Birkenwasser knits

It's Helsinki Pride week and artists Ilar Gunilla Persson and Heidi Lunabba brought their Washing line art project* to Helsinki. The minute that I saw the announcements, I knew this was call for some knitted street art! So here is my yarn bombing contribution:



The artists say that the act of selecting textiles from the cabinet can be seen as a symbolic act that refers to the concept of "coming out of the closet", although in this case they would rather see it as a way of showing compassion. Well, I'm selecting yarns from my yarn stash cabinet, bringing them out of the closet!




I also have a secret wish to decorate the construction site surroundings in my neighborhood, so instead of using our own balcony for the washing line, I took it out to a pedestrian and cyclist detour around some major construction work taking place at the moment. Hopefully it will cheer up my neighbors who have to walk the extra bit to get around the construction site!




This was a fun little project to knit, and it also gave me the opportunity to compare german short rows with wrap & turn, and to try out different ways to cast on. It was also fun to knit in two dimensions for a change. And the best part: no weaving in the ends, as the ends were used to tie the items on the "washing line"! 




* Here's how the artists describe their project:

"Washing Line is a community art project where everyone who want to show their support for equal value are invited to hang out washing in the colors of the rainbow, photograph it and share images using the tag #tvattlina.

Washing Line is part of the Helsinki Pride Festival 22nd -28th of June 2015. The artists Ilar Gunilla Persson and Heidi Lunabba started the project during Jeppis Pride Festival 25th – 26th of July inviting Pietasaari and vicinity to attend."

Bubble gum colors for my Troll princess. The perfect choice for a sunny summer day: bright and striped! The stripes are made by changing both color and texture, alternating in stockinette and purl in four colors.




The pattern is available on Ravelry in English and in Finnish in size 104. You'll need one ball of each color.



The original version of the design had colored stripes on gray background, but I learned the hard way that storing children's wear projects for a year is not a good idea. I had knitted the front a year earlier, but got distracted with other projects. Then I returned to this one, picked a t-shirt from what Troll princess is wearing now to get the correct size for sleeves, but noticed that there were some other minor adjustments needed as well:


As I didn't have enough gray to make a bigger version like this, I modified the stripes so that there's gray background on the top and more colors at the bottom. As this project has taken some time, you might not find the same colors anymore. However, I think any bright happy colors would make a similar result, just choose a neutral background color to replace the gray, and then the brightest colors you can find for the other stripes!

Every day is a potential knit in public day for me, but it's always more fun if there is company. World wide knit in public day sounded like something I'd like to participate in, and not only by knitting by myself. To my surprise, there weren't that many KIP happenings listed in Helsinki. The choices were either Geek girls knitting in the park or Snurre, a LYS. I think the geek here refers to a different type of geek than what I am, and as I've also passed the times of being able to call myself a girl, there wasn't much of a choice to be made. Number one reason for choosing Snurre, however, was that I had been wanting to visit that yarn shop for quite some time already, so I put the date in my calendar and made sure I'd have at least a couple of hours on Saturday to go there.

I was a bit afraid of not finding a seat once I get there two hours before their closing time, but maybe the first sunny summer day had changed other knitters' plans and they were all knitting in a park. So there was a chair left for me and my knitting, and some lovely company as well.



It's funny that it took so long for me to finally find my way to Snurre. I guess the problem is that it's too local: as I live in downtown Helsinki, it's always possible to just pop in - but then I never do, because I never put it in my calendar. It's a bit like meeting with friends: I used to see my friends more often when I was living abroad, because back then I would contact all my friends when coming to Finland and make the effort to meet with them, but now that I live here we can meet anytime - so there's no reason to contact them...

A couple of years ago I knitted a very time consuming cable pattern with an expensive supposedly good quality yarn. Turns out it starts pilling after wearing the garment maybe twice. Well, what can you do, avoid that yarn from now on. Then I happen to visit the same LYS for some other business, and casually mention the problem with the yarn. "No, there haven't been any problems with that yarn, it's a top selling top quality yarn." Right?! So the pilling is all in my imagination then? I wasn't asking for a refund, only giving feedback regarding merchandise bought from that shop. How difficult would it have been to emphasize and instead say "Oh, that is the first time I here someone complain about this yarn. I will take your feedback to the manufacturer, thanks for letting me know!"

On another occasion, I was knitting during a lecture and ran out of yarn. During the break I quickly cycled to the nearest yarn shop. Unfortunately this yarn shop did not want me as a customer:
"Hello, do you have Novita wool in yellow?"
"We don't sell supermarket brands!" was the answer, and then the lady turned her back at me.
Wrong answer. The correct answer would have been:
"No, we don't have that yarn. What do you need it for, maybe we can look for something similar..?"
"No thanks, I need it for this something that I'm knitting and run out of yarn."
"Oh, I see. Well, you can find that yarn from Supermarket X. Is there anything else you might need? Could I show you some new arrivals for the spring?"
Instead of making a supermarket yarn buyer feel ashamed of herself, she could have gotten a new customer. What she managed to do for me was to make me stick to the good quality Made-in-Finland "supermarket" brand for the next couple of years.

Until my friends told me that they were making a trip to a yarn shop in Tampere. I liked the idea and joined the group, and found the lovely LYS Kerä. Well, not so local to me, as it is some 160 km from where I live. There was a knitting meeting taking place, the shop was full of knitters, coffee was being served and the atmosphere was nice and supportive to all knitters. Of course, everyone seemed to be knitting something with yarns bought from that shop, so I can't tell what they would have said if someone brought a supermarket yarn project to the meeting. However, people weren't buying anything at that time, only enjoying their knitting. Since that visit, I've been taking my yarn money to Tampere.



You can have your own yarn shop business if you love yarns and want to be around yarns, but if you also want to make a living out of it then learning a couple of things about selling and customer service might be a good idea. I wouldn't like to see the yarn shops in Helsinki go out of business, but if they don't want me as a customer then I'm not going to force my money on them. Why is it so difficult to sell something? Well, selling is a skill and often when you go shopping nothing is actually sold to you - you have to buy it yourself. There are a couple of easy tricks for turning customer visits into profits. One easy example is to ask someone buying yarn if they have the needles for it. The customer doesn't even think of this as selling, but more as customer service making sure that the customer doesn't need to make another trip to buy the needles. And that just added the extra euros on the sales for that day.

A comic shop in Helsinki started charging their customers an entrance fee as they got tired of people just spending time at their shop without buying anything. If you are a yarn shop owner and don't want to start charging your customers entrance fees, but would like to start selling more instead, I can put you in contact with a sales professional who can help you turn customer visits into sales.

What kinds of experiences do you have from your LYS? Do they know how to sell stuff? Or are you happier if they don't?

Lehtokerttu top is a linen summer top with dropped stitches creating lace like horizontal lines. The top is knitted sideways in one piece. It has a loose, boxy shape.


Quince & co Sparrow organic linen yarn has a lovely glow. The top turned out just the way I wanted: the summer top that makes me wish that summer was already here!


Just in time for the #tttKAL and with a couple of days left for the #linenKAL2015 - I managed to finish my first KALs on time! The pattern is available for purchase on Ravelry and it is available in English and in Finnish.