April is the time to start thinking about summer knits, yet still cold enough that you need wear gloves. Therefore, my April knitting includes both summer cotton and woolen gloves.

The cotton project that I'm working on is a summer tee in Drops Paris 100% cotton yarn. I'm not a huge fan of knitting with cotton, but I loved the fact that the yarn is 100% recycled cotton. I'm not sure if it's recycled denim, but at least the colors are the colors of jeans and I wanted to work with the gradient blues. Let's see if my striping works out in the way I imagined it. On the reading part, I'm on book number 4 in Knausgård's series.


I also have a spring shawl project going on: Rowan Fine Art wool/mohair/silk blend that's forming into a brioche shawl. I already knitted one Briochangle shawl, but when trying to write the pattern I noticed that I should have made notes and thought that it's easier to just make another one and write the pattern as I knit. A new pattern coming up, that is! And for the book, well, someone commented in one of my knitting and reading posts how my knitting matches my reading, and it's not a coincidence. Now the problem was, that I didn't have a book to go with these yarns, so I went to my bookshelf to find one. I have no idea how "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy has ended up there, but as it matches my knitting I think I'll go ahead and read it. There are worse ways to pick what you read, right?


In the children's reading front we started a Finnish classic: "Onnelin ja Annelin talo" by Marjatta Kurenniemi. It's a book from the 60's, and I remember it from my childhood. The kids like it, although there are unfamiliar concepts in it for them, such as the girls curtsying. Girls don't do that anymore, do they? Except for ballet, of course. Troll princess did remember that it's something they do at ballet and I had to explain that back in my childhood girls would curtsy when saying thank you or shaking hands. I'm knitting gloves for Young warrior using Rowan Fine Tweed. The yarn might be too fine for me, however, as it breaks when I pull it too tight...


And then I borrowed another classic from the library, this one for adults: "Punainen viiva" by Ilmari Kianto. This is a Finnish classic from 1909 and the reason for reading it now is that I saw a clown version of it in the theatre and started thinking that I might not have read the book. So here I am, finding it difficult to figure out if it's a comedy or a tragedy after the clowns made fun of it. I want to knit something with Tukuwool fingering, so I'm experimenting a bit with the yarn.

What comes to my knitting and reading projects from March, I've finished the books, but not the knittings. Essi Kummu's book about motherhood trauma was not as interesting as I thought that it would be, and apparently the shawl wasn't either as I haven't finished it yet! Actually, it just takes too much concentration to knit it, and I can't read while knitting it so it's progressing slowly. Pärttyli Rinne's book about school shooting was as horrible as one would expect. Easter eggs were not horrible at all, and I ended up making 4 big ones and 7 small ones. I finished the book by Jens Lapidus, but didn't spend all the time needed to frog my brassy bling bling pullover. If I ever think of more use for the yarn I'll have to start by frogging it.

The kids loved Wizard of Oz and we finished the first book. The only reason for starting with Onneli & Anneli was that I didn't have time to pick up the second book of Oz from the library. We have almost read the second book as well by now, but I think there's like 7 or something in the series so that should keep us busy. And poor little Troll princess still doesn't have her dress. It's been taking ages to finish, and then I ran out of yarn. I was going to buy more yarn, but then I started hesitating a bit as I thought that I already paid 75 euros for the yarns, and investing 25 more felt like a bit too much - it's a dress for a 4-year-old after all! Then I realized that I had made a mistake in knitting it all along and decided to frog the whole thing. Starting over some time later with an improved design that's going to work without buying more yarn.

Participating in Ginny's Yarn along.