Garn Boet - The Yarn Nest

We had pretty hard winds here yesterday, but nothing happened on our yard, no fallen trees or such. The good thing was that all the oak leaves were thrown from the tree by the winds, so we spent Sunday collecting leaves and taking them to the compost heap. The work went so well that I almost forgot to take pictures of my finished Haruhas.

I did knit them with my winter coat in mind, you see those slits? They can be pretty cold when the wind is whirling around one's arms. The Haruhas are much longer than the pattern model, just because I wanted them to cover my lower arms. I will of course also wear gloves, but my gloves are just and just reaching the end of the slits, and from there on will the Haruha take over. But I think they will be pretty useful in cold libraries too.

Project details
Pattern: Haruha by Kristel Nyberg for Ulla neulelehti.
Yarn: 100 % wool from Greece, given to me by my still very Secret Pal.
Needles: 3 mm.
Alterations: I did knit them longer. There are four medallions on the cuff of the model, I have seven.

See all entries on Haruha.

And there has been some progress made on the Rosebud mittens too. They look even more uneven than in real life, sight. But they will even out after a good soak and blocking, I know. The Bayrische socks are also coming along nicely, but I forgot to take a picture before it got too dark for it. Another day, friends.

All this knitting on small needles has made me long for a bigger needle project. With father's day coming up, I'm thinking about a Sharfik by Grumperina in lovely soft Jaeger Extrafine Merino and 4 mm needles. And I do still have some Rowan Linen Drape, that would need to be knit up on about 3,5 mm. The two balls in light lilac would make a lovely shawl for my younger daughter, but what to do with 5 balls in dark purple. A top would be one solution, but I'm open for ideas.

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I got a web-card from my Secret Pal a couple of days ago, and as promised in the card, the postman had mail for me twice this month. Yesterday did a comfort pack drop into my mailbox:

Chocolate-raspberry coffee that smells good, and tastes good, dark chocolate (i'm one for dark chocolate, so it was a perfect hit. It did last just for the picture to be taken, not many seconds more), a lollypop, a seasonally suitable reflector, a beeswax candle, stitch markers (I'm always dropping them and in a constant need of them) and cute Teddy bears to put on the ends of the needles. And a Mickey card! Thank you secret pal, I'm looking forward to know who you are!

Remembering the Secret Pal yarn from Greece? The Haruha wrist warmers are finished. There will hopefully be modelled pictures in a couple of days, and close ups. Let's keep the thumbs up for blue skies and no rain, and outside picture possibilities!

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Sofia’s basket weave mittens are finished and blocked. They were dry just in time for her to take them to school this morning, and the modelled pictures are taken in the first morning light today.

What about a close up? Click for it!

Project details:
Pattern: The colour pattern is from Eeva Haavisto's book Sata kansanomaista kuviokudinmallia, this is again a pattern she tells us is coming from Jalasjärvi in Pohjanmaa. The pattern indicates that the flatter top decrease is to be used, I followed Mary Olki's directions from the book Kirjokintaita ja muita kansanomaisia neuletöitä. In other aspects is the mitten my own basic mitten.
Yarn: The mittens are inspired by the beautiful blue-green Vuorelma Satakieli yarn I got from my secret pal. The golden and off white are also Satakieli.
Needles: 2,5 mm.
Other: The top of the mittens are decreased with a two stitches band, and ended with the three-needle bind off method (see my earlier post on how to do this). The thumbs are also decreased with a two stitches band, but finished in the ordinary way with treading the last eight stitches on the yarn, not binding them off.

Mittens blocking on the ironing board

Do you block your mittens? I do. I use mitten blockers I have made from those metal hangers you get with clothes from the dry cleaner. I found a tip on Saartje's site for making sock blockers this way. Since colour work looks best when blocked, I decided to make mitten blockers the same way. Depending on the size of the mitten is the blocker easy to enlarge or make smaller, the wires are soft enough. You can see the blockers peaking out at the end of the mitten rib in the picture above. Give it a try! Your mittens will look even more fabulous when blocked.

See all entries on Basket weave mittens.

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The first basket weave mitten has hit the top-of-the-mitten finishing line! This mitten is finished with a top that one see quite often on older pictures. Instead of decreasing the top until there are only eight stitches left I stopped the decreases when there were sixteen stitches left. I put together a small demonstration of how to finish a mitten this way.

	The last stitches are still on the needles.
	The stitches have been moved to safety pins.
	The mittens has been turned inside out and the safety pins moved to the wrong side of the mitten. Here have the stitches already been moved to needles again.
	The top stitches have been bind off with a three-needle-bind off. The mitten has been turned with the right side out again.

This way to finish the mitten gives you a slightly broader top, with fewer decreases. If a broader mitten is the goal, then this is a perfect top, with more than sixteen stitches at the end. My daughter's hand is very small and in no way in need of this finishing, but since it was the one Eeva Haavisto has drawn her pattern for, I decided to go for it anyway. The result is very much like what you would have got if you hade grafted the stitches together. I followed the directions given in Mary Olki’s book Kirjokintaita ja muita kansanomaisia neuletöitä for how to do this traditional finishing.

The ribbing of the second mitten is already started. And as my commuter knitting has the Haruha wrist warmers worked perfectly. The yarn I got from my Secret Pal is perfect for this project, and the wrist warmer has a fit like a glove. The pattern is very easy to follow, I warmly recommend it!

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The new Satakieli yarns have been very tempting on the needles, and I have knitted way more than I should this weekend. One reason has been watching football, there is not so much to do when the girls are warming up, except to knit. The tournament went well, the girls won two games and played one even.

This is the basket weave mitten, knit with the blue green Satakieli and after a suggestion from Memmu, with golden Satakieli as contrast colour. Sofia, the younger daughter, saw these mittens, and forgot everything about what she had wanted before. Her mitten world was filled with this mitten. And that was a good thing, since what I hadn't taken into consideration was that being knit with three strands of yarn the mitten will be significantly smaller than when knit with two strands of yarn. Sofia's hand was the only one in the family that would fit into this mitten. Being knitted with three strands of yarn will also make them warmer than when knitted with only two.

The pattern is from Eeva Haavisto's book Sata kansanomaista kuviokudinmallia, and she gives the credits for the pattern once again, to Jalasjärvi. Her original was knitted in black, with red as contrast and white as background. Must be a quite impressive combination! The cuff is very long, a good thing for a mitten made for a very mobile child. Knitting with three strands is a bit trickier than knitting with only two, but the result is quite nice. Do you want to have a close up? Click away and you'll get it!

These are the mittens I had already started for Sofia. The white and red yarns are Satakieli, the green Isager Tvinni, bought some time ago in Copenhagen. The pattern is one that you can find as well in Eeva Haavisto's book as on a pair of mittens in the National Museum collection of old Finnish mittens. Haavisto says her model is from Kurikka, and it is knitted in white, black and red. The model in the museum collection is knitted in green, red and white, and is said to be from Ilmajoki. Kurikka and Ilmajoki are about 15 kilometres from each, and the distance from Kurikka to Jalasjärvi is about 25 kilometres. So we are moving on a very small area in the south of Pohjanmaa here. I haven't seen the model in the museum collection personally, only a picture of it, and I think the cuff was made in a little different way, it looked like it had more structure in it. I can't swear either that the pattern is exactly like what I have knitted. The museum picture has been my inspiration, but I have used Haavisto's pattern for the mitten. The lower pattern, above the cuff, is called "ässänväärä", and is a pattern that is used in several different art forms in Pohjanmaa, for example on painted furniture. It's a typical rococo ornament, and believed to have come to Pohjanmaa from Sweden. The flowers above the ässänväärä are looking like rosebuds, so I call the mittens rosebud mittens.

On both of these mittens is the thumb made as I think they were made before in Finland. It's a straight thumb, with the thumb stitches stored away on a tread, and new stitches casted on above (this is by the way my grandmother taught me to knit mittens eons ago). I did cast them on in the colours that would have been used for the stitches; I don't know how much it will matter when the stitches are picked up. The tops of the mittens will be finished in two different ways, more on that in next post on the mittens.

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I got this parcel a couple of days ago, but the weather has been grey and the outcome of my pictures poor. Today there were some rays of sunshine, and I took everything from the parcel out on our garden table for a picture session. Well, everything except the candy, that was already gone. But I took a picture before I started, so there is evidence of what was in the parcel. The candy that the seller had said was popular by the Englishmen had an, hm, interesting taste. Not bad, in no way, but it didn’t taste like anything I’ve eaten before. There is a difference between English and my Finnish taste buds ;-) But the Estonian chocolate, it was good. Really, really good.

The yarn content of the parcel was more than welcome. My pal visited Greece some time ago, and managed to find a yarn shop over there. Two balls of 100 % wool by EL.D Mouzakis, Classico (this is about all what I understand of the label). I think these will be turned into a pair of wrist warmers, perhaps the Haruha from Ulla (even if these will be more in the colour of aki - autumn). The colour will match my winter outfit perfect.

And then there were two hanks of Satakieli from Vuorelma, natural and blue-green. As soon as I saw them I knew what to do with them. There is an interesting, kind of basket weave patterned mitten in Eeva Haavisto's mitten book, and these yarns will fit the bill perfectly. There is only the problem of finding the third colour, the one that will be outlining the squares. I have tested with a rusty red (too bright) and with this blue. The blue matches in colour perfect, but has a tad too little contrast to match the beautiful blue-green. So I'll probably test on other colour, in order to get the blue-green to stand out more.

Thank you Pal! A wonderful autumn greeting! And thank you for the compliments on my knitting.

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An other busy week is behind me and the next is about to begin. There has been knitting going on, even if not blogging. And the result: the Jalasjärvi flower mittens are finished!

See those pine needles? The autumn is here!

Project details:

Pattern: The flowers and the flower band are from Eeva Haavisto's book Sata kansanomaisata kuviokudinmallia. The book was first printed in 1947, my edition is from 1953. The biulding up of the mittens is my own. I added a cuff taken from an old sock pattern, one that in Pohjanmaa was called the zig-zag pattern, nothing fancy, just ordinary increasing and decreasing, but quite nice with coloured stripes. The thumb is made as a straight thumb, this is the way old Finnish mittens were knitted, the thumb gusset came later on. The thumb is decreased with a narrower band than the top of the mitten, a two stitch band instead of the four stitch band in the top. The top was usually broader than the thumb, with three or four stitches in the band. Click here for a picture of the tops. Eeva Haavisto gives no clues on how to pattern the thumb, indicating that it is to have the same pattern as the hand. Since it would have been impossible to get the big flowers to continue around the thumb, I decided to keep the back of the thumb striped. I used the Estonian way to knit in a piece of different coloured tread where I wanted the thumb to be - this is not how the thumbs were knitted in Finland I think.

Yarn and needles: Vuorelma’s Satakieli on 2mm bamboo needles. The mittens were knitted with a gauge of 38 stitches and 38 rows for 10 x 10 cm.

Close up of the flower pattern

The next pair of mittens will be for my younger daughter, and you can look forward to see more flowers. It will be a pair I have seen pictures of, they are part of the National Museums collections, and the knitter who made them were according to the archives home from Ilmajoki. The same pattern in different colours is also to be seen in Eeva Haavisto's book, but she credits Kurikka to be the palce where the mittens were from.

See all entries on Jalasjärvi flower mittens.

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