Birkenwasser knits

I'm super happy with the positive response to my Tiger Flower design for Quince & co, thank you so much! I have to say that I have been enjoying knitting this pattern so much, too, that I have knitted three versions already. The first prototype went to my mom, and the sample to Quince, so I wanted to knit this one for myself.


The third time of knitting this design was almost all pleasure and no work. Almost, as in that I couldn't just knit along, but had to follow the pattern. I have shown this shawl at trunk shows, and I also wanted to re-check the pattern, so I forced myself to count stitches and make sure it confirmed with the instructions. Normally, I just knit away and don't care too much about stitch counts.


As you can see from this "wrong side" detail, the shawl is reversible: you can tell a difference in the brioche pattern if you look closely, but it looks good on both sides.


It's RUMS day!

My new brioche design, Tiger Flower shawl is now live! Published by Quince & co in their Tern yarn, a lovely mix of wool and silk (75/25 %).


This crescent-shaped shawl is completely reversible, starting with two-color stripes at the top and continuing with a two-color brioche edging. The brioche pattern has Tiger Flowers in a row, so once you have finished knitting you can wrap yourself in flowers!



All photos by Whitney Hayward.

It's RUMS day.

My choice from this year's class program at Jyväskylä Summer Knit Festival was Nancy Marchant's Grab bag of brioche techniques. I have a few brioche designs of my own, but that doesn't mean that I know it all. And if you can learn from the Queen of Brioche, I believe it's better to use the opportunity!


Nancy's class was on Saturday afternoon, and unfortunately, it started at the same time that my trunk show finished so I was a bit late (sorry for that!). I was there well before the cast on of the class project, though, so I got started with two-colour long tale cast on with everyone else. During the class we also learned syncopated brioche, crossing brioche stitches, mixing brioche with garter stitch, cabling brioche stitches, and, finally, stem-stitch bind off.



Of course, we were the best class she ever had (and I bet she doesn't say that to every class ;) You can see how much we got done in three hours! Someone finally got the courage to ask if Nancy could sign her book, and after that there was a line up of brioche books to be signed. I only remembered after the class that I should have brought the Bart & Francis scarf that I knitted earlier this year. You can't remember everything...


If you ever have the possibility to take Nancy's brioche class, I recommend you do!

Our first Snadi neulemiitti ("Little knit night" or something) on June 10 turned out not so little at all: it was a success and we had a house full of knitters! Liina of Kutimointia blog and I started thinking about organising something on World Wide Knit in Public Day only a couple of weeks before the KiP day. We started thinking of what our dream event would be like, and pretty soon we knew that it would be great to have some indie dyers in the event as well. Nea of Lanitium ex Machina agreed to join us, and so did Leeni of Lystig Yarn even if she thought that she wouldn't have time to dye enough for a pop up shop on such short notice. I brought my trunk show and my new tote bags with me, and Liina brought her blogging partner Senni. All set up for a lovely afternoon, hoping our message got out to fellow knitters in the Helsinki area.


We were so happy to see so many knitters come and join us! We had to bring more and more chairs to make room for everyone, which was great. Good thing that the venue had enough chairs! We were slightly worried that the address in the new Kalasatama neighbourhood might be difficult to find, and that was also what several people were saying when they finally did find it. However, as you can see from the picture - we had a nice group of people who found us.


There was a nice selection of Lanitium ex Machina yarns to choose from. As Lanitium is sponsoring Tour-de-Sock, there was also a discount for TdS participants. It's getting time to stack up on sock yarns and warm up for the competition!


Lystig yarn has had dye pots bubbling with new colors, and we were lucky to see some of the lovely new shades - before they disappeared from the table. I saw a green one with pink speckles that I really wanted, but after I turned my back it had disappeared.


There was also a basic brioche class for those who felt more comfortable learning a new technique together. The class also turned out to be a success - everyone got through their brks and brps and double increases and decreases and quadruple increases and decreases! As homework they will now repeat the class pattern for 1,5 meters - and I'll check the homework in our next event ;-)

Next event? Well, the feedback that we got - starting already before the event - was that this is something people have been missing. That's why we decided not to make it a KiP day event. Instead, we are planning for another one to kick off the knitting season in the fall. Would you like to join us for the next event? Please leave a comment with any feedback from the first event or your wishes for the next one!


In the meanwhile, I'm packing my trunk show and my new tote bags for Jyväskylä Summer Knit Festival, hope to see you there!

Thank you for making this event happen Liina, Nea, Leeni and everyone who showed up!

Nancy Marchant is the queen of brioche, and I've been wanting to knit something designed by her for quite some time already. So when Lankakauppa Kerä announced the beginning of their year long From Head to Toe challenge and the second item to knit was a scarf, I knew that it was time to pick one of Nancy's designs. I chose Bart & Francis for the interesting brioche pattern. The instructions are great, and there are both written and charted instructions. The pattern has enough going on to keep you interested while knitting, and after a couple of repeats you don't need the instructions anymore as you can always look at the previous repeats. My only problem with the instructions was that there seemed to be a mix up of right and left slanting decreases, but looking at the pictures soon fixed the problem.




This was a nice pattern for learning a couple of new techniques: two-colour Italian cast-on and Italian bind-off. The cast-on technique is easy and creates a nice beginning for two-colour brioche patterns. The bind-off wasn't so easy and I managed to get it wrong in the beginning. It's also known as the kitchener bind-off, and it's done with a tapestry needle. Unlike grafting a seam, such as the toe of a sock, there's only one end to finish, and for me that made it more difficult to see which way the needle should go into the stitches. You can see how the beginning looks crooked and then the stitches start to look good. Of course, I should have started over when I noticed that it was going wrong, but I was lazy and decided that no-one is ever going to take such a close look at my scarf anyway.


I added one pattern repeat to make the scarf a little bit wider, and then simply went on for as long as there was yarn left. This actually produced about the same length as the instructions said. I took the scarf project with me for our winter holiday in Indonesia, but I didn't get much knitting done and I missed the deadline. Having eventually finished, I believe I'm still in for the 9 items KAL. Although, I did also miss the wrist warmers stage... Putting effort on the sweater stage now, while also trying to finish my gloves for stage three.

It's RUMS day.

When I started writing patterns of my knitwear designs I promised myself that I would only write patterns for something that I've knitted for myself. I'm a selfish knitter after all, and I wouldn't want to waste time knitting something that I won't be able to wear. Well, 21 patterns later I've noticed that it doesn't really go that way... At least for me, that is. I used to knit my designs only for myself and I didn't care so much if they were perfect. Now that I've published my designs, I do want them to be perfect. The way I work, experimenting along the way, means that I typically knit a prototype, then write the pattern and knit the sample from my own instructions. This way I get to keep the prototype and still have the sample to show.


With my Circular Reference pattern I did it the other way around: I first knitted the sample (unraveling and re-knitting until perfect) and then noticed that I want one for myself, but in a bigger size. So I checked my stash and found one more skein of Onion Knit Tussah Silk, a purple skein that I bought to make a hat for myself. There were also just enough Madelinetosh Tosh DK leftovers from my Repeating Horizons pullover that I was able to knit the larger hat for myself.



What happened to the original gray Circular Reference samples then? Well, Young Warrior tried them on and said that he needs a hat and a cowl, so what could I say? I did negotiate with him enough to have the samples for my trunk show at Kässäkerho Pom Pom, but after that he took them and let's just say that they are not exactly in show condition anymore... Anyway, after he took them I had one jealous girl telling me that she also wants a hat and a cowl. I managed to negotiate that into just a cowl, as I reminded her that I knitted the Catwoman Returns hat for her last winter.



The cowl is a bit shorter than it's supposed to be, but I used all the yarn that was left from my hat and this is how far I got with it. Troll Princess is super happy with her cowl, though! Oh, and the shawl that I'm wearing, it's my modified Exploration station in Madelinetosh yarns as well, with some of the same Rose colorway.

It's CreaDienstag!

Circular reference hat and cowl are worked in spiraling two-color brioche. The pattern is enhanced by switching the main color and contrast color for each panel. Use high contrast in colors for a more visible pattern or less contrast for a subtle effect. This pattern will keep you interested while knitting and still produces a cool no-frills end result. Make the hat first, and you can adjust the size of the cowl according to how much yarn you have left. This unisex design works for both men and women. The pattern comes in sizes S and L. The stretchy brioche makes it adjustable for anything in between - or even for a child: my 7-year-old Young Warrior announced that he is taking the samples, because a silk-merino cowl is just what he needs as the weather is getting colder.

Betua Mittens and Hat are knitted with one main color and three gradient contrasting colors used in the background. The design features a birch leaf pattern in two-color brioche stitch, where the second color changes using all three gradient colors. The background for the brioche birch leaves is knitted in two-color garter stitch: every other round in main color and every other round in contrasting color.





This is one of those patterns that were inspired by the yarn. The lovely gradient set of Aarni by Riihivilla made me think of autumn leaves, and that became the brioche part: birch leaves, with autumn colors in the background. Betua is Gaulish for birch. You could also try a self-striping yarn in the background, or simply use two contrasting colors.

Briochangle shawl is a triangle-shaped shawl. Two color brioche stripes give you plenty of time to get used to brioche knitting before the more complicated decorative edging. Use high contrast in colors for a more visible pattern or less contrast for a subtle effect. I used The Uncommon Thread Uncommon Everyday for the pink-gray version and Rowan Fine Art for the mint-purple one.


Full-size shawl takes more than two 100 g hanks of yarn, but you can leave out one repetition of the pattern in order to make it with two hanks. Instructions for this are given. Of course, if you knit tight like I do, two skeins are enough for the full size shawl. Finished measurements (full size): Length 150 cm (59’’), width 59 cm (31’’).