Happy Christmas! With Yarns!

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Happy Christmas! With Yarns!

Finnish Knitting Yarns

I have spent some quality time in the summer vacation by dyeing my Alku wool yarn.

Alku yarn

Alku is Finnish and means "origin". This really is a yarn whose origin I know exactly. The wool is from Eastern Finland and is selected by my friend who is really good at picking the best locks from the shearing. Then she took the gorgeous baby sheep wool locks to a local spinnery. It was a big day when we received the yarn. 

I have dyed yarn for many years and it has never felt so right as with this yarn. 

Here are some colorways I have created recently.

Real Finnish yarns

There's not many real Finnish yarns - the most of the wool for them is brought abroad or there's non-domestic sheep breeds like Texel mixed in it. And those we have often look very modest without any color. Most of the yarn is worsted (carded fiber, fluffier), not woolen (comber fiber, smoother). Superwash treatment is not available in the spinneries. The possibilities to mix other fibers like silk in the yarn is very limited. So Finnish knitters and shops buy foreign yarn.

What about my stash?

My stash is not totally domestic either. I do love those malabrigos, noros, sweet gerogias etc.

But I also knit from Finnish yarn, pure Finnish wool from Finnsheep or Kainuu Grey breeds. Here's a peek what I have among some others.

Back row, from left to right:

Hieno Finnsheep sock wool  (worsted) by Succaplokki

Kainuu Grey sock wool (worsted) by Christina's spinnery

Alku Kainuu Grey wool yarn (worsted) by Woolgrey, the yarn that I sell

Suupohja's Finnsheep wool yarn (woolen), not in production anymore as the spinnery has been shut down but some is still available with natural dyed tones at Pata-Noita

Maahinen Finnsheep wool yarn (worsted) by Riihivilla, dyed with natural dyes too

Front row:

Kainuu Grey wool yarn (worsted) by Ilu

Finnsheep wool yarn (woolen) by Kormu's sheep farm 

For the love of Finnish wool!

To celebrate the anniversary of the shop where I sell the Finnish wool and Alku yarn, I am giving 15 % off from all products there. The offer is available until 25th July. 

Go to www.woolgrey.com and use coupon code JUHLA12 at the checkout.

Introducing My Own Yarn!

Look what I have!

Here's my long awaited dream that has come true! A yarn made from organic baby Kainuu Grey finnsheep wool that my friend Susanna Kääriäinen has selected from sheep farms and that has been spun in a Finnish spinnery for us. How cool is that!

I am selling this special yarn in my Etsy shop Woolgrey. It call it "Alku" which is a Finnish word for "Beginning". And yes, I have designed the label myself and it's based on one of my doodles.

Here you can see how the swatch looks like. The tension is 22 stitches with 3,5 mm needles.

I have been having fun handpainting the yarn. You can see more at my shop but here are few samples.

"Renaissance"

"Nereida"

"Antique"

I love the natural white too!

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.

Jewel Tones

I have been doodling rugs recently. The woolly texture of them is very appealing so I find it fun to try to make illustrations that imitate them. This one had colors that I really like so I repeated them on wool too.

Here's the first set of wool that I dyed. (Available at Etsy)

And here's the second one. (Also available at Etsy)

These jewel tones get me in a good mood, hopefully you too! Colorful day!

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!

Wool Fool

Temptation colorway, available at Etsy

I am crazy about the wool my friend gets from the area where I lived as a child. I can't help buying it, dyeing it, spinning it, selling it. It is a part of my life nowadays. And the fact that my friend is equally obsessed with it makes it even better. I am not the only wool fool in the world.

Needle felting wool set, available at Etsy

I dye the wool with acid dyes but my friend uses natural ingredients she picks from the nature. The colors are softer and they all look great together.

Industrial dyes, natural dyes or no dyes at all, the wool is wonderful!

Two of Everything

Whatever I do, I always end up dividing myself in two. There's the logical side and the emotional side. There's the perfectionist and the one who really does not care. In crafts I have two passions: paper and fiber.

I made these tags for Lain Ehmann's ScrapHappy community tag swap. I opened my little treasure box of papers and dived in into the world of scraps and doodles. And inks. And strong colors. But when the tags were finished they seemed missing something. I finally got it: the string! Rushing to my stash of handspun wool, I grabbed some. Luckily I have the same taste of color with my knitting!

Fiber is like water, the world could not exist without. That's why I could not resist when my old schoolfriend Susanna brought some from our childhood area. It's been more than a year and we've played with it, carded it and spun it. Finally we were able to make it in bigger portions so that also you can enjoy it. Check out my new Etsy shop Woolgrey for organic wool and handspun yarns.

There will be new products soon at Peony and Parakeet too. And this blog continues to be a hub of everything that I make, either with paper or fiber. Thanks for following me!

A Happy Organizer

I am attending two great online courses at the moment, both in the area of scrapbooking. They are produced by Big Picture Classes. The first course is Stacy Julian's Library of Memories. It is about how to keep up with photos and stories. I have managed to organize my scrapbook pages plus 4500 digital photos within few weeks!

Another great course that has put me organize my stuff is Lain Ehmann's Mother LOAD. It prepares for 26 days scrapbooking marathon. I made this layout about my scrapbooking space as the first week's assignment. I think it's pretty cozy but actually it's only temporary as we have been renovating the library room at our house and once my table arrives, I will move my scrapbooking stuff there. The real library of memories and the place to scrapbook, I am so happy about it!!

Last week's theme at Lain's course was putting all the scrapbooking stuff in good order. I am pretty organized in that sector but after going through my die cuts and odd alphabets I got this idea. I put them all together in separate divisions of one plastic container. I love this arrangement, it's so practical! If you have problems with handling the small stuff, try this!

Here's my layout for week 2 of Lain's course. It's about how my dog Cosmo makes my life happy. I think both of these layouts really show the happiness. Well, on summer holiday, it's so easy to be content and happy!

More ATCs, made in the middle of summer nights. I love to stay up late and play with paints and doodles.

During the days, I have been dyeing yarn and wool! Here's some tussah silk and bluefaced leicester wool blend. Happy colors here too.

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.

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!

Wool Weekend

I attended a felting course at Röykkälä's organic sheep farm in Central Finland. I had lovely time with four of my colleagues from my day job. In the picture there's my first ever felted work.
In the picture below is the actual project I was working for the weekend. It's a bag, of course, but still a bit unfinished. The needle felting motifs will fill the surface and I am going to add fabric lining and fabric strap to the bag.
There are more pictures about the farm in my finnish sock knitting blog Sukanvarsi. I really enjoyed the weekend!