knits

This summer seems to be bad for my knitting content - I just can't knit when it's over 30 degrees, not even cotton or bamboo. So it was in Finland, too, where I spent last week (I came back today) on holiday visiting my family with my DH. It was so hot I spent my days swimming and drinking juice in the garden. I'll post a few photos of the Finnish summer soon (courtesy of Nick), plus my new yarn goodies and a recycled sweater bag I finally lined on my Mum's sewing machine! Watch this space.

I can't seem to get enough of shawls! I love knitting them, love wearing them, and I love how I can use sock yarn to make them and don't have to knit the yarn with tiny 2mm needles!

It's too hot to knit! Or at least it has been the last week, now it's getting a bit cooler to the kinds of summer temperatures I can function in - less than 30 degrees celcius.

Therefore I have very little knitting content to show, so I though I'd show the content of others! Here are a few of my favourite blog posts last week - first some with knitting and then some with simple living. Enjoy!

Ok, I've cast on 26 things in June, all because I'm participating in the Finnish KAL I mentioned a few weeks ago, where you - starting from the 1st oh June - cast on something new every day until Midsummer, and you finish everything my the end of July. It's a challenge, but so much fun! Here's what I have ready (or almost done) by now (& since the last posting)

No, it's not a new health food, it's my newest FO!

I'm slowly getting back my sock knitting mojo which was gone for a long time - I've been enjoying shawl knitting so much that I've forgotten all about how I liked knitting socks. But then I discovered this pretty yarn and the Froot Loop pattern in my May Small Item Club bag, I decided to get my dpns out and make some socks. Here are the specs:

As I said in my last post about the WWKIP in Bochum, I also visited the local yarn store there. I have been keeping a strict yarn diet this spring, so I thought a few new nice yarns won't do me any harm, and anyway I just wanted to try some new things. So here they are!

On Saturday we had a WWKIP (World Wide Knit in Public Day) meeting in Bochum, which is a neighbor city to Essen. So I packed myself up well (it was freezing) and took the train to Bochum. I first went yarn shopping a bit (more about that later) and then at three headed to the meeting in the cafe in Bochum city park.

There were a few knitters I knew from Essen, and many I didn't know from Bochum, Dortmund and surrounding cities. Plus, there was the amazing camel Dumistvieh, whom you can see in the third picture!

You might remember I volunteer for my local animal shelter by knitting things for sale and helping during open doors days, working at the sales booth. The shelter just had their big summer open doors day a few days ago, and to try out something new I decided to knit two little triangular shawlettes for sale.

For the second time in a row, I'm participating in the Finnish knitalong "Kesäyön hullutus", which is a KAL for crazy Finnish people who want to start a new knitting project every day from the 1st of June to Midsummer, the 26th of June - and finish all 26 knits by the end of July. Pretty insane, huh!

Once in a while my attention gets drawn to the misccellaneous bags in my stash closet, the ones with yarn ends and half balls, the leftover yarns from bigger projects and maybe a few full balls with yarn I don't really know what to do with. To be honest, my attention is actually drawn to the fact that the bags are packed if not overflowing. This is usually the time I take out the bags, take a look at the yarns inside and decide to start a stashbusting project.