LunaKnit

My sister moved to Berlin in the beginning of February. Her husband works as a diplomat and they will be staying in the capital of Germany for the next three to four years. Which means Berlin will most likely become very familiar to me as well in the coming years. I traveled with my mother and the main point of our trip was to see my sister (whom I last saw in September and my mom in October), but we did have time for some sightseeing and yarn shopping as well. Even if the cherry trees and magnolias were in full bloom we didn't have the best luck with weather on this trip. My sister said that a few weeks before our visit it had been sunny and warm enough to wear just a t-shirt, but during our stay it was gray, windy and it even snowed a couple of times! So woolen sweaters and a winter coat were a necessity. Luckily Berlin is filled with cool cafes to pop into everytime the cold became too much to bear. One of my favorites was the No Fire No Glory on Rykestrasse 4

In this picture I'm wearing my Stasis pullover inside out to show you there are no labels on it. I made it. 3 years ago. But I didn't make my t-shirt or my jeans nor do I have any idea who made them. Before I started knitting my own clothes I rarely stopped to think the question in the topic line. Who made my clothes? And where? And in what conditions? How much did they get paid for it? I knew about child labor, I knew about the appalling conditions of many textile fabrics in the third world countries, I knew about the possibly cancerous and poisonous dyes. But I didn't really stop and think about it. Not until I started to knit and see all the work it took to make a single piece of garment for myself. How much would I ask for a me-made sweater, if I really took in account all the time it took for me to knit it? Especially if I would need to get a decent salary to live on by making clothes? Not sure if anyone had the money to buy my me-made clothes... It makes me wonde

Before my preganancy I started to read about capsule wardrobes and decided to try and minimize my own pile of clothes. During these past two years I've been trying to define my own stye by really focusing on which clothes I wear over and over again, and which ones are just taking space in my closet. And the results have been a bit surprising. I have always thought of myself as a colorful person and I thought I loved a bit quirky clothes. But the fact is I don't actually dress the way I imagined I do. I mean, I own(ed) those kind of clothes, but I seldom wear (wore) them. In the reality I kept reaching for the same basics over and over again and feeling the most comfortable wearing them. I do love colors, just not wearing them.   It meant I had to redefine my style, my "uniform" and also my knitting queue. I cleaned away everything I didn't really wear and started to buy good quality basics instead. I also cleaned my knitting queue, replacing things that I

Koto pullover , by Olga Buraya-Kefelian , published in Wool People 9. Yarn: Drops Merino Extrafine #2 black. Lately I've been trying to conciously choose classic everyday staples for my next knitting projects rather than just knit anything on a whim and not really what I need in my wardrobe. This pullover wasn't the most inspiring to knit but I love wearing it and I'm sure it's one I will reach for over and over again. The sleeves turned out too long for me after blocking. I hadn't realised that the shoulders would drop as low as they did, so I ended up with sleeves that are about 5 cm too long. The sleeves have cuffs that are folded double and joined by three needle joinery. I wanted to keep that detail, so I fixed the length by picking stitches from both the cuff and the arm, and then using kitchener stitch to join the two parts back again. This worked fine because the increases start higher up in the sleeve, so I didn't have to worry about the

This is only the second KAL (knitalong) ever I'm participating in. As the hashtag in the topic line suggests, the purpose of this KAL is to knit garments for yourself so that by the end of the year you can cover yourself in handknits from head to toe. There are going to be 9 garments in total, and 11 months to get it all completed. Simple enough. The KAL is hosted by a Finnish yarn store called Lankakauppa Kerä . The first garment we knitted was a hat. I chose the Roku hat by olgajazzy and used some leftover Rowan Tweed from my stash. The colorway is called pendle . It's a simple ribbed hat that goes with everything and I've been using it a lot ever since it came off my needles. The second garment was a scarf or a cowl, and I knitted the Tenchi cowl, also by olgajazzy. I used Brooklyn Tweed shelter for this one. It was my first time knitting with Brooklyn Tweed yarns since they are really hard to come by here in Finland (at the moment we have only one yar