Pinwheel Baby Blanket

Fastest project ever!

Started: Saturday, 24th of May, just before the Eurovision Final (my faves were Azerbaijan, Israel and Iceland, btw)
Completed: Sunday, 25th of May (quite late in the evening)


Project: Round or Pinwheel Baby Blanket by Genia Planck, free free free!
Yarn Details:

• Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora
• 80% cotton, 20% angora
• 50gr=78m
• colour #15511

Needles: 5.5mm dpns and 100cm circular
Finished size: approx. 40cm radius

The pattern doesn't state any specific edging, but the blanket will curl up at the edges without a border of some sort. I had a long look on Ravelry at the 800-or-so other projects to gain some inspiration as to what borders look good and what I might possibly do. The final decision was to create a ruffle by increasing into each stitch on one round (kfbl) and then continue in a lace pattern from Nicky Epstein's Knitting Beyond the Edge book (which I picked up in Oslo last month).

This yarn has a bit of a bad reputation for shedding all over the place, but I really didn't have that experience. It's nice and soft and has great weight to it. Good thing that I like it, because I still have more than thirty balls of the stuff. ;-)

Double-Up Socks

Back in February (when I was still allowed to buy yarn), I got my hands on some pink, grey and white self-striping yarn, specifically with the intention of making some socks.

I am not an experienced sock-knitter. At least two of the pairs of socks that I've made were fraught with worry about running out of yarn. So, this time, I decided to try the toe-up method, as I figured that way I could just keep on knitting until the yarn ran out. The perfect plan.

As I was searching for a toe-up tutorial, I stumbled upon a tutorial on knitty.com for working two socks at the same time, on the same set of dpns, with one sock inside the other. I'd seen the method of working two pairs on the same long circular needle, but not this method.

It seemed crazy. One sock inside of the other? How do they stay separate? I did a little practice and indeed, I worked two pieces of fabric at the same time and somehow, they ended up being separate. Time to try the socks?

Not so fast. The knitty tutorial was written for cuff-down socks. How on earth was I going to manage shaping the toes and heels in this 'extreme 2-in-1' method?

The problem was solved by combining two patterns, which resulted in working two socks at once, on the same set of dpns, one inside the other, one strand of yarn in each hand, toe-up with afterthought heels.

Were you wondering why these socks were started in February and are only now, in May, getting blog action? Now you understand.


Pattern: a combination of

• Extreme Knitting: 2 socks in 1 by Kory Stamper, from Knitty Autumn 2006
• Two at once, toe-up sock pattern by Kelley Petkun, free on the Knitpicks website (the pattern, not Kelley)

Yarn details:

• Novita 7 Veljestä
• Wool/nylon blend
• 100gr=300m
• about 140gr used

Needles: 3mm dpns for toes and cuffs, 2.5mm dpns for the rest

I couldn't imagine how to do the toes with the double-knitting method, so I made the toes separately (i.e., one at a time) on the 3mm needles and then put them onto the same set of 2.5mm needles until I reached the ribbing. By this time, I had been slaving over these socks for several months and had no energy left with which to learn how to do ribbing, so back on two sets of 3mm needles they went. Actually, I just remembered that for the cuffs, I did magic loop, not dpns. Whatever!

Here's a picture of them at the beginning. Looks like one sock, right?

Wrong! Two socks!


And this is a closeup of how the two yarns look on the needles - one inside sock stitch, one outside sock stitch.


For all of the effort that these socks demanded, I don't think the finished product is anything special, and I was actually considering not blogging about them because they're kinda boring. But the process warranted blogging.

My opinion of this technique is that it's really cool and I like the novelty of it, but it's slower than working two socks separately. Spotting mistakes is quite tricky and then fixing them is even trickier. I made one crossed stitch and fixed that really easily with a crochet hook, but then later I did something shoddy and had to tink back a few rounds. Tinking in double-knitting = the opposite of warp speed.

But despite all of that moaning (sorry, didn't mean to gripe so much), making thesse socks was a jolly big learning curve, and that can't be all bad.

Wine and Roses Mitts

Recently I've been making lots of small projects and it has been giving me great project completion satisfaction. So here we have another little project - some fingerless mitts for me!

I thought these would be good for summer here, but it doesn't look like summer is really on the way yet, as it snowed a bunch last week and is still trying to snow this morning, although the rain is winning the battle. I've been seeing pictures of the first flowers of the season from other Finnish blogs and am waiting for the day when I can post my pictures. :-|

Pattern: Wine and Roses Mitts by JoLene M. Treace, published in Interweave Knits Winter 2006.

Yarn Details: here's where things get a little hazy. I bought this yarn from ebay, it's 'vintage' and the labels are conspicuously missing such information as fibre content, length, weight, etc. But my guess is that it's 100% wool and it's cobweb weight. I've included a picture of it just in case somebody knows more about it than I do. It's so unbelievably fine that for this project, I had to use two strands doubled throughout.

Needles: 2.75mm bamboo dpns


These turned out slightly too big for my taste, so I felted them a teensy bit by hand and now I really like the size of them. I actually made a mistake in making them, though, as I put them down for about a month and when I picked them up again, I couldn't remember how many repeats of the hand chart I'd done. Long story short, they ended up with one less hand chart repeat and so they're a couple of centimetres shorter than the original pattern states. Personally, I don't think it makes that much difference.

Ellin Mekko/Elli's Dress

I finished this at the beginning of the week but didn't snap such good fotos at first due to crappy light. Yesterday, however, the sun shone on the balcony for just long enough to allow me to whip out the camera and the tripod and snap away. See the shadow?

Pattern: Ellin Mekko/Elli's Dress by Jaana - here is the English pattern and here is the Finnish one, find her website here and her Ravelry profile here
Yarn Details:

• Novita Tennessee
• 100% cotton
• 100gr = 214m
• colour #537
• about 120gr used

Needles: 3.5mm bamboo circular, 40cm long and 2.5mm circular for neck edging

I love this little dress! It's so cute! I knew when I first saw it that I was going to have to make it. It's pretty small, designed to fit a 3-month-old, so it took less than a week to make. This yarn is nice and the colour is ELECTRIC! It's so saturated and bright.


It's funny that while I was making this little baby dress, many people asked who it was for, as is normal and natural, but when I didn't have an answer for that, they started suspecting that I was expecting!

But no, friends, there is no baby on the way for me. This cute dress does not yet have a home to go to, but for sure someone's bound to pop out a girl sometime soon. :-)

Yarn Shopping in Oslo

When I was in Oslo last month, I took a trip to a shop called Husfliden, where they had all sorts of gorgeous Norwegian knitted garments, national costumes, glass and ceramic art...plus tonnes of yarn! Woo hoo!


Those are just a couple of corners in the shop. There was much more stuff than just that! I loved how they had many of the Hanne Falkenberg Designs kits, as well as the finished garments.

What did I buy? Being in Norway, I wanted to buy Norwegian stuff, so I got some Brodergarn (Ravelry link) by Røros-Tweed:

It's 100% new wool from the Spælsau sheep. I also got the same yarn in a dark emerald green colour. The plan for the purple colour is to make the Peacock Feathers Shawl by Dorothy Siemens (Ravelry link here).

These eight balls of Rauma Lamullgarn (aka Røros Lamullgarn) should make themselves into some lovely mittens:

So, shop details. The name of the shop is Husfliden and there seem to be stores all over Norway, but the one I visited was in Oslo. The address is Rosenkrantz' gate 19-21 and it's very close to the Town Hall (the big ugly brown box-shaped building...really, it's uuuugly!). The telephone number is (+47) 22 42 10 75 and the email address is post@dennorskehusfliden.no.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow!!!!!!

I can't say much more than that. Yesterday we took a trip to a local dam, as apparently this is the only time of year that this particular dam has a barrier open all the way to allow the breaking ice from upstream to pass through.

I was dumbfounded by the speed, force and power of all of that water and all of that ice! So much of it, and huge thick chunks. Makes me think that I live in the arctic or something...

Have a look at some of the videos that I took. This first one shows the place where the water passes underneath the bridge, just before the barrier. Two warnings: I'm not a very good camera operator, as demonstrated by my non-steady steadycam work and bad angles. Also, this video is over a minute long, so it might take some time to buffer if you have a slowish connection. Alright, three warnings...I would recommend turning your sound down before viewing.



This next one shows the other side of the dam and how much power is generated by the sheer amount and force of the water being pushed through. It was actually quite scary to watch those huge huge huge waves moving so rapidly and seeing massive ice wedges being thrown about. It's kind of hard to get a sense of scale, but keep an eye out for the trees in the top right hand corner. They look so small!



This last one shows inside the dam, where you can see the barrier raised fully. Keep an eye out at the very top centre of the shot at about the 3-second mark for the huge block of ice that says hello to the wall!

The Clementine Shawlette

I posted a little picture of my clementine shawlette as a work-in-progess a few weeks ago, before my two-week break. I actually finished it quite quickly, within a week or so, but I wasn't happy with the result for two reasons. One, it was too long to sit nicely on my shoulders (although it fit around my neck perfectly) and two, I didn't like the grafting job that I did on it.

So, lots of procrastinating left this project hanging around for almost a month, finished but not really finished. I scrounged up some motivation yesterday morning to undo the grafting plus ten rows or so of each piece, then I redid the grafting. The whole job took less than an hour.


Pattern: Clementine Shawlette by Michele Rose Orne from Interweave Knits Spring 2007
Yarn details:

• Novita Bambu
• 68% bamboo, 32% cotton
• 50gr = 135m
• colour #550
• about 140gr used

Needles: 3.5mm
Finished measurements: 150cm long x 26cm wide

I actually really enjoyed making this, but by the end I was starting to get a little bored. At the beginning of the pattern, I needed to refer to the chart all the time, but as soon as I hit the long, straight part, it was all systems go. I would rate this as an advanced-beginner pattern.

I don't often comment on yarn too much, even though I've been educating myself about it a lot recently, but I would like to comment on this particular yarn. Novita yarns are available in supermarkets all over the country here, and I suppose that can give one the impression that Novita doesn't make good quality yarns. Come on, yarn from a supermarket? I expect to find only discount acrylic in supermarkets, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with this yarn. It's soft and lucious and it was a dream to work with and lovely to have next to my skin. Hooray for bamboo!

A bit of news

Some of you may have noticed a little countdown bar in the right column that appeared fairly recently. It's counting down my self-inflicted yarn diet. Being overyarned happens to most of us knitters and crocheters every now and then and something drastic must be done before it gets too out of control. Hahaha, 'too'.

So yeah, the first step is admitting that there is somewhat of an imbalance in terms of the amount of yarn purchased compared to the amount of yarn used. Net result: I OWN TOO MUCH YARN! If we consider just the yarn which has a specific project allocation, we're talking 25+ projects' worth already. Then add to that the mountain of yarn that has no destiny yet! You get the point.

At first I toyed with a three-month yarn fast, but dismissed that as being half-hearted and weak (come on! three months wouldn't even make a dent in the stash). Three months turned into six months, which in turn became the rest of the year. Sob!

At least now I can get some of the stuff in my queue done without being distracted by new yarn purchases.

And now for something a little sunnier: the weather here has been FABULOUS for the past few days! I actually wore little slip-on shoes outside yesterday! Can you believe it?!?! The temperature has been around 15 degrees for a few days and has even reached as high as 17.5. When I listen to myself, I sound like a loon - where I come from, anything under +20 is considered chilly and here I am raving about having 15 degrees for a couple of days! Well, you know, after the stupidly long winter, we'll grab onto even the faintest glimmer of sunshine and warmth. This heat wave isn't going to last though; the weather forecast is predicting four degrees for early next week. Sigh.

Here's what I've been intermittently working on for the last couple of weeks:



Classic Granny Square Blanket. It will continue to grow as long as the yarn holds out (and believe me, there's tonnes of it). I've been enjoying working on these squares and coming up with different techniques for weaving in the yarn ends as I go along, leaving just the very last end that needs to be woven in manually. It's really relaxing to work on these. It gives me a break from the Frost Flowers and Leaves, which is almost almost almost done! I started the border a few days ago. Man, that road ahead is still long, but I'm so close to the end! I can't wait to see how it looks off of the needles.

I've also been busy making some more little knitting and crochet videos, which can be viewed on my youtube channel. More stuff to chat about, but for now it's sauna time. :-)