Birkenwasser knits

Repeating Horizons pattern was published in January, and I showed woolen version of the pullover, knitted in Madelinetosh DK, in my post at that time. I've been wearing it all winter, but it's starting to look like spring even here in Helsinki and the woolen pullover is getting a bit too warm. So it's time to share a silky version of the pullover with you. This is actually the first prototype version of the pullover. I knitted it last summer and I love the feel of the silk yarn: Katia rustic silk.




Participating in RUMS again.

Things don't always go as planned - or as instructed. You miss an increase, tink back to where you were supposed to do it, and continue. You notice that the item is too big or too small and you have to unravel half of what you have knitted so far. Or you simply realize that it's not going to work out, the item is horrible and you will never wear it so better frog the whole thing.


For me unraveling is a way of working. I do make swatches and even try to do the math beforehand, but let's admit it: I'm too lazy to look at my own calculations and just keep knitting when I'm in the flow, hoping that it will be all good. Knowing that most likely it won't be. Even if I'm following a pattern, I usually keep myself too occupied with reading something, attending a seminar or whatever, so picking up the instructions is simply too much to ask for and there I knit, hoping that it will be all good.

Last weekend I noticed that I have four projects waiting for unraveling and attention to detail. One of them was a simple case of not reading the instructions (or, technically speaking, the instructions said "see below for right number of increases" and then the numbers were _above_ on the next column, so it wasn't really my fault, was it?), not paying attention to obviously wrong size (I mean, if you see that the sleeve is too small, then why knit another one the same size and continue with the yoke until you run out of yarn before admitting that you need to buy more yarn and make the sleeves wider?) and then two cases of prototyping.



Prototyping. That's the way I design my patterns. There's only so much you can calculate, but then you will also need to see how the cables look like with the neckline shaping and you can't really calculate that. Or how the neckline works with the edging. For me, ripping something and starting all over again isn't a failure, it's part of the process.


Then again, plenty of the rework is simply a result of not concentrating on one thing at a time.

A couple of weeks ago I listed five new things that I'd like to try. Well, not that I didn't have seven unfinished projects waiting, here I'm adding three new ones. Number one on my list was top-down knitting. Now, I understand that the wise thing to do would be to pick a pattern by someone else and learn the technique. But then I happened to visit the lovely LYS Kerä in Tampere and ended up with this lovely Katia rustic silk yarn and wanted to make a swatch and my mind started wandering and... Well, the design is in my head so I'm just going to see if I can skip the learning part and go straight to making the pattern while knitting. You can laugh at me later when I end up frogging the whole thing!


Oh, and stitch marks. I said that I would not want to try using stitch markers, but as that seemed to be the thing in common with all top-down patterns I thought I might as well give them a try while I'm at it. After the first 25 rows I can say that there's no reason to use them to see where you are supposed to increase as it's pretty visible at least with this yarn, BUT while you are reading something it does help to notice the increases without lifting your eyes from the newspaper.


Number five on my list was linen. I visited Kerä for the first time about a month ago with our knitting club (you can read about our trip in Liina and Senni's blog Kutimointia, in Finnish). I saw a table filled with Quince & co Sparrow linen, but couldn't think of what to knit of it. The reasonable me left the Sparrows on the table and came home with some Malabrigo lace and Isager Plant fiber, but I couldn't stop thinking about Sparrow. Slowly the design appeared in my thoughts, and then I had to go back to buy the yarn. My following visit to Tampere was for work, but I was pretty sure that I would find time to get the yarns as well. Unfortunately, the schedule was too tight and I had to return to Helsinki without Sparrows for the second time! Now I know that Kerä has an online shop as well, but it's not the same thing for me. There might even be a LYS in Helsinki selling Sparrow, but I'll have to write another post explaining why I travel 180 km to by yarn. Finally, after waiting for about a month, I had the opportunity to visit Tampere, and this time I made sure to make it to the yarn shop!


Then there's more baby news: a friend of mine gave birth to twin girls! I'm going to visit them in July so there's plenty of time to knit, but I happened to run into this Novita Puuvilla-bambu yarn. I've seen some baby knits made of this yarn, so I thought that I would knit something other than the woolen bonnet and socks that I always knit for my friends babies. Especially since I have knitted them for the first born of this friend already! Waiting for inspiration with these yarns now. (And hoping that my friend is busy with her babies and doesn't have time to read my blog...)

I added my blog on Bloglovin' and Blogipolku, so you can follow my blog with these services. I was happy to notice that 1/3 of the views to my blog are from outside of Finland, so it seems to make sense to write in English. I'm also happy for those 2/3 from Finland, as it shows that writing in English is not scaring off my Finnish friends. Thanks for reading!