Spinning at Stundars again

I have been spinning with school children twice in May. The home for my guild Björken (The Birch) is here: Stundars. Every spring the staff at Stundars arrange craft days for 1400-1600 children.

This is Frida Paulin, a crafter I admire very much. Her main craft is bobbin lace, but she is also a skilled spinner and weaver. She's well over 80 now, but still spinning. She's surrounded by old Finnish spinning wheels, the oldest from 1818.

Frida had two bobbin lace makers with her in the big farm house. One of them later said it's quite comfortable to undo mistakes while making lace in public, because no one will know whether you're going backwards or forwards!

This is what she made:

And here's the other lace maker:

Beautiful laces, aren't they! I have made bobbin lace in my youth, so after a bit of practice I could do now also, but not as complicated lace as these two are making.

I was spinning here this time:

This is part of Gråbyn (The Grey Village), a part of Stundars with small crafters cottages. They are grey because they have never been painted. This was typical for areas inhabited by the poor in the old days (not so uncommon in our days either...)

In our cottage it was warm and cosy. There was a fire lit for us, because even if it looks warm outdoors it was still quite cold in the nights, and the cottages were damp after the winter because they had not been heated.

My company this year was Doris Bengs, who is a skilled decorative painter. Here she is surrounded by interested girls.

Some of Doris' work, and the beautifully coloured interior of the cottage:

The sheep where out, and this year there's a Finnsheep ewe with three lambs. They already graze and eat grain, but mother's milk is better!

The ewe will be sheared when the nights get warmer, which means any day now. She has a lovely wool, but the winter wool is not the very best as you can see. Lots of vegetal matter, and it's worn and fragile and has some shorter wool among the longer. The lambing hasn't made it any stronger. Three lambs takes a lot of strength from the ewe, so often there will be a weaker spot in the wool that grew during the pregnancy and while she was producing milk. But in the autumn she will most probably have a very good fleece for spinning.

When you're one of the crafters you can't go and see the others working in the area, which is something that most of us are sad about. But working here is one of the peaks each year. I was here for the first time in the 90s, when I first started spinning in public. I had to pause for many years while my job took most of my energy, but now that I'm retired I feel free to participate again.

Graffiti

These two ladies are so fun :) Last time I saw them they were making crochet graffiti at the museum where I spun a couple of times this summer.

They covered a stone with lace. The lady in the red dress is one of the museum's guides.

"Smile with your ass, you're being photographed!" shouted the other when I was taking a pic of her friend's graffiti back.

I was spinning that day, so I didn't see how much graffiti they actually had time to make. I saw a pole with knitting, but someone else has done that I think.

Spinning with children

Yesterday I spun at the crafts village Stundars just outside Vasa (Vaasa in Finnish): Stundars. We where 29 craft persons and about 200 school children having fun together. I spun on Louet Victoria, my "Peerie":

According to the rules of the museum I should spin on one of Stundars' old wheels, only my right ancle won't take that any more, so I may use Peerie. But my apron from Woolfest 2011 isn't quite accepted...

I shared a small cottage with two others. A lady knitting and crocheting the awesome Korsnäs sweater, purses, hats and mittens:

And her brother in law making beautiful things from birch bark:

My pupils made yarn with twisty sticks:

Someone had showed them how to make rope:

It was so fun! We where served coffee and the famous "grisar", a kind of donut in the shape of a pig with jam inside it. And after working for three hours it was time for the standard lunch for crafters, sausages and potato salad. Yummy!

Spinning in public

Malin and I spun in a museum today. It's an outdoor museum with many attractions. We both had our modern spinning wheels today, because we wanted to show what spinning is today. In another house a lady showed how people spun around 1900. There was a fire in the open firerplace in our room. It's been raining the last week, so the fire made it more cozy.

In the same room as Malin and me was also a lady doing bobbin lace.  Here she's doing a corner.

In another house was a knitting friend of mine, Marianne Wasberg. She's a master in twoendknitting. Today she knitted a sock.

This is a Finnsheep lamb, very curious. It wanted to eat my camera.

Here is an owerview of a small part of the museum.

I didn't have time to look at the other crafters, but I saw a small knife made for a woman, and a pair of small scissors used by a young lady who's working with herbs. She gave me a recipe I'll try. Apple vinegar and what wild herbs you can find is put in a glass jar and is kept in the window for a couple of weeks. Then you sieve it and use it in food and dressings. It smelled delicious.

Äntligen kom jag iväg till Stundars

För många år sedan spann jag på Stundars ibland, men sedan hade jag inte tid med det mera. Stundars är ett museiområde, så helst skall man använda gamla redskap och arbetsmetoder. Jag tog i alla fall med mig mina nya sländor, eftersom jag inte äger någon som skulle kunna defininieras som gammal, undantaget min afrikanska stödda bomullsslända. Jag hade tänkt ta upp spinnandet på Stundars i nästa år när jag har mera tid, men tänkte att en dag kan jag nog spinna. Det var riktigt roligt igen. Framför allt är det roligt att träffa andra, som korgmålarmästare  Doris Bengs som jag fick åka tillsammans med.

Frida Paulin, Stundars grand old lady vad spinning och knyppling angår, spann på en spinnrock från Vörå, som jag tror har årtalet 1884 målat på bänken. Spinnrocken är grön med rödbruna detaljer, väldigt vacker, men lite trött och skev. Frida spann ett vackert, vitt, jämnt garn av rätt grov milt tvättad ull som hon måste karda själv eftersom hon var ensam i dag. Frida spann med halvlångt drag, det typiska "arbetsdraget" för den här typen av kardad ull. Frida har en spinnrytm som verkar självklar, men tro mig, det tar tid att träna upp en sådan självklarhet.

Till vänster bredvid Frida står en skrubbstol, grovkardor, att öppna ullen med. Till höger syns den öppna spisen, där det denna kyliga dag brann en brasa. Högsängen med förhängen och kärlhylla är typisk för våra trakter. Den är bäddad med vävda täcken i munkabälte (tror jag) och lakan med knuten frans. I taket hänger torkade rådbröd, stapelfödan under århundraden. Brödet blev så hårt när det torkade, att man hade en miniatyrhyvel att hyvla loss spånor med. Dem gav man åt sådana vars tänder inte klarade att tugga brödet.

Till min glädje dök Malin upp med sin Ladybug, utrustad med spinnväska full med trevliga spinngrejor som jag inte hann titta så värst mycket på. Det är väldigt bra att hon får spinna på Ladybugen på Stundars, för högrocken är faktiskt en äldre typ av spinnrock än den snedrock som Frida spinner på. Högrocken konkurrerades ut av snedrocken i Finland under slutet av 1700-talet, men har använts och förbättrats i Mellaneuropa och USA hela tiden. Schacht Ladybug är en modern version av högrocken, med bl.a. mer ergonomisk trampteknik: två trampor. Kolla också in Malins snygga sockor! Bakom Malin står bondstugans andra högsäng, också den bäddad med förhängen och fransalakan, och ett rött täcke vävt i det typiska Svensk-Österbottniska munkabältet. Jag har ett likadant, som min farmor vävt.

Det var skoldag på Stundars. 350 elever och 120 lärare sprang runt i stugorna på området och tittade på olika slöjd- och hantverkstekniker. De flesta kom från Vasa, men där var också ett par engelska, tyska och internationella skolgrupper. Inte hinner man lära någon att spinna under sådana förhållanden, men lite får de pröva på om de vill. Det här är en flicka som tyckte att twisty stick och ull är jättekul!

Socker på botten: titta på Frida som kardar på sina handkardor! Jag är ganska avundsjuk på hennes kardteknik. Jag har aldrig lärt mig karda på handkardor. Jag får inte till de vackra rullarna, fast jag i teorin vet hur det ska göras. Tyvärr glömde jag att fotografera hennes kardrullor, som hon prydligt lade i en korg.