Jyväskylä KnitFestival organised its first Winter Festival on Feb 2-4, 2018. The first day of the festival wasn't easy: local traffic was on strike and there a blizzard in Jyväskylä. Not the best day for an open air market, with temperatures below -10 'C! Luckily, long distance trains were not on strike, and as I live within a walking distance from the train station I was able to make it to Jyväskylä on Friday. I arrived just in time for the Knit Night at Cafe Muisto, and had a lovely evening.

On Saturday morning, we were greeted with sunshine! It was a beautiful day, although colder than Friday. You have to admire the marketplace vendors who spent the day outside. I wasn't dressed for the weather, so after some quick shopping outside I headed to Titityy for some more shopping and to check out their new premises. There was plenty of room to sit and knit and chat with other knitters, and I was able to swatch with some new yarn to find out what size needles I should buy.


In the afternoon, I participated in Rachel Coopey's Inspired Socks class. We learned how to design a pair of socks with inspiration from stitch dictionaries. I brought a stitch pattern with me that I thought might be too difficult to turn into a sock design, but Rachel was very supportive and encouraged me to go ahead with it. After 3 hours of knitting, I noticed that I didn't like the pattern after all - it looked so different in sock form compared to the picture of a flat piece. But now I know what parts of the pattern I want to keep and what I'm going to change, so this just might become my first sock design!


On Saturday dinner, we had the opportunity to see (and try on) some of the samples in next Laine Magazine. There are some lovely designs among them!


Sunday morning started with a Knitting Brunch at a lovely teahouse, Teeleidi. After that it was time for me to head to the train station with my souvenirs. Two bags of yarn. I don't know how that happened... But this set of Tukuwool Sock was included in the ticket price, and there should be a pattern by Rachel Coopey coming to go with it!


It was such a nice weekend, again. Thank you for organising such a great event and thank you everyone who participated for making it such a great experience! Hope to see you all at the next event!