Birkenwasser knits

My new brioche design, Tiger Flower shawl is now live! Published by Quince & co in their Tern yarn, a lovely mix of wool and silk (75/25 %).


This crescent-shaped shawl is completely reversible, starting with two-color stripes at the top and continuing with a two-color brioche edging. The brioche pattern has Tiger Flowers in a row, so once you have finished knitting you can wrap yourself in flowers!



All photos by Whitney Hayward.

It's RUMS day.

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!

Friday the 13th was Knitmare night in Helsinki. Knitmare Fest by ILO brought yarn shop Silmukka from Tampere and designer Susanne Sommer from Austria to Helsinki, in addition to ILO yarn shop from Salo. A nice group of knitters welcomed them to Helsinki by attending a lovely knit night, buying gorgeous yarn and knitting together.


My contribution for the party was the Flying Jib Shawl, here at ILO's table at the Knitmare fest. We had a promotion with ILO: buy the yarn for this shawl (2 skeins of fingering weight) and get a free download code for the pattern, and I'm happy to announce that the promotion will run until end of October! Please visit ILO in Salo, or check out their online shop. I also did a trunk show at the event, and it was so nice to hear all the positive feedback for my designs! Thank you, all!


Susanne Sommer was the star of the night, and she gave a brioche class for advanced brioche knitters. I love her pom pom headband and I wish I had taken a better picture of it. But trust me, it's awesome!




Stidilä was a nice venue for a party like this, although it was rather dark. I had to give up my dark green cabled dress at the point when I noticed a mistake in the cables 6 rows earlier and tried to fix it in the dark, but as you can see in the picture, many people were happily knitting. And I did have another WIP with me for emergencies like this, so I didn't have to sit without knitting.


Of course, I did more shopping than a mere sock yarn skein, and I was super happy to get these lovely stitch markers from Lankaputiikki Silmukka. Saved me the trip to Tampere, even if I'd love to visit the pretty yarn shop again.

Thank you, ILO, for organising such a great event! I hope this will become a tradition!

Flying Jib Shawl is my contribution to Knitmare Fest by ILO, a knit night in Helsinki on Oct 13. The shawl has an asymmetric shape that is similar to a jib sail that sets ahead of the foremast of a sailing vessel. This is a collaboration with ILO, and if you buy the yarn for this shawl from them (2 skeins of fingering weight yarn by Oct 31, 2017), you get the pattern for free! Of course, you can also buy the pattern from my Ravelry store.


This shawl lets you play with colors and the interesting shape makes knitting fun with the otherwise simple garter stitch and eyelet stripes. Choose two skeins in contrasting colors, use a gradient set of mini skeins, or use up those scrap yarns and create a contrast fade of your own!






It's RUMS day!

Midsummer Haze was Joji Locatelli's contribution to Jyväskylä Summer Knit Festival: the pattern was a gift in the festival magazine. At first sight, I thought it was a nice pattern, but not my cup of tea. I admired the lovely Midsummer Hazes popping up on my Instagram feed and that was it. Later in July, our family vacation trip took us to the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I have bought several yarn souvenirs from Estonia, so now I wanted to see what Latvia and Lithuania have to offer. A bit of googling, and I knew that I wanted to buy some Lithuanian linen. Unfortunately, we came to Vilnius, the capital, on Saturday afternoon due to my knitting obligations. That meant that the nice yarn shops that I wanted to visit had already closed - and on Monday we had to leave early to visit Trakau castle before heading to the other side of the country to see the Curonian spit. We stayed in Klaipeda, and happened to walk by Siulas linen shop (Lino Namai at Tiltų g. 11), and among all the lovely linen products they also sold linen yarn! So I did managed to get my linen souvenir after all.


The original plan was to knit a summer top with the linen, but it didn't take long before I started thinking about the Midsummer Haze pattern. That would look nice in linen, and a linen cowl would be a summer accessory, wouldn't it? Well, it is!



I was a bit afraid that the rustic linen wouldn't work in a lace cowl, but I was wrong. I think it's lovely, and it has that linen shine. I'm really happy that I changed my mind about this pattern - or just found the perfect yarn for it. I'm also really happy that I found this linen. I have 400 g left, so a summer top might still be doable, and hey, Lithuania is not that far to go and buy more!


Linking up to RUMS.

My Steller Tunic pattern is published on Ravelry!  This tunic is knitted seamlessly top-down. There is garter stitch edging on neckline, hem and cuffs. The tunic has a flattering a-line shape with set-in sleeves, designed to fit tight around the shoulders and loosening along the way towards the hem. A color block in the hem gives room for a bit of color play. Choose a size closest to your bust circumference. This light tunic worked in a wool-linen-silk yarn is perfect for warm days and nice to wear when the weather starts getting colder.



If you think that autumn is not optimal to knit a short-sleeve top, you can do as I did for the prototype version of this pattern: knit half length sleeves. Or continue until 3/4 or full length! If you knit the hem first, you can see how much yarn you have left and knit your sleeves accordingly.



Linking up to RUMS.

The last round of Tour-de-Sock was a tough one. We knew beforehand that it would be four colors and quite a large amount of yarn. It turned out to be stranded knitting using four colors, which is still ok. The new thing here was jacquard floats, and these two combined made knitting slow. Very slow. Actually, most of the participants didn't even get started with these socks, and those who did dropped out pretty soon after noticing how much time it would take to finish this pair.




Jacquard floats was a new technique for me. It means that you add float stitches every two or three stitches apart and purl these stitches with yarns in front. This way the inside of the sock is also almost knitted, and there are no long floats to worry about. It does make the socks rather thick, though. You need to pay attention to the order of your yarns. I only noticed this as I was knitting my second sock: you can see how the float stitches are showing at the top of the large squares. At that point I was wondering how I managed to knit the first sock without learning the technique, but also at that point I didn't care anymore; all I wanted was to get these socks off the needles. In retrospect, I could have easily fixed those visible float stitches with a crochet hook at that point, but now I just have to accept them.


Another problem with these socks was the heel. Turning the heel meant working the square pattern in the middle and decreasing the gusset stitches on the sides. As the contrast color is not involved in the decreases, it meant that I got large holes next to the decreases no matter how hard I tried pulling the main color working yarn. For the second sock I tried wrapping the contrast color around the next float stitch on the sides, and that helped a bit, but I still took a needle and yarn to close the gap afterwards.


Here's my set of TdS socks. I got one pair that's too small for adults, and one with too many mistakes to give for anyone, but I also got 4 pairs that I can give as gifts when needed and learned many new techniques. All in all a good experience, that is! But I'll never knit socks again...