Handmade Collections

I like to keep things organized. Art and crafting supplies included. I like neat compartments and piles and putting everything into its own place. This summer has been really rainy and cold in Finland. So I have got a lot of time for organizing!

I browsed the photos that I have taken the past couple of months and I see grids and piles in most of them. Even the cards that I have made are showing the strict order. Another things that I see there are collections, all handmade. I have grown the flowers from the seeds, picked the berries and potatoes from my garden, dyed the yarn, carded the wool ... The pictures from summer are like well organized shelves in my house.

There was a time when I was desperately avoiding grid patterns in my art. The free and flowing line surely is the sign of creative spirit. I wanted nothing to do with symmetry or squares.

Now that I have found some of the freedom I was seeking for, I get the permission from myself to space the small circles evenly instead of throwing them to the background. It is like in knitting I tried not to knit simple patterns to learn the complicated ones. Nowadays after tens of years of knitting I enjoy simple projects the most. Sometimes it's laziness but most often it's being able to do something more from the less of stuff. 

The last picture is a simple neckwarmer that I made. I started with the carded roving, handspun the yarn, then dyed it, and finally knitted the piece using a simple pattern. It's not like the most ingenous knitwear ever but it has a story unlike many store-bought items do.

Handspun, Handdyed

Some knitting projects this time!

This is Bandana Cowl (pattern by Purl Soho). I knitted it from my own handspun and was a Christmas present for my sister. The handmade tag goes so well with it, doesn't it! (I have some for sale at Etsy: here and here)

Speaking of handspun and Christmas presents ...

Here are handspun mittens, a gift to my friend Susanna. She is the one who picks the Kainuu Grey Finnsheep wool that I sell. She is brilliant at it and these are made from the wool. I have spun different shades of greys and am quite pleased with the rural look and feel.

The next ones are for my own use as this year the winter is very cold in Finland.

Mittens from finnsheep wool dyed by a finnish artisan. Love the colors of this yarn! The pattern can be very basic when the yarn is so pretty.

Socks from very thin merino sock yarn. I handpainted the yarn first.

Finally Lady Sunshine gloves (pattern by Julia Mueller). I was surprised to notice that I had started these a couple of years ago. I don't know what happened that the second glove was not finished. I finally did that and these are great. The gloves fit well and the Wollmeise sock yarn goes well with these. I usually knit my gloves from sock yarn so that they last longer.

New Year, New Purples

Here's my newest fabric design. I began with this print, made a repeat and then added some little details that break the symmetry.

I have been dyeing spinning fiber too, purples again! Available at Etsy.

Enjoying Colors

I love dyeing wool!

Hand dyed Kainuu Grey sheep baby wool, available at Etsy

I spun some baby sheep wool to get samples of various yarn so that me and my friend Susanna could decide what to get made at a yarn mill.

The first three skeins in the picture have been hand dyed after spinning. My personal favorite is the leftmost, the yarn with black, dark grey and red. It is called "Joy and Sorrow" and it is inspired by Karelia, the area where the sheep wool comes from and where also both me and Susanna come from.

The second one on the left is inspired by colors used in icons. Unfortunately the red got too pink! And for the third one I got an idea from embroidery stitches. But I did not succeed in color, neither in the dyeing.

The fourth skein is natural colored 2-plied yarn that I used for the first three. And the last one is spun with three different shades using 2 grams of each in turn. It is 3-plied.

Ok, those were pretty soft and I was quite pleased with the spinning process but still nothing like this one:

I love this yarn! It is so soft! Spun from the natural dyed Kainuu grey sheep wool. Susanna has handdyed it with hand picked lichen. I have two large skeins and I am so pleased I succeeded in bringing the softness of the wool into the yarn.

From the two of us, my friend is more specialized in dyeing with natural colors. But I have made some experiments too and here's a skein of commercial sock yarn, dyed with marigolds. Not any marigolds really, as I have grew them from seeds.

It brings me great pleasure to work with wool, dyes and plants. Probably as I love everything where I can enjoy colors!

What Is Valuable?

My answer is: Little things with big stories.

A tiny piece of hand decorated paper. How long have I practiced to achieve it - tens of years! It seems ridiculous but it represents a lot to me.

Plain wool. Some might think it's nothing. But this wool is really big for me.

My friend has bought it raw from the area where I lived as a child. She has spent months and months learning how to find and pick the right kind of wool, how to process it and find people who can do it in bigger portions. We have shared hours and hours around this wool, learning its qualities.

And yes, small thinks can grow bigger.

I got this fleece from my friend. It's grey finn sheep, Kainuun harmas, wool, processed for spinning or felting.

In the near future you might find a small portion of my friends fleeces available at my Etsy store.

If you are interested in yarn instead, well there are plans for that too. Dyed fiber or yarn? Planning ...

Join my newsletter Peony And Parakeet Specials if you want to be alarmed when there's wool available.

Colorful Illustrations and Gray Yarn

Here are more pages of my first art journal that I am making at Traci Bautista's Discovering Y.O.U. course. I am getting there: undestanding how fun and fascinating it is to have journal. I have always dreamed about having an extra room for library and now I dream also about the whole bookshelf with books that I have made myself.


I am also more and more into illustration. I have been listening Thomas James's podcast Escape from Illustration Island for some time. It is worth listening if you want to go deep with the professional illustration world. I quite like to find stuff way above my own skills, it really makes me practice more and more.


Here's a journal page with some illustration:
Few spreads of the journal:




Besides making journal, knitting and other regular crafts, I have been making yarn from the wool I got from my friend. I have carded the wool myself and now some of it has been spun to the yarn. Now so colorful than my journal pages but I think it is so cool to be able to make yarn from the wool collected from the area where I spent my childhood.




I want to finish with colors though. Here's a card that I made some time ago with stamps and markers. Stamps are great for creating illustrated feel too!

The World of Wool

10 months ago, before I bought a spinning wheel, I did not realize how deeply one can fall in love with the wool. I had been knitting all my life, how deeper could it get! But now I know, there's a new world, and it's a world where wool is the queen and I am its' servant.

Before spinning I thought that sheep is sheep or merino. Now I know: there are so many breeds, so much different wool, even sheep wool, that it will take a lifetime to try them all. Very soon I also realized that I want to dye my wool and not only buy luxury fibers from the web but also buy wool produced more locally.

Then it hit me: the spinning wheel would not be enough. I need a drum carder. By not traveling abroad this summer I could finally justify the purchase. Now there's one limit less, I can card my local wool and mix fibers with this machine!

I had some coarse Finnish sheep wool to try it out. It looked pretty bad after dyeing but my magic carder did some wonders!

Then I had to spin some of it, of course!

Now I have just got a bag of rare Finnish wool, the breed is "Kainuun harmas" and this wool is much softer. What makes it very special is that my friend gave it to me. She had bought it from the sheep farmers in the area where I used to live as a child. She has washed it and now its my turn to card and make some yarn from it! I got it in three colors!

Making Yarn

My Christmas has been full of work. Or would I rather call it pleasure? As you can see, I have been making yarn, That is spinning and dyeing!
Spinning some seawool from Creatively Dyed.


Dyeing four skeins of sock yarn for future projects.



And dyeing the last portion of bluefaced leicester wool in oriental colors. These colors really give me strength to cope the dark winter days.

Color!

Sometimes I feel that the form is overrated in design. I see white objects everywhere. I think we Finnish are obsessed in white. I am not a big fan of whites, and really, if you examine colors, it's like the whole world could be expressed with color only.

My starting points were the iris flowers from my garden, a dark blue belt from my sister's winter coat and pale blue baby merino yarn I had bought from the sale. My intention is to knit a hood for my sister.
Another project on the go is to hand spin yarn for a lace scarf. My color scheme is inspired by Nepal. I have dyed four lots using the same theme but different colorways. Here's the third lot.

I hope the yarn will be lovely. The singles look very pleasing!

Four Seasons, finished

The beginning is often difficult. It is hard to believe in something that is just about hundred stitches on a circular needle. I try to make sketches before I actually begin because it gives some hope that there will be a final product in the end. This time I had a lot to do. Lining, flaps and all. I know designing should be simplifying but this time I just had to put all the ideas in the one bag!

At my day job I do simplify, simplify, simplify. But this bag just needed all these details! And, because making these bags is not my day job, I can be as crazy as I want, eh?

I am so inspired by the queens of the 18th and 19th century. I pictured some noble women in their grand gardens carrying their treasures. They would be surrounded by the trees ... Trees! Why not make a bag showing all four seasons using the forms of a tree!

That's how this started.

I have been learning a new skill: spinning! My new spinning wheel is a beauty and truly wonderful. The yarn is not the prettiest possible but it's very dear to me! I am excited about the possibilities spinning can offer! Being close to fibers is just uplifting.

Four Seasons

A glimpse of my newest bag, still unfinished. It's about trees and seasons and quite big. I was supposed to make small bags for Christmas, but got this so tempting idea and after some sketching I just had to start it!

I also have a new blog called Peony and Parakeet. It is about papercrafting. I have been especially keen on collage work and such for the last three years.

And like there's not enough to do with all the hobbies and the rest of the life, I just got a message from France that the spinning wheel I've ordered is now on its way to Finland. How exciting!