I felt something

I’m typically always late with presents. Last Christmas was no different. Couple of weeks before Christmas I realised that there’s only couple of weeks before Christmas – and nothing ready. That’s when I usually spring into action. I grabbed my felting yarn and needles and knitted some quick and easy presents: potholders. I know they are a bit lame among fancy and expensive presents, such as new phones and cameras and such, but I can’t afford such presents. At least these are handmade and they come in handy in the kitchen.

The square potholders are knitted from corner to corner. Here is the pattern.

The star pattern is here. I used single yarn for the smaller one and double for the bigger one.

And the knobbly one can be made according to these instructions.

Apologies for the terrible quality of the pictures. Like I said, I was already very late with these and had no time to spare to get decent pictures. It’s the darkest time of the year too, but I’m sure you can see the idea.

Mitts to knit

All last summer I knitted nothing but mittens. With or without fingers. They are quick and easy and they allow me to follow a film at the same time without missing what’s happening in the film and without making mistakes with the knitting (well, in theory). The idea with fingerless mitts is that they allow the fingers to fiddle with camera knobs while providing a bit of warmth. The problem is that in this country it’s either way too hot for any mitts or it’s simply way too cold for them. If you’re quick and on the ball, there is a small window each year to wear fingerless mitts. Now I have a collection for those rare days.

About knitting while watching films…I don’t like to watch anything on TV with lots of lights on and of course knitting in the darkness is not always the easiest thing to do. Well, it’s easy enough but one can’t really see what one is doing. These mitts (below) were supposed to be beige with various leftover yarns for stripes. First one done, no problem. On the second one I just finished the strips on the wrist and that’s when the film ended and I put more lights on. Bloody hell, the stripes were black, not blue like on the first mitt. Oh well. I knitted the rest of the strips differently, too.

And these if any are true leftover mittens. After finishing them I had literally just couple of inches of the yarn left.

Slightly uneven thicknesses on the various colous here but at least I got the strips the same.

I’d like to knit something else now but can’t really get going with anything. Sigh. Maybe soon.

It’s hotter than two cats fighting in a wool sock

It’s been very warm, almost hot actually, for almost two weeks now. What would be better than to post some woollies?!

I made all these ages ago. They were all Christmas presents I made in a massive panic just days before Christmas. I got this cool glass head to display hats but I’m not sure what I think of it just yet. It bothers me a bit that you can see the other side through the head. Maybe I should try and stuff the head with tissue or newspaper. Anyway, this is just a soft and fluffy hat with a knot on top.

See what I mean about seeing the other side? Then again, the head does look kind of spooky, which I like…

This is a simple hat, for an early teenage boy…

…with matching mittens. The mittens are not really lumpy. I put some tissue paper inside to make them look better but I think they only look lumpier. Mittens would look better if they had hands inside but my big hands wouldn’t fit. So, it’s lumps, I’m afraid.

And these are for an 8-year-old boy. I thought he might find it amusing to lift one hand for ‘hello’ (moi), and the other one for ‘bye’ (moido). We Finns are not the most talkative of people, you know.

Ribbed for his pleasure

Here’s another jumper I finished recently. It’s for hubby and I finished it just in time for summer. My timing is always not so brilliant. Oh well. This is Finnish ‘7 Veljestä’* yarn by Novita; a classic yarn which has been in production for 40 years. It’s a very nice yarn to knit.

There is a ribbed band both front and back but it has a little break on it only on the front. The same ribbed band is also on the sleeves.

The recipient is well pleased and that’s the main thing.

* 7 Veljestä, ie. ‘Seven Brothers’ is regarded as the first significant Finnish novel by a Finnish author. Written by Aleksis Kivi and published in 1870, it is still regarded as the best Finnish novel ever.

Don’t know about the future but my jumper is very orange indeed

I make stuff all the time but the bottleneck is with taking pictures of the stuff and also getting the pictures here. It is typical that now as the spring is just about here, I display woolens. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The first item is an orange jumper. The yarn is called Teddy and it’s by a Finnish company Novita. It’s quite thick but with only 45% wool it’s not the warmest of jumpers. Now that I live this far north I’ve started to really notice the difference between wool and man-made fibers. I suppose the bright colour makes up what it lacks in warmth. That’s the theory. It’s a basic jumper with no extra pipes and whistles.

The black corduroy skirt used to be pants. The pants were fine except that below the knee where the fabric creases the corduroy had come off and the pants started to look very worn. I cut the legs off, opened the middle seam and sewed an triangle piece underneath. Easy. This must be the easiest way to make a skirt from old trousers. This corduroy fabric is slightly stretchy, making the trousers first, and now the skirt, very comfortable.

It’s a conspiracy, I’m sure

Ages ago I promised the dogs a new rug. I knitted it using yarn cut from old t-shirts. I used a lot of t-shirts and it took forever to cut them. I kept getting Paddington stares from the dogs while knitting, knuckles white and aching, like there was some sort of urgency for the rug. Finally, it was finished.

Ta-dah!

I assumed there would be a fight between the two dogs for which one can sleep on it first. But guess what? No one touched it. For two days they deliberately walked around the goddamn rug. After two days Oskar finally went on the rug. He stayed a moment on the edge of it, like the rug was a leper or something.

Look, I’m on the rug. Alright?

What a fuss about a rug. Sheesh [rolls eyes]

I’m lying on it, I’m lying on it.

Dogs, eh?

Easy scarf

My favourite leftover yarn buster is a scarf knitted in garter stitch sideways. Every row is knitted with a different colour and the yarn ends are simply knotted afterwards. It couldn’t be any easier. I look for yarns in similar consistency and thickness but even these aren’t necessary. The top scarf was knitted with no 4 circular needle with 335 stictches and it’s about 185cm long. The green-blue-white scarf has 225 stitches and it’s about 135cm long. Both are knitted until they are wide enough. Quick and easy – perfect while watching a film on TV.

Flowery woollies

Well, ‘summer’ as it is, I continue with the woollies. This was another panic knit just before I started to watch a film. Another two balls of leftover yarn bit the dust! It was supposed to be just a plain old rib hat but since I had just a small bundle of yarn left I decided to crochet a flower. I’m not usually one for big floral things but I kind of like this. Amazingly I had one blue button (I have tons of buttons but only ONE in blue!! Ha!) and the most amazing thing is that it was the right kind of shade of blue. I just had to add it to the centre of the flower.

Apparently, we should be moving away from woolly hat weather now but I’ll believe it when I see it.

Circular scarf

The other night I needed something to knit because a film was starting so I grabbed two leftover balls of yarn. I’d already knitted a jumper and a hat with this yarn. I decided to knit a matching scarf. I knitted it quite wide and of course the scarf was a bit short for a scarf. I was annoyed since I’d calculated that it should be enough for a bit longer scarf. Lazy as I am I couldn’t be bothered to undo it and so I weaved the ends together to make a loop. It now goes round my neck twice.

Here’s the earlier knitted hat too. One might think that this is a silly thing to do in the middle of summer. Not so. We were expecting snow this morning but it didn’t snow. It did snow, however, about 100 miles north from here. It was +2C here this morning. It’s ridiculous. Wearing this hat and scarf now wouldn’t even be exaggerating and I wouldn’t even break a sweat.

Beady necklace

Ha, more blue things. This is clearly my blue period! I threaded lots of various blue beads onto a crochet yarn and started to crochet. After every 20 chain stitches I crocheted one bead. This necklace is very long – it goes down to my knees and it has to be wrapped round the neck many times. I quite like it. It makes a good summertime necklace – not that one really seems to need a summertime necklace in these parts but no harm in being prepared, yes?

In case you are wondering how long is a necklace that goes down to my knees…well, I’ve been reading some statistics and apparently I’m just a little bit taller than average in this part of the world but in the global scale of things I’m practically a giant!! So, it’s a very long necklace – take my word for it.