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.

MidSummer

The Summer Solstice time includes a lot of sunlight but usually it can be quite cold. There is the meaning in the nature for it that at this time of year the sun can't set. If it would, nothing could grow or breed. The Nightless Night in Finland begins in Kemi-Kuusamo line. Tornio -where I work- is a famous target of explores to see the Midnight Sun. Tornio is an old city and market place with ancient marina for big ships to arrive from far and away. 

Our MidSummerFest holidays started this year at Kemi train station 16.6.2025 when the train drop on the platform Him and our grand daughter. My favorite place at Kemi train station is Cafe Hertta.

We almost faced a catastrophe in holidays but is was solved out with a very good service. A year ago I bought my new bike. Now we had bought something special for it but crashed at the fact that we could not inset it to my new bike, or any bike. I asked all the places but Keinänen was the only one which agreed to help us just before the holidays. They did it as an extra work and we all are very grateful for them because of that. If you are around and get in the trouble with vehicles (bikes, boats etc.), try them. They were so sorry for the price they needed to ask to make it all possible, but for me the most important thing is that they bothered to do it! I do understand the part and work cost. And I am incorruptible, I don't advert here in my blog for free service, money or any benefits. This is not my job, I have a full time job at adult education.😅

We bought Hamax 2 seat bike trailer for our outdoor adventures. It is easy to attach and take off and use as a stroller now when we got the adapter inset. We have only one grand child or any child that could use it. But it actually is a good buy also for small shopping cargo use. Max weight to load on is 47 kg but that is just fine with a toddler and grocery shopping or library visit. It has a rain and mosquito covers so everything inside will be safe no matter the weather. 

This MidSummer we met also other warm heart people than at Keinänen. Our neighbor donated us kids garden swing set because his own kids and grand children have grew over it. I think I owe him a pair of woollen socks for the coming winter.

Today Sámi people can celebrate MidSummer as a Christian celebration for the birth of John the Baptist. We've never done so. We celebrate it for the Summer Solstice. It is a festive of and for the sun that circles day and night around out sky and appears also in our traditional symbols and jeweler. See a picture at the end of this post to understand how the sun appears in our soljo brooches. The figure of the soljo comes and stands for the sun. 

19.6.2025

This post includes issues about Forest and Inari Sámi rights and politics. Some people can feel uncomfortable about the issue so remember you can always skip this rare statement post in my blog. But the ones who are interested about the human rights and the truths behind the scenes benefit from this statement. 

Today is a sad day. Finland parliament accepted the racist Sámi Parliament Act despite all the Lapland MP's, except one who was absent, vote against it. 

That actually is very interesting because most of Sámi People who have been accepted on the Sámi Parilament's listing live somewhere else than actually in Lapland, Finland. Most of Forest Sámi and Inari Sámi people still live in their ancient areas in Lapland and follow their traditional and cultural lifestyle. In practical Lapland issues have now been decided somewhere else than in Lapland and by someone else than the real original indigenous Sámi people of Finland. 

That Finland which is known about the equality and well being doesn't exist anymore. It has been weakening in the past yeas but by this act crashed it down. 

The process of accepting the reform of Sámi Parliament act has included a lot of dishonest lobbing and fake news for the reform and against Forest and Inari Sámi people. The key points have been the fake translations about UN Human Rights Committee and CERD Committee monitoring Finland's Sámi situation. Anyone who can read can check all that out and find the truth. See Hard Politics Behind The Scene by Parliament of Sámi Villages in Finland that has uploaded the article on its English site.

They base the new law on the language issue, not descent facts like ILO convention 169. The new Sámi Parliament Act discriminates Forest and Inari Sámi people because they have lost their spoken Sámi language in the past 100-150 years because of the colonialism, assimilation and church acts. We can prove our grand and great parents spoke the Sámi language but the problem is Sámi Parliament call us liars because they don't believe our testimonies. It is interesting to know that they accept and reject even the siblings of the same family into their listing. We even can prove our descent connection by genealogy and gene tests but they claim that is not enough either. 

The truth is that Inari and Forest Sámi people were here first. Reindeer Sámi people arrived only 150-200 years ago from north parts of Norway and Sweden and have been causing troubles to Inari and Forest Sámi tribes who lived on the region first since that. 

Our problem is that Sámi Parliament has connects to everywhere in Finnish society; parliament, ministries, amnesty, media etc. meanwhile they get huge funding for their act. We send correcting request almost daily to the media but they don't correct the fake news. Not even if the news would be totally wrong. 

This racist act of Finland  and Sámi parliament can't silence Forest and Inari Sámi people anymore. Our culture has been hidden from the outsiders and we have lived it in the private homes because of cruel bullying and discrimination by other Sámi and Finnish people. But our culture is still very much alive and we are not going to hide it anymore. 

Expressions "I am sorry" or "My apologies" were not originally part of Sámi culture nor language. As a Forest Sámi I was brought up in the way that I must live my life in the way that there will not be a reason for these words. But living in the pressure of Finnish culture I have learnt there are forgivable and unforgivable actions. I have also learnt that the ones who ask you to turn the other cheek usually hit you again. We are not turning our other cheeks anymore because they have already hit each generations' both cheeks.

You know me as TaijaS. My name is Taija Sillanpää. But my name is also Petra Kiesseluohtâ. Petra is my second name given to me by my Sámi mother. It means a female Forest Deer. Kiesseluohtâ is my original Sámi family name the christian priests never consent to write on the official papers. They translated it to Finnish as Kesälahti. They said it's better in that way. But it is not. It literally means Summer Bay. But it originally is Kiesseluohtâ, nothing else but Kiesseluohtâ and it comes from the exact place on the planet Earth that was ours to live through the eternal time before it all was stolen away from us.

Thank you for listening!

Siejddemuorrâ

This is my own design and piece of textile art Siejddemuorrâ - Seitapuu - Seita Tree. Seita is a sacred place of Sámi people. Seita can be for example a stone or tree. But not any stone or tree. You need to know more about the culture to understand which stone or which tree is seita. So, in practical some seitas are marked even on maps as an ancient monument or landmark. But most are not. When I meet seita in the nature I always salute seita and if possible leave something to seita.

In these pictures in my blog you can't see all of Siejddemuorrâ. It includes also a sacrificial table under it. The table is made of drift tree and is placed on the floor. All together as a complete piece of art and cultural object it needs open floor place where the seita can freely hung from the ceiling. So, it needs at least 3m high open floor place (modern architecture will be just fine). Siejddemuorrâ is made of different kind of yarns, glass beads, salmon vertebra, wood and metal. It includes a lot of cultural information which I will explain to the buyer if the one is a private person and unfamiliar to our Sámi culture but wants to support our cultural work and leaves the contact information for me to get in touch. (We don't get any funding from the government of Finland, Sámi Parliament of Finland or any business.)

In my previous blogpost I announced the price 5000 € for this piece of art Siejddemuorrâ. In July Siejddemuorrâ will be shown and on sale at Lyylin Salonki, Salla, Finland. It is open from Monday to Friday, weekends closed. Lyylin Salonki takes 10% commission from the sales so there the price will be 5500 €. It is a local small business so it needs to get some profit. We (me and my siida) are still planning to get Siejddemuorrâ at public place but if and when it will be sold I will use the money to publish my book. 

When visiting the exhibition at Lyylin Salonki you can bring your own gift to seita and place it on its sacrificial table.

Siejddemuorrâ is already in Salla. This week I took it and two Sámi costumes to Salla for the Forest Sámi Summer Expo 2025. Instead of staying at friends my mom wanted to test some cottages for the upcoming SummerExpo so she rent a cottage at Sallatunturin Tuvat. She was quite satisfied with the cottage and service so she has rent it again for the summer expo. I have nothing to complain about it but I need to say I loved its sauna!!!! The sauna was clean, able to be set hot (or cold) enough easily and the spirit was right!

OpenExhibition

This spring at work I received an interesting email. They were organizing a group exhibition Töissä täällä - Working here for the workers whose employer is Tornio City. Because I work at Tornio Community College my employer is Tornio City. I decided to participate and show First Kiss which none has ever seen "live" anywhere because it is part of the private collection. It has been shown only here in my blog 11 years ago!

Here is the list of artists and their pieces of art you can see in June 2025 at Tornio City library. I have updated this exhibition and one other that is upcoming in July 2025 on my OnTour page. If you are around, take yourself there to enjoy about local art that are seldom seen anywhere else, especially in the Finland capital and big city areas. Salla exhibition is up to upcoming Forest Sámi Summer Expo 2025. Anyone is welcomed to see around and learn about Forest Sámi.

PS. If you are visiting anywhere in Finland and want to see local art, go to the library. Libraries are usually free places for artists to show their art. Galleries and museums are far too expensive unless you have applied and received a public funding for your exhibition. And many don't because they are far too humble to do so even they are super talent. Just be silent, polite, and sneak around. Take pics only when none appears in your photos. It is allowed to photograph in public places but it is considered extremely rude to do so if there is a local person in your photo. Show respect for this and you can see a local person to smile. For my picture of this art exhibition wall I waited for about 5 minutes to get the wild child in photo to hide well enough so that it is called polite and compliment to take the photo and publish it. I could have cut off the child in the picture but I want to show you what is ok and what is not.