Respect the Wool

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.

The mitten saga

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!

The leftover pullover

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!