Birkenwasser knits

Kivitasku Vest has a cable pattern that makes it a smart vest for a young gentleman. It's knitted seamlessly from the top down. The V-neck looks great with a collared shirt, and you can pair it with a colourful shirt for a casual look or use a white shirt for a more formal outfit. The pattern is now available for purchase on Ravelry.




I knit the first prototype 7 years ago, so you can see the same model posing for size 18 m and for size 10 on the pattern page. I think the small vest is so cute, that I used the left overs of the Knit Picks Hawthorne Aquatic Speckle to knit a tiny vest. There wasn't enough yarn for the hem and neckline, so I used Hawthorne Poseidon for those, and I think it looks pretty good combined with the speckles here. Now I just need to find a toddler who could wear this!

Tabular is on the cover of Pom Pom Quarterly Vivid Winter issue, and the minute I saw it I knew that I wanted to knit it. Jyväskylä Knit Fest Winter was approaching, so I decided to wait and buy yarn at Titityy during the festival. I was planning to use Coop Knits Socks Yeah!, but I changed my mind in the shop and decided to go with recommended Isager Highland Wool instead. And I even chose almost the original colors: MC and one CC are the same as the original colors, although the CC is not in same position.




At Titityy, I noticed that KnitPro has interchangeable needles also in size 3 mm, so I sat down, borrowed needles from a fellow knitter, and swatched to make sure that I can get gauge with that size. Swatch seemed perfect, so I bought the needles and yarn, and started the project the same night.


I was planning to make size 3, so that was what I bought yarn for. For some reason, I changed my mind and started a size 4 instead. That proved to be a good choice, as I noticed that the swatch with metal needles wasn't the same as what I got with the new wooden KnitPros - I was knitting tighter. Of course, by the time I noticed this was when I was knitting the bottom of the front, so there was too much effort invested to start all over with larger needles.


I decided to work the sweater a bit longer than instructed. Now, the instructions say where you can add length for the front, but not how much that equals for the back. You can see in the pictures that the front is knitted with increases in the middle and decreases on the sides, so adding length is a bit more complicated than simply doing x rows more for front and back. I ended up doing some trigonometry to figure out how much I would need to increase for the back, but as I only added 1 cm to the front the difference with the back was lost in rounding.


Only problem that I had left was that I bought yarn for size 3 and I was hoping that with my tight knitting it would be enough for size 4. I considered knitting the sleeves top-down so I could simply make them as long as there was yarn left. For some reason, I didn't, and of course I ran out of yarn when knitting the bottom hem. I didn't want to leave it at that, and luckily Kässäkerho Pom Pom stored the same yarn even in the same dye lot, so I was able to get one more ball at the Super Weekend in Kuopio. So I finished the pullover and it's lovely - and it's too small for me. And Business Woman, who was nice enough to model in the pictures, doesn't like it. I think it looks good on her. I'll have to talk her into liking it.

In a recent blog post on the publication of Ilana Wrap pattern in Knit Picks Everyday Wraps collection you could see a sophisticated black, gray, and white wrap. That sample was not knitted by me, though. I did receive sponsor yarn to knit a sample for myself, and here it is!




I wanted to go with shades of the seas: blue and turquoise. We had more snow last night, and the sea is still frozen, but I think the shawl also goes well with the blue winter light.


It's CreaDienstag.