About this blog

The name of this blog, LunaKnit, is a token of love for our cat. She is my constant reminder of how you can rise from hardships without losing your joy of life. She is the bravest, happiest and most trusting being in the world; and even though she didn’t have the best start in life she won’t let it bother her and enjoys each day to the fullest. She has been my inspiration to take life as it comes and not worry about tomorrow, do the things I want to do and not stress over everything that can go wrong. Luna probably didn’t expect to suddenly find herself living in the streets and ending up in an animal shelter, or finding a new loving home with us. But life happens whether we want it or not and she decided to make the best of it never mistrusting us or questioning if this home will be a permanent one.

For years I wanted to do all kinds of things but didn’t because I was so afraid of failure and what other people would think of me. I wanted to start designing my own knit wear and also dreamed of someday publishing a cook book. On the eve of my 30^th birthday I decided that if I wanted things to happen I shouldn’t just sit at home waiting but start to make my own way.

The first step was to set up this blog. At first I just documented what I had been knitting and then I published my first recipes. And after a while I gathered all my courage and published my first knitting patterns. I’m still finding my way to pursuing my dreams, but after years of doubting myself and being afraid to do what I want to do I’m finally starting to feel proud of being me.

I mostly write this blog for my own amusement and to keep track of the things I love the most: my knitting, my baking, the books I read and the places where we travel. After publishing my recipes and patterns I’ve also used this blog as a place to share the things that inspire me with anyone who is interested. You can find everything I’ve published about knitting by following this link and my own patterns here.

A while back I was diagnosed with severe allergy to most of the common cereals: wheat, oats, barley and rye. I found it hard to find recipes for baking since most of the gluten free recipes contain oats, something that is also on my black list of eating. I refused let the allergy bring me down or give up bread and cakes. So I started to experiment in the kitchen and after many small disasters began to figure out how to bake without wheat. When I first found out about my allergy I couldn’t really find suitable recipes online and started to doubt if baking without the common cereals was even possible. As of today there is nothing I haven’t managed to make and my husband doesn’t even notice the difference anymore. I do miss the dark rye meal loafs but at least I now have bread to eat. You can find all my recipes here, or filter them to just savoury ones or sweet ones.



Some things about me you might find interesting:

• I work as a furniture conservator repairing and mending museum furniture. My work includes wood working, painting, upholstering, varnishing, gilding and a lot of gluing among other things. The most important aspect of my work is to keep the objects authentic, so conserving the original materials is essential. This might mean hours of reattaching flaking paint chips back to the surface or trying to patch upholstery fabrics with moth damage. 
• This wasn't my first career choice. I was actually supposed to become a physicist, and studied technology, engineering and physics. A couple of years into my studies I decided that I rather wanted to be happy than get a big salary and changed to an art school to study conservation. I have never regretted that choice.
• I speak Finnish as my mother tongue but my husband is Swedish speaking as well as many of our friends. Some days it feels like I speak more Swedish than Finnish. I'm writing in English because of the bilingual life I have and I didn't want to rule anyone out: some of my friends don't speak any Finnish, some don't speak Swedish and some speak neither of them.
• I mostly like knitting sweaters and socks. And things for myself. I have really hard time parting with anything I've spent hours working on. I also find it harder to concentrate on projects I know I never get to wear i.e. presents. My least favorite garments to knit are scarfs, mostly because at a certain point they get quite hard to handle and I usually get bored of repeating the same thing before the scarf has reached the necessary length. 
• I think I'm addicted to bread. I used to think I have a sugar addiction but after my allergy diagnosis I noticed that bread is the hardest type of food for me to give up. Luckily I don't have to anymore since I've now learned to bake wheat-free. My favorite foods include pies, sushi and Mexican food.
• My favorite type of yarn is merino wool. And I usually knit with Garnstudio Drops yarns, since I know they are good and am afraid of risking a failed project because of a yarn I'm not content with.
• I'm a bit of a geek even though I try to look and act like a normal adult. I especially love Star Wars and The Lord of The Rings. I'm addicted to Game of Thrones. My favorite books are mostly sci-fi and fantasy books, like the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb, Nail Gaiman's American Gods, The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and the Hyperion books by Dan Simmons.
• Lastly something you might not expect: I listen to metal and hard rock. My favorite bands include AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed to name a few. I teach Zumba classes so people don't usually expect this type of music from me, but if you knew me in my early twenties you'd know I used to dye my hair black and have a few facial piercings.