Birkenwasser knits

I have recently used bubblewrap stitches in several designs: Pastilles Hat, Ipana Cardigan and Mesmeria Dress. It's a nice way to add what looks like stranded knitting with a bit of texture - and only working with one color at a time. Knotions magazine published a tutorial for bubble stitches and it's really worth it to have a look if you are not familiar with the technique. The stitch is also known as Drop, Ladder, Knit (DLK). I was happy to read that my pattern was in the top 5 for the January issue of Knotions - maybe it was the bubble stitch!

Bubble stitch tutorial in Knotions

Knitting for babies is always a pleasure: whatever you knit, it won't take much time and you get a cute result. So when I heard that we'd be visiting a friend who had a baby last summer, I wanted to knit something for her. I included a baby size for the Mesmeria pattern that I published in November, so I decided to make a mini version of the dress. One of my test knitters used a gradient yarn for her dress, and I wanted to see how that would look like. I had just enough pink-purple Nordlys left from my U-turn sock project that all I needed was a main color for the dress.



I like the way the dress looks totally different from the first one I knitted in red and brown. And I love the little pink butterfly buttons that I found for this dress!

It's CreaDienstag.

This Sweet Gemma was supposed to be a Christmas present for my Troll Princess. She's not a baby, but they do have nap times at the daycare, and she doesn't have a blanket there, so when I saw this lovely baby blanket design by Triona Murphy I knew that I wanted to knit it for her.




Anything going to the daycare needs to be something you can just throw into the washer when it comes back. I also wanted this blanket to be something she can play with, so I dug into my stash to see if there's enough of any machine washable yarn to work with. Troll Princess loves to build play houses with blankets and pillows, and I have told her that she's not allowed to use my Frida's Flowers blanket or my Paintbox Log Cabin blanket in her play. I feel bad about it, but the former is the biggest crochet project I have ever done, and the latter is hand painted silk yarn, so I don't want either one of them ruined in play. This one is now a blanket for her and she's allowed to play with it as much as she wants!


I found these Novita Wool leftovers in my stash. The yellow I used for the vest for Business woman last Christmas, and the purple was used in a lace pullover for her. I managed to make her believe that I had unraveled her garments to make the blanket, and she got pretty upset so in the end I had to tell her that I had just enough leftovers for the blanket. Or, almost enough. I weighed the yarn beforehand, knitted one square and realised that I have enough of both colors to make 4,6 squares. Now, you need 4 and 5, so it didn't quite add up, but I decided to think about it later and just knitted 7 squares to start with. At that point I noticed that there's more purple than yellow, and I also remembered that the Paintbox Log Cabin blanket pieces were attached with three needle bind off instead of binding off each piece separately and then crocheting them together. So I unraveled the bind off and went with three needle bind off instead. That allowed me to use yellow for the bind off and use the little strands unraveled from the purple squares to almost finish the 5th purple square. Don't tell anyone there's half a round missing from one square! You can only imagine the amount of ends to weave in...


To make the blanket a tad larger, I used the remaining yellow to knit a border around the blanket. With the border the blanket is 80 x 80 cm (31 x 31 inches), so it's not really big enough for a 5-year-old. I didn't manage to have the blanket done by Christmas, but Troll Princess' name day is after Christmas, so I told her that it was her name day gift. "This is the best name day gift I have ever received!" was the verdict, although it might also be the only name day gift she's ever received.

This is the only Indie Design Gift-A-Long project that I managed to finish on time, but I'm glad I got one project done. There are two more coming, but not within the GAL, unfortunately.

A friend of mine is expecting twins any day now. Naturally, I wanted to knit something for the babies. My friend is from India, so I decided to knit something traditional Finnish - "train socks". This pattern is really popular, as it might be the best pattern to stay on a newborn baby's feet. There's also a lovely story behind the pattern: Kerttu Latvala was fleeing before World war II battles in the winter of 1940. Bombings had destroyed parts of the rail tracks and they had to wait for the tracks to be cleared. Kerttu Latvala was travelling with her 2 month-old baby, Tuula. There was a retired handicrafts teacher sitting with them on the train, and she felt sorry for the baby. While waiting for the journey to continue, she unraveled part of her hand knitted cardigan and knitted a pair of socks for baby Tuula. Kerttu Latvala later knitted hundreds of socks with the same pattern for other babies, and Finnish knitters continue the story by knitting these socks for babies close to them.

Time for the monthly update: knitting and reading. This month I've had so many deadlines with my knitting projects and I've been working on this and that and felt like I haven't accomplished anything. Well, I have, and I'll be sharing those projects with you soon. But what's in the working at the moment, here are a couple of interesting projects:


Knitting this tunic is taking a bit longer than I thought. I had already started the third skein of yarn and posted a pic about it on Instagram, and only seeing the photo made me notice how totally different colors the skeins were. And I did check that they were all from the same dye lot! So I had to rip almost the whole thing and alternate between two skeins to avoid unwanted color blocks. But it's a lovely yarn to knit with, so I don't really mind going back and redoing it. The yarn is BC Garn Colori. I haven't read any of Katja Kettu's books yet, but I've been wanting to for quite some time already. "Yöperhonen" had hundreds of people on the library waiting list, but only about 50 for the CD, so I'm going to try listening a book for a change. Which of course means that I can knit something more complicated than while reading! "Piippuhylly" is a book I saw Business woman reading, and as she said that the short stories are located in St. Petersburg I didn't need more recommendations. I love reading about all these familiar places!


This month I haven't been knitting for my own kids. I've knitted a couple of Pikkutylli cardigans for my friends' babies. We've taken a break from children's classics as well, and jumped right into coding for kids: "Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding" by Linda Liukas. My kids think it's ok, and I'm loving it! A fairy tale that teaches kids how to instruct computers, it's simply awesome! Read it. Even if you don't have kids.


I still haven't gotten around to read the Putin books on my night stand, but as I saw Business woman reading a book about Ukraine by Anna-Lena Lauren ("Ukraina - Gränslandet") I had to move it to the top of my reading queue. I loved her book about the Caucasus states ("I bergen finns inga herrar") and the crazy Russians ("De är inte kloka de där ryssarna") so I'm expecting a great deal from this book. And the yarn, well, I love knitting the green tunic, so I went ahead and got yarn for another one.

From my January projects I finished McEwan's "Children Act", but the tweed cardigan is on hold. I'm almost done with Fidel Castro, but not with Starling pullover. Philosophers and summer top are waiting for the right moment. Silk top is almost finished, but I haven't even started Sarah Waters yet. We finished Pippi Långstrump with the kids, but I didn't finish the dress yet. Oh well, multitasking sometimes means that nothing is finished even if there is progress on several fronts.

Joining Ginny on yarn along.

One of the reason for designing Pikkutylli baby cardigan was to have something new to knit for my friends who were having babies. Well, they were not the last babies around us, so I'm glad to have a nice pattern to pick up as more friends are having babies. My original pattern was knitted using three colors. The idea was for twin girls to get matching cardigans: the other one white with marine blue stripes and pink edges, the other pink with blue stripes and white edges. Then I saw some nice Pikkutylli versions on Ravelry knitted with two colors, so as I was buying yarn for two more cardigans I decided to go with only two colors each this time.

Pikkutylli ("Little Ringed Plover") cardigan is designed for a newborn. Knitted from top down in one piece, it has no seams or buttons that would press against delicate skin. The cardigan is tied with thin crocheted cords that will not make a big lump in a baby's armpit. This is a fast knit, and the construction will keep your interest in it for the short while that it takes to knit this.


If you are not familiar with adding crocheted strands on a knitted item, I have made an instruction video for that part. The video shows how you can avoid weaving in the ends while crocheting the strands.


The background for this design is in my experience with babies. All babies like to be held on someone's shoulder, facing backwards. Another favorite position is to be on someone's arm, facing away from the person holding the baby (place the baby on your arm, facing down, your arm going between the baby's head and shoulder, and grab the top leg pulling it in a "frog" position and you are sure to have a happy baby - and a free hand to do chores while holding the baby). If you're not holding the baby, they are usually happiest lying on their stomach. What is common to all these positions is that there should be no buttons in the front of the garment the baby is wearing, and this is where the idea for this design comes from.

This project had a long lead time. A friend of mine gave birth to twin girls in May, and I made a plan to visit them in July. I even bought the yarns in May already. But then I wasn't sure what I wanted to knit for the baby girls. Slowly the design started evolving in my head, and I started by making the first swatch in June. This project involved plenty of prototyping, however, and all of a sudden I noticed that I have two days left and this is what the project looks like:


Well, nothing works like a little time pressure and I was able to finish the fourth prototype the day before leaving. This time I finally had the fit I had envisioned, so then it was just about writing notes and knitting the second cardigan for the rest of that day. I had to write the pattern as well before leaving, as I would be giving the samples to the little babies during the trip!

The yarn I chose was Novita puuvilla-bambu, a 50-50 cotton - bamboo mix. The yarn is soft and makes a lovely knit for a baby. However, you need to pay attention while knitting, as the plies come apart easily and you will notice having knitted only half of a stitch.

As winter is coming, I wanted to try the pattern with a wool yarn as well. It also seems, that there's a sudden baby boom around me, so there are plenty of recipients for these small newborn knits. This winter version was made with Drops Merino Extra Fine. This one, as well, was given to a tiny newborn before I got a chance to take a picture of the finished item.

A couple of weeks ago I listed five new things that I'd like to try. Well, not that I didn't have seven unfinished projects waiting, here I'm adding three new ones. Number one on my list was top-down knitting. Now, I understand that the wise thing to do would be to pick a pattern by someone else and learn the technique. But then I happened to visit the lovely LYS Kerä in Tampere and ended up with this lovely Katia rustic silk yarn and wanted to make a swatch and my mind started wandering and... Well, the design is in my head so I'm just going to see if I can skip the learning part and go straight to making the pattern while knitting. You can laugh at me later when I end up frogging the whole thing!


Oh, and stitch marks. I said that I would not want to try using stitch markers, but as that seemed to be the thing in common with all top-down patterns I thought I might as well give them a try while I'm at it. After the first 25 rows I can say that there's no reason to use them to see where you are supposed to increase as it's pretty visible at least with this yarn, BUT while you are reading something it does help to notice the increases without lifting your eyes from the newspaper.


Number five on my list was linen. I visited Kerä for the first time about a month ago with our knitting club (you can read about our trip in Liina and Senni's blog Kutimointia, in Finnish). I saw a table filled with Quince & co Sparrow linen, but couldn't think of what to knit of it. The reasonable me left the Sparrows on the table and came home with some Malabrigo lace and Isager Plant fiber, but I couldn't stop thinking about Sparrow. Slowly the design appeared in my thoughts, and then I had to go back to buy the yarn. My following visit to Tampere was for work, but I was pretty sure that I would find time to get the yarns as well. Unfortunately, the schedule was too tight and I had to return to Helsinki without Sparrows for the second time! Now I know that Kerä has an online shop as well, but it's not the same thing for me. There might even be a LYS in Helsinki selling Sparrow, but I'll have to write another post explaining why I travel 180 km to by yarn. Finally, after waiting for about a month, I had the opportunity to visit Tampere, and this time I made sure to make it to the yarn shop!


Then there's more baby news: a friend of mine gave birth to twin girls! I'm going to visit them in July so there's plenty of time to knit, but I happened to run into this Novita Puuvilla-bambu yarn. I've seen some baby knits made of this yarn, so I thought that I would knit something other than the woolen bonnet and socks that I always knit for my friends babies. Especially since I have knitted them for the first born of this friend already! Waiting for inspiration with these yarns now. (And hoping that my friend is busy with her babies and doesn't have time to read my blog...)

I added my blog on Bloglovin' and Blogipolku, so you can follow my blog with these services. I was happy to notice that 1/3 of the views to my blog are from outside of Finland, so it seems to make sense to write in English. I'm also happy for those 2/3 from Finland, as it shows that writing in English is not scaring off my Finnish friends. Thanks for reading!

About a week ago I realized that it was the day my friend was due to have a baby. And I hadn't even started to knit anything for the baby! Luckily I had some lovely forest green Novita wool that I knew was going to be left over from another project (Kuukkeli vest for Young warrior), so time to cast on. There's a baby hat that I've knit many times and both of my kids have used these hats, so it's a good baby gift to knit. I was a bit worried about finding a baby hat in my house, as my youngest is turning four, but luckily I noticed that the instructions are printed on the Wool band.


The hat is a quick knit as it's only garter stich and a small piece. I found one sock to use as a pattern for the socks. Still no baby news the following night, so blocking and casting on the first sock.


It doesn't take long to knit a pair of mini socks, and as there was the constant pressure to finish, I even managed to sew the seams and weave in the ends. Last night I washed the pieces and this morning I got a message: a little baby boy was born this morning! Just-in-time knitting.