Midsummernights dream or a nightmare

I’ve heard the following phrase a few times: “You Finns are crazy”. It usually refers to sauna or swimming in a frozen lake or just going on like there’s nothing out of ordinary if there is a blizzard going on. Snowday? What is that, is it something that you eat? Well, I’m going to participate in something that will probably fall in to that category as well. It has yarn, a lot of knitting, a challenge and something very Finnish.

For babysocks

I decided to participate in a knitting challenge called “Kesäyön hullutus” which loosely translated as “Midsummernights Crazyness”. (If you know Finnish, you can check out the Ravelry group or the blog where I’ll also will be writing about KYH2013-challenge). In my own blog I’ll be updating probably not daily but quite often and I’ll also have a page where my progress is visible. Check for posts tagged KYH2013.

For babysocks

What’s it all about then? The main idea is quite simple. Start a knitting or crochet  work every day for 22 days from June 1st and finish them all by July 31st, or at least start 22 works between June 1st and June 22nd. You can even start all the works on the same day If you feel like it. I’m aiming for one start a day. There a two categories, socks and general, where you can also knit socks, but everything else too. A pair of socks is one work, pair of mittens is one work and so on. I’m participating in the general series and my list can be seen in Ravelry or at the page here in my blog.

My first ever Wollmeise is going to be a scarf

Now, for Finns it’s obvious why the ending day is June 22nd since that day is the Midsummer nights day this year, but for others here is a few words for explanation. Midsummer night is an important public holiday to celebrate the Midnight sun and summer in general. It is round the summer solstice, which is the day when the sun is up the longest time all year. In Helsinki where I live, it goes up on 03:54am and down 10:50pm, but in northern parts of Finland (and all the other countries that have land over the Artctic Circle) there is a long period of time when the sun does not set at all during summer time. For more info check the links.

A hat of some of this Guernsey yarn

Then back to the knitting :) I chose a list of quite small works like baby socks and a bookmark. I also am knitting for charity and some of the works will end up there. Still, it’s quite possible that all I end up with is a lot of WIP’s or UFO’s. The good thing is that I actually have only two WIP’s because I don’t have that much of needles and I don’t want to buy new ones. I also chose to knit only from my stash, because it does not fit in the space I have reserved for it.

Socks for myself and charity from Drops Fabel

There is still few days to the start and I’m so excited! Can’t wait to start, but how long will this euphoria stay on is another thing. Still, I welcome all my readers to see if I succeed or face an epic fail.