April's News

This April has been full of weather surprises: some very warm days, and then a cold week with lots of new snow and traffic chaos. During the cold days it was still perfect weather for warm knitting, so I knitted two pairs of socks, one in light blue

and the other in yellow and teal:

Then I used the rest of the yellowish yarn with brown for a perfect pair of mittens to go with my warm winter coat.

I finally had the inspiration and energy to machine quilt this starry quilt, the only one I have been working on this year.

I quite like it. The stars are made with two different blue plaids each, and the red 16-patches have a random selection of various red shades. All these fabrics are recycled, mostly shirts from the men in my extended family, and some fabrics come from sewing projects never finished.

 

To pass the time

The Winter has been long and my energy levels low, but my needles have been busy anyway. Here is the collection I have finished this year: socks in different sizes and some mittens too.

The quilt top is now waiting for some final ironing. I need to put the backing together from two unused sheets before I can layer the quilt for machine quilting.

When the weather is not good or the pavements too icy, I prefer to stay in the house and do something fun, like putting together the jigsaw puzzles together with Mr. K. This one was especially tricky, and irritating at the same time.  

The pieces were sawed in a peculiar way so the rows didn't hold together sideways except in the top and bottom edges. Anyway, we managed to finish it before taking the photo above:

 

I love the old fashioned pictures on many of my puzzles, like this couple:

I don't like cats, but this puzzle was fun as it was so tricky. The boxes don't have a photo of the puzzle so it will always be a surprise to see the finished picture.

I wish the snow and ice would melt away!

The Best Mittens Ever

Knitting is my favorite craft nowadays. I have been improving my mitten design with every pair I have knitted, and I think I have reached my goal with this pair. The pattern is one my Grandmother used a lot, but I have changed the overall design. Instead of her ribbed wrist in one color, the pattern begins at the wrist and continues all the way to the thumb and the tip of the fingers. As the pattern uses lifted stitches, the rows are tight together and thus warmer. Granny's thumb and top of the mitten were in plain stockinette in one color, so our fingertips were easily cold.

See how beautifully the pattern continues in the thumb gusset and thumb!

The mittens are a gift, and so are the socks in Broken seeds pattern.

Our Christmas tree is a mini version on the balcony. Happy Holidays for everyone!

 

New Mitten Collection for Winter 23/24

In spite of the warm weather I have been knitting. These are my new mittens for next Winter:

The brown and green pair on the left is closest to my grandmother's original pattern, but I wanted the thumbs to be warmer so I continued the pattern knitting all the way fro the thumb as well.

For a more modern look I started the two colored pattern from the wrist.

Then I did the same with grandmother's other pattern.

Finally I knitted a pair of Aino'S mittens in a slightly bigger size.

At the moment I have a pair of socks on my needle (yes, a pair, and yes, it's a long circular needle), but after that I think I'll look for a nice color combination for mittens again.

I hope this new setting and smaller photo size will make my blog more smart phone friendly.

 

Still here, still sewing, still knitting even in public

Somehow months have passed without a single blog post. At this age I feel busy when I have a special program on one day of the week! In May we had a school reunion with friends from 50 years ago, so naturally I felt busy for weeks. I needed a nice new bag for the meeting.

I used vintage handwoven linen (from my mother's stash) and some double sided Japanese quilting cotton (from my daughter's stash), with the dotty side out, and a button I bought from Liberty's in London in 2013.

Two open interior pockets in the lining and a big zipper pocket in the back. I used iron-on felt interfacing, stitched on the front side and not stitched on the back. Adjustable strap. All my own design, with ideas from other bags I have made over the years.

The annual World Wide Knit in Public Day was on Saturday, and Villa Cooper organized an event like many times before.

Coffee and tea with biscuits and cake was served, and the weather was perfect for sitting in this lovely garden, knitting and chatting with new and old friends. My long time blog acquaintance, Kristiina from KristiinanSilmukat was there and we met for the first time in real life. It was nice to get a face to the name and a new friend. Many ladies came by, not to knit but to bring their no longer needed knitting needles and yarns for our collection to be donated to the local Ukrainian refugees.

Over the weeks I have stayed away from blog writing, I do have visited the usual blogs, and I have been knitting. This is a collection of dish cloths. The green and yellow ones are pattern experiments with a 70 % bamboo, 30 % cotton blend, and the beige is all cotton.

Before dishcloths I knitted some socks and mittens, but I save them for my next post. 

Sunflowers

For a change I made a little table runner with sunflower blocks. No plaids this time, just solid colors.

These socks are like made for Easter, light and striped and yellow and white. We still have ice and snow, night temperatures down to - 10 C or so, and - 6 C in the mornings, so warm socks are a sensible choice. I used some leftover yellow yarn for the stripes of these socks. I had about half a meter of the yellow yarn left after the last row so I could see that it would not be enough for a row of yellow dots for both socks, and it was time to make the heels. As always, I knit both socks at the same time so I can see how far a yarn rest will take me.

This method helps me keep track on the number of rows and adding stitches or any other changes along the way, and both socks will look the same.

For this pair of men's socks I used the rest of  two different blue yarns together with the basic grey, which seems to be a trusted favorite among men.

And finally a pair of bed socks in natural white baby wool.

The pattern is not quite what I meant. I didn't remember exactly what the easy lace pattern from my school days looked like, so I (lazy as I was, I didn't go looking for my old notes or for that blog post in the link) just knitted something in that direction.

More purled stitches between the yo, 3 tog, yo repeats, and maybe a knit row or two would have made this look like the school project revisited, but I think this "new" lace is not too bad either. 

The knitting quilter's return

Somehow time just flew by and nothing happened here on the blog. Week by week it was more difficult to sit down and write. Naturally there was Christmas, and snow and darkness, and it was cold out there, and then it was so long ago I last time blogged, and there were no photos ... and so I just knitted and knitted ...

... and I found a new way to use my Grandmother's mitten patterns like this.

 

And for a third pair with the same yarns.

Then I knitted some socks for fundraising in the sports club's colors for our grandson's team.

I had some 9-patches left over from the RSC2022, and made some more in feminine plaids, and used up a light grey fabric for the alternating squares. This time the machine quilting was no problem.

I got a nice lap quilt made all from scraps and little bits, and I happened to have a lovely grey flannel with white dots, exactly the right size for the backing. As the Autumn's Joys quilt has already been sold for the Red Cross fundraising for Ukraine, there is and empty place on the shelf for this quilt. People seem to be ready to use their money for a good purpose.

Usually at this time of the year we have the first snowdrops peeking through snow in the garden, and pussy willows soft and furry, but this year we have had lots and lots of snow (which has almost melted 

away before there was more), and today it has been snowing again all day. The only migrant birds so far have been the whooper swans, looking for open water (not yet there) and inspecting their familiar nesting place. In a few weeks there must be more signs of Spring!

Meet the newest Unicef doll

This week I was inspired to make another doll for Unicef. I had a red striped skirt in mind, but ended up with this velvety jersey in dark blue. With a zipper in the back and a big ribbon bow in silver grey sateen, and a tiny flower brooch the dress is perfect for thee school's Christmas fete.

Here Elsa is again, between my old cacti in full blossom. They are a bit early for Christmas, but will probably have flowers again for Easter. As you can see, we have snow and the days feel so much lighter with it.

The funds raised through adoption fees of the dolls are used for vaccinations against lethal diseases and for programs that promote the health, education and safety of children. In this way the dolls will help save real children of the world.

My hands have not been idle in the evenings. Here are the newest socks from my needles. Two grey shades and some white.

Dark red and pale pink, I was trying to use up both of those rests but there is still a little left for some stripes of a new pair.

The green, red and light blue socks are gifts, each with a different slouchy leg part. The smaller socks are knitted with the leftover yarn from the green socks.

 

9-patch quilt finished

This is a quilt that has been coming for a long time. I usually cut the small leftover bits from any quilt project into 2½" squares and store them in a box. At the beginning of this year I started sewing them into 9-patches when I had suitable colors for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month I decided on a setting and put the quilt top together.

This time the machine quilting was no problem, and I quilted diagonal lines from edge to edge.

The sashing fabric was chosen to match this chest of drawers.

My evening activity is - as always - knitting combined to TV. These two pairs of socks were a custom order in very light pink and beige stripes, and the same pink with white and green bubbles.

 

Autumn's Joys

Finally the Autumn quilt is quilted, bound, washed, re-washed and delivered! Autumn's Joys is the name I gave it. In my previous post I told the story behind the rows of blocks.

Washed, you may wonder. Yes, I wanted to be sure the colours would not bleed, and washed the finished quilt (stupidly enough) in cold water to save energy. What I had feared, happened: the red apples from the top end bled, and I didn't even notice it before the quilt had been drying over night. I did what I thought was right, and washed the quilt again, but in hot water and with a colour catcher, and to my big relief all the white was bright again and all stains were gone.

I had some problems with the machine quilting, the needle thread formed loops on the reverse when I crossed multiple layers. I unpicked the worst, but decided to leave the small loops of  some few stitches.

This quilt was delivered today to Villa Cooper and is for sale for the Finnish Red Cross' Disaster Relief Fund to help in Ukraine.

Like always, I have been busy knitting in the evenings. Five pairs of wool sock and two pairs of mittens are waiting for the cold days of Autumn and Winter. With the energy costs going rapidly up, it is necessary to drop room temperatures, and wool socks will be our way to stay comfortable.

 

Helping Bunnies for Red Cross

As many of you know, I love to knit socks. That means many balls of yarn, and finally many tiny leftover balls of those yarns. Luckily the Finnish Red Cross has published a knitting pattern, designed by Anu Pensola, a soft toy to bring comfort to children in need. This bunny is a cousin of the Trauma Teddy from the Australian Red Cross. Currently there is a campaign to get new bunnies knitted for every child coming from Ukraine to Finland.

I happened to have all these bits of yarn just waiting for a useful purpose, so I knitted five bunnies. They are knitted in the round so only minimal seams need sewing. The bunny is stuffed through the feet left open when starting, and through the final opening between the ears.

Even a few meters of  leftover yarn were enough to make some stripes in the sweaters. The scarf has been sewed tight in the neck so it will not get lost. The knitting café Lentävä Lapanen, the Flying Mitten, is one of the places where knitters can bring their bunnies. The campaign has been running from the end of March, and on Friday when I took my bunnies to them, they had two baskets full of bunnies waiting for delivery. The campaign will last until the end of May, so there is still time to knit a bunny or three.

Before getting the idea of knitting bunnies I used some leftover yarns like they are usually used, for striped socks.

These went to Villa Cooper and the selection sold to raise money for the Red Cross. Both pairs are knitted in a finer wool and that makes them perfect for Summer use in wellies or crocs at the holiday cabin.

I don't spend all my spare time knitting, I have a soft spot for quilting as well. This month's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink, and I found two suitable plaids in my cupboards. I made these six 9-patch blocks:

I wonder what the colour for May will be. I decided to keep to this 9-patch block only in this challenge.