Birkenwasser knits

Winter in Finland can get cold, and at some point you need woolly leggings under your winter pants. When I saw the Kalaloch pattern I knew that I want to knit them - these leggings are pretty enough to be worn on their own. I added some length to the legs, but with DK weight yarn it's a good idea not to make them full length: you don't want to stuff them in your boots - or skates!



This was one of my Indie Design Gift-A-Long projects, but I didn't manage to finish by the deadline. This project is not a knitting-and-reading project: once you start with the legs you have to start paying attention to the pattern. Another issue was the hand-dyed yarn that was bleeding so much that you couldn't just knit a couple of rows and then do something else - there's hand washing after every time you pick up the knitting.

The pattern is nice and straight forward. My only problem was with measuring "low waist". I seem to have a different idea of where is low waist and the elastic band is too loose. (Of course, I should have taken a look at the pattern pictures that show how high up the low waist comes.) The construction starts from the waistband and you knit the elastic band inside the waistband before continuing. It's nice because there are no seams to sew afterwards, but it also means you can't adjust the elastic afterwards. I would suggest leaving an opening for the elastic, as it sometimes needs to be changed also because of wear and tear.


Today is RUMS day!

On a global scale we hardly have a homelessness problem in Helsinki. Everyone is entitled to housing and our beloved welfare state should guarantee that for everyone. For the time being at least. Of course, there are always people who are not caught by the social security net and we have some 8000 homeless people in Finland, most of them in the greater Helsinki region. Whereas the number of homeless people is not huge, the weather conditions in Finland are harsh for those who have to spend most of their time outside. Luckily, we have volunteer organisations, such as VVA (Vailla vakinaista asuntoa ry, "Without a permanent residence org") who help those who are not getting help through official channels and also try to change the situation through political lobbying. In addition to the important work they do to change the situation, they also provide practical help. One little thing they do is provide woolly socks for the homeless. Last fall they ran out of socks, though, and there was a challenge for knitters to fill their sock storage by "Night of the homeless", a happening that takes place every October to raise awareness of the homeless situation. I wanted to participate, and found a bag full of sock yarn so I was planning to knit 5-10 pairs of socks. The first pair that I started was this "Ruotosukat", a sock pattern created with self-striping yarn and slipped stitches.




I had to work from the toe up, as there wasn't enough yarn and I didn't know how long I could actually make the legs. After working two-at-a-time for a while I noticed that my other black skein was not the same yarn as the other black and the striped one, and the second sock was turning out smaller than the first one. That meant that I had even less yarn to work with, thus the striped cuffs. Let's hope that whoever wears these will have their pants over the cuffs.


Of course, this wasn't the only project that I was working on at the time, and my plan of knitting 5-10 pairs of socks turned into not even finishing this one pair before the deadline... The good thing is that VVA office is close to where I live, and as the homeless situation has not been solved I'm sure they can use another pair even after the Night of the homeless. Now if I just finish the rest of the socks I had planned, I can drop them off at VVA...


It's CreaDienstag!