Birkenwasser knits

Wigeon is a drop shoulder boxy pullover worked flat in pieces and then seamed. The body is composed of three large color blocks, and the two bottom ones are repeated in the sleeves. Top block drops from the shoulders to create the top part of the close fitting and full length sleeves. Shoulders are shaped with short rows and joined using three-needle bind off. The back is slightly longer than the front with a slit in the side seam. Worked in lace weight yarn takes some time, but the result is a rewarding lightweight pullover - throw it in your handbag to have something warm for the chilly spring evenings.

It never occured to me to do an inventory of my unfinished projects, until I started documenting them on Instagram. Excluding those whose status is "discontinued", the list is still quite long. The first one is only a sketch with an idea for the yarn, but let's exclude that for now. Starting from the latest additions, Peippo cardigan for Troll Princess is so far only a drawing and two skeins of Noro Haniwa yarn:


Haapana pullover is made of Malabrigo lace. Front is almost done, back started.

The next one was started back in 2013 when pastels were the thing for the spring. Unfortunately we also moved back to Finland in 2013 and I never got around to unpack the boxes of yarns and UFOs. The pieces of Allihaahka top have been waiting for finishing for two years... The problem with this one was that I wanted to add some flowers to the front, but they didn't turn out nice, so the whole thing was put away. I might want to finish this without the flowers now.



I don't always design what I knit, sometimes I try a pattern written by someone else and only slightly modify. The last one is purple pullover from Novita winter 2012 magazine. This one might have been in the making since winter 2012, but now that I found it and realized that it's all knitted I will go ahead and finish it.




That makes a total of nine unfinished objects. You need to have a couple of projects going on simultaneously, though, because there are different kinds of knitting situations. Most demanding is reading: that requires so much concentration that anything beyond ribbing is too complicated. Then for knitting in public you need to have something small enough to carry around. And the rest you can do while watching TV. If you don't watch much TV, then that part kind of piles up, as it includes the blocking and seaming of the pieces knitted on other occasions. Finally, there's the design part, which really requires all your attention, so you can't do it while doing anything else.

The plan is to share the progress of these babies with you! I think cutting down to half of this would be a good goal, but I kind of like this spread from plans to almost finished items. Let's see what happens.