sunnuntaina, maaliskuuta 20, 2016

Ye olde yarnshoppe

Time to talk about yarnshops!

Considering Tampere is the second biggest city in Finland, it's not that surprising that there is quite a few yarnshops available in addition to the yarnsections in department stores like Sokos and Anttila. The two I tend to favor are Lankaidea and Lankamaailma.

My latest purchase from Lankaidea
3 balls of Schachenmayr Catania which is 100% cotton 
Lankaidea (Yarn idea) is an independent yarnstore which I thought had quit, since it closed its store in the city centre some time ago, but luckily I was wrong. It's back on the same street but on a different end. The owner often seems a bit tired and stressed at first glance (which I'm not surprised at, it seems she's the only one working there and being an entrepreneur isn't easy), but she's really kind, helpful and chatty once you start talking to her. There is plenty of the more regular yarns (Schachenmayr, Drops etc) but also some of the rarer kinds of yarns.

Lankamaailma (Yarnworld) is actually a chain, and they have stores in Oulu (my hometown, yay), Turku and Helsinki in addition to the one here in Tampere. It's not in the city centre, but its quite easy to get to by buss which goes from the central square roughly about every 10minutes. This one has less of the rarer kind of yarnbrands, but it still offers a lot of variety to those who are bored with Novita (which is probably the most commonly used yarn in Finland, since it's very easily available in larger supermarkets and department stores)

The other two yarnshops I know of here are Kerä and Merletto. I've only been to Kerä (Ball [of yarn]) twice. The first time was when they were in another location in the city, and the second time was just this week. So far I can't say that I particularly dislike Kerä, but I do feel like there are other yarnshops I like better. Based on their web page and online store they have more of the rarer kinds of yarn (at least the type I rarely see). Merletto has a good selection of yarn, too, but I'm not particularly fond of it, since the personnel seem to be a bit... well, not unfriendly, but I feel like they're almost bored or less-than-happy to be there and I rarely get a smile out of them. Customer service is an essential part of my job, so that means a lot to me.

I also got to go to Titityy in Jyväskylä this Friday while finally going to say Hi to a friend of mine. I actually wasn't aware of this shop until recently, though it's not really suprising since I'd never proprely visited Jyväskylä. But I heard that they're having a knitting festival this summer (mid July) with quite a lot of handicrafts courses. I bought a ticket to a course by Veera Välimäki from their online store and I'm quite excited to be going! I imagine it might be just about the first day I get to myself after I've had my baby and to spend it learning more about shawl making from Veera Välimäki sounds just heavenly! I also ordered some yarn from them last week, which arrived on Tuesday.

The visit to Titityy was lovely. The building in itself was so gorgeous, because it was an old wooden house surrounded by other old wooden houses. My guess is that the buildings have been a family home, with cows and lambs and separate buildings for the maids and farmworkers and so on, until the early 20th century. One of these buildings had been converted into the yarnstore, and it really was lovely. I can think of no other word for it. I was also impressed with the variety of yarn they had, since most of them were the type I have rarely seen in other stores. The staff were really friendly and helpful, and I really feel like I could sometimes go to Jyväskylä just because of that shop.

I've also visited a few yarnstores in other countries as well, but I think I'll save those for another post with pictures of what I've made with yarns bought from them.

How's the diet? Oh gawd, don't even ask... I bought some Novita-yarn on tuesday, then I've visited Kerä and Titityy, so I've bought 1kg of yarn this week alone. Will be working hard to get back to "shape" as of right now...

sunnuntaina, maaliskuuta 13, 2016

The stash

The start of a new year is often the time people start new big projects, and I make no exception to that. I tend not to make any big official promises, but I do usually do some inventories of things that I hoard - tea, yarn, cosmetics...

So, the crazy person that I am, I wanted to see how much yarn I actually have in my stash even though I was scared that the end result would be horrific. It was and it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be. I had less yarn (in terms of weight) that my worst-case-scenario-thought was, but then I took it a step further and made a rough estimate on how much money was attatched to my stash. That almost made me faint.

Result: almost 6,7kg of yarn which cost me around 276€.

And I wasn't able to count the whole worth of the stash (probably a good thing), since some of the yarn is actually old enough that it's not in production anymore and I can't remember what one skein of it had cost me.

But it really was a good thing that I did the inventory. First off, looking at the list of yarn, and how much I have, helps me to cut back on buying any more yarn before I've spent some of the old out of the way. I do need to figure out some sort of a deal with myself on how much yarn I need to spend before getting anything new, but at least I haven't bought anything new since doing the inventory.

The second "good" thing was that it kicked me into storing them with more care. Because I found insects in there. Nothing big, not a hellish invasion, but still. And since there is quite a lot of money invested in the stash, it would really be stupid not to take better care of it.

Knitted ombre beanie, made with
Novita 7brothers yarn from the stash
Before, I had the skeins in an Ikea box (around 32cm x 37cm x 32cm) just mish-mashed and bundled up, with the box overflowing. Because of the small invasion in the stash, I bagged the yarns so that the same yarns (for example all of my Novita 7brothers-yarn) was in the same airtight bags and threw as much of the bags in the freezer as I could fit for one week. After a week I switched the bags to unfreezed ones.

From now on the yarn will stay in those bags and any new yarn will be stored in bags as well
. In case some hardcore insects survive, they won't be able to spread to other bags and ruin more than one bag of yarn and more than likely any new yarn I buy won't be infested. I might also consider freezing all new yarn before I mix them up with my existing stash.

For the preemie babies
Ideally I think it would be a good thing to have a stash that weighs less than 3kg, so that's what I'll be aiming for. I don't have any goal as to when my stash should reach this goal, but a goal is still a goal. I might also add this as a permanent part of my knitting/handicrafts updates in the form of a question dreaded by most women: "How's the diet?"

So, how's the diet? Last week the situation was just a bit over 100g on the plus side because of the yarn I bought before my inventory project. But then this week came and I slipped up a bit. At the start of the week I heard about small crochet toys for preemie babies that help them lay off the tubes and wires that hook them up on essential, helpful machinery and the slip-up started by getting a new crochet hook from Lankaidea-yarnstore. It felt silly to just buy a crochet hook, so naturally I looked for some yarn too (for the toys, but still), and I ended up buying three balls of Schachenmayr Catania cotton yarn. Lovely colours and just 150g all together, but still.

I also did my first online purchases, because I have been wanting to knit a shawl for myself for a while now and wanting to use some less-basic yarn for it. So first I bought my first not-for-free pattern on Ravelry and also some yarn from an online shop (they do have a physical yarnstore, too, but it's in Jyväskylä). I have been very sceptical about buying yarn online so far, because I'm really more of a need-to-touch-before-I-buy-type of a yarn shopper. But the yarn I bought is 100% superwash merino, so I think I'm quite safe with that.

So far I've used stash-yarn for a pair of socks and a beanie hat, which took a total of about 150g of yarn, and I've also almost used up the Catania cotton yarn (I think I have about 15g left) so that leaves my yarn diet situation to around 400g on the plus side.

sunnuntaina, maaliskuuta 06, 2016

Time to dust this blog out.

It's been quite close to two years since my last post, and I don't expect anyone to still check up on this blog. Probably didn't have too many readers back then either. But this past week I've been watching podcasts from other knitters and find myself wondering if I could maybe, possibly, do that myself one of these days. Then I realised that I might want to start by kicking this blog back to life first, see where that goes (and how that goes) and then, after some time, take the podcast option into serious consideration.

So maybe, as a dusting off type of thing, I might start by introducing myself and laying out some plans on how I dream I'd start this blog off... ...again.

I'm a 29-year-old handicrafts enthusiast, who lives in Tampere, Finland. I'm originally from Oulu, where most of my relatives still live. We do have some off-shoots in Sweden and Tuusula/Järvenpää-area (close to Helsinki), and I guess I'm one of those off-shoots since I've left Oulu, too, and have no immediate plans to return.

I don't really remember a time when I couldn't knit, even though my obsession picked up around the time I was in sixth form/high school. I'm very interested in all kinds of handicrafts, but knitting and crocheting are the only two things that have stayed in the picture steadily, whereas sewing, embroidery and other types of handicrafts tend to come and go and come again.

I'm currently engaged, and we are planning to get hitched at the end of September this year. We've been together for over 7,5years now (8year anniversary is in June), and we're expecting a new addition in the form of a baby to our lives in early May.

I'm also a self-confessed geek, so I will surely be posting about books, movies and other series that catch my fancy as well as knitting.

My intention is to post about handicrafts-related things every Sunday, and other topics will be covered on a more random timetable i.e. when I finish reading a book, or something else feels like a topic I want to share or discuss.

That's about it for now, we'll wait and see what I come up with.