Birkenwasser knits

Kässäkerho Pom Pom changed the schedule of their annual SUPERweekend from autumn to spring and we enjoyed a lovely weekend in Kuopio on March 23-25. The weekend was filled with yarns, knitting, old and new friends, chatter and laughter - and learning new things.


The marketplace had some old favourites, as well as some new amazing yarns. Moar Yarn demonstrated hand spinning and had a lovely collection of hand spun yarn and spinning fibres on their stand.


ILO yarn made the trip all the way from Salo, and brought a lovely selection of these pastel beauties by Lystig Yarn, as well as gorgeous items from Primrose Yarn Co., Annie Yarns, etc.


KVG Woolworks had more of the awesome signature "Kuopio" colorway, only available in Kuopio, and this time also as fade kits. I had to get a sweater quantity of Kuopio, but with the fade kits I opted for this accidental colorway that I found especially pretty. I also picked up an accidental colorway of Kässäkerho Pom Pom Merino singles, as well as some Alpaca-Linen-Silk from Lanitium ex Machina, so it looks like I managed to get a ridiculously exaggerated haul back home with me. Nothing new here... (Except the yarns, they are new, something I didn't have in my stash, so I had to get them. Right? Right?!)


It was nice to see a couple of Liinu Shawls that I designed for the previous SUPERweekend. I also learned that more Liinu Shawls were in progress, and I can't wait to see them! This merino-silk one was on display and later worn by its talented knitter Maijusha (Ravelry name) at the evening party at Hygge Bro.


I had the opportunity to attend Liinu's sock blank workshop, finally! It was very exciting to have my first try at dyeing. My sock blank even turned out pretty much the way I wanted (see below) - until it was time to microwave it. For some reason, the dye bled afterwards, and I got some unplanned effect from that. I'm not sure if it was good or bad, as it actually dyed the whites from underneath (I only painted one side of the blank). So the end result is not what I planned (see the end result in the yarn haul pic above), but I'm definitely super anxious to get it on the needles and see how it is going to look like as socks!


Thank you, again, Liinu and the team for organising such a great event! And thank you all lovely Kuopio knitters for welcoming us visitors!

Jyväskylä KnitFestival organised its first Winter Festival on Feb 2-4, 2018. The first day of the festival wasn't easy: local traffic was on strike and there a blizzard in Jyväskylä. Not the best day for an open air market, with temperatures below -10 'C! Luckily, long distance trains were not on strike, and as I live within a walking distance from the train station I was able to make it to Jyväskylä on Friday. I arrived just in time for the Knit Night at Cafe Muisto, and had a lovely evening.


On Saturday morning, we were greeted with sunshine! It was a beautiful day, although colder than Friday. You have to admire the marketplace vendors who spent the day outside. I wasn't dressed for the weather, so after some quick shopping outside I headed to Titityy for some more shopping and to check out their new premises. There was plenty of room to sit and knit and chat with other knitters, and I was able to swatch with some new yarn to find out what size needles I should buy.


In the afternoon, I participated in Rachel Coopey's Inspired Socks class. We learned how to design a pair of socks with inspiration from stitch dictionaries. I brought a stitch pattern with me that I thought might be too difficult to turn into a sock design, but Rachel was very supportive and encouraged me to go ahead with it. After 3 hours of knitting, I noticed that I didn't like the pattern after all - it looked so different in sock form compared to the picture of a flat piece. But now I know what parts of the pattern I want to keep and what I'm going to change, so this just might become my first sock design!


On Saturday dinner, we had the opportunity to see (and try on) some of the samples in next Laine Magazine. There are some lovely designs among them!


Sunday morning started with a Knitting Brunch at a lovely teahouse, Teeleidi. After that it was time for me to head to the train station with my souvenirs. Two bags of yarn. I don't know how that happened... But this set of Tukuwool Sock was included in the ticket price, and there should be a pattern by Rachel Coopey coming to go with it!


It was such a nice weekend, again. Thank you for organising such a great event and thank you everyone who participated for making it such a great experience! Hope to see you all at the next event!

Oslo Strikkefestival was arranged for the third time on October 20-22, 2017. This was my first time at the festival, and I have to say that it was definitely worth the trip! I hadn't planned for attending the festival, but then I noticed that I have some SAS bonus points that are expiring soon and remembered the festival. At that point, most of the classes were sold out, but I did manage to find something interesting, so off to Oslo it was.


The festival started on Friday evening with Opening party at Deichmanske Hovedbibliotek. There were long tables full of knitters as I arrived, but I found a seat right in front of the stage. The program included stand up comedy in Norwegian, so I can't say whether it was good or not. I understood the part of choosing what kind of knitter you are when trying to choose what Facebook knitting groups to join, but then it got to politics and started to be too much for my language capability. I don't speak Norwegian, but I've studied Swedish for 6 years and that helps.


There was a photo booth for taking festive pictures, such as the one above. I was wearing my Steller Tunic and my Flying Jib Shawl, and especially the shawl got lot of attention - which was nice, obviously. Later in the evening there was a movie screening "Yarn" by Una Lorenzen, which was a documentary of four fiber artists and in a way continued the feminism theme. For example, knit graffiti artist Tinna Þorudottir Þorvaldsdottir explained how she wanted to bring handicrafts from the private to the public, and artist Olek described how difficult it is to be heard in the art world after explaining that your material is yarn and your technique is crochet.


On Saturday, the festival moved to Norsk Folkemuseum and it was the first day of the market place. There was an unbelievable amount of people at the marketplace, and it was difficult to move, let alone to buy anything. I managed to grab four gorgeous skeins from Tweedy Todd before it was time to find my class: "Ryaknutar och några stygn" by Magasin Duett. The class was about rya knots and various stitches, and it was nice to learn something completely new. In Finland, rya rugs are making a comeback, and I have been thinking that it would be nice to make one. I don't know when I would ever have the time for that, but at least I now know how to.


After my class, I headed to the museum cafe where the after party had already started. I met some old friends and made new ones, and it was a lovely evening.

My original plan was to do sightseeing on Sunday, but as my visit to the marketplace wasn't as successful as I had hoped for on Saturday, I decided to go back on Sunday. There was also supposed to be a guided tour of the museum in English on Sunday morning, and I was interested in the knitting exhibition. Unfortunately, it turned out that the info on the website wasn't correct and the tour was in Norwegian. After the guide had talked about the first exhibit for 10 minutes and all I understood was that it was a nightgown, I decided to head to the marketplace. This time it wasn't as crowded as the first day, and I was able to have a look at all the yarns. There was a group of refugee women showing their hand dyed yarn at Garnsurr booth. I loved the idea of making a social integration project of yarn, and I might have exaggerated a bit with their sock yarns (especially as I recently swore never to knit socks again...), but if I ever feel like knitting socks again I now have the yarn for it. At G-Uld booth there was a line up on Sunday as well, but not as bad as on Saturday and after waiting for half an hour I was able to get a cardigan quantity of lovely plant dyed alpaca.


After this shopping, I felt that I had met my goals at the market place and headed to the cafe for an afternoon of knitting and making new friends.

It was a lovely weekend at the festival. Thank you for arranging such a great festival, Tone and Katie!

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!

We had homework before the class, so everyone brought three swatches that were to be cut open. I enjoyed doing the homework, because I can't even remember the last time I did stranded knitting (except for the Welcome to Finland socks more than a year ago, but a little Finnish flag hardly counts as stranded work).


The first technique we learned was the crochet method. That was pretty straight forward, and we got to make the first cut! Nothing unraveled, and it looks pretty neat.


The second method we learned was sewing. You can see the purple yarn on the left side that was used to secure the stitches. What is also visible is that the result is not very pretty. You would need to add a ribbon to cover the ends, or make a steak sandwich cover, such as the one on the right side. I like the way the sandwich looks like, but I wouldn't use it for a button band - maybe a blanket or an open cardigan.


The third method we tried was the most laborious: knotting. It means that you unravel the steek stitches in pairs, cut them in half, knot the two strands together, and weave in the ends. That is some weaving in! You can see from the picture above that I almost finished my tiny swatch in class, but for some reason didn't feel like finishing it after class. Many people in class swore that this would be their first and last try of the knotting method! This would be a good method for slippery yarn, but, in my opinion, it would be even better to choose a non-superwash wool to work with in the first phase.

We also learned to pick up stitches from the steek, first for a simple button band and then a sandwich version. All ready to move to garments now!


There are several good tutorials about steeking online, both photo tutorials (Kate Davies' is a great example) and YouTube videos, so it would be possible to learn the techniques on your own. However, it is so much more fun to learn with other knitters and make new friends while doing it. Thank you, Renee, for a great class, and thank you all my class mates for making it such a nice experience!

Now I feel all inspired for some stranded work with steeks - maybe the Cherry Bloom by Lene Tosti or Bruntsfield by Ysolda Teague. Or do you have any other suggestions?

Jyväskylä Summer Knit Festival started on Friday, July 15 with classes taught by knitting super stars. I wanted to continue with my plan to learn from the best, so I signed up for "Beyond the raglan" by Ysolda Teague. The class was about top-down construction and the many different ways to do it.

Example of different increases

Ysolda started by explaining the different construction options: compound raglan, round yoke, saddle shoulder, set-in sleeves and modifications to them. We also looked at the different ways of increasing, be it raglan or any other shaping. Then she explained how to take measures and calculate increases to achieve the desired construction. We also got to do some hands-on exercise in knitting a set-in sleeve mini sweater sample. After the knitting break it was time to do some math, and we did example calculations for the different construction types. Ysolda had brought some samples with her, so we could also take a closer look at some of her designs.


The hands-on part of the class was especially nice in that it provided an opportunity to chat with other knitters in the class. The finished sample turned into a souvenir for Troll princess - after we found a doll whose head is small enough to fit, as neckline adjustments were omitted.

Joji Locatelli gave a class called "Approach to Sweater Design" at Titityy LYS in Jyväskylä. This was an inspirational evening filled with tips and tools for knitting and sweater design. If you ever get the opportunity to take a class with her, I'd definitely recommend it!


 The class covered sweater design from finding inspiration to grading and pattern layout. Joji showed us pictures of knitwear that have been inspirational to her and explained how some more complicated constructions had been achieved. Then she introduced the traditional construction techniques and gave some examples of how they can be modified. She explained how to take measures and transform those to stitch counts. Last, she explained how to use tables of measurements for grading the pattern.


The class was full of knitters from all around Finland and even from St. Petersburg in Russia. There were differing backgrounds in knitting and knitwear design. It turned out that some of the participants would have preferred the previous class "Sweaters that fit (You!)", but couldn't make it and took this class instead. I'm sure they found the part of taking measures useful. And for those of us with some design experience already, I'm sure the others also agree that it doesn't hurt to learn more from the best! I found the little details most interesting: what knitters want to knit, what kinds of questions will they have, what kinds of details should you add in the instructions to make it easier for the knitters.


Joji's Worsted boxy was used as an example in the class. To make the most of the learnings in class, I think I'll continue with homework and knit this one next. Although, now looking at her patterns more carefully, I do feel tempted to get the whole Interpretations 3 collection! Especially My Everything has an interesting construction, and would be more fitting to my plan of knitting a black cardigan. If I knit Worsted boxy with my black silk-cashmere-merino cardigan yarns, will I then have to buy more for the cardigan..?