Birkenwasser knits

In this episode, you will see the Timeless Henley pullover designed by Joji Locatelli. You will also meet my model and business partner who is modelling the pullover. Finally, I will show you the progress with my Indie Design Gift-A-Long projects.

Utmost Happiness is my latest design: a round-yoke pullover with gorgeous slip-stitch cables/mosaic knitting. I talk about the making of this pullover and where its name comes from. You will also get to see the ups and downs of my Indie Design Gift-A-Long projects. I have started four projects in the giftalong: a sweater, a cowl, fingerless mitts and a shawl. I also talk about affiliate links, and a couple of them are included in the link list below.



Utmost Happiness
Suoma DK
Amazon Audible offer, valid until Dec 14, 2018 (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)



Indie Design Gift-A-Long
Trooper by Christelle Nihoul
Fouilloy Cowl by Kathleen Sperling
Reune Fingerless Mitts by Jean Clement
Breakwater Shawl by Stephannie Tallent

When preparing for the Indie Design GAL, we heard that one of the designers had gotten into an accident and couldn't promote her own patterns during the GAL. Many participating designers wanted to show support for her and bought her patterns. Natalia Sha designs lace shawls for advanced knitters, and as I had been thinking about knitting a shawl with lace and beads, it seemed like the perfect time to do that. I chose her Mountain Ash shawl, and found some blue beads and lace yarn in my stash.




It was a good decision, as I ran out of yarn a couple of rows before finishing the border. I undid the provisional cast on, and unraveled the first couple of set up rows of the lace border. ("Brilliant! You'll never have to buy yarn again, just keep unraveling from the other end!" said Business woman.) With this yarn I was almost able to finish the border, and then I used the variegated yarn to bind off. I was planning to use two colors for the main shawl, but it was so small that I didn't even need a whole skein of the variegated one.


Then it was just about easy stockinette stitch towards the end, and I was going to finish by the GAL dl. Well, things don't always work out as planned, and just before reaching the top I realised that I was decreasing at a too fast pace and what was supposed to be a small shawlette had turned into a tiny nothing. At this point I could have finished and just leave it at that, and had I known that Natalia was one of the unrepresented designers of the GAL I would have done that. But I didn't want a weird tiny shawl, so I unraveled the variegated part and started all over. It didn't take too long to finish knitting, but as I wasn't in a hurry to finish, it took about a month to block the shawl! You have to pin every 4 sts of the bind off, and I was dreading to do that. In the end, my little Troll Princess asked if she could help and we had a nice time blocking the shawl together. Afterwards, she asked if she could have the shawl, and I didn't have the heart to say no. It's not really my style, I just wanted to knit it. It might not be the style I'd like to see my daughter wear either, but she loved the beads and I didn't have other plans for the shawl so it's hers now. I'm not sure if I'd ever want to knit another one, there was too much of looking at the chart in the lace part to my taste, but I'm still happy that I did - I always enjoy trying new things when it comes to knitting!


It's CreaDienstag!

I had quite ambitious plans for the Indie Design Gift-A-Long, and they turned out to be too ambitious. This cardigan took more than 5 weeks to knit, so I only finished it after the GAL was over. I'm still super happy with the cardigan - a long, open cardigan is something you can wear with everything!




If you notice a side seam in the picture above, it's where I changed between two skeins to even out the differences in colour in the plant dyed yarn. There were big differences in colour between skeins, so I used two skeins throughout the cardigan and tried to vary the width of the stripes. You can still see some stripes, but they look ok to me. The only problem was that the first two were so similar that it looks like I only started striping after dividing for sleeves.


It's RUMS day.

The Indie Design Gift-A-Long inspired me to knit one last minute Christmas gift: Rivoletto Mitts by Noriko Ho. I had knitted the UnCrabby Crab for my brother-in-law, and then realised that I had nothing for my sister. This pattern seemed like the perfect gift: pretty, useful and quick to knit.




I like the way the ribbing makes the mitts fit many sizes, and how the thumb is part of the ribbing: a lovely little project!


It's CreaDienstag!

My fourth FO in Indie Design Gift-A-Long was Crooked Lines by Karalee Harding. This pretty cowl has instructions for a single loop and a Moebius loop versions. The lace pattern is easy to memorise and it's completely reversible, so you don't have to worry about the wrong side and the right side when wearing it.


Basically, the idea is to start from the middle of the cowl and then work towards both edges at the same time. Sounds complicated, but it's not!


After getting started it's just simple knitting until you're finished, and this one skein project is also easy to carry with you. For me, this project was my "Länsimetro" project. After years and years of waiting, we finally have a western ("Länsi") extension to Helsinki metro line, and I can now take the metro from where I live in Helsinki all the way to where I work in Espoo. That means uninterrupted knitting time for the 18 minutes that my commute now takes. Provided that I don't leave at rush hour when the metro is full at my stop and I have to wait 5 minutes before I get a seat. Still, that leaves me 13 minutes of knitting time! On the way back there's no problem getting a seat as the rush hour traffic goes in the opposite direction (it's way more common for people to work in Helsinki and live in Espoo). Here's one happy Länsimetro customer and a pretty cowl to prove it!


It's RUMS day!

Every now and then you notice that the kids need socks, and if you can't trick anyone else into knitting them there's not much you can do - knit socks it is then. Luckily, the Indie Design Gift-A-Long was just around the corner when the need for socks appeared, so I looked at the selection of socks and saw this interesting design: Diagon Alley by Dana Gervais.




I was hoping that the smallest size would be about Young Warrior's size, but as you can see there is room for growth. The pattern is made of short row sections that are repeated in pairs, and you can knit a couple of rows more for extra length, but knitting less would have meant leaving out the second pair of short row sections from foot. I didn't want to do that, so I followed the instructions and the socks should fit next winter.


After the photo shoot, Young Warrior insisted on wearing the socks for the rest of the day. "They feel so nice!", so being slightly oversized doesn't seem to be a problem.

Look what I found! A little crab climbing from the sea. Looks like a happy little fellow!




Now I gotta catch the little guy before he jumps back to the sea!

My first finished project in the Indie Design Gift-A-Long is this Evanlyn Hat by Kaitlyn Yeager. The pattern was chosen by Business Woman, who will also receive this hat as a Christmas gift (if I can get it back after she wore it for the photo shoot). She wanted a tight fitting hat, and I made an initial choice of interesting tight-fitting hat patterns from the gigantic Indie GAL bundle and she then decided on this one.




This project was slowed down by an accident on the couch: someone sat on my knitting and broke my circular needle. (Apparently, no-one was hurt, as there was no yelling or crying.) My other 4 mm needle tips were busy in another project, so I was going to wait until having finished that. Then I realised that I could use DPNs to knit this hat, and it didn't take too long to finish after that.


I think the hat looks great, and so does Business Woman. That makes it a good first FO in the GAL, now to my other 5 GAL projects!

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.

Combining two-colour brioche with two-colour garter stitch, finishing with one-colour brioche and garter stitch. Throw in some short rows and i-cords, and it's a poncho. Or a cape. Or a cardigan. Or whatever, but it looks good and feels nice. This P-Rex by Susanne Sommer was one of my Indie Design Gift-A-Long projects from last November-December, but I didn't manage to finish it then. After the deadline had passed, there was no hurry to finish - not until the Head-to-Toe-Challenge by Lankakauppa Kerä. Round 4 in the challenge was for sweaters, and as finishing a WIP was allowed, this gave me the push needed to wrap up this project.



The pattern calls for sport weight yarn, but as the options at my LYS were much better in fingering weight I decided to go with Hedgehog Fibres Sock. The fit of this garment is not really an issue, so I simply followed the instructions for the largest size and got a nice medium-large result. Although, I have to admit that before blocking I was slightly worried that it would be too small, but I'm happy with the size after blocking.


It's RUMS day again.