The zippers are attached!

Yes, now I have sewed in all the zippers. The first one was the worst one. The pattern is not even. So I had to sew by hand afterwards to try to fix it. I just added some stitches to it too. The patterns is nice anyway. You don't look so closely.
I gave it to Heidas' and Christophs' daughter Emelie. They came over for coffey this Sunday. And I had just in that moment finished it. This is how it looks like:

..and this is how it looks like when she is wearing it:

Then we also have Erics lopapeysa and another one that fits me. They look like this:




The last sweater I hope someone wants. I'm not sure who will get it. I could sell it. I always had this dream that I started my own store where I can sell all my stuff and sell a lot of yarn. It fits me actuallly perfectly (size small but I will give it to my friend Anna in Sweden. When she visited me I promised to make her one. I already have one (a bit to big) and I will definitely make more and more.

The Vest is finished!

Yes, now it was a while ago since I wrote something. I have been totally busy trying to find Christmas presents. It has been going slowly. Of course I also knit some gifts but I have to buy a lot too since I have 5 siblings and some of them had birthdays too. And then I also have a cute little niece . By the way my bright blue vest is finished:



It is really nice. I like the color. I wore at work yesterday. It was fun. They thought it looked nice. Some people don’t like these bright colors but I think it is really cool with strong colors. Andreas ( a Danish guy from the university) came over to us yesterday to watch a movie. He said: Oh, oopss, what a color. But he does not even like wool stuff. He would never wear a wool sweather he said. No hats, no sweathers no nothing. Here is another picture in brighter light:



Then I also started on some small projects. But it goes slowly forward. I have had a lot of activities at work lately: Christmas smorgasbord table, Christmas lunch, Christmas workshop (making Christmas decoration etc. And then Johan’s’ work had Christmas dinner. I have also been running around in stores in the evenings. And one evening I baked Lucia buns (Lussebullar in Swedish), a Swedish specialty, that you always do around Christmas and especially at Lucia (13th of December). Then I deciced to make another batch for work. So I made the dought at home and baked them out at work. My boss picked me up with the dough in a bowl. And then I also started to go to the gym three times a week in the evenings. At least 2 times a week but I aim for 3.
I started to knit a scarf, which will be a Christmas gift, in 3 threads of Plötulopi (Unspun yarn, therefore cheaper). It turns out to be very thick and warm.



Then I also made a hat. Have no picture on it yet. I will take a picture soon. No, I made 2 hats. The first one was finished for 1,5 week ago, I think. It was a new thing I tried. It turned out really soft. Almost too soft. I used one yarn in 100 % Mohair and one 3-colored yarn in 100% wool. This is the kind of hat that a baby could wear actually. I knitted with needles 7 mm. Should have used needles 6 mm. But it is ok:



Today I have to sew on the zippers for the sweaters from the last blog contribution. It will take some time. So I guess I will not have the force to do them all. It is actually my Birtday today. I’m turning 27 already. The worst thing is that I’m sick. Have a sour throat and I´m hoarse like a crow. I don’t think I’m fit for fight to go out for a dinner. We were supposed to do that tonight. But we will save it for later.
Well, last weekend I went to Álafoss (the best yarn store in Iceland). They have the largest selection of colors. I went with Lára (Icelandic girl). The thing is that when I go there I can’t hold my horses. I just have to by a lot of stuff, even if I already have too many bags of yarn at home. I always get so good ideas when I see all the colors. They have so many odd colors, which they don’t have in town. For example the bright blue one for my vest.
Now I saw a bright red one that just had to buy, really nice to do something with. So I bought yarn for a whole lopapeysa of course. It might be a brown one. Haven’t decided yet.



I also bought some other balls of yarn. A lot of Mohair and some glitter yarn. I want to knit some nice hats when I have the time for that.
Now I have to continue with my Christmas gifts. I’m going to knit a dress for my niece. I have to start tomorrow, because it is only one week left.

No, I have to start get going with my zippers now.

Ongoing projects!

At the moment I have two ongoing projects. I saw a pattern at . It's a vest. You should see it there somewhere. It's a vest in léttlopi.
I thought it would be fun to do something different for a change so I bought bright blue yarn for it. This is how it looks like so far:


And then I'm also doing a pair of socks in a multi color yarn, which Linnea (my dads' wife) sent me. They are not knitted in the usual way from the top to the toe. They are knitted back and forth from bottom to top as you can see in the picture.
It's quite cool I think.

It will take some time to finish them since I'm knitting with needles 2,5. And I'm also much more interested in finishing the vest.

Latest Icelandic Sweaters!

Now I have finally washed all three kid lopapeysur (sweaters) that I made. And I also finished my own size sweater, a white one with brown and black in it. They have just dried and it took 3 days, which I think is quite long time. Especially if you want to continue sewing in the zippers. I just took some pictures of them. Now I just need to buy the zippers too before I can start with that. IIh, that is the most boring thing to do, because it is not the easiest thing.

I like the white child sweater the most. It was made by using plötulopi (unspun yarn). It looks so nice. But it was a bit difficult to knit with that yarn because it has a tendency to break all the time until you learn how to do it. Now I’m always gentlem knitting with that. The plus with it is that it is much cheaper than lopi or läettlopi. One plate costs 250 ISK, which should be as much as one ball of lopi, which costs 350 ISK. But it depends on where you buy it. I often buy it in Hagkaup, which is more expensive than the handknitters store or Álafoss (I think one lopi ball costs 300 ISK there and maybe 200 ISK for the plate then).

With plötulopi you will also get a thinner sweater than with lopi, but it feel thicke than léttlopi. So it is something in between. And plötulopi is not as itchy as léttlopi, I think. The white one turned out like this:


And I'm also quite satisfied with Erics lopapeysa (Johan’s nephew). It is a Christmas gift. I just need to put in the zipper and it is done:


Then we have the third child lopapeysa, which I just came up with myself. Sort of. I saw one pattern and changed it completely. But I regret that I did not do white all the way up to the trinangles and pink all the way down in the trinangels if you know what I mean. Now it looks like a straight line between white and pink. But I think it looks nice anyway. I like the colors.


And then we have my own sweater. I'm really pleased with it. I decreased to needles 5mm . Usually I knit with 6 mm. So it was quite dense. Tightly knitted. Maybe I knitted harder than before. Strange! And I also used two different pattens and mixed them together to make a new style. But maybe it's to much pattern. I´m not sure. But it's nice anyway. I'm thinking that I might give it away as a Christmas present. This is how it looks like:

Now the tricky part is left. To sew in all the zippers. It can be hard to make it look good. I´m going out shopping some zippers tomorrow.

What has happened so far!

Well, I moved here to Iceland in February 2006 and I think it was in the end of the year that I took up knitting again. Last time I knitted before that was when I was 17 years old. First time was of course in school and after that me and my friend Anna often sat at here place and knitted. I never finished my sweaters. I was not so good at that point. One bright blue sweater I actually ripped up. And the second one was my lama sweater as can be seen on my boyfriend later in this contribution. I finished it here in Iceland at one of my first knitting club meetings.

I was thinking to myself that maybe I will finish this in Iceland sometime. I saw it when I was packing down my stuff in Sweden on my way moving to Reykjavik.

So after a while in Iceland, working at the University, intended to do my Ph.D. I met a Swedish girl called Anna-Karin at lunch club. She invited me to knitting club and since that first day at knitting club I’ve been crazy about knitting. Hahaha!
Now I’m working at Actavis with pharmaceutical development and I’m still crazy. Thinking about knitting a lot!

At knitting club you can meet a lot of different cultures, which is really fun. I’ve met people from Sweden, Germany, England, US, Iceland, Ireland, Canada and Norway there. And we usually meet once a week at Jamie’s place. She is always very nice and generous.

Here is my first sweater in Swedish wool with lamas in the pattern.

The arms are a bit too short for my darling Johan but the body looks ok. I actually ran out of yarn and I think I bought this yarn back in 1995. Woow that is long time ago. And another thing was that I had never stitched together a sweater before so the seemes are not invisible. But on a distance it looks quite good :)
Johan can wear it at home in the sofa with me when it is really cold. Actually I thought I made it for me. But as I said I was a beginner when I started. Used wrong needles, haha.

It was now it started for me with Icelandic wool, called lopi. I started with my first lopapeysa (Icelandic sweater) for my niece. My younger sister (4 years younger than me) became a mother before me. That was the first grandchild for my mother. But my father is still waiting for me to get pregnant (we don’t have the same father).
It was really fun to se the results.
This is how it turned out:

I made it in lopi yarn ( 100% thick wool).

After that I wanted to try something thinner so I made a léttlopi sweater for myself. Léttlopi is lighter and thinner than lopi. Lopi only weigh half of léttlopi when you wear it. But I actually like lopi more. It feels softer in some way. The finished sweater I made feels so itchy. Maybe I should have washed it in more conditioner. It turned out like this:

The sad thing is that I don't like it so much because the shoulders turned out to be weird. I don't know what happened there really, but the shoulders have a tendency to point upwards like two big bubbles. Otherwise I really like the pattern. It looks really nice. If I have a jacket on top of it I can actually wear it.
I wonder if someone would wear it?

Then I also made a small hat for my niece in the same colors. It turned out like this:



After that I wanted to do a Icelandic lopapeysa for myself. I had difficulties to decide what pattern to use but finally I made my mind and knitted one i blue colors.

It looks really nice. I really liked it. However, the size was wrong. It was too big. I was so sad. It turned out to be like a medium. I will give it away.
I look a bit tired on that pictures. I was soo tired that day.

After that sweater it was time to make one for my darling and that is actually the best one I made so far. It looks really nice. I really like the pattern and the color. The zipper was very difficult to sew in because it was my first. But it looks ok and Johan was very glad to get it. He wore it almost every day. And a colleague of him was a bit envious about it. He wanted one too. But I know that Lára will knit one for him one day.



I have also made a lot of hats and some mittens but I'm not going to put up pictures on that. All of them are not so good. Some try out projects if you know what I mean.

After that I also knitted 3 small lopapeysur for kids. Two in lopi yarn and one in plötulopi (which is unspun yarn and therefore cheaper). But they have to be washed before I put up pictures and two of them need zippers to be sewed in. So cute small sweater.

At the moment I'm making a lopapeysa for myself again. One that I hope will fit. It will be white with some brown colors. The armes are attached. Just knitting the top pattern now.

SORRY IF I MIX BRITTISH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH WORDS. I don't seem to have learned all the differences. Like color or colour???