Birkenwasser knits

Pattern: Junasukat by Kerttu Latvala

Yarn: Sandnes garn Lanett Babyull (Royal Blue 28 g) and Filcolana Arwetta classic (Shock Orange 19 g)

Needles: 2,5 mm

Choice of pattern was obvious, then. Now all that was left was choosing the color - and I had no idea what to choose! To start with, I didn't know if the babies are boys or girls. I don't like to dress my kids in "boy colors" or "girl colors", but I didn't know how my friend feels about colors, let alone how his wife feels about the issue. I could have gotten away with baby pastels as being the traditional choice, but that didn't work as I couldn't do the traditional gender coding. So I excused myself from pastels, and started wondering which bright colors to choose. I knew that for the Chinese red would be an obvious choice, but I didn't know if there was a similar color for Indians. I started googling, and reading about colors in India, but it seemed that pretty much every color had positive connotations. Until I reached orange, which is a holy color. And then I remembered the time when I was travelling in Tamil Nadu with my friend and in Rameswaram we saw a lot of pilgrims - all wearing orange. That would have to be a good color! Now I just needed another color. Reading on about orange, I learned that it's also the color of the Sikh flag, combined with royal blue. And I remembered that my friend's wife is Sikh, so that did it! Googling a bit with words "Sikh baby" confirmed that I wouldn't be totally wrong with these colors. At least that's my hope so far! (I'm also counting on my friend not reading my knitting blog...) If you know more about Indian culture and feel that the colors are totally wrong, please let me know asap!

At some point last summer I wanted to start decorating our balcony. Of course, that meant trying to find knitting or crocheting ideas. Searching through Revelry I found the Paintbox Log Cabin Blanket by Katherine Keyes. She used Noro Kureyon in a big 4 x 5 square blanket. I remembered that I had some Noro Haniwa left from the Skerry cardigan I knitted last winter, and that I also bought all of the yarn that the store had left after finishing the project as I was so fond of the yarn. I made one square first to see how it would look like and to evaluate if I had enough yarn. I loved the result, but at the same time noticed that I would run out of yarn. However, I also found this green Debbie Bliss Donegal Luxury Tweed for framing the squares, so blanket project was on.

After knitting the first square I realised that I wouldn't be able to make more than 8 or 9 squares. That wasn't a problem, though; I figured that a smaller blanket would be just fine. I had plenty of the green tweed, so I doubled the width of the edging and it turned into a nice 93 x 110 cm blanket. I modified the edging also in that I knitted it in one piece instead of the original one-side-at-a-time construction.