There is one serious summer knitting madness going on. I guess that the one knit only -restriction when knitting Chevron Sweater backfired a bit :).

Habu cashmere top
I wanted to do something useful from this lovely yarn.

So this is the body of sheer tank top, excellent to layer over other garments. 3,5 mm needles, but the knitting is quite fast. There is no purling involved, I just turn around to create the texture.

Rust brown wrap top
Almost finished! I only need to reconsider the edging, the pattern I firs picked does not look nice knitted with Muskat. Still don’t know if this will be decent or not…

Another Montego Bay
Since I was knitting my first Montego bay I have dreamed of knitting one with original Handmaiden yarn. I really love how the suble colour shifts of periwinkle Sea Silk work in the original. Well, sometimes the wishes come true! I met a Ravelry friend on the beginning of July - and she brought me a lovely ball of Handmaiden Silk Maiden, even more luxurious yarn than Sea Silk. Thank you so much, Carrice!

That turquise colourway is so beautiful.

Changeling -copy
I have to admit that I find Anthropologie knits often more inspiring than patterns in knitting magazines. So if one had some skeins of beautiful suri-merino in ones stash and Anthropologie shows this kind of lovely knit for autumn, what can a girl (supposedly a knitter) do? Isn’t it a crime they won’t provide the pattern as well? That little tangly piece of cables will be so much fun to knit! Love the unconventional construction.

Olive Grove socks
Sometimes the inspiration is easily drawn from beautiful yarn alone! Araucania Ranco (Ravelry) feels so soft, and I really love these handpainted almost solids with subtle but noticeable colour shifts.

That olive tone is so yummu… …my new socks might have some vines and leaves incorporated…

Striped Noro scarf
I’m certainly not an early adopter with this but one certain Kureyon colourway just forced me to join the Noro striped scarf craziness.

I pre-ordered the Nicky Epstein Crocheting on the Edge, the book finally arrived - and I like it.

Unlike Knitting on the Edge this one has nice charts of every pattern. There are again few patterns for whole garments.

And I have to say that I really like that circle cape. On the other hand that small capelet would be excellent reason to spree to some Tilli Tomas Swarowski-silk.

And then I made an one night trip to Tallinn, Estonia. Estonia is well known from traditional colouwork knitting. Considering that it might be a small surprise how small selections of Estonian wool is available there.

I would have preferred a bit different shades… …for colourwork… …but these probably end up regular socks…

…this is not Estonian. Thick wool from Katia will probably be a Twinkle scarf one day.

I got some cotton yarn from my mom, it’s Garnstudio Muskat in lovely color.

Shooting to another direction of windowsill… …more gorgeous browns…

That yarn is knitting up to sleeveless wrap top. I have one neat idea incorporating the wrap bands to the knit, it allows them to be interchangeable, even made from fabric. I’m thinking this dirty ivory silk here. I will add some light ruffle for the lover edge of this top. I really like this one with dropped stitches from Knitting on the Edge.

I haven’t bought fabrics in ages, so it was pretty hard to control myself when picking up that silk for attachment bands. I love fabric pieces sold by weight. These airy silks weigh nothing, so they were almost free… …a skirt, perhaps?

Another container was filled with beautiful lightweight cottons, I could not resist.

Oh yes, then there is that fabulous Habu cashmere I bought from winter sales. I have a neat and extremely simple idea for this one! I want to start right now!

Inspector is checking the swatch…

…seems to be a quality yarn…

…approved!

Mom’s gonna get them tomorrow, hope she likes them…

Previous pair is lovely, but sloppy. Now I knitted a tight surface with 2,5 mm needles. Toe to top sock algorithm is now mounted in my head, so there is no actual pattern. Size is an educated guess.

Leg is a bit short: another ball had a knot on the red section - and continued with gray *sigh*. Otherwise matching the colourways succeeded pretty well.

Ouch. Not stiff enough for this…

Another pair of hippy silk Garden socks finished today, now blocking. I hesitate (just a bit) to give these away, as I have thought to do…

Colourmart smooth DK weight silk is perfect for this pattern. Drape of the finished knit is beautiful, I emphasized it even further by ironing the knit rather flat. I just can’t imagine this in that mercerized, wiry cotton suggested in pattern, at least the gauge should be very loose to give the necessary drape for this garment. But bamboo yarn might be great choice for this pattern, too!

I did not adjust the pattern - well, knitted the body in round instead of two pieces, but that’s it. The pattern is a small wonder in all its simplicity: two rectangular pieces are attached to the top of that tube to form sleeves and upper body. They are sewn together few centimeters just to prevent the bellybutton to peek out from the neck opening…

The beige yarn was a bit unblanced, but ironing the knit helped a lot. Seams need some additional pressing, I see it now. There is one ugly loose gauge patch on the other side of the body (dropped few stitches for several rounds to correct a mistake), I hope that the first wash will help to even it out. But why on earth did I wear it on front for photoshoot?

These colours are not the easiest to incorporate in my wardrobe, but I still love them. I’m particularly happy to that, I had strong doubts about the colours while knitting this piece!

I love the silhouette of this knit. Knitting patterns tend to be very conservatively constructed - so happy to find something unusual. In my opinion this cut is not too hard to wear. Being fitting from below the bust the shape hugs the body where it tends to be smallest. And I like generous decolletage, it gives very feminine impression. Combined to that unusual, not too fitting overall shape the impression is not slutty. A spaghetti strap body will limit the view and give a nice horizontal line to the front when necessary…

Pattern: Chevron Sweater, Erika Knight: Glamour Knits
Needles: 3,5 mm bamboo circular
Yarn: Colourmart DK smooth silk, beige 2 cones, forest green, jade green, lime green 1 cone, very small amount of dark brown

Still in love…

Another one, I’ve been planning this literally for years:

It is so me! And ooh, SATC the Movie in the theatres very soon! Those clothes *swoon*…

This is my home street, Siltasaarenkatu.

This is where I would like to live :-D, just couple of blocks off my current home.

And this is where I actually live… …no, unfortunately not in that tower…

Hakaniemen halli is a great market hall, jus across the street from us. I love to do my grocery shopping there and perhaps have a cup of coffee. One can even bump to our president in there…

At summertime shopping outside in the market is option, too.

Jugend (or Art Deco) buildings are quite characteristic to Helsinki…

…but clean and simple lines of houses built on 1930-1940 are common sight near the centrum, too.

And all houses simply aren’t created equal. Kallio district is quite a quilt of architecture.

But the sun shines equally over all kinds of buildings, what a bliss…

Kallio was a working class district for a long time… …and it has kept some of it’s former image, although some trendy hairdresser salons and cafes are slowly infiltrating to small street level commercial properties. But sex shops are still common sight here…

…sometimes more discreet…

On the waterfront there is Merihaka district, the concrete pearl of Helsinki…

Porthaninkatu (street nearby us) is pretty much torn down right now.

I have a strange fascination for rust patterns and tags, what about both of those…

Some great thai takeaway from the nearby kitchen…

…and look at my cute wildcat pumps on temporarily abandoned tram tracks! No tights at sight, anymore!

If somebody wonders why there is nothing happening in this blog lately, you can blame the Chevron Sweater. I decided to concentrate on knitting it and just it. And because it is boring, I’m not too surprised that all the other activities seem to be so much more tempting…

I usually don’t concentrate on one knit, but this one was in too great UFO danger zone, especially considering the yarn investments (I tried first with Yeoman suggested in the pattern, then with this Colourmart silk - and end up ordering another green for one stripe). Silk yarn in its all loveliness is not really fun to knit. I don’t mind the unstretchiness of it, but it splits like there is no tomorrow. And talk about hiding those split plies to smooth silk surface…

But I’m quite curious about the result, so there is a positive side on this project, too!

The first sleeve is almost finished. I have to say that half of the body is knitted with these sleeves, so no wonder it takes time…

I had a yarn diet, too, but I slipped a bit to get some motivation to knit the chevron. I will make another hippy pair of socks with this lovely and quite tranquil shade of Silk Garden Lite (#2021).

There was also some Wendy’s yarns on my LYS, I especially liked Supreme, mercerized, but not too hard cotton. This lovely cool beige shade with mauve undertones really caught my eye. Cardigan, perhaps? I have only one ball of this for swatching purposes… …just waiting for inspiration!

I knit the sleeve now, flat because I did not have a circular short enough. And why did not I think this: the unbalanced yarn looks so much better knitted back and forth! Not perfect, but significantly better. Should I frog the body piece or what :-D.

Another slowly progressing knit is the cashmere sweater for my husband. And now I have lost my faith to the math I made when calculating the shrinkage of the yarn (Colourmart oiled cashmere). My original swatch is lost. Should probably knit a new one and calculate again.

Relatively fast is my latest design, a summer top from oddballs of cotton; mercerized and unmercerized; white, beige and couple of shades of brown with hint of rose. I knit up separate sections with different stitch patterns, pick up stitches, crochet the pieces together. This is so much fun and I really wait to see the result. Should resemble distantly this, the middle piece has two folds on top, creating the A-line.