After getting more and more annoyed with WordPress and its limitations, I decided to move my blog over to blogger. Despite the slight inconvenience, I hope you’ll continue to read my blog at its new location :-). There’s a new post there already! So visit:
Happy working week!
On tuesday my friend Markus had his birthday, and once again he’s a year older than me. Hah!
Being my best friend, he of course deserved a nice wooly gift, but even more so because during the past few months he has really been there for me so something extra special seemed appropriate. And what’s better than handknit socks?
Some time ago, Markus was telling me about this trip he and Tuija were thinking of making, they were planning to spend a romantic weekend in Porvoo, a small town east of Helsinki. He was wondering what one could do in Porvoo and I naturally mentioned that there’s a yarn outlet there, and that if I was going to Porvoo I’d be sure to spend a few hours there. His response? Let’s just say he didn’t get it, and said something back that made the wool gods angry because the next day one of the mittens I knit for him got stolen.
In order to make him respect the Wool, these socks are knit from Icelandic worsted yarn (kambgarn from Ístex) which should be handwashed. That should humble him a bit ;-). The pattern is my own, and for the toe decreases I tried a method described in Sukkasillaan for a spiral swirl of purled decreases. Just for fun.
It’s starting to look like I am cursed. I seem to be utterly unable to finish handwear these days and George knows I’ve tried. Many, many times. There was the red glove who never got a partner.
There was the glove from Folk Knitting in Estonia that I wasn’t happy with because I chose the wrong yarn for the roositud pattern and I seriously dislike stickout thumbs. I looove roositud though.
There was the glove that I started to replace the Estonian glove but ended up not being happy with either. Turns out it’s not a good idea to put two colors right next to each other, there’s no room between the tiny stitches and so the colors don’t line up correctly.
There was the two-end knitted mitten that I began oh so enthusiastically but ended up feeling bleh about which is really sad because this is the nicest worsted yarn (kambgarn) that my friend Markus bought for me in Juankoski and could this sentence get any longer?
There was the wristwarmer that I knit but I cast off too loosely and the thumb opening was too small.
and finally there is my copy of the mittens of my great grandma
and it looks like I cannot for the life of me get the top decreases right. What’s going on, I ask? I desperately need mittens for the winter. Someone please, please lift this curse!
Has it been so long since I last wrote? Time flies, huh! Actually, I’ve been having a somewhat shitty time in my personal life and have spent most of my free time thinking about life, the universe and everything, while knitting. My mom came for week’s visit to cheer me up, which was really really nice. Aren’t mom’s the greatest? Hopefully things will start to look brighter in the near future.
Last summer was the Big Summer of Sweater Knitting. I knitted 3 sweaters and a vest, all of which I gave away, and afterwards I was all sweatered out. I therefore turned to smaller projects (in addition to the shawl) to cool off. Now that a few months have passed and winter has arrived (and left again, it seems), I felt it was time again. I longed for a wool sweater to keep me warm. When I was in Iceland in August I bought some plötulopi (plate-lopi) for a yoked pullover, so I wound it into balls, knitted swatches and did some calculations. A sleeve got knitted, and then I spent two weeks wondering what kind of pattern I wanted for the yoke. I spent hours and hours drawing up sketches and rejecting them, until I got so fed up that I decided to move on to something else. No warm sweater for me this winter.
A while later I bumped into a bag of leftover lopi balls, things I had bought with some sweater in mind but then used parts of it to knit something else. An idea came to my mind, and shortly thereafter the leftover lopi sweater was born.
It’s already a little bit stretched and worn, since I’ve been wearing it constantly for 2 weeks. I am totally in love with it, and already planning another one in a little bit different style. This one was knitted in the round, like a normal raglan pullover in stockinette, and the colors were chosen randomly by drawing cards. Then, once it was finished, I turned it inside out and voilá!, pretty color changes in reverse stockinette. Due to the frequent color changes I had to weave in a trillion ends, which made the progress rather slow (I was wise enough to weave in the ends while knitting), but that’s a small price to pay for a pretty sweater which used up leftovers. Hooray!
Tomorrow I have a 45 minute presentation at the lab where I work. I’m almost done with the slides, just some finishing touches left, and then I have to practice. I am a little bit nervous, but not nearly as much as I would have expected. Wish me luck!
It has been raining for the past week. The sunlight is fading into winter darkness, and endless rain and covered skies get rather depressing. Waking up in darkness, going to work in darkness, coming home from work in darkness… it’s hard on the spirit.
At times like this it’s great to have fun new socks to cheer you up.
Excuse the crappy pics - there’s no daylight here! These unintentionally ended up having the color palette of the Icelandic flag. This means that from now on I shall wear them every 17th of June, on our independence day. I hope they’ll last at least to next year, although I’m not optimistic. The yarn I used is Novita Wool and it seems like a very, very fragile little thing. The pattern is from the fabulous Sukkasillaan, my favourite sock book which I’m deeply happy to have bought - despite it being in Finnish and all.
Thank god it’s Friday. Have a great weekend everyone! Go out and enjoy the sunlight! I know I will.
It’s been raining a lot lately. It’s been dark and dreary, but today the skies cleared for a while making it possible to take a few pictures of my brand new shawl, the first of hopefully many more (who are not such a pain in the butt to knit). I brought my camera to work, and before going to lunch, Markus and I headed to the forest behind the building in which I work. (Ok, calling it a forest is perhaps stretching it - Finns would laugh their asses off. I work in Otaniemi.) Without further ado I present The Shawl
As you might notice, I am not a shawly type of person. I have seldom worn shawls and I’m still trying to figure out how to best wrap it around me.
The obligatory wingspan view (made very crappy by me not holding it properly - I’m new at this business).
I’m happy with my new shawl. I’m glad that I persevered. I’m glad I’m stubborn. All of the bad times are forgotten. (Still, I will never wash it again. What a drag.)
After the photo shoot, Markus and I figured that it was only fair that he should have his picture taken also. After all, he was wearing the mittens I knitted for him last christmas. They haven’t appeared on the blog, and the blog must be fed. So in addition to the shawl, I present to you my best friend Markus who is my favourite person in the world (apart from mom and dad and such).
My job will soon be done
I am relieved, to say the least. I am relieved that I will never have to knit this evil thing ever again. I am relieved that I have escaped without serious psychological damage. Now I understand Yarn Harlot’s graphic descriptions about rather wanting to lick hedgehogs.
The pink threads there are for blocking purposes, but I think I’ll be sensible and wait until tomorrow morning. Instead I’m going to pour myself a glass of redwine and propose a toast: Skál fyrir mér!
I’m going to come out clean. For the past few (many) months I have been knitting a shawl behind your back. I just never felt the need to talk about it and now I’m suddenly close to finishing it, which is no small feat.
For my birthday this year I got the Þríhyrnur og Langsjöl book (Three-cornered and long shawls) from my parents and for a long time I browsed through it trying to decide which of the many beautiful shawls in the book I should start with. I was most fascinated by the more down-to-earth shawls, not the fancy bancy types. I wanted a shawl for the common people, something nice and warm to help me through the winter.
I’ll admit now that I am a total product knitter. I don’t care if something is going to be the most boring thing on earth to knit, I’ll knit it if it looks good. Yep, I’m a sucker for looks. So it came to be that I chose “ferhyrndur herðaklútur” (lit. square shoulder cloth) as my first shawl, I liked the way it looked. Never mind that the stitch pattern consists of two different stitches with every other row knitted plain. Never mind that I have to knit those two stitches for all eternity, with no decreasing going on since the shawl is square. No, no, I’ll do it because it’s going to look freaking great! What I forgot is that being a product knitter I am rather fond of seeing things progress, and preferably with high speed. Do you think that this shawl grows quickly? Nope. When each 204-stitch row adds less than half a cm to the length, it takes for-freaking-ever to knit. And it didn’t help that I was incapable of concentrating on it, when seeing no progress at all, so the only times I actually did some knitting on it were the occasional bus trips when I didn’t have any other portable project, and a few plane rides between Iceland and Finland.
This autumn I fortunately got a strong urge to finish my unfinished projects and move on with my life. For the past two weeks I’ve been knitting almost exclusively on the shawl, and to my great surprise the darn thing grows! Here’s what it looked like on the 30th of April:
This is the state of it on May 11th
and here’s what it looks like now, all 79 (out of ~96) cm (31 out of ~38 inches) of it
The end is in sight, but naturally I’m running out of yarn. I have 20 grams (0.7 oz) left and from my oh so scientific estimates I think I might need around 50-60 grams (2 oz) to finish. The error bars here are quite big, so I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I figure that if the length in unblocked state is, say, 5 cm (2 inches) smaller than the width, I can just block it out since the shawl stretches pretty awesomely. Yep, it shall all work out - never mind that this is my first shawl and I have no idea whatsoever as to how much you can torture shawls in the blocking process. It’ll all work out.
Then the only thing left is the border which is knitted separately. The pattern instructs you to sew it on in an invisible fashion so that both sides of the shawl can be used. Is there an experienced shawl knitter out there who can suggest a way to accomplish that?
Some people are amazing, crazy amazing. On tuesday I found a note from the post office in my mailbox notifying me that I had a package. Package? What package? I’m not expecting any package, thought I. Of course I ran over there immediately to get it, but as I was on my way to the weaving course I brought it along and fought the urge to open it while in the metro. When I arrived at the course location there was no one there and I remembered that we had decided to have it on wednesday this week because of a premiere that the teacher had to attend. So I went back home with my package, opened it and became speechless. Wouldn’t you?
This time the wonderful Cassie managed to surprise me in a most pleasant way. We’ve been sending stuff back and forth for some time now, I buy Icelandic wool and books for her, and she buys American wool and books for me. It’s a very handy thing. One time, I sort of surprised her with a package of Icelandic wool but this time she outdid me by far. I surely didn’t expect this and well, I have few words to describe how happy she made me.
Spinning has been in the back of my mind for some time, but I thought I’d wait a while since I have quite enough hobbies and I haven’t seen the tools around. Now there’s nothing to stop me. I tried it out a bit after having read the “quick start” guide and oh dear, what a sad piece of string I made. You can see it there on the spindle, all lumpy and overspun. That’s where the book comes in, I hope I’ll do a little better after reading it. I’ve got to, I have all these ideas now for yarn to spin.
In other news I knitted socks, teeny tiny little infant socks. My supervisor is having a baby any week now.
The pattern for these is in Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush and I can totally recommend it. They’re simple, quick and painless, easy to drag around. All you could ever wish for when nothing else is doing it for you. I think these are gonna be my standard gift for newborns. Oh yeah. Go make babies!
First of all I’d like to thank you all for your beautiful comments on the wedding gloves. It was so nice to hear from you :-). I heard that many of you think that the hairless cats are …hmmm… “interesting”. I have to say that my mom topped everyones cat-comments in the email I got from her today. When she first looked at the picture, she honestly thought that they were baby pigs! I’m still laughing about it from time to time. When my friends bought the first cat, Pörrö (”furry”) I thought they were crazy. Why on earth would you pay money for a freak of nature like that? After a short while they kind of grew on me and now I just think they’re real cute. In a way they’re also comfortable to pet since it’s almost just like stroking a human. Almost. Their skin is much fattier.
Onto other things. There’s this “worker’s institute” here in Helsinki which organizes classes on almost anything you can dream of, and since it’s subsidized by the city (I think), the classes are very cheap. To be more accurate, there are actually two of those institutes, one Finnish-speaking and another Swedish-speaking. For those who don’t know, Swedish is also an official language in Finland due to the ~8% Swedish-speaking minority. I have many times been deeply grateful for that!
This autumn I signed up for a weaving class at the Swedish institute and today was the first class. Now, in theory I don’t really speak Swedish, but I do speak Danish and there isn’t a huge difference. Fortunately for me, Finnish-Swedish is much easier to understand than “real” Swedish, because it’s spoken with a clear Finnish accent which is rather similar to the way us Icelanders would prefer to speak. My two problems with Swedish is that I do an awful immitation by speaking Danish which a heavy Icelandic accent, which makes me feel like I’m speaking the most horrible Danish and I’m never quite sure which words are not common to Danish and Swedish, and it makes me nervous. When I’m nervous and afraid I might make mistakes I prefer to stay silent. This is a big problem - it’s the reason why I never speak Finnish here, even though I know a bit by now and could get by with that. My intellect of course knows that I would learn much faster if I just started speaking, but this is a deep-rooted psychological fear which no amount of rational thinking can cure.
I know how I work by now. When I lived in Copenhagen for example, I spoke English for the first three months and didn’t utter a word of Danish although I easily could have. We spend about 8 painful years learning it in school in Iceland. Then after three months I had absorbed enough to (unconsciously) figure out how the language was supposed to be spoken and voilá! One fine day I just spoke, and never used English again. This process I go through didn’t become clear to me until years later.
Anyhoo, I’m losing the thread here. Yeah, the weaving class. Well, it was funny. I sat for the most part silent. I did understand the important stuff and I’m excited about it. We’ll begin by weaving a rug - you know, those types you can make out of ripped up sheets (or buy really cheap in Ikea). Just to practice. I’ve already got an idea for colors, I wonder if you can buy variegated rug-thread-thingies? (Gawd it’s going to be funny to learn all those weaving words in Swedish.)
That reminds me. When I lived in Copenhagen I took a class at a similar institute. I don’t actually know the English word, but it was about learning to draw those models that you then use to cut out fabric to sew clothes (sniðteikning). Well, all of my vocabulary on that is in Danish and when I draw these, I write everything up in Danish! Oh gawd, then I’ll be weaving in Swedish. And I usually knit in English. My brain’s gonna get fried one of these days.
Sorry for this most incoherent post. My brain’s a bit fried.
Updated a little bit later: I forgot the most embarrasing thing. At the class we were given a picture of a loom (vefstóll) with numbered parts and the teacher would say the names of each part and we were supposed to write them down on our paper. Well, as I said, I don’t speak Swedish and I have very little idea of how to write it. So what did I do? I tried in the most inconspicous manner to roll my eyes to get a look at my neighbors paper, who I think noticed. They must all think I’m a complete idiot!
