WeavingTools

I usually never have time to go shopping just to hang around. Yesterday I happened to drive by a local Goodwill charity shop that had opening at the new place. I pop in just for the support. I don't buy distaffs at second hand but I do have 2 of them. Now I found this distaff and decided to buy it just for the support. It laid next to the wooden warping paddle. They both looked old, vintge, miserable and worn out. I brought them home just with 5 €. I cleaned them and oiled with the Macadamia nut oil like I did with the Wind Catcher. Just look how beautiful they are now.

Someone would say this is not a warping paddle but a spaghetti serving size measuring tool. I don't know about that. All I know is that these were used as a warping tool around here when the spaghetti was not here yet. And many were hand made and home crafted. It might be a multi-functional object / design! 😁

Pegs

This is my very old peg basket. It is almost 30 years old. It has finally faced the end of its time. The plastic has weaken so much that every time I just look at it, small plastic pieces falls off. I've been seeking a new one, actually for a year by now. The problem is they don't sell baskets for pegs without pegs. I don't need pegs. I need the basket. I have been looking different kind of options but each one would have needed some DIY extra.

That's why I ended up to design my own one and crochet it. I used loose end weft from YoungLady's rug project. I am satisfied with the result and it works well. I hope it to last the next +25 years!

RainbowMittens No1

Only in January 2026 I was learning Shepherd's crochet. And by MayDay 2026 I was having a workshop about it at annual Rovaniemi Craft Expo because of my job together with all the community colleges of Lapland. Each college had their own workshop around the same table. Next year I'll be there again. Next year the annual Craft Expo in Rovaniemi Lapland will be held 17.-18.4.2026. I will be there again on Saturday 17.4. showing up some other artisan work. You are always welcome to pop in and chat. We don't sell anything, we share only the information. There will be also craft/artisan small business to sell their products.

I designed and made these beautiful RainbowMittens No1 for the show in Rovaniemi. I used Novita 7 veljestä yarn (80 % wool, 20 % polyamide) (100 g = 200 m) for both blue and rainbow yarn. They are made by Shepherd's crochet.

Oops

In May I have stepped to plant dye wool as a natural cycle of the year according to the traditional Forest Sámi life style. These are experiments for my upcoming book.

The traditional plant dye for traditional Forest Sámi knitting patterns is going on well. Red is red and yellow is yellow. Red is made by madder and yellow by special birch leaves.

But very big oops pop out from my green kettle!!! Gosh! It is black. Accidentally. It supposed to be green but I made it Iron Age black. 😆At least it seems black now when it is wet. We'll see how it will turn out when hanging in the sun. 

StartingShawl

Last autumn I plant dyed some yarn for my upcoming shawl project and made the warp. It is going to be something very special.

I can't do it when the cats are visiting. Now when I know there will be weeks until they'll be back, I set up the warp on my loom. So, here it starts. It is going to be a Forest Sámi Shawl. It is a real restorative craft that breathes history and spirit of my ancestors through the traditional crafts. 

CatHammock

Yesterday I told you how YoungLady brought something with her in December. It was a round metallic frame which is a part of her huge cat tree. One of its hammocks' fabric part had worn out and broken in the hard use. I decided to use the left over material from Siejddemuorrâ. I designed it and first I crocheted the round and made some decoration for it.

Then I added macrame threads and started to work with it. I was guided not to make it too high and not to add anything playful (wooden beads or balls) with it to make sure it lasts longer. 

I started with the crochet, continued with macrame and in the half way made the pillow and the finished the macrame with the pillow to see the form better.

The pillow looks a bit too fat because the filling is plump up. The pillow and the filling will flat down when the cats have slept on it for a while. 

CatPillow

I designed and sew a new round pillow and pillow case. I used recycled materials for all the fabrics and filling. The quilting block is leftover material and rescued from a trash and given to me. The white parts are made from and old sheet (linen) and the beige parts are from old trousers. For the filling I used old home decoration pillow. Real FashionNOW product and the nature says thank you.

The pillow case has a zipper so you can easily remove the case and wash it. Inside is the filled pillow made of white and beige fabric. This pillow is for the cats. When YoungLady arrived for the YuleHoliday she brought something which she asked me to fix. This pillow is part of that. You will see more later...

PatchingPullover

I have a very old industrially made pullover. When I bought it on sale, it was a bit too big for me because it was men's size despite small. I have been using it and loved it. Now the wrist parts and elbows have worn out with tiny holes in the structure. With the wrists I just cut off the extra and fold it again. Now the length of the sleeves is actually the right. The elbow parts I first patched and then hide the patching by embroidery. This is FashionNOW.

HomeDecoKnitting

Just take a look how cute home decoration knitting I made! It is a sweeping brush handle woolly sweater! It is made of left over / loose end yarns. It is very easy to complete. It is done by circular knitting with 5 knitting needles. I had no 3 needles and the yarns approx 100 g = 200 m. It actually doesn't matter. You can mix all kind of yarns as long as they are about the same thickness. You can mix 100 % wool and artificial fibres. I even had some glittering in few, which you can't see on the pic.

I used 4 stitches on each needle (16 stitches total). I knit all the stitches. The length is of course individual but the basic handles at my corner of the world are approx 140-145 cm high. I just made a knot at each different yarn start/end and left 3- 5 cm loose end and pushed it inside the sweater. At the end I just knit together 2 stitches on each needle, and on the next round again 2 stitches together on each needle. Then I had 2 stitches left on each needle (8 sticthces total) and I cut the yarn and pull it through these 8 stitches and tightened. I never turn around the sweeping brush sweater. I just carefully used a needle to zig zag the yarn back and forth inside the sweater. It really was possible because I didn't do it longer than the length of the needle. Then I pulled the loose end of the yarn to the front side, tightened a bit and cut it off. 

 

At some point the sweater started to get a bit too long to be easy to knit so I used safety pins to keep it in order and easier to work with. It was all fun. And, this actually is low budget gift idea for the upcoming Yule tide with FashionNOW idea if you use your loose end yarns and don't buy any new! Knitting this is easy and fun so it does good on your mental health and on the other's health too because I can promise it will bring a smile at everyone's face who will see it! 💖

OctoberWeekend

This October weekend I have been quite busy. I have been doing traditional Sámi craft which results you will see later. This is a fur of a wild mink my father-in-law caught and made ready for the use.

I've also designed a new tablet weave band and made the warp for it already. It is going to be something special for my father-in-law. Don't tell him! It's a gift.

It has been dry an beautiful so we went to the sea shore to collect some sea grass. The autumn has been warm and we have not got the 1st snow yet despite it already is October. 

He needs sea grass to refill His decoys. He hunts black grouses by decoys. What is that? We'll, in decoy hunting you set up stuffed fake black grouses on the top of the trees. The real ones think "oh, there's a great place to eat" so they come to land on those trees. And that's how you get them caught for the food. But He needs to fix the black grouse decoys a bit because last season He faced a demolish. A white-tailed eagle also thought they were real and attacked at the decoys. The white-tailed eagle was quite confused and did everything it could to get the decoys but at the end it needed to give up and fly to find real food.

We are drying the sea grass on our bathroom floor by the stove. It works well. Soon He can finish fixing the decoys.

From this you can be sure the climate change is here and true. This sun flower blooms with few fellows in my arctic garden. The remarkable thing is that it is spontaneous and not planted. It is nearby our bird feeding place where we feed birds over the winter season. But it is a shadowy place and we have been feeding birds there for ages! Never before we have got any "wild" sun flower as a result even tough I know it can happen.

Despite I saw today almost full white hare (yes, they change the color of the fur coat for the winter to be safe from the predators) the frost has not arrived. We have protected our apple trees by the nets to keep hares and Roe Deer away. This may seem funny to you, but this really is necessary. Just image 1 meter high snow cover. Our apple trees don't grow much higher than a man. When there's deep snow cover on the ground the trees are partly buried in. If you protect only the stem, someone will eat the rest.

He has set my new old wooden rowing boat ready for the winter. He bought it for me from our neighbor who doesn't need it anymore. It is designed for the rivers, not the seas. I need to think where I will take it to inland because we live by the sea shore. You can notice there is a construction going in the garden which we were not able to keep on this summer because of Poor Pii. About the construction project you will hear next summer because we really can't start it now when the winter is arriving to cover the earth by the snow.

While I was looking after Poor Pii He fixed His boat but also built our new wood shed for our fire wood. Believe or not but He carried each timber over His shoulder from the street to the end of the garden (25 m) because we didn't want to damage our plants and tress because of the project. That's why He also dig the soil by tiny gardening shovel at some point because we didn't want to damage the roots of the huge old spruce that grows behind the new wood shed. The shed is built in the terms of the garden. That's why He also lift the timbers by his own hands one by one over each other all the way to the top. To avoid the damages to the trees we could not use any machinery/vehicle for the project. We are happy with the result, despite the shed looks like a brand new it also looks it has been there for the ages like the nature had already grown around it. But we just built it into the nature.  This season we don't have the time to built the stairs for the shed so this temporary solution will do just fine over the coming winter.

This weekend I have also been at the friend's farm to help with the wool and sheep. We have been sorting out the wool and kept on learning shearing the sheep. Also, meeting other old friends and making new friends. It really was empowering occasion.

Actually, my friend Elina has started a small business to run a farm holidays. You can take a look and book yourself in if interested at Farm of Old Leinonen. I've been there before and showed you around. And for sure I'll be back to gather with friends at Elina's sheep farm.

OMG

My colleague at work faced a horrible disaster last spring. She had put her French cardigan to hang outside to make the air to clean the wool. That is how you clean woolen garments. You put them outside to air and they get clean! This time she noticed someone had ate her beautiful cardigan! At the end she found out it was birds who had started nesting and needed something warm to build their nest. We both agree there must be very romantic baby girl tits in the world now! Princess like. She asked if I could do anything with the holes.

Well, I can always patch them. For the patching I used DMC stranded cotton embroidery thread. To make it more firm and not stretching. I wanted to create a base for something. See...

The cardigan had hang from the hanger on which the tits hand been sitting and peck fibers out from the garment. That's why both shoulders had faced the disaster but no other parts. 

To hide the patching I did some freehand embroidery over the shoulders.

It is mohair cardigan so I used mohair yarn for the embroidery. In this way she could at least wear it at home and cottage. But she liked it and is going to use it at work again.

This is FashionNOW. And also preserving memories. It was a gift she had received from a very important person in her life.

Notice: I have made a small Patching Wool -tutorial in 2014!

HomeSchool

In Summer 2025 I was unable to leave the house because of Poor Pii. I had planned to go again on Bobbin Lace Course at Valamo Monastery and already booked myself in but had to cancel it because of Pii. But, it didn't need to mean I could not have my course here at home on my terrace deck in my garden. It needed some arrangements because one point being at Valamo Monastery is being isolated and on ready made meals so that you have all the time to spend on focusing the subject you need to. That's why we needed to update our fridge and rethink the week menu. Here you can see one of my suppers: home made saskatoon berry curd, industrially baked gluten free bread with cheese and cold hot chocolate. Yep, cold hot chocolate. You make it to cold milk and do not warm up. I wonder if you have it elsewhere too than in Finland. And, no, it really is not what you mean with a milk shake.

And here is one of my easy breakfasts. Industrially baked gluten free bread, home made raspberry-saskatoon soup, cold hot chocolate and tea. Breakfasts were served with a good book. In this time it meant Jane Austen.

I always have one hot meal in a day. Usually it is served at lunch time. The lunch includes smashed potatoes with gluten free minced meat of cow. We usually never buy industrially produced meat (or anything else) but this was a special thing to ease my life for the home schooling. The Greek style salad is also industrially produced and packed in portions. Gluten free pancakes are home made so I needed spend some time cooking them. Here you can find a recipe for Gluten Free Potato Cakes. If you want to make normal pancakes just add one more egg and leave the potato out. 😉 The jam is home made red currant - cherry jam for the season 2024. 😋

WeekendRagRug

On summer 2024 my loom faced a disaster by Copy&Paste. On September 2024 I fixed the damage but after that I must have done some more fixing. See the black yarn...

Copy&Paste are about to come over for a few week visit so I decided to finish the remaining warp and the last rag rug. I decided to call it Weekend because it is made of weft rhythm 7/5 and included double stripes (Saturday and Sunday).

It was quite interesting because I was not quite sure how long the remaining warp was and how much weft I had for the rag rug so that it will be matching to HallwayRagRug. But, at the end I was there. It is exactly 2,5 meters long.

Only this (40cm) of the warp was left over from my 30 meters warp we set up on my loom on May 2021. That's 4 years ago! We've woven so many rag rugs of it! 

Here it is. FashionNOW rag rug. For this I used old recycled linen and cotton clothes, LP-yarn (80% of recycled cotton and 20% of other fibers) and textile industry left over material. Only the warp is brand new 100% cotton like in all these rag rugs I have made of this 30 meter long warp. Both Nuka and Pii seem to love it like they love the weekends! Unfortunately they can get it only when the snow falls.

Kemijärvi

When I was going to ForestSámiSummerExpo2025 I stopped in Kemijärvi. It is a city with interesting signs and citizens. I stopped there for 2 years 30 years ago and warmly recommend you to stop at least for few hours if on self guided road trip in Lapland, Finland. 

I visited at Kemijärvi local history museum. Unfortunately their website is only in Finnish. Like many local history museums they run it by volunteers. You can see the opening dates and hours on their website. I am sure google can translate it for you. But if it is not open when you plan to visit it just call them beforehand and ask for a private tour. The private tour per person for 1 hour is just 20€ and worth of the money. Besides the money goes for the charity/museum, they don't get the public funding to run the museum. I have visited the museum twice 30 years ago when studying in Kemijärvi and again now. I like it because they have labelled it all well and are very aware of about each item origin and history. 

Just check out the local library in Kemijärvi. There might be interesting exhibition going on at the library or at the cultural center. They locate both in the same building just next to each others. Usually it is all free entrance at least at the library exhibitions.

I wanted to see Heikinheimo's exhibition at Kemijärvi cultural center. He has phothographed a lot Forest Sámi people and his photos are very valuable to us and hopefully some day we'll see more of his collections at the museums and exhibitions. Rencently -about a year or something ago- his pics were donated to the museum from the private collection. In the future we are expecting to see more of his photos. This exhibition presented himself to the audience.

SilverBand

I've been doing some tablet weaving on our terrace deck.

I was interrupted by someone who thinks I am the most shiny baby in the corner. The flirt was so straight that even I understood it. I must confess I was a bit flattered. A woman at my age and still someone thinks I have the most shiny body in the world!

Since being a child I have been admired dragonflies but never before they have been interested about me. Not even I get many of them visiting my garden every summer!

This fellow was really persevering and arrived several times to get me on the flight. I told I am married already but it took quite a long time until the nature called and the dragonfly flew after someone else.

I designed and made silver-golden tablet weave band. The other end is a bit different because I tested another figure first but noticed it doesn't work so well. I could have taken it away but wanted to leave it all there. I decorated the other end with glass beads. On the other side is 12 beads for the protection of 12 months. On the other side is 8 beads for the protection of 8 seasons. In the modern world we live in months. In the traditional Sámi world we live in 8 seasons and nature cycle. I am sure you can spot the golden snake figure there. For the band I used Schoeller & Stahl's Manuela yarn (85% viscose, 15% polyester) (25g = 112m) in golden and silver shades. I have never before tried band weaving with metallic yarns but as long as you are careful with your moves and turns it seems to work just fine.