Sauna romance

Ok, so I've been away for a while. Life, as usual, interfering with my personal life. Time now for a bit more extensive update, I hope. So, what have I been up to on the knitting front the past few months. Well, I ran into an interesting book, Unelmien silmukat, by Pirjo Iivonen, and as it was out-of-stock wherever I looked online, I ended up buying it in a local book store. Not the cheapest way, I must say, but, well, I got what I wanted. There are some really fascinating socks in that book, many technique must-do's. So far, I've knitted two, and I think the book would have needed a little bit more proof-reading/knitting but as Finnish sock instructions traditionally tend to be of type "knit cuff desired length, then heel, after that knit foot until long enough and finish sock the usual way", well this book has come pretty far from that tradition! I started out making these for myself!

The yarn used is Hot Socks Neon, which I got from my secret knitting friend LeenaS last spring. Did end up struggling a bit over the pattern / made my own solutions. Love the result.   When I showed the book to my Mom, she immediately spotted what was to be my second project from this book. A pair of Romanssi i.e. Romance, for one of her friends. I took the sock pictures in the sauna by the way, hence the title of this post. These look fantastic on the foot, but as my foot is too small for these, no pics of that :-(.

I got a pic of the book too. Not in the sauna, though...  

 

Yarn used Drops Fabel, one of the few decent ways to find a uni-color (in this case close-to unicolor) sock yarn at my local yarn store. Size 40+, needed a bit more than one skein.

 

But now the socks will have to take a short break, right now DD's hands are too big for last year's mittens, so I'm giving these a try:

 

As she's not around this weekend I don't know about the size, I sure hope I got it right! Love the yarn colors anyway. Bought these when Stockmann apparently once again stopped selling yarns, bright-colored Novita Nalle was all that was left. Prize tag says €1.40 but I got my skeins for €0.70. I think the sales person made a mistake there, the sign said 50% but the tags already had the discount prize on them... I did not want to draw attention to this, but yes, I wish I had gone back and bought them all...

 

Also, as I found yet another colleague of the freezing type, I'm knitting a pair of simple, discrete wrist warmers. Would have chosen an even darker gray had I had one, but this will do. 

My family will be heading this way any hour now, putting an end to my weekend of silent rest (not that silent as the cough that made me stay behind has gotten pretty loud at times). I think I should put my last hour into the mittens, as they require a certain amount of concentration that is not always possible to achieve with the family in the house...