I've had grand ambitions about all sorts of things that I want to write about (Rufus! VegFest! Spring walks in Helsinki! More vegan baking!) but have directed too much of my energy elsewhere to have any left for blogging. Luckily I have perfected the quick-and-dirty-version of cooking and cleaning -surely I can adapt the same principles to writing...

The socks are done! Have been for a while now. 

Yarn: Zitron Trekking Pro Natura, dyed by me using KoolAid (success!)

Pattern: I picked the stitch pattern from Pieni suuri neulekirja (orig. Knitting Stitches: over 300 contemporary and traditional stitch patterns) by Mary Webb. Otherwise this is my basic sock - 72 sts, short-row heel and all that jazz.

Speaking of quick-and-dirty cooking...

Some of our guests probably think that all I ever eat is salads, because I serve them so often. This one's one of my favourites: tasty, healthy, filling and ready in 20 minutes. The recipe is from Viiden tähden vegaani.

Because I somehow felt too busy/tired to write last week, I also missed my blog's anniversary. Yep, I've been writing here for a year now!

I've received prizes from other people's giveaways, but have never hosted one myself. This occasion seemed like the perfect excuse to have one, especially since I have the perfect prize:

It's fingering weight sock yarn (60% wool, 20% bamboo, 20% silk) from Handu. She's a fantastic Finnish dyer and co-author of the book Neulekirja. I've used her other yarns before (most recently in one of the stockinette socks), but this skein I got as a mistake. It's still very pretty, though, and should make some knitter very happy.

So here's the deal. I've learned that in the knitting community nothing draws out people like free yarn, and I'm shamelessly going to take advantage of this fact now.

Posterous has some kind of page-hit statistics, and although the numbers are fairly small, I'm guessing they can't all be from M (or our cat-loving friend ;) but have not entirely ruled out the possibility of Posterous reporting some ghost readers. Therefore: comments needed!

Place a comment for a chance to win the yarn. I'm going to randomly pick one winner on June 1st. You do not need to be in Finland/Europe to be eligible.

Please mention in your comment if you're not a knitter (alternative prize needed) or are vegan/strict vegetarian (alternative yarn needed). Other information is also welcome, such as how you found me.

(total fail in quick-and-dirty blogging, btw!)

This year, my busy April also included a trip!

My Travelling Sock Picture (à la Yarn Harlot). The sock is the second of the pair (first one was finished before we left).

Although I had knitting in my bag for most of the time, I actually knit very little during the trip. Most knitting was accomplished on the plane to & from Copenhagen. I also managed a few rounds while waiting in line at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. I even received a few comments from another Finnish tourist who was also a knitter. I gave her the address of the yarn store in Copenhagen I had already visited. Speaking of which...

The store is called Sommerfuglen, you can see it behind the water fountain. It's not the only yarn store in the city, but I've understood it is the best. I didn't buy very much since a lot of the US import brands would be cheaper for me in Finland, because of the current Danish Krone-Euro -exchange rate. But it was the first time I saw Namaste bags in person. I have one I bought online and was seriously tempted to get a different one.

That's pretty much all the knitting-related stuff about our trip. But I have some excellent restaurants to recommend!

For starters: I got all my information about where to get vegan food in Copenhagen from HappyCow. It has always served me well. If I went travelling in Finland I would also check the restaurant reviews from Animalia's website.

Firefly

Homepage here

We went here on the first night, rather exhausted from a day of travel. It's all-vegan and pretty near some of the other places we ate at. The place looks rather trendy which I always find scary, but the staff was friendly. At least on a weekday night, other customers seemed to be tourists as well.

The dinner was excellent -too pricey to be eaten every week but a perfect beginning to our vacation. I especially loved the desserts:

I had raspberry cheesecake (the "cheese" made from cashews), the BF ate buckthorn berry sorbet. I loved the cake so much that we actually went back to Firefly another day, just for desserts.

Green Sushi

Homepage here (we only visited the restaurant on Gronnegade)

There aren't that many places in Helsinki where you can get good vegan sushi, so in Copenhagen this restarant was a must. It isn't all-vegan, but had a decent selection and vegan items were clearly marked on the menu.

I had the 11-piece vegan set for lunch. Yummy! Very reasonably priced too. We came back another day for dinner and weren't disappointed then either.

Naturbageriet

Homepage here

As the name suggests, this is a bakery. It's pretty small but located near the Firely and Kalaset (see below) restaurants and had good vegan carrot cake :)

Kalaset

Info here

Very laid-back, nearly packed on a Saturday afternoon. Not all-vegan (or even all-vegetarian) but again, everything was clearly marked on the menu. I had the vegan burger:

The (homemade) ketchup was like a revelation and the burger plenty big. Also: good beer!

SimpleRaw

Homepage here

All-raw, all-vegan, small place with a very Scandinavian decor. Menu was only in Danish but the waitress offered help (and I still remember some Swedish). We shared a meze-plate that had small portions of everything (pretty good, especially the lentil steak) but were too full to try the desserts. They looked delicious, though.

Finally, I have to mention Kokkeriet. It was recommended to us by a vegetarian couple, yet it's by no means a vegetarian restaurant. I have no idea how they got the idea to eat there. However, I can testify that if you notify the restaurant ahead of time, they can prepare a vegan menu that is well-thought-out and definitely suitable for special occasion dinners.

The end of April is always a busy time for me, and this year it's even more so. Luckily it's mostly the fun kind of busy :)

It's not really a celebration without flowers...

...or cake. This is only one of three cakes and the one made by me. The recipe is from a Finnish vegan cookbook (Puputytön juhlakirja). My mother made a vegan strawberry cake (from a recipe in Puputyttö ja vohvelisankari) that was absolutely delicious as well.

But I have been knitting too! Mostly socks. Maybe my sock mojo is really back this time?

Pattern: none, except for the heel. I inserted an afterthought heel to my basic sock using Lala's sock pattern (ravelry pattern page here and video tutorial here). I don't think I'll be doing it again very soon -it requires kitchener stitch and is more fiddly than my usual short-row heel (that I learned from cosmicpluto's tutorial years ago). But I'm happy that I tried it, and now I have perfectly stripy socks :)

Yarn: Baby Boom by Fiesta Yarns, colourway "spring chill". I bought the skein from another raveller two(?) years ago. It's not a self-striping yarn, so I was really amazed at the pretty even stripes. That's why I tried the afterthought heel -I didn't want the stripe sequence to get messed up.

Thoughts: They are very pretty and soft, but why do I have so many blue(ish) socks? I now have seven pairs of blue/turquoise socks. And more are on the way:

This sock has many firsts for me -first time I tried dying yarn myself, first time picking a stitch from a stitch dictionary, first time using such a skinny yarn (420m/100g) successfully for socks...You can tell that these are going to be extra-special.

It seems that there are still a few things I can do very fast, once I set my mind to it: reading, and socks.

Even after ripping out two UFOs, my knitting basket has been overflowing. Although I'e always been a multi-project knitter, this still annoys me somewhat. It means that I can knit for hours on various things and still see very little process. It certainly doesn't help that I had a large-ish shawl in progress. 

So I got an itch to knit socks. Simple, stockinette socks; for the past year pretty much all patterned socks have ended up in the UFO pile.

Pattern: None. CO 72 sts, 2x2 ribbing for 16 rnds, short-row heel. 

Yarn: Handu MCN sock, colourway "onnen oikotiellä". Bought at the same time as the yarn for my beret-turned-cowl.

I started the socks on last Wednesday and finished them on Monday. For me, a pair of socks in 6 days is pretty phenomenal. We did have a long weekend in there, sure, but that also meant cooking, cleaning and travelling.

They are incredibly soft, reasonably lightweight, and might actually still be useful before the summer.

I had just finished the socks and blocked them when I got another idea: download the free sample of The Hunger Games. 

I'm pretty sure I only heard of The Hunger Games this winter, and mostly through Twitter. Then, when the movie premiere approached, I saw it mentioned in papers. The first plot descriptions I read did not make the whole thing very tempting, and in retrospect some were just misleading. Then of course the film reviews started pouring in, and the BF expressed interest in going to see it. I decided to give the book a try.

Now, I did read it in a day. But that's not very uncommon in my case, and does not automatically mean high praise. Although lately my reading has mostly consisted of individual articles or random chapters from books that might be useful for my thesis, when I do read for pleasure, 12-hour marathons are my forte. The Help took 24 hours, most Dorothy Sayers books the same. And I read three Connie Willis' novels in a week. In the end I liked all of them more than The Hunger Games, although I have to admit the book isn't without some merits, either.

Hunger Games is fast-paced yet still has a relatively well-structured plot. The heroine is an interesting character. The writing is at times surprisingly vivid and the struggle for survival portrayed well: it is convincing but not too gory.The violence was what initially perplexed me -a YA  book about teenagers killing each other?- but is is as a whole handled in a way that suits the tone. Being aimed at teens, the book is also a very easy read and requires very little effort from an adult reader.

But. The story would have needed some more flesh. As it is, the world-building is very minimal (especially given the dystopic setting that provides plenty of opportunities), many characters barely more than their hair colour and the love triangle forced and unnecessary. My knowledge of the Twilight series is limited to half of the first book (a bad Mary Sue fanfic, if you ask me), the movie trailers and a few interviews on Conan, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone thought the love triangle would attract the teenage girl audience. 

In spite of its flaws, The Hunger Games was a pleasant surprise. The main character shows such promise that I'm willing to belive that the rest of the cast improves as well in the remaining two books. I will almost certainly end up reading them, and I'm now relatively eager to go see the movie too.

I've been suffering from startitis and consequently haven't finished very much. I have only two FOs to report, not hats! Although one of them was going to be a hat.

Seems that the photographer failed to inform me of random bits of yarn sticking out. Sigh.

Pattern: Sugared violets (Ravelry-link) by Rose Beck, from the Be Mine -collection. As I'm sure I've already mentioned, I got the pattern collection as a prize, but had I paid for it, it totally would have been worth the money. Way too often do I buy knitting books and hardly knit any patterns from them, while from this I've now knit three out of five. This collection was probably perfect for me because the pattern are quite simple -as much as I admire complicated lace shawls, easy ones like these are really what I want to knit.

Yarn: Malabrigo Rios, colourway "zarzamora", two skeins. I had to leave out the lace edge and still I ran out of yarn. I finished the bind off with Dream in Color Classy leftovers.

This scarf is supersoft and warm, but I actually already put it away for the summer (and then, we got snow. I might have been too eager with this). This next one, on the other hand, I haven't gotten a chance to wear yet:

Pattern: Reverie Beret from Knitty. But why is it not a beret, you ask? Well...

Usually, if I'm using fingering-weight yarn for a hat, I cast on 148-156 stitches for the brim. In the Reverie pattern the cast on number is 112. "Ridiculous!" I thought. "I've knit so many hats by now that I know what to do. I just cast on 156 and follow the pattern from there."

What I missed here is that usually I CO 156 sts in rib, and then continue in stockinette. The Reverie pattern includes yarn overs, lots of them. The gauge is completely different. I had 208 stitches after the increase round, which might have been fine for a stockinette beret, but not for this. When I finally tried it on, it was huge. Like You-Could-Hide-A-Sombrero-In-There huge.

Before I could despair, I realized that it might make a nice cowl-thing for the spring (also, I don't like ripping. Who does?). So I continued to knit with the 208 stitches until the whole thing was about 14cm, and then increased 1 stitch in every pattern repeat. Once it seemed that I was running out of yarn, I knit ribbing for a few rounds. Success!

I'm planning to wear it like this:

The combination of a turtleneck pullover with a lace cowl is rather jarring, but maybe with a yellow t-shirt in air conditioned places? Hmm...

Oh, and the yarn is merino sock yarn from Handu that I bought about two years ago. The cowl used the whole skein.

It snowed here last night. Yes, snowed. Seeing it in the morning (before I've even had my coffee) was like a slap in the face.

So I played a bit with snapseed. We went to the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden on Saturday, and also have flowers at home, so I had a lot of material.

This is for all the spring dreamers out there. One day the winter will end.

I must warn you: this entry has no knitting content whatsoever. Although the subject (tofu) is treated with the same amount of enthusiasm as a sock knitter feels after discovering Judy's magic cast on.

What is tofu? The really short answer: tofu is made from soy. There are a few steps in the process, but soy beans are the original source.

In Finnish you may also come across the term soijajuusto, "soy cheese". In spite of this translation, tofu is not really a replacement for cheese (there are other products for that), but an alternative for meat.

There are two varieties of tofu sold generally, firm and soft (also called "silken"). The brand I use a lot is the Finnish Soya (homepage here). They sell both unseasoned and seasoned firm tofu, plus silken tofu with the name pehmeä - mjuk tofu. 

Tofu is widely available at least where I live. Even Alepa usually has some, with larger supermarkets carrying multiple varieties and brands. Check near the cheese section.

Firm tofu has a significant amount of protein (about 16g/100g) and not too much fat (8-10g). Silken tofu has less protein (6-8g), so I tend not to use it as the main ingredient in my cooking.

Tofu by itself is pretty tasteless, but can with seasoning be adapted almost endlessly. The firm variety I mostly use fried, in savoury dishes. Silken tofu is good in pie fillings, sauces and even in baking -I've used it in chocolate pancakes, for example.

Here are a few examples of how I use tofu:

This picture was taken around Christmas, in case you can't guess from all the red. It's spaghetti with tofu in sesame sauce, made from a recipe in Puputytön juhlakirja (Finnish vegan cook book) that has become a household staple.

(A fun fact that surprises most people: sesame seeds have a high amount of calcium. 100g has 975mg, more than the adult's recommended daily intake (600mg*). Of course one doesn't eat 100g in one meal, but I use small amounts here and there, and bigger quantities occasionally -like in the sesame sauce.)

This is Satay Tofu with a bulgur salad. The Satay, or peanut, "sauce" (this one's pretty thick) is my own version. The bulgur salad is based on a recipe in Viiden tähden vegaani (another Finnish book), but I substituted couscous with bulgur (which also adds protein and fiber to the meal).

Finally, an example of my typical weekend breakfast. The basic idea is just that, basic -fry some tofu, add some vegetables our whatever's in the fridge, season, and eat. My favourite version is probably frozen peas, onion and corn. The picture shows tofu and left-over peas and tomatoes, with nutritional yeast sprinkled on top. (That, by the way, is one of the vegan substitutes for cheese. See wikipedia article here or a vegan blogger's post here. In Helsinki the best places to find it are Ruohonjuuri, Punnitse & Säästä, Ekolo and general health food stores.)

As you can see, in all of these examples the tofu has been fried. This is both fast and easy, but here are the basics:

-First dry the tofu! I generally first press it with my hands over the sink and then wrap it in kitchen paper. Once the extra moisture is out, I cut it into cubes or slices, depending on the recipe. You can also put tofu in the freezer -it changes the texture a bit but makes it even more easier to fry.

-After drying, I either fry the tofu at once or let it marinate in a sauce for a while.

-If you're frying just the tofu, use a hot pan. The tofu should get a nice golden colour.

For more recipes, my two favourite sources have already been mentioned - Viiden tähden vegaani and Puputytön juhlakirja. There's also one focused exclusively on tofu: Tofukeittokirja by Marianne Kiskola and Sanna Miettunen. I rarely use English-language sources nowadays, but Vegan Yum Yum has pretty good recipes in the archives. In Finnish my fave is Chocochili. Other vegan blogs are for example Pidempi korsi and kasvis.fi.

*Kasvisruutukokki (WSOY 2003), page 30.

I have as many as three FOs to show you today! I know I wanted to write about all three at once, but since one of them was a gift for someone who might be reading this, I had to wait until the 21st :)

Let's start with the gifted item - a hat! In fact, they're all hats. Again.*

Yarn: handspun from Villavyyhti. The skeins are unique, so you won't find the same stuff behind that link, but truly, they're all awesome.

This one's really all about the yarn. Actually, since the recipient is a knitter, I could have just given her the yarn, but I really wanted to knit with it myself. What can I say, I love handspun.

Pattern: None. I guessed how many stitches I might need, knit a garter band, then switched to stockinette. After one false start at knit night I got closer to the right head size with 110 sts on 3mm needles. 

This next one took f o r e v e r. Many people have probably already seen it, since I took it to various knit nights in February and beginning of March.

Out of approx. 30 pictures THIS was the best one. Sigh. 

Pattern: Wild is the Wind by Lee Meredith (available for purchase via Ravelry). The designer was interviewed on Stash & Burn in February and inspired by that, I cast on the hat while listening to the show**. It's one of those no-gauge patterns, i.e the pattern provides the formula but you have to do some math to calculate the necessary stitch numbers. This one was not my no. 1 favourite -some directions could have been clearer, and although I do now love the pointy top, I was following the directions for a non-pointy one. Also, I continue to be unwilling to knit any sort of vertical bands, and just did a 1x1 twisted rib instead.

Yarn: Madelinetosh Tosh merino light in "calligraphy". Obviously, my choice of light fingering weight yarn might not have been optimal for this pattern. At least it certainly explains why this took so long -my gauge was 32sts to 10cm.

This one I call The Cupcake Hat. As a knit object it's hardly anything special, but it does mark the beginning of a new era. It's the first baby-anything I've ever knit (NO, not for me***).

Me and the BF's age difference is just big enough to mean that as my friends are now graduating from university, his friends are getting married and having children. This hat was, I imagine, only the first of many baby presents to come.

The yarn is Katia Cotton Comfort -great stuff, actually suitable for (vegan) summer socks, so naturally it's discontinued. Boo.

* I've been re-reading 52 weeks, 52 Hats, which certainly does nothing to limit this hat addiction. 

** Stash & Burn really deserves it's own post. If you understad enough English to read this and are interested in knitting, please go listen to their episodes.

*** I always suppose a blogger is pregnant when they show baby knits, so just wanted to make it clear that it's not the case here.

Pattern: Hitchhiker by Martina Behm

Yarn: Handspun by Friday Studios + Frog Tree Pediboo in Lime

A sleeve being knit in Cascade 220, colourway Citron (8910)

Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Cotton in Lemongrass (607)

Our new table runner :P

Good morning all! Today has started with sunshine, coffee and the new Knitty. Not too shabby for a weekday morning.

I'm not really too keen on massive spring cleaning, but I have to admit that the increasing amount of sunshine does make me rather more aware of dust in random places. Like for example our bookshelves. Although I do not buy as much fiction books as I used to, knitting books and magazines take a lot of space as well. And when you add to this the 20-odd library books I have lying around for studying purposes...

My knitting library isn't huge, in my opinion (and the curious can check my library through my Ravelry profile -I keep it up to date), and yet I've realized that I still could manage with far less books. In fact, if I had a really limited amount of space, I could manage with 6 books:

1. Knitting without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmermann

This one really has been invaluable. I've used her sweater patterns with most of the garments I've made, even when I've technically been knitting someone else's pattern. Nor does the book take much space, as it's a pretty slim (but large) paperback.

2. Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush

Although I own more sock books than any other type of knitting books, I find myself using the same few over and over again. I've knit some of the patterns in Vintage Socks just as-is, and used stitch patterns from others to adapt to my taste. I also love the history section and the feeling of a long tradition the book evokes. The physical book is rather heavy but it's also spiral-bound. That means that it stays open, which makes it easy to check directions while knitting.

3. Weekend Hats by Cecily Glowik MacDonald and Melissa LaBarre

I've already written at length about this book, and yes, it does have it faults. Yet I have used it and continue to use it. It's not very expensive, does not weigh too much or take too much space. Definitely a keeper.

Althiugh books 1 & 2 also provide enjoyable and useful reading material, I would still categorize them as pattern books (and no. 3 as solely a pattern book). The rest of the books are on the list because of the reading experience -while I might make some of the patterns, they aren't really the point. These are the books I read when it's so hot I can't knit, but want to read about knitting.

4. Knitter's Almanac by Elizabeth Zimmermann

What could I say that hasn't been said already? If you haven't read it, please do so at once. I own the small paperback edition, which makes the book perfect take-along reading, but there is also a more recent hardback edition with colour photographs.

5. The Knitting Rules by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Although I like the other Yarn Harlot books as well, this one's really my favourite. It is both useful and fun, again presented in a handy paperback form.

6. The Gentle Art of Knitting by Jane Brocket

I came across Brocket's earlier book The Gentle Art of Domesticity at the library about two years ago, and have since borrowed it more than once. I started reading her blog (http://yarnstorm.blogs.com/) and naturally found out about the knitting book that she was writing. I bought The Gentle Art of Knitting from the Waterstone's in Amsterdam when we went there on vacation last spring. Although the book does have patterns, Brocket also writes about inspiration and colour and personal memories, so that the patterns do not really feel like the main point. The majority of them are very simple and if I ever knit any of them, I think they are more to be used as inspiration than strict step-by-step instructions. I'm pretty sure the writer would approve. As a physical object, the book is very quaint and large enough to serve as a coffeetable book.