Working on my degrees

Yes, I'm working every day. As some of you may remember, I'm spinning for a Certificate in Handspinning in Online Guild. I'm now allowed to show any of it in public before the examination in August 2013.

I'm also spinning for my Master examination in my local guild. I don't know when that will be, they haven't told me yet. I hope it won't be next spring... there aren't enough hours in a day to choose fibers, search for fibers and purchase them, prepare, spin, finish and take notes, knit, weave, crochet, nalbind the samples, make a portfolio you can be proud of. So if they say "in May next year" I'll probably have to say "Oh no, I won't be finished before 2015".

It would be nice if I could use the same yarns in both exams ;) But I can't. I have to spin even better for my own guild as it's really an exam for becoming a Master Spinner.

So instead of showing pics of washing fleece, combing, carding, spinning, plying, and finished yarns, I'll show you something else:

How to fix an antique spinning wheel that isn't quite straight any more: use a match to straighten the drive wheel! It may work, or it may not. My old Lisa likes this. I'll show her as soon as I can take a pic from my studio without being embarrased because of all the junk and fibers laying all over the room.

Protection

There was a comment on my blog a few days ago about the belief that rowans protect you from evil. So now I've made a necklace for hubby and one for me too. This one is hubby's.

Here's another protection: our lovely little Kasper, a herder and a guard dog, eight years old now. One ear is listening to me, the other is turned towards the village.

Oh yes, I'm spinning, carding, combing and knitting as always, but there's nothing I can show right now. So I'll show you what hubby found in the attic on Sunday. A package with several kilos of tow yarn and some very old viscose. What on earth shall I do with it? I don't have a loom.

Crane birds

The crane birds are gathering. Soon they'll be gone.

Rowan hook

After reading the comment from Monika in the previous post, I went out and picked some rowan berries and also took a branch just in case I'd need to be protected. I made a hook for my smallest diz using a piece of that branch. A good day's work! Now I can sit down and think about combing fibers :)

Rowans

I love rowans. There are several big rowans in our garden. They had lots of berries this year, but now hundreds of thrushes are eating all they can before they move south.

These rowans are from a small island in the Gulf of Bothnia:

Either there has been sheep grazing, or someone has cut the lowe branches. Beautiful! We saw them in Midsummer this year. The rowans had already bloomed on the mainland, but out there by the sea they bloom later.

These are our rowans:

The thrushes have eaten all the berries from the top of the bushlike rowans, while the tall tree like rowan still has it's berries left, but for how long?

String for Kuchulu

My pretty little Kuchulu needs a new string for it's purse. I like making lucet cords when I'm tired or just relaxing. I can read or watch a movie while making cords.

My lucet is cherry wood, and the Kuchulu (from Jenkins Woodworking as you can see) is lilac and ebony. It weighs 11 grams, 0.39 oz. The shaft is 7,3 cm, whatever that's in inches. It's perfectly balanced and likes to spin silk, merino and other fine but not extremely short fibers, even if you could use it as a supported spindle. I have real supported spindles for that purpose, so the Kuchulu is used as Turkish spindles usually are, as a drop spindle. Yarn and fiber from Easyknits.