Shawl progress, new lopapeysa, a lot of snow and some more.

Lilac Leaf: Progress

Since the last time I posted here I have been working on Irene's wedding shawl that is growing pretty fast and I am liking it more and more. I have come to realize that sometimes the most simple patterns can be as beautiful as the most complicated ones. And for me this is the case: Just leaves, no strange stitches, crossings or nupps but only knit and purl, yarn overs and decreases. I am planning to make a border that will contain some nupps (because I LOVE nupps!) to give a final touch to it.



For a couple of days this was the only project I had working on my needles (well, along with some other things that I haven't touched for a long while and that are patiently waiting to be finished) but this situation didn't last too long. A friend from Argentina, JC, and me decided to make an EXCHANGE: I would knit a lopapeysa for him and he would do a painting for me. It sounds really interesting.  He went through my Flickr gallery and chose this picture to make the painting:

Pic taken at Þingvallavatn by Kristina

I am very excited about it! He paints really well and I have never had a portrait of myself painted before! Yesterday he showed me the drawing and is looking goood!

So, in order to get his lopapeysa started we had to make a couple of decisions first:

1. Yarn: Of course it had to be lopi. I personally find that icelandic pullovers made with other fibers look somehow strange. They have to be made with lopi. I chose plötulopi because is my favourite kind of lopi, is it softer and absolutely brilliant to knit with! It will be double thread of plötulopi.

Plötulopi

2. Colors: he gave me a lot of liberty to choose the colors. All he didn't want was any kind of too bright colors. Just something simple and sober. I came up with the idea of using some brown (of course, one of my favourites) but he wasn't very excited about it. So, in the end I went for the gray family. I chose gray for the main color and a very light gray and somekind of black (or extremely dark gray) as secondary colors.



3. Yoke pattern: I was very tempted to use Vetur again. But then I thought that maybe it would be a liitle bit too much. I have already made three of them. So, I sent him pictures of three patterns (some of my favourites):

• Vetur
• Fugl
• Órói

He chose Órói but without the opening on the side and a short neck.

The same day we made all the decisions I put the stitches on my needles and began. It had been a long time since the last time I knitted with double plötulopi.I had almost forgotten how QUICK it knits! It is like magic! I began two days ago and I have done a little more than half of the lenght of the body section!

Órói

April 30th. It snowed all day.

Talking about other things, after a crazy April and an even craziest begining of May everything seems to have come to what it should be in terms of weather around here. As I posted before, the weather during Eastern was crazy but it didn't stop there. On saturday morning I woke up and when I took a look outside I couldn't believe that I was seeing: It was ALL white outside! And it didn't stop there... it snowed all saturday, non stop, so on sunday 1st we had a total of 17cm of snow. I can't deny that I was very happy with all this snow. Summer is nice but winter will always be the best!

Everything was just wonderful outside. A little bit too wet because the snow was really soft but beautiful. Since this is probably the last snow of the winter (or spring, I should say) we decided to go out for a walk and take some pictures. We went to a lake called Hvaleyrarvatn that is very close to my place. It was cool to see all covered with snow but with spring birds (heiðlóa, spói, þröstur and others) everywhere. It was so quite and still that the only sound around was the singing of the birds.

Hvaleyrarvatn

Þröstur

Heiðlóa (Believe me, the bird is there... go to my flickr and see the pic bigger :)

One of the things I like the most about where I live is that we have a really nice view of the harbour and it is very common that we see amazing sunsets. On sunday was not the exception. A beautiful day ended with a beautiful sunset (by the way, the sun is setting later and later everyday! It was a little after 22.00 on sunday!)

Last week I bought a cable release for my Zenit camara so I can make long exposures and it works pretty well!

Here there are a couple of night shots I made using the new little toy :) I still have to learn to calculate the right amount of time that I should keep the lens open... I guess it will be a matter of practice.

PS. I might be a little away for the next day... I am preparing everything for my vacations, yes! I will go on a trip starting on friday... I try to keep you posted! : )