CoolMayDay

 

I have celebrated May Day before. It is not a surprise it can be cool up here in the north. This year, 1st time ever, I was over 700 km south from home to face this May Day weather. That was a surprise!

We spent the holidays with the kids and their families. We had lazy and relaxing moments. Last year our MayDay looked like this. 

Kirke looks like dead but believe me, she is not. She spends hours like this and if you lift her away she runs back. It must be relaxing. Just think how it stretches your back when hanging like that!

On our holidays in Turku we always walk a lot because of the dogs. We usually spot church yards (which are my favorite top ten) because Turku is almost 800 years old town and that's a lot in Finland.

The weather was not arctic all the time. We faced also beautiful -almost summer like- moments there. I love how they have built the play grounds there! They are park-like.

What amazes me most in Turku is that at least by Aurajoki river the wildlife is around. The birds nest in the parks and play grounds, rabbits dig their tunnels and I have never seen a fox that close anywhere else than in the city. The animals have lost half of their natural fear against the human in the city environment. That makes at least the Aurajoki riverside an excellent place to spot birds and other animals.

It would be wonderful to recon the bird nests by their figure, how they are built up. That is something I can't tell about the nature.

In Turku I found the heaven on earth for coeliac's gluten free life. I usually go another super market but this time I was introduced K-Citymarket Kupittaa by YoungLady. That means I had a guided tour around. I found many gluten free food products of which I have only dreamed about! The Citymarket is huge (from my perspective) so if you ever go there with a special diet, just make sure you have enough time! There are specialties from the big world but also something that is typical to Finland region kitchen.

Also, it was wonderful to come back home to find this "soljo" delivered to my GreenOldHouse. It is a traditional Sámi brooch about which symbolism and meaning you can read here. This is from goldsmith Tomi Mansikka's Aamunkoi collection. It is not sold anywhere yet. This is the 1st piece. Once I asked him could he make this design also as "soljo". And he did, and here is the result. Tomi works for Taigakoru which is my favorite jewellery trade mark in Finland. I am sure he will make some more if you like. :) 

Dutch Heel No4 (var.)

I designed and knit this pretty pair of woollen socks. It is inspired by my Ireland Erasmus+ journey 2025 with my students and the visit at the IrelandsEye Knitwear factory. For the socks I used Novita 7 veljestä yarn (75 % wool, 25% polyamide) (100g = 200m) in green shade and AAW (50% our own ethic produced arctic angora wool, 40% ethic produced FinnSheep wool, 10% nylon) (100g = 238m) which I plant dyed by fire weed. 

For the decorative knitting I used Single cable and mosaic stitch. In these socks you can find the mosaic stitches in the green stripes. To knit the mosaic stitches you use only the stripe shade so you knit by just one yarn (it is not Fair Isle). You knit the 1st row, then purl the 2nd. BUT you need just to slip the stitches between the stripes. It is very easy, just try it on.

For example in this version I knit on the 1st row "knit 4 - slip 2" and on the 2nd row "purl 4 - slip 2". 

I knit Dutch heel variation with seed stitch. Seed stitch is very easy and pretty. It is suitable for the beginners who want to learn to knit something else than just plain. You can use seed stitch just a little bit, only for few rows. Or you can do even double seed stitch for bigger surfaces. 

To get the seed stitch surface you just need to purl every stitch and knit every purl stitch:

1. knit-purl-knit
2. purl- knit-purl

AranHeadband

I designed and knit Aran Chain Cable twisted headband. I started it at the Aran Cable Knitting workshop in Dublin 2025. 

This was my 1st ever twisted headband. I am sure I will make more! I used cable knitting and actually crocheting too.

The yarn is King Cole's Dollymix DK yarn (100% acrylic) (80 yards = 78 meters) in the shade Peach. Never used it before. Actually I didn't know it exist. I usually don't use 100% acrylic yarns but this was just fine for the work shop and sample work.

Easter 2025

This Easter we spent at home and had some visitors up here in the North. I had few moments when I had some time to enjoy about the sunshine, warmth and knitting outside.

We made the 1st bike tour in the local area for this spring. It was windy and a bit chilly there where you could not hide from the wind.

But there where you could hide from the wind was very warm and comfortable. We climbed to the bird watching tower with our binoculars to look out over the bay to spot swans, mallards, greylag geese, golden eyes, sea gulls and mergansers. If you remember we are participating in the nature conservation project of goldeneyes.

If you compare the pics of this post to the spring trip 2024 you can see this year we didn't have so much snow, neither frost. The sea is still frozen but it is melting fast.

NewT-shirt

This time I dyed an old T-shirt. Actually, it was given to me for rag rug weaving. It was just fine with a few tiny spots. I decided to call in FashionNOW and make a new T-shirt for myself.

This time I used red onion peels. From the peels we had dyed at work with my students already quite a lot of wool yarn and they still gave me this strong shade.

German Short Row Heel

I knit these woollen socks. It's a variation from Kerstin Balk's SoxxBook Family & Friends by Stine & Stitch but not exactly from her design. I used Kotikulta's Tuokio yarn (75% wool, 25% polyamide) (100g = 200m) in white and red shades.

This pair has German Short Row heels. It is the most common heel in all the commercial socks you can buy. But it is not the most durable one. Excellent choice for the woollen socks you are going to wear at home, school or work if you are not going to walk a lot.

German Short Row heel is called also Hourglass or Boomerang heel.

French Heel

I designed and made these woollen socks but was strongly inspired by Kersin Balke's book SoxxBook Family + Friends by Stine & Stitch. I used Kotikulta's Tuokio yarn (75% wool, 25% polyamide) (100g = 200m) in white and red shades.

These socks have French heels. It is quite similar to DutchHeel NoO (plain) but differs at the casting offs and the side edge of the heel.

CandyBlueSet

Previously I showed you Dutch Heel NoO (plain) woollen socks I made. I used hand dyed no logo 100% merino wool which I received as a gift from a friend. I had only 50g of it. It was enough for the toddler socks but some was still left after finishing. That's why I designed and knit Aran toddler mittens too. Aran as a souvenir from my Dublin journey in March 2025.

They make a perfect match. I plant dyed the pink yarn  by cochineal. The yarn is 100% wool I inherit from my grandmother that passed away in 2010. I still have it a lot! I have made KnittedGloves No1 and  KnittedGloves No2 of it.

Dutch Heel NoO (plain)

I designed and knit a traditional style woollen socks with the traditional style heel in toddler size. I used hand dyed no logo 100% merino wool which I received as a gift from a friend. 

Notice that this heel is exactly the basic plain & original Dutch Heel. This is not as durable as Dutch Heel No 1 (trad.), Dutch Heel No2 (var.) and Dutch Heel No3 (var.).

 The heel is made: 

every 2nd row - knit

every 2nd row - purl

always slip the 1st stitch

NamePlate

When planning our Erasmus+ journey to Dublin the students wanted to make/wear something similar which would show to the other people that we are a group. I suggested us to create hand made nameplates. Because especially foreign names are the ones you always forget and find difficult.

Everyone designed their own nameplates and used the technique they wanted. I waited until I knew what they all were making so that I use some other technique none had chosen. That's how I ended up to make mine by tin thread embroidery that is a form of Sámi crafts.

First I designed the pattern, then I transferred it to the iron on backing fabric. Then I did the tin thread embroidery by the 0,25mm tin thread (the finest available) on a piece of wool that was left over from my Sámi costume and FourWindsHat. Then I needed some reindeer leather to finish the nameplate itself.

First I sew the inner edges. I needed Marilla for this and we worked just fine together. Even I don't have the leather presser feet for her.

After sewing together the leather and wool I was able to cut off the extra wool fabric to make it all to the right size.

I needed also something to hang/fasten the nameplate. I had an idea ready for it but it needed a lot of work. If possible, we wanted to show that we are from Finland. That´s why I made these tiny flags of wool: Sámi flag and Finland flag.

The next step was the challenging one. I needed to make it all succeed by one stitching round because the sewing makes holes into the leather. The flag part is very thick so I need to pay a lot of attention when sewing it. Notice that the background leather is bigger at this point that the front side leather.

After sewing it around the outer edges I cut off the extra leather of the background leather. There are two "jump stitches" but I decided to do nothing to them because they are symmetrically on the both sides of the flags. Fixing them would also cause visible signs so I decided not to. In this way you don't notice it if you don't know. 😊

After finishing the nameplate and renewing my passport I was ready for my Erasmus+ journey with my students. 

Very special and very beautiful like all the nameplates the students made.

Dublin 2025

I was again in Dublin. On June 2024 I was there at my Erasmus+ education after which FashionNOW was started. This time I brought 9 of my students to Dublin for Erasmus+ group mobility because of my work. 

We stayed at The Trinity City Hotel. There was me and one student with special diet needs. I must tell this hotel is an excellent place to get your safe special diet. Perhaps you need to wait sometimes for it but that is ok because they know what they are doing. They never turn us away. If I need to choose I will stay in this hotel instead the previous one which neither was bad.

Part of Erasmus+ program is that there is a host with whom you operate. Our host was fabulous Dublin South City Partnership who arranged us this memorable Aran cable knitting workshop. We will never forget them and hopefully we will see them soon again.

The other host was IrelandsEye Knitwear whose factory we were welcomed to visit and participate. It was amazing to be able to see the factory inside that pays a lot of attention on sustainability in clothing business! I do can say that if you need to buy an industrial made jumper IrelandsEye Knitwear is a very good choice. It does its best to follow all the corners of the sustainability in clothing business. They didn't give me or my students any voucher, free gifts or anything. You know me, I don't advert anything, not even for a money. They just allowed us to step in and see all the places and process because of our Erasmus+ education and learning activities. We did learn so many things and appreciate that they provided us this once in a lifetime possibility in learning things like this.

Our main host DSCP (Dublin South City Partnership) arranged learning activities in few places. When going around we saw many places we would have missed in a normal tourist weekend in Dublin. Somehow this reminds me about Copenhagen. 

We had interesting learning activities in non-formal environments like graveyard with DSCP. They are very creative with their learning facilities.

We had nature/environment workshop at a library! I was very exited about that because in Lapland you never think you could have a nature workshop indoors!

After the environment workshop at the library we needed to go hug the trees outside because it all was a bit overwhelming. 

Ireland really is a country of thousands of welcomes. Me and my students experienced it many times in every day! These cute chickens were knit by our Aran cable knitting workshop facilitator for the group as a welcome gift. Each had a chocolate egg inside.

When going home we were amused by the fact that instead of Rovaniemi our flight was going to the North Pole. We didn't know we live quite there.😁

Me and Ireland -we'll meet again, that's for sure. 

TheBooks2

This year I decided to challenge myself to show you what on earth I read. In this blog post I show you which books I've read in March 2025. 

In March 2025 I have read a very interesting book Muinaisjäännöksiä Suomen suvun asumus-aloilta. It is a facsimile edition of the original J.R. Aspelin's publications. The only change is that Aspelin published 5 books separate on 1877-1884 which all was published in 2014 in the same covers. In English the tile means something like "ancient relics from Finnic people's regions." It is my book and I read it in Finnish. It is translated to French in the same covers like the original books. The book included plenty drawings so it is more like a picture book. Very interesting and educative book with its A4 size 399 pages!!!

In March 2025 I've also read Kate Morton's The Lake House (in Finnish). It was published on 2016. It has over 600 pages but full of fascinating occasions. Fascinating story from Britain's countryside. I left my copy actually at The Trinity City Hotel in Dublin, Ireland where I was 22.-29.3.2025 and read this book as my journey story. I always carry a book with me when travelling.