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.

Experiments

My plant dye kettle is on again. I have an interesting plant dye experiments going on.

I am using local plants and time to repeat the experiments I started last summer. This recipe you can find in my upcoming book later in the future.

Secrets

At the moment I have started to finish my long-term craft project. It is going to be a piece of textile craft art. It will be shown in a craft expo in Salla, Finland this summer (July 2025). It is for sale (5000€ +  commission if the gallery takes one) but is looking for a accessible public place so it can also be donated if such a place can be found. It has special limitations and demands for the location it can be placed. It is a visible part of Forest Sámi culture. I am not in a hurry giving a new home to it so we will seek the new home for it in peace.

I am in the middle of another secret project too. I am investigating a special plant dye method. I will make an experiment and about that you will hear later in my upcoming book if it will be succeeded. It is not a secret anymore that I am writing a book: Forest Sámi Costume History And Present Days. 

WoolCakes

Here they are. 500g of hand spun arctic dog wool chinegora.

Variable quality, variable yarn. That makes it to look lively and unique which twists are different here and there but all balanced.

Most of it is white or light grey.

There is also darker grey.

There is also other natural shades. That all makes it actually a tweed yarn. I can't wait to start knitting the project. Unfortunately, I have many others going on, so this needs to wait...

SlowCraftWool

After our angora rabbits passed away 2018 we had one last delivery of wool to the mill and received for about 10 kg AAW. On that time Liinu moved in 4 years ago. Since that I still have -like always- collected our arctic dog wool. I started to spin it 2 years ago in May 2023. Now I have spun ~500g of 100% chiengora from our own dogs' wool. I do have spun everything else too but this has been my main and long term project. 

How much I have used the time to spin this yarn? I never counted. But, a skillful spinner spins 40-6o meters of yarn in an hour. This is not an easy yarn to spin so I have used much more time to get ~50 meters than an hour. I have not calculated yet but there might be approx. 200m in 100g. Normal wool of 500g would then have appeared in ~20 hours. This is not a normal long fiber wool. 😅

Today I finally reached the point where we slowly start to see all the shades of the wool. I have washed those 4 skeins now. I used only ~50 liters of water to wash 500g of wool. It is a small amount of water to wash the wool. I did it in home industrial hand-washing way so it was possible. This really is FashionNOW and eco-friendly wool.

I hung these 4 skeins to dry outside so for that I don't need electricity. Just the wind and a bit sunshine. It is +8 Celsius degrees outside at the moment. That is enough to get it dry. But, because the drying up takes time and the birds are building their nests I need to hang up also some scarecrows to prevent them to pick up any wool from these beautiful hand spun chiengora skeins!

What I am going to make of it? A vest for Him. A very warm vest.

The problem to solve was what to use because I don't want to scare the birds away from nesting in my arctic garden. I need the birds for my biological and ecological toxic free gardening. That's why I chose 2 wind chimes you can see in the previous picture and one crystal hanger. The birds are used to the sounds of my wind chimes but still don't go close to them. This crystal hanger has been hanging in my veranda so they have seen its reflected light outside. I just moved it 4 meters and placed it outside. 

I need to pay attention and see if they scare them enough but not too much. At this time of the year the birds appear to pick up the dog wool everywhere. We also leave it outside on purpose for them to use.