Birkenwasser knits

Corvid was, for me, one of those designs that you know you want to knit from the first time you see it. Love at first sight. That perfect item missing from your wardrobe. I had to have it. And it only took me a year to knit one!


I'm also wearing my Flying Jib Shawl in the pictures.
It's RUMS day.

For me, the most exciting part of Indie Design Gift-A-Long is to see who are all the participating designers! In my previous post, I listed the other Finnish designers, and if you follow me on Instagram you have seen some of my IG friends who are participating as a designer for the first time. Today's GAL Instagram challenge theme is Makin' a list, so I'm going to share what I'm planning to knit.


Some of these I've had in my knitting queue for some time already, and I was only hoping to see the designers on the list so the patterns would be eligible for the GAL. Some of the patterns I only found after the GAL started.


Starting from top right and going clockwise, the first one is Karalee Harding's Crooked Lines cowl. This is something I'm going to knit for myself, in a lovely hand-dyed merino silk by Lanitium ex Machina. This is a special skein that has been waiting for the right pattern! Casting on already taught me something new: Moebius cast on.


Natalia Sha's Mountain Ash will give me the opportunity to add beads to something else than socks. I'm going to see if the pattern would work in three colors, starting with the burgundy, followed by the variegated one and ending with blue and blue beads.


Diagon Alley socks by Dana Gervais look like they would be fun to knit, and that is always a bonus if you have to knit socks. In this case, I noticed that Young Warrior needs socks, and as he needs them before Christmas I can't take the easy way and ask my sister to knit them for him as a present. So if it must be socks, it might as well be wild socks! Although, my color scheme is going to be moderate compared to Dana's pattern pictures.


You Wear It Well by Mary Annarella is something for me again, using my recent stash addition from Oslo Strikkefestival. I hope alpaca works as a material for this design. For such a major project, I have even wet blocked my swatch.

Then there's a little UnCrabby Crab by cheezombie on my list. I have been looking for a cute crab pattern so I could knit a crab for my brother-in-law who collects crab toys. Let's hope that he doesn't read my knitting blog so it will be a surprise!


Business Woman asked if I could knit a hat for her; something like the Circular Reference that she liked a lot, but which ended up on Young Warrior's head. "I'd like to have a hat that's made of your luxury yarns" she said. I hope Eden Cottage Yarns Oakworth DK is luxurious enough for her - my stash is not very comprehensive in the DK section. I would have loved to knit another Circular Reference hat, but as it was GAL time, I decided to knit someone else's design for a change. After a lot of searching we decided on the Evanlyn Hat by Kaitlyn Yeager. It had to fit tight, no slouchiness, and it had to look interesting to knit, and be a new designer for me. I think we finally found a good pattern to match all requirements.

The ultimate GAL challenge is "Taming the Opadoo", which means that you knit something from each of the 8 categories in the GAL. With these 6 projects I would get pretty far, and would only need to add a baby item and something for hands. I do feel tempted to give the Opadoo a try one day, but I think that my choice of patterns will be different then! I don't think that I'll have enough time to finish all these projects by the end of the year, but I'm not going to let it stop me.

Photo credits in the collage go to respective designers.

It's Indie Design Gift-A-Long time again! This year we have 311 participating designers from 31 countries. All participating designers have selected 10-20 of their patterns, which are offered at a 25% discount for the first week of the GAL (Nov 21-28) - a total of 5327 discounted patterns! You can check out my offers here. Use coupon code "giftalong2017".


The fun doesn't end at the sale, though! The GAL starts with the sale period, but the event itself lasts until Dec 31. There is a very lively forum on Ravelry with discussion about the knitting, of course, but there is much more going on: random prizes, designer trivia, etc. I received several inquiries after my recent Instagram giveaway as people wanted to purchase my "Do you speak my language?" tote bag, and I can hint that participating in the GAL would give you a chance to win one! And there is more: yarn, books, patterns, stitch markers, project bags, etc. All non-free patterns by all participating designers are eligible to win prizes; you have more than 18 000 patterns to choose from.


This year, there is something new in the GAL: an Instagram challenge! Check out these prompts and use them on your IG posts, or simply use #giftalong2017 and #GAL2017 for all GAL-related posts. You can connect with other GAL participants and designers, and see what everyone else's gift knitting looks like.


For me, the GAL is not so much about selling my own patterns, as it is about joining the fun and finding new designers whose patterns I'd like to knit. The only difficult thing is to limit my plans so that I can finish all my projects by the end of the GAL! I'll write another post about my own knitting plans, and you can expect that when the IG prompt says "Making a list". I'd love to hear what you are planning to make! If you like to shop local, you can look at the map of participating designers and see who lives near you - or maybe you'd like to see what kind of a collection someone from the other part of the world has? For my Finnish readers I can tell that there are 5 other participating designers from Finland: Annina Päivärinta (Artesanitarium), Pauliina Karru (Lina Knits), Anna Johanna (Neulisti), Susanna Winter (Talvi Knits), and Meiju K-P (Meiju Knits).

Please note that the GAL runs in US EST time zone, so all dates depend on your time zone. For example, in practice, the sale period in Finland is Nov 22-28.

Obviously, one of the highlights of Oslo Strikkefestival was the marketplace and all the lovely yarn there. However, I had some extra days in Oslo, and of course that meant more yarn shopping! I had asked for some recommendations of lovely yarn shops, and I was advised to visit Værbitt and Pickles. I also heard that there are nice souvenirs at the Heimen Husfliden yarn shop at GlasMagasinet, so that got on my list also.



Pickles is located in Grünerløkka, at Markeveien 56. They have a lovely selection of yarns, mostly their own Pickles brand. I found it very difficult to resist these rows full of color, and ended up getting a colorwork cardigan quantity of their Pickles Merino Tweed. I should have taken the above picture before getting my yarns off the shelf, though!

Værbitt is a lovely little shop of children's books and hand-dyed yarn. It's located in Tøyen at Sørligata 46, which is within a walking distance from Pickles. The yarns were organised on the shelves by color instead of the normal brand/type categorisation. This really makes the shop look awesome! It might be slightly more difficult to plan colorwork if different colorways are found at opposite sides of the shop, but it's a small shop so it shouldn't be that difficult.


Heimen Husfliden is located at the bottom floor of GlasMagasinet at Stortorvet 9. It has the largest selection of yarns of these three shops. They have all the popular Norwegian brands: Rauma, Sandnes, Du Store Alpakka, etc. There was also a wall filled with rya yarns, and I did feel tempted to get a rya rug amount of them after my ryaknuter class, but somehow some voice of sanity in my head told me to practice with scrap yarns first. And maybe start with something smaller than a large wall hanging. Ryas were mentioned in the evening news just the other day, by the way: how they have become popular again and how people are learning to make them or hunt for old ones from flea markets. Maybe it's too late to make one now?


I had been wanting to knit a colorwork cardigan since the steeking class that I took earlier this year. With all the possible shades of Rauma Finullgarn, I was able to find the combination I wanted for the Cherry Bloom cardigan by Lene Tøsti. At the Strikkefestival I noticed so many Siri cardigans by Linnea Öhman, that I ended up buying yarn for that as well. I learned about a charity initiative going on in Norway at that time, #Oransjeskjerf ("Orange Scarf"), and as I saw a box of the orange yarns at Heimen Husfliden, I decided to buy these charity scarf yarns as well. And I got a skein of the lovely hand dyed mohair at Værbitt. And a gradient Kauni for no apparent reason (it's not even Norwegian, so it doesn't count as a souvenir). But then again, do you always need a reason to buy yarn? With these additions to my Strikkefestival purchases, I think I made good use of the piece of checked-in luggage that was included in my flight ticket!

My Tiger Flower design was published by Quince & co recently, and you can see my sample shawl that was knitted in Quince & co Tern in the pattern pictures. This was not the first version of the shawl, however. I often work with "full size swatches", meaning that I knit a prototype first. Of course, I make smaller swatches and, usually, even write the instructions beforehand. Still, there are things that you only notice from a full-size sample, and then you have to either rip and re-knit, live with the flaws, or knit a new one. In this case, I knew that I wanted more stitches for the brioche pattern, but this first sample looked good enough as it is. As I agreed to knit the sample for the pattern in Quince & co's yarns, there was no need to rip and re-knit this one, so I simply kept this one as a prototype and knitted the sample with all the improvements that I wanted in the design.



Actually, I didn't get to keep this prototype after all. My mom happened to see it and made it very clear that she would like to have a shawl like that, and that solved the issue of finding a gift for Mother's Day. Not my mom in the pictures here, though.