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Showing posts from 2016

Wild Blueberry Suit For Theo.

Theo needed a woolen jumpsuit to wear under his overalls while palying outside now that the weather is getting colder. I tried to look for one for him (either new or secondhand) but the ones I liked were way too expensive and the ones that were affordable were ugly. So what does a crazy knitter mum do? Right - I decided to knit him one. Since this was something he needed ASAP I dropped (almost) everything I had on my needles and for once concentrated on (almost) only one project until it was ready for use. I used the Wild Blueberry Suit pattern that is freely available on the Drops Design website. It is knitted flat until for the length of the buttonband, then joined in a round for the sleeves and legs. However, if I would knit this again, I would knit the whole thing in a round with a steek, and add the buttonbands later. First of all, it's so much more convinient to knit fair-isle in a round instead of back and forth, and secondly, it would have reduced the amou

Siri cardigan.

You know how sometimes a pattern comes along that just suprasses everything you already have in your queue and you just need to cast on it the first chance you get? Well, Siri was like that for me. Love at first sight. There's something about the design that is at the same time both simple and complicated, interesting and very everyday that really spoke to me. I happened to have enough yarn for it in my stash, so there was nothing really stopping me. For a design such as this yarn with good stitch definition is essential. Especially if you want to knit it in black. I used Drops Cotton Merino which I think was perfect for this cardigan. I've had the yarn in my stash for ages and can't even remember what I orginally bought it for. I've been wanting to knit a black cardi for a long time, but somehow never got around to it before now. The yoke of this cardigan has a complicated looking pattern of diamonds made out of rows of small 1x1 cables. The first few ro

On My Needles.

First of all, thank you all for your kind words regarding my last post. The past year has been really hard for us like I wrote, but things are starting to look brighter. I personally believe that tabus don't help anyone so I have strived to be honest and tell people around me how things are with us. Our life is far from perfect and I don't see the point of pretending like it is. You don't get any help or support if you don't ask for it, and saying everything is fine with a fake smile serves no one any good. So again, thank you for being so understanding. It's been ages since I last showed anything I've knitted, so maybe it's time to give you a glimpse of everything I have on my needles at the moment. You know me, never a monogamous knitter, so there's always a pile of WIPs waiting for me. I've been a bit restless lately, so I've been casting on for way too many things that I'm trying to juggle. At this moment I'm knitting two car

I'm Back.

  I'm back. I've been away for a long time, I know, but I'll try to be more active here from now on. The past year has been hard, harder than I ever thought it would be and harder than I care to admit. Being a mother should be the most natural thing in the world, but for me it didn't come naturally. I had a really hard time adjusting to the new role and I'm still not quite sure if I have really found my place. For an introvert to never be really alone is extremely exhausting.   For us this year has been extra hard because of Theo's allergies. The summer was horrible to be honest. My whole life revolved around Theo's skin and what he ate, trying to prevent him from scratching himself and putting everything he found in his mouth, to holding his hands while changing his diaper or dressing him, cutting his nails as short as possible, and writing down every single piece of food he ate. I had to stop breast feeding him at the age of 8 months, because it w

Snoqualmie Cardigan.

You know how I love knitting cables. And cardigans. And Brooklyn Tweed patterns. And everything by Michele Wang. So I don't think it comes as a surprise to any of you that when the Snoqualmie pattern was released last January it was love at first sight for me. I just knew I had to knit it. I must say it has been one of my favourite things to knit so far. I love the cables, I love the size and the fit, I love the collar, and I love that despite its HUGE size it was actually pretty quick and effortless to knit. I have nothing but positive things to say about it. I want to live in it and never take it off.  I used Shishang Wool for this one. It was a souvenir yarn brought to me by my mum from China. It wasn't quite heavy enough by itself so I knitted it together with off-white Drops Baby Merino. The two yarns give the cardigan a nice marled texture. PS. Thank you for all your condolences both here and via Ravelry concerning the passing away of our beloved cat O

Update.

I took an unintentional break from blogging, it was not planned, it just happened. I just haven't had the time for computers. We've been busy enjoying the summer weather (even though it has been raining some days over here) and also my husband has had to work extra which has meant more mommy duty from and even less free time. Being a mom has been a lot harder than I imagined a year ago. I never thought it would be this intense and time consuming. A friend of mine said she hasn't had time to even touch the knitting needles ever since she went back to work some 4 months ago (her baby is 5 months older than my Theo). I really hope that won't happen to me. Nothing much has happened around here, and at the same time a lot has happened. You know how it is. Let me sum up the past month for you: We were on a holiday in Turkey. I'll write more about it in an own post. I finished my Snoqualmie cardigan. This also deserves it's own post. I've been writin

10+1 Knitting Related Facts About Me.

My favorite needle size: the one that i use the most would probably be 4.0mm, but I love knitting with small needles like 2.5 mm and 3.0 mm. My favorite yarn weight is sport (I guess this goes hand in hand with my favorite needle sizes) I almost only knit with circular needles (I knit with the magic loop method). I dislike knitting with straight needles because I think the ends always bump into everything (like armrests), they don't fit nicely into a bag and our cats find the ends waving in the air irresistible. I avoid seaming whenever it's possible and often alter patterns so that I can knit in the round (one more reason to prefer circular needles) I'm not very good at seaming and I think it's boring and takes forever.  I also hate weaving in ends (doesn't everyone?). It usually takes me a further day or two to actually finish a piece after binding off the last stitch until I have finally seamed everything together, woven in the ends and attached buttons (

Breton.

I'm taking a short break from packing (we are leaving for our holiday in Turkey on the day after tomorrow) to show you my newly finished Breton sweater. This one was a long time in making: I started it last year and finished only now! I'm not quite sure why exactly it took me this long to finish, the whole pullover was fairly simple stockinette stitch with some stripes, so nothing too fancy there. It just took me ages. There were a couple of things I changed about the pattern. First of all, I knitted it in a round, both the body and the sleeves (but separately obviously). I read on Ravelry that many had commented about it being a pain in the a** to try and line the stripes when seaming so I decided to skip that part as much as I could. There were the seaming of the inevitable sleeve caps but that went surprisingly well considering my not-so-great skills at mattress stitch. (I'm actually really proud of my seaming this time!) I used this tutorial from Knitty to

Theo's New Knitwear.

All of Theo's hats became suddenly too small for him. And also too hot now that spring has arrived. I had been eyeing the Kyushu hat pattern by Kuroki Knitting for a while and decided to knit it now that I had the chance. I love knitting baby hats because they are really fast to knit but at the same time as versatile as grown-up hats. This hat had a really unique eyelet sic sac pattern which was fun to knit.  Theo was diagnosed with allergy to eggs, that's why his cheeks are looking so bad at the moment. But now we know and can eliminate all things containing eggs from his diet! This was my first time knitting with Sandnes Garn Mini Alpaca, but certainly not the last one. Unlike many other alpaca yarns it was not at all itchy which is important for baby knits. The light blue color is also really cute in my opinion.  I have also finished the bunny yoke pullover I started knitting during the Easter holidays. The pattern is Sweet William by Ann Kingstone

Our Trip To Helsinki.

My husband Magnus had a business trip to Helsinki two weeks ago for 4 days and instead of just staying at home like we always do, Theo and I decided to go with him. I haven't been anywhere for almost a year now, and baby-T has only been to our home town some 100 km away so it was high time to do some traveling. Also, we are going on a holiday to Turkey in the end of May so I wanted to go on a little "practise" trip before that to see how everything works with a baby (for your information: quite well but everything takes about twice as long).  I used to live on this street! The brown house at the end of the street used to be my old home! It was fun to be back in Helsinki! In case you didn't know, I used to live there for 6 years while studying, but it's almost 8 years already since I moved away. After that I've been there to visit friends or on business trips myself and never really had a lot of time to just walk around and see the sig