Birkenwasser knits

Tauride Shawl is my latest pattern, an asymmetric shawl decorated with Vikkel braids. The shawl gets it asymmetric shape with increases on one side and decreases on the other side. While increases are made on every row, decreases are combined to form an angular edge. Binding off stitches on the right side continues in a Vikkel braid to form wedges. Each wedge is two rows wider than the previous one, and each bind off has more stitches than the previous one, creating an ammonite-like form. Seed stitch at the corners keeps the edge from rolling up. You can knit the shawl in two sizes: there’s a one-skein version (Small) and a two-skein version (Large). The pattern includes a photo tutorial for Vikkel braid.



This pattern is a collaboration with Lanitium ex Machina. I had the opportunity to try their gorgeous BFL Silk Cashmere yarn for the large shawl, and let me tell you it's a bliss to knit! The only problem is choosing which one of the gorgeous colorways to use. I do recommend a light color to make the Vikkel braids visible.


The shawl gets its name after the Tauride gardens in St. Petersburg. We moved to St. Petersburg three weeks after Young Warrior was born and stayed for four years, except for the summer when Troll Princess was born. That summer I spent in Helsinki with Young Warrior, because I wanted to be close to a Finnish hospital when the time comes. Three weeks after Troll Princess was born we moved back to St. Petersburg (Why three weeks for both babies? One week to get a passport, two weeks to get a Russian visa!). We lived close to Tauride gardens, and I have spent endless days in the park, enjoying lovely weather, flowers, shashliks and friends - but also rain, wet snow, and loneliness. In Finland, we say that there's no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. Therefore, we take the kids out every day. In Russia, at least in my experience, you don't take the kids out if its cold or raining or snowing or anything else that might make the kids feel uncomfortable. As a result, it was just me with a baby and a toddler in the giant park on so many days that my memories of those years start with miserable images of pushing the double pram alone in wet snow in the park. This shawl is my attempt to take back the pretty park through creating something beautiful and remembering the good times. I love St. Petersburg and we still go there a couple of times every year, even though it's been almost four years since we moved back to Finland. I wanted to take pictures of the shawl in its namesake gardens during our last visit, but I had been away from St. Petersburg long enough to forget that the park is closed for renovations one month every spring! Therefore, these pictures were taken in our current next-door park: Mustikkamaa island in Helsinki.







Today is CreaDienstag.

I originally designed Ipana Cardigan for Tukuwool, and I love choosing different color combos from those lovely Tukuwool colors. I have knitted three different color combos so far! I never planned for the cardigan to go with the Mesmeria Dress, but I had both of them tested one after the other and my test knitters noticed right away that these two designs would work well together. I figured that I'd better do what they did, and knit a cardigan to match the dress, so here it is! Now the only problem is that I can't find the dress anywhere... I'm sure that I'll find it somewhere eventually, but I'm also sure that Troll Princess has outgrown it by then. In the meanwhile, at least she has a lovely cardigan to wear!

We had some company for our photoshoot!

Julia Mueller has the most spectacular glove designs I have ever seen. I started with Knotty gloves last spring, and as the third round in Lankakauppa Kerä's Head-to-toe-challenge was for wrist warmers (mitts, gloves etc) I knew that I wanted to pick another one from Julia's collection. With some leftover beads from Tour-de-Sock last summer, I decided to see how subtle the effect of red beads on red yarn would be. Arkema pattern seemed to have enough going on to make the project interesting. Pattern printed, yarn wound, tools ready, and onto an intercontinental flight!


I planned on knitting these gloves on my holiday in Indonesia, even if I was still working on Head-to-toe-challenge round 2 scarf when leaving home. I did get started with the gloves in Bali, but I didn't even finish the scarf during the holiday (which was nice, as it means that the holiday really was a holiday, also from knitting). After the holiday I put the gloves on my knitting table by the TV. This pattern does require attention, so you can't knit while reading, and you can't really carry it around with all the beads and stuff. So I would work on the gloves during the evening news - for the following 2 months!! If I ever pick up a project like this again, I really need to start watching more TV...




The gloves are lovely, and they would be worth every minute spent on them, had I paid more attention to my gauge. Normally I always swatch to find out my gauge and adjust needles if necessary, but this time I figured that since I only have 2,5 mm DPNs there's no point in swatching. And then I went for the largest size, because, well, I have big hands. Unfortunately, my hands are not big enough to accommodate the loose gauge, so the gloves don't really fit like a glove.


Another thing that you should always do is to read through the whole pattern. This one starts with the cabled cuff knitted sideways, then you pick up stitches on the side for the hand, and then on the other side to continue with the cuff in the opposite direction. At some point I was looking at the picture and thinking that it looks like an i-cord on the edges of the cabled cuff, but there were no instructions to do an i-cord edging in the first part. Well, after you thought that the gloves were finally finished, there's still the part where you pick up stitches for the add-on i-cords...


Today is RUMS day.

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.

Smokey Zickzacks by Natalia Vasilieva have a very interesting construction. The socks are knitted flat in a chevron pattern and then grafted together to form a sock. This is a pattern that will keep you interested, and it's truly amazing how everything adds up in the end and all those different sized chevrons suddenly form toes, heel, and the whole sock.





The pattern is written for fingering weight yarn, but I had some aran weight sock yarn in my stash, so I simply knitted with the instructions for the smallest size and got a medium-size result.

I met the lovely Anna of AnnaSaskia designs last October at Kässäkerho Pom Pom Superviikonloppu. She told me about her plans and it's been great to see her start with her web page and Etsy shop since then. After the festival I checked out her designer page on Ravelry, and noticed that she's the designer of the popular Tamarugo hat. And then I remembered the camouflage-colored yarn that I had bought with Young Warrior in mind, so all that was left was to modify the pattern into kid size.



Last autumn, I made fingerless mitts for Young Warrior so he could play Pokemon. Later on, he explained that there should be half of the fingers in the gloves for better fit. Of course, that's obvious, and so is the reason why I didn't make them in the first place: too much effort and too many ends to weave in. But if the kid makes the effort to explain what kind of knitwear he needs, I feel that I need to make the effort to knit that and as there was plenty of yarn left, that was the next project.



I wanted to make matching gloves to go with the new hat, so I took the stitch pattern from Tamarugo hat. To avoid swatching and counting, I searched for a kids' glove pattern for the yarn. I skipped the stitch pattern from the instructions and used two repeats of the same stitch as in the hat. As the stitch is formed by one row of mostly slipped stitches, I was worried that the gloves would turn out uneven as the palm side would have one extra row in every four rows. Therefore, I slipped every other stitch on the palm side when knitting the slip stitch row, and then slipped every other stitch on the following row. Looks pretty even now. Only thing that I would modify is to make the fingers different length to match the length of the kid's fingers - working until the first knuckle, for example. There will be an opportunity to try that, as the next order is in. Troll Princess just realised how unfair it is that she doesn't have fingerless gloves...

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.