April- spring is here!

Eventually spring is here with bright sunshine, dry leaves, brown grass and small buds and spring flowers suddenly popping up. On my kitchen window sill seeds are slowly growing to plants. Hope has returned!

From the workshop: I have made a pair of ear-pendants for the first time. This time I took photos of the work progress so it is possible to follow step by step. I used 0,5 mm fine silver threads for the ear hooks, 0,3 mm (28 gauge) filigree wire fine silver, 2mm bezel strip sterling silver, 0,8 mm square wire sterling silver, beads in fine silver. Beads are easily made, if you melt a small piece of silver it will form a perfect ball. I make beads from scrap silver. The stones are rock crystal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the knitting front I have knitted an alpaca sweater which first was meant for my son but ended up fitting my daughter best so she got it. I have also knitted a pair of mittens. Why do I knit mittens all around the year? Because I like to knit patterns and that suits small items like mittens. Pattern from Alice Starmore´s.

 

 

I have to tell about my visit to Carl Milles museum in Stockholm. Carl Milles was a sculptor, very well known in Sweden. His museum has a park with his own sculptures which is very interesting but now I was there to see the exhibition “Weaving silk” . It was spellbinding! It describes and shows the history of silk production in Nanjing in China from several thousand years ago up till today.  Apart from a lot of wonderful silk fabrics from various periods in history the most interesting thing was the loom from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) which was operated by master weavers from Nanjing. The loom is nothing but a technical miracle. From a painted picture the weave is set up with a transmission to a code of knots on ropes. It has a resemblance with the binary system used in computers. It had taken three months to set up the weave we saw. It takes two persons to weave, one is sitting on top of the loom operating the ropes which decides the turn of the warp. The weaver sitting at the floor level has numerous spools of silk in different colours. Unbelievable skills! This is another example of how textile techniques have been in the forefront. In the 18th century punch cards were used in Jacquard weaving, hundreds of years before computers.