia. It has started already then when the humans inhabited these areas. I am sure some information is available also in English.

PlantDyes

So far I have plant dyed this summer for example these AAW (50% our own ethic produced arctic angora wool, 40% ethic produced FinnSheep wool, 10% nylon) (100g = 238m) and OOW yarns (25% arctic dog wool and 75% Finnsheep wool).

From left to right

1. Yellow AAW (Birch leaves - Betula)

2. Coral AAW (Cinnamon Webcap - Cortinarius cinnamomeus)

3. Lavender AAW (the mystery one 😊)

4. Light beige (Fire Sponge - Phellinus igniarius)

5. Brown OOW (Alder Cones - Alnus)

The shades are beautiful and I already have something in my mind for them. Many many projects. In this pic you can see how they appear compared to white. But photographing the shades is so much up to the light and everything so you hardly never get the exact shade if being a hobbyist in photographing like me. 

I have plant dyed also by mushrooms. I used toxic Surprise Webcap (Cortinarius semisanguineus). Also this is one of my experiments for my upcoming book. I frozen and kept in the freezer for over the winter. Especially the caps remain well their ability to give red shades. The foot begins to give more brown than yellow after spending months in the freezer. These are OOW yarns.

ResultsOfExperiments

Do you remember my experiments in May? It is now finished. This is the result of it. How interesting! I have managed to dye lavender purple with local materials. They say it is impossible but you can see it is not. 

I made some pics of the yarn with different shades so you can see how it all influences on it how the shade of the yarn looks.

And no, I am not going to tell you what I used to get this shade. You will find it out in my upcoming book some day in the future. But I have been working with it for 10 months now to get it right. It is an old, almost disappeared recipe which I have brought back thanks to my Forest Sámi spoken cultural heritage and old books.

PoorPii

This week we noticed something weird with Pii and went to vet with her. She has a weird lump filled with blood. 

That's why we needed to take Pii to North Finland Animal Hospital. Again I wondered why it is called "North Finland" if I need to drive 1½ hours to south to get there...

It is a long way to drive actually approx. 115 km to get help when your love one is at poor state. Dear Pii had her 1st vaccination and after few days she got very dramatic reaction because of it. By then (June 2020) we first went to local municipal vet and get help there and they set us ready for the long drive. Young Lady sat on the back seat and took care of the poor little puppy while I was driving. 

But we made it and got there just in time, just when she started to go to the final end. It all looked like in a dramatic film and it was my 1st experience of animal hospitals (this was new by then around here). We got ER care and Pii stayed over the night. By then we didn't know yet will she survive. But you know she did. She has also received all her other vaccinations but with a bit different ingredients. It is important to vaccinate humans and animals even sometimes you may get the reaction. Since that she has not got any reaction of vaccinations or medications.

This time 6 hours was enough. It means we spent 9 hours on the journey. She needed surgery and medications. We could have get her out a bit earlier but just when it was the time she had managed to get off the collar and scratch the wound at the clinic when they was getting her ready to go. So they needed to fix that.

Poor Pii has got grey hair in one night. She needs to wear that plastic post surgery collar for fortnight. I won't take it off to make her to get used to it because there is no other way at this time except to wear it. We take it off only to clean the wound. We still don't know what it is and why there was blood. (No inflammation.) We get more results on the next week.

Nuka knows all about it so she just feels sorry for Pii and lets her be. On the photo you can see the damages in Nuka's throat and chest area because of the dog attack she faced in February 2019. The white fur in her throat is growing from the loose skin. The attack and bite caused the fact all the skin loosed from the muscles around her neck, throat and chest area. It took a long time to get it mostly attached back. 

ToddlerDress

This time I designed and made toddler summer dresses and shirts from recycled materials. Did you know that manufacturing one single cotton T-shirt needs for average 2 700 liters of water. That's as much water as one person drinks in 2½ years!

I received few bags of old adult T-shirts to be used in making rag rugs. For some reason also adults grow up their clothes and so they wake up on one morning only to notice one piece of clothes is too small for them even they would still like to wear it. 

I found few pretty shirts which were still good enough as clothes. That's why I decided to make some new summer clothes for my grand daughter. 

I used only old T-shirts and textile industry left over material (elastic bands etc.) I must tell everyone who has seen these shirts and dresses has fall in love with them and the idea. 

Every day my grand daughter has a new favorite of these 5 new clothes. She loves each of them. Also, it is funny when people who donated a shirt notices Her dress/shirt is made of that. It brings a happy smile one everyone's face.

This is FashionNOW. This is an excellent way to recycle and avoid buying new clothes each time your kid seems to need one. My grand daughter asked what clothes these are. I told they are Save The Nature clothes and after that she didn't want to wear anything else. She is just 3 but thanks to the education she already knows -at child level- what it all means.