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???