Birkenwasser knits

Quiet Folly pattern by Heidi Alander is simple and pretty. It's one of those patterns that I wanted to knit right away when I first saw it. Therefore, it was a natural choice when it was that time of the year: speed knitting for kindergarten teachers before their holiday starts. Good thing is that the pattern is not more complicated; it didn't take much time to finish this pair.

Then all there was to do was to knit the socks, and there was like a week to do it. Obviously, that made me think that there's all the time in the world to do it and on the last evening I realised that there's no way I could make it. Luckily, I had the Smokey Zickzacks still on my desk, so we had something for the teacher, but you couldn't say that Young Warrior had anything to do with choosing the pattern or yarn. Nevertheless, this pair of socks also found it's recipient already, as one of Troll Princess' daycare nannies started her vacation and we had a little gift for her.

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!

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.