The Shawl

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?

Oh no, a new hobby

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!

Weaving class

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!

Pretty gloves

I am trying out this new program for my iBook that my good friend Markus told me about. It’s called Journler and from my first impression it is simply excellent. Apparently I can write my blog stuff in it and publish, all without ever visiting my actual blog, now that’s cool! Let’s see if it works, maybe it’ll make me write more frequently.

My life is finally back to normal, since returning to Helsinki. The day after I came from Iceland, I moved with an un-unpacked suitcase over to Frank’s place and stayed there for 10 days. His parents and sister were visiting and since his apartment is basically an open space, and my apartment has rooms and is bigger, we swapped. It was a fine swap, but it was good to get back home, as there’s nothing like home.

Then on the day I returned to my apartment it was invaded by houseguests of the feline kind, Pörrö and Hellä:



They are Markus’s and Tuija’s cats who needed a home until yesterday as the parents where out of town. We had a lot of fun together, but I wondered if I could ever have kids. All this responsibility you know, having to feed them at proper times and making them take their vitamins, something I don’t even do for myself. Also, it’s quite tiresome to be strict and say “EI!” (no) all the time, along with any one of “get off the table”, “don’t eat the plants”, “don’t jump on me unexpectedly with claws wide open”. That sort of stuff. Of course with kids it might be easier, at least they at some point understand spoken language. I make it sound bad, but really it wasn’t – they’re very sweet and loving most of the time and I enjoyed having them around.

Last week I finished the wedding gloves so now you can all go ahead and invite me to your weddings. They’re so fine and pretty, please winter, come soon.



All those teeny tiny stitches give me immense (or perverse) pleasure. I am getting obsessed with smaller and smaller needles and I fear it’s going to end badly. After knitting these on 1.5 mm needles (US 000) I knitted a bit on 2 mm ones (US 0) and thought the stitches looked so big and grotesque. That feeling does wear off after a while, fortunately.

Through the process of knitting such tiny stitches I discovered that I have favorite knitting needles. I found them in Weaving Works in Seattle and they’re made by Inox, but not the boring gray needles we get over here, no, they’re steel (I think), and they shine and sparkle. Which is nice, but the nicest part is that they don’t bend. Saying that I have a firm grip is probably an understatement



here you can see the 1.5 mm (US 000) Susan Bates needles (top, blue) with which the first wedding glove was knitted and below it are the steel ones on which the second glove was made. Lowest on the picture are the grey 2 mm Inox needles, slightly bent.