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.

 

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!

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.

 

December

Busy times before Christmas, so I have not found time to take photos and write new blog posts. Socks and mittens have left the house without a photo, but here are some of the newest knittings:

The socks are "just normal socks" but the mittens are both traditional patterns I figured out from originals knitted by my Grandmother in the 1950's. The one on the left I have later found online but the one on the right is so far my own secret.

Here I experimented with a Latvian Braid, which was easy but time consuming.

Baby socks in pink merino wool.

Fabric baskets in coarse linen and Christmas prints and antique crocheted lace.

And finally more fabric baskets, filled with chocolate pralines for some special people.

I wish you all a peaceful holiday season, good health and no stress. See you next year! 

Same again

My doings seem to be a repeat of the same things over and over. I have been busy doing them so that there was no time to take photos. but here you have almost two months' worth dolls and socks, as usual. Five new dolls are waiting to be taken to Villa Cooper.

A new version of Emil and Ida, the first ones sold in a short time so I hope there are other Astrid Lindgren fans just waiting for their dolls.

For a long time I have been wanting to make a granny doll, and now she is here. I wanted her to have soft pink or salmon colored silky jersey knickers but I didn't have any of that material left. When digging deeper in my stash I found the perfect alternative: leftover bits of Rhovylon jersey, an early technical fiber  recommended for rheumatic people. Granny is very happy with the warm comfort.

A new hobby horse enthusiast, with improved riding pants.

And finally a flower dress girl with burgundy hair. This makes 99 dolls for Unicef  I have made over the years. The next one will be a custom order of a cyclist with tan lines and bruises, I have promised to get her ready for Christmas.

Speaking about custom orders, these three pairs of socks were knitted for a friend and will be Christmas gifts for her friends in the USA.

Small and sweet in alpaca yarn. The color is actually a lovely pale pink but the lightning makes it look almost dirty.

Large in normal sock wool quality.

And extra large and extra warm with the rest of the white yarn together with some grey.

Because I like to use up rest yarns, I knitted these mittens with the remaining grey yarn and a bit of dark red for the Latvian braid at the cuff. I just wanted to try if I can make that.

The rest of the pale pink alpaca yarn was all I needed for this pair of baby socks.

And finally, I had some baby merino wool left over from the chemo hats I knitted two years ago. The pink yarn is now a pair of knee high baby socks.

Number of finishes since my last post: five dolls, five pairs of socks and one pair of mittens. Number of quilts worked on: zero. I meant to be busy with some unfinished projects but got carried away with these instead. 

Organizing

New home, old mess. I'm trying to organize my crafty things in some way that makes sense, and the basic idea is to have just one address for each category of hoarded material. Like the quilt backing fabrics in this cupboard:

Embroidery floss kept popping up in different project bags, shoe boxes, and pouches and bags with my mother's unfinished projects. I had no idea how much of that stuff I had, and what colours. Now I'm working my way from this mess

towards something in this direction:

One way to help with the organizing problems is naturally reducing the amount of material to organize. Using up yarn rests is my favourite method.

Still some light grey yarn left, so I started knitting this pair in a smaller size. I ended in a vicious circle and had to buy more light grey...

... and so there was yarn left and therefore I had to knit these mittens to go with the Little Knight  hat for our grandson. The pattern is for a newborn baby, I just used heavier yarn and more stitches.