LunaKnit

This is what I’ve been up to during the past week or so. Top row from left to right 1.        Milla was enjoying the sunshine on our balcony 2.        The flowers are starting to bloom. I love the fact that it’s almost summer-time! 3.        We were at Håkan’s 68 th birthday party. (He’s Magnus’s father.) 4.        We also met with little baby Amanda. The happiest baby ever! Second row: 1.        Sunset during our evening promenade 2.        Luna has been “helping” me with my studies… 3.        … and Otto with some cacti and aloe vera planting. 4.        I finished a pair of socks I had started a long time ago and then forgotten about. I think the color is a bit 1960’s retro. Third row: 1.        Otto is looking handsome as usual 2.        This is our new home. I love it there. 3.        Otto stole the new pullover I’ve been knitting. 4.        I’ve been gilding at work.

Oh, I just love him...

I love the fact that the summer is coming and the days are getting longer. I love the additional hours of sunlight. In addition to the extra energy it gives, it also makes taking photos easier as I hate artificial lighting. I took some new photos of my beloved Norby hat yesterday, and I wanted to add them here as they make me happy :)

It’s time for a bit of an update on my knitting projects. I usually have more than one project on my needles at any given time, as I’m the sort who gets easily bored. I also need different types of knitting for different occasions or moods. My work as a fitness instructor means I now and then have to be over-social and overly happy around the customers; at times that leaves me very drained when I get home. Luckily my husband understands this and lets me just be on my own. On those occasions I want to knit something complicated so that I can really focus all my energy on it. I just want to sit down, start to knit and put all my attention in that one thing, close the world outside me, forget about everything else. I find knitting as some kind of meditation for me. Other times I want something more straightforward and simple to knit so I can watch TV or maybe even study at the same time. I have really hard time sitting still or concentrating if my hands are idle, and I’ve found

In a previous post I mentioned that I started to knit a big blanket with an idea of knitting one square piece a month. I usually get quickly bored with my projects and have to tendency to leave them unfinished if they take too much time. I have been dreaming of a big knitted blanket to wrap around me in the cold wintertime but the idea of knitting one project for that long has been putting me off for a long while. So this year I decided to knit it in pieces, one square every month. I decided to make all the squares different so that I could have new inspiration every month. This far I’ve knit 2 bigger pieces and 2 smaller pieces (the latter being my “February piece”: I decided to make two because I ran out of yarn just 20 cm into the first one and couldn’t get the same shade of grey anymore. So I knit another smaller piece to make up for the missed length.) The only restriction I gave myself was the color scheme: I’m using only different shades of white, grey and black,

The instructions for this are coming soon!

I first thought I would just post a couple of photos of me from the past days, but then I realised I'm wearing a few of my favourite knits in all of them. So I decided to show you the knits I've worn the most. I already mentioned earlier that my favourite socks are definitely my Linesx3 and Phloem socks, so this time I will show more of hats and pullovers. The photo above is not the best quality, but I'm wearing my Bough cap in it. It's such a cute hat and I love wearing it, it makes me happy every time. This is what I'm wearing today. The pullover is from my pre-Ravelry-time and something I made up as I knit. The socks are my Rumpelstiltskin socks .  Another pullover that has been in frequent use is my Papillon . I knit it with cotton yarn so I love the smoothness of it against my skin. The colour is also wonderfully peaceful. My favourite pullover for lounging around the house is definitely my Skagen . It just so amazingly soft and war

I had such a lazy Sunday. I forgot to stretch after my Saturday jogging and my legs were killing me. I tried to go for a walk to get the muscles to warm up and loosen a bit, but it actually made it all worse. So I spent most of the day knitting and watching Homeland on Netflix. At the moment I'm knitting the Pine Bough Cowl by Dianna Walla (on Ravelry). I'm using 4.0 mm needles and knitting with Drops Karisma in shade 37 (dark grey blue) and 52 (dark mustard). Oh, and the pink socks that I have on in the photo above are my Linesx3 socks . I absolutely love them, and I wear them (or my Phloem socks ) all the time.

I love everything about this shawl. The colour, the size, the drape, the way you can pull the ribbing around your neck and chin like a cowl. The only minus I can come up with is the fact that it is almost too warm to use it before next fall... haha. The pattern was surprisingly easy even though it looks much more complicates. There were many short rows so if you are not comfortable with those, I recommend you practise them before starting with this project. The way the pattern was written felt a bit unusual to me, but it was still very clear and easy to follow. I hope you like my Lin-Lin Shawl as much as I do!   

Brownies are one of my all-time favorite desserts. They are delicious, super-easy to make, almost impossible to screw and their taste gets even better when refrigerated for a day or two, so you can make  large enough batch to last the rest of the week and not worry about having to eat it all the same night. You could but you don't have  to :) Brownies are also a good dessert option if you have guests coming over as you can prepare them day or two beforehand. I have never met a person who wouldn't enjoy them, and this is an especially good recipe because I have reduced the amount of sugar compared to many other I've tried. S they are very chocolate-y without being overly sugary.    I don’t know why I haven’t tried making brownies once after quitting wheat as I thought before starting that substituting the wheat flour would not really affect their consistency as much as some other baked goods. These brownies worked out amazingly. You wouldn’t even know they a

 The books I've read so far this year. In the past years I've been a lazy reader. The decline of my reading habit coincided when I bought my first iPhone and iPad. The books I used to read before bedtime were swapped to mindless surfing around the internet and Pinterest. I don't usually make New Year's resolutions, but this year I made a conscious decision that the iPad is not allowed to our bedroom in the evenings. I also made a pact with myself to turn off all the electrical devices (tv, Playstation, computer...) at least half an hour before I went to sleep and rather read a book instead. My dad has always read a lot and ever since I was young he has been encouraging me to read as well. I read many of the classics in my teens (the works of Isaac Asimov,  The three musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, George Orwell's 1984, to name a few) and my father still has the habit of recommending books for me to read. We often share what we have been reading

This is a project I started already at least 3 years ago, but never finished it until yesterday. Around that time we moved to Vaasa and the blanket squares were stuffed away into a moving box and then forgotten. Until we moved again and I found them. So I now finally finished it.  I remember I was going to make the blanket bigger, I was going to make 5 squares of each pattern, but I only made the 5 ready of two of the patterns, 4 of third kind, and only two of the last pattern. But I decided 16 squares would have to do, as I can't remember where I found the instructions for the blanket and I didn't have enough yarn left. I can't really tell you anything else about the blanket as I can't remember the needle sizes or the yarns I used either... I sewed the squares together and I happened to find a small ball of the lightest purple yarn among my stash of leftover yarns. I used it to crochet an edging for the blanket. I'm really happy about the resul

Usually when I heat the oven I try to come up with as many things to put in as I can. I think it's waste of electricity to heat it up for just 15 minutes to make the bread rolls so I decided to make some cookies as well. (Always good to have an excuse to bake cookies, saving electricity is as good as any!) However since it's not weekend and my official baking day, I wanted to make a bit healthier, low-fat, no added sugar version of chocolate chip cookies. I hope you enjoy them! Greek yoghurt chocolate chip cookies Makes 12-15 2.5 dl (1 cup) organic corn meal 2.5 dl (1 cup) organic almond flour 1 tsp salt 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp vanilla (I like using organic bourbon vanilla powder by Urtekram) (2 tsp stevia powder) 250 g (9 oz.) organic Greek yoghurt 1 egg 200 g (7 oz.) dark chocolate chips (I love big chunks of chocolate in my cookies so I usually make my own by chopping a chocolate bar into pieces) Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (390 F). Mix