LunaKnit

The baby is doing fine and growing every day - or at least my belly is! He has started to kick and I'm a bit terrified how active he seems to be, I sure hope he calms down when he gets bigger, because I don't want to turn into a human punching bag. If there's any truth in the old wives' tales about predicting the baby's sex by the heart rate  he might actually be a she - but for now I'm just trying to think of him as a baby without any gender and knit unisex baby clothes in gender-neutral colors. Starting to knit stuff for the baby has been like opening the Pandora's box for me: once I started I can't seem to stop! The funny thing is that I used to be a notoriously selfish knitter but now I don't seem to have time or inspiration to make anything for myself. I'm just so overwhelmed by all the great patterns to knit, all the lovely shades of yarn to use and how fast the tiny socks and hats knit up - and how super cute the little baby clothes

It's a while since the last time I posted  a recipe on this blog! It's not like I haven't baked anything, but it's usually been so late at night that taking decent photos has been impossible and by the time it has been light again everything has been, well if not gone, at least half eaten... This recipe started out as a classic French Tarte Tatin but it has been modified quite a few times, first by my grandmother and then by me. The recipe is copied from some old cook book with handwritten notes by my grandma so it's very precious to me. Today I will share it with you. Tarte Tatin is originally an upside down apple tart, but I've noticed it's hard to get the crust right with gluten and wheat free flour. It just doesn't want to stay in one piece so that you could neatly lift it on top of the filling without it crumbling to pieces. So I've modified the cake to be baked right-side up, i.e. the crust is in the bottom and the filling comes in t

Lately I’ve written about trying to get rid of all the unnecessary stuff filling our closet (read about it here and here ). I ended up recycling about half my clothes and for the first time I could actually even part with pieces that I knitted myself. They have held a sentimental value to me – there’s something about spending hours and hours creating something that makes the pieces more than just mere clothes – that has stopped me from throwing them away, even if I never used them and all they did was take up space in my closet. Why some pieces become instant favorites and others are left unused is a bit of a mystery to me. When you buy a piece of clothing in the store you see immediately how it fits, how the fabric drapes and how it really looks like. But when you choose a pattern to knit, all of this is left to be seen. Sometimes I have picked a beautiful pattern and carefully chosen the yarn and the color to match, but the end result is nothing like I imagined in my head. Even

Walnut Pattern: Walnut Snoo d by  Kyoko Nakayoshi Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Andes #9015 gray Needles: 6.0mm

It started with my wardrobe but I just couldn't stop there. The more I looked the more I found stuff we didn't use or need. It started to irritate me and little by little I begun to go through all our cupboards and closets and to empty them from all the clutter. We moved here over a year ago, and we still have boxes that haven't been opened even once after the move. It made me wonder if I would ever use those things again in my life. So why not recycle them? I keep wondering one thing: I try to buy groceries and such that are ecologically produced or at least fair trade (preferably both) even though they would cost double the money. We try to minimize our household waste by only buying what we eat and trying to use even the leftovers, and I'm glad to tell you that we throw very little food away compared to the nationwide average (in Finland the numbers are now sad 20-26 kg of food per person every year). We also strive to recycle our waste, save water and elect

 Example of a capsule wardrobe. Photo from Polyvore. Lately I've been really reading a lot about minimalism and the capsule wardrobe concept, and I've been really intrigued to try it myself. Because, let's be honest, I've only been using a very small percentage of my clothes on a daily basis. I have the few favorites that I use over and over again, and the rest is just taking space. There are some clothes I wear quite hesitantly just because I have to wear them because I've spent so much money on them and others I virtually never touch. So why keep it all? I will soon have to buy maternity clothes and I'm not planning to buy more than few essential pieces - I'm only going to use them for a few months so why buy a whole new garderobe? - so the capsule wardrobe mindset seems like a perfect concept to explore more closely. Too I often buy clothes thinking about how I would like to look instead of what I really wear. Or things that are r

Ever since he was just a little kitten Otto has been one of the most social cats I've ever met. He always wanted to be near people, sitting on everyone's lap or throwing himself on his back in front of you demanding you to rub his belly. He used to come to sleep on my stomach as soon as I went to bed and in the morning he was sound asleep next to my feet at the end of the bed. He wanted to be so near that it sometimes got even a bit annoying, like trying to lie down on my laptop keyboard to get my undivided attention.  He was also one of the kindest animals around, always in a good mood and never biting, scratching or acting up. He was gentle, jovial, calm and very affectionate and always so easy to handle. During the past year or so he started to change. Not overnight but the changes in his behavior and temperament were slow to happen, so that it took me a long time to even notice he had changed at all. It's also hard to say when the symptoms started as they wo

In my last post I broke the news about us having a baby in August. And although I promised not to turn this into a baby blog I'm still going to show a few photos of the stuff I have already knitted for the little one. :) In the early weeks of my pregnancy I was afraid that I would be jinxing everything if I started to knit little cardigans and rompers and baby hats before we knew everything was going like it was supposed to go. Instead I just searched, adored and saved patterns for baby clothes on Ravelry, feeling anxious to start already. Immediately after the week 12 ultrasound I gave myself permission to start knitting things for the little guy. Since we don't know for certain if he really is a boy until the end of March I've been trying to choose neutral patterns and colors (although more blueish than red - for some reasons I think it's more OK for baby girls to wear blue than for little boys to dress in pink). I've been knitting with beige and

...and if you have been following on Ravelry what I have been knitting lately, you might already guess what I'm about to say. I'm over-the-moon happy to announce that we are expecting our first baby in the early days of next August!   I've been waiting to tell you this whole time and have felt a bit (let's just be honest and not sugar-coat it) shitty keeping it from you and making excuses why I have been updating less than usual and complaining about being tired. I hope you all understand now why things have been a bit more quiet around here than usual. We were at the week 12 ultrasound scan two weeks ago and seeing the little baby kicking his feet and waving his hands was one of the most amazing feelings in my life so far. It also made the whole pregnancy more real for me: earlier I've just had to believe everything was going well and trust that me being so extremely tired and feeling queasy and kind of sea sick were signs of everything going well, now

I guess everyone has a project or two (or more than a few) somewhere just hibernating and waiting to be finished. I seem to find it really hard to pick up these projects and find the inspiration to complete them. There always seems to be a pile of knits waiting to be seamed, or weaving in all the yarn tails, or sewing the buttons... Once an unfinished project ends up in the Pile of Oblivion it is very unlikely it will ever be finished - or not in the next few years at least - and most probably will be unraveled when I need the yarn for something else. That pile is exactly where I found the front and back pieces of the Hellebore sweater lying totally forgotten. I can't even really remember when I started to knit this but it was probably in February 2013. The pattern is part of the BT Winter 13 collection and I remember starting to knit it almost immediately after it was released. It was left on hold because I ran out of yarn after I had knitted the body of the sweater and o