New book, Aolian progress and my lace super-pupil!

Tomorrow is Gummi's birthday and I was thiking about giving him an amazing icelandic book called Íslensk sjónabók (Ornaments and Patterns found in Iceland). I actually already bought it and gave it to him... I know! I couldn't wait until the actual birthday day! I am terrible!

Even the hard cover of the book is BEAUTIFUL!

This book is a compilation of patterns found in 17th to 19th century icelandic manuscripts. There are actually ten sjónabók manuscripts that have been preserved. The book contains all the patterns found in those manuscripts which have been redrawn digitally. It is a source of ideas with strong ties to Icelandic national heritage.

The book has 783 pages FULL of wonderful patterns that can be used for knitting, embroidery, cross stitch or whatever comes to your mind : ) It also comes with a CD! 

The book is a little bit pricey but it is worth every crown (króna). It is just WONDERFUL and the best of all... Gummi LOVED it!!

These are a few pages so you can see what I am talking about:

All the pages are arranged like this: to the left there are diagrams and to the right the drawings with color of the diagrams.

Some patterns could make beautiful wallpapers!

The Aeolian shawl is growing and growing. I have already started with the edge which is the main part of the whole shawl. At first I had decided to make the narrow edge version but finally I changed my mind and I am going for the full size version. I think it is going to look very, very good. I am very curious to see how it turns out!

This colors look so nice together! Don't you think?

The whole process of knitting this shawl has been pretty smooth. Except for a couple of SILLY mistakes I have made that have made me frog a couple of long eternal rows. The instructions are quite clear except for the set-up edge section which is made out of four charts:

- Right edge chart.
- Edge set-up chart.
- Center edge chart.
-Left edge chart.

The construction is as simple as:

* Knit the 2 or 3 stitched of the garter stitch tab.
* Begin with the right edge chart.
* Continue with the edge set-up chart repeating it as many times as necessary to get to the center stitch.
* Make the center edge chart once (between the stitch markers that are before and after the central stitch).
* Knit the edge set-up chart again as many times as necessary to get to the end of the row.
* Knit the right edge chart.
* Knit the 2 or 3 stitched of the garter stitch tab.

There IS something strange in the way this section is written in the pattern (at least I found it weird)... so I had to make up my own little instruction to get it right.

Today we were just at home, chilling out and Jóhann Birnir asked me, out of the blue, to teach him how to make bobbin lace. He is twelve years old and loves, loves, loooves handcrafts (and sports!). He is a great knitter himself!  Now, how could I possibly say no?!  IMPOSSIBLE!

Very concentrated.

Looking so PRO!

So, we started by loading the bobbins with some yellow, rather thick thread of linen. The first lesson: how to make a half stitch torchon ground. It was amazing how quicky he picked it up!! And how even the ground ended up! He made just a little piece because even though the thread looks really good it was kind of difficult to keep in the bobbins... somehow the knot that keeps the thread from running off the bobbins kept on running making it a little difficult to keep the bobbins in order. Anyways... Jóhann made a beautiful little first work!

Even and perfectly done!

I am so proud!! 

Aeolian: A shawl that made me think about my first steps in knitting lace.

My journey on knitting lace began in June 2009, six months after I began to learn how to knit. Lace had alway cought my eye because of how complicated it looked and it was definitely a challenge!

Noro Kureyon

I started to look for patterns on Ravelry until the Springtime Bandit came my way. It looked nice and not so complicated. By then I really wanted to try something that wans't lopi. Since I had started to knit back in December 2008 I had only used lopi, mainly because of its price and how easy it is to knit with it. Among the yarns that I wanted to try it was Noro in its wonderful colors! I began to look for Noro in Reykjavík until I found it in a shop called Storkurinn. Even though it was HUGELY expensive I bought 5 skeins to give a try.


The result was ok. I made a Springbandit that looked fairly well:

Springtime Bandit

In Skógafoss

By knitting this I learned a couple of things:

* Crochet provisional cast on.

* Read charts.

* That decreases slant! Yes... that was a huge discovery! And that slanting thing meant that I had to switch all the decreases of the pattern in order to get the lace well made  because I am left handed!

* Blocking. This was the first project that I had to block and stretch for real. I remember that I had to block it twice because the first time I was so afraid of breaking the shawl that I didn't get it to blossom and show the pattern nicely!

About Noro... I think that it is totally over rated and over priced. It was really nothing special about it. It even had lots of knots! (I gave Noro a second chance but this time with Silk garden... it was much nicer and softer (and more expensive as well) I made a baby surprise jacket).

The shawl ended up frogged and later on became a cowl that my sister owns now.

Cabled cowl.

After I finished my first shawl  I saw the Aeolian for the first time on Ravelry and I fell in love with it. I liked it so much that I decided to try to knit it. The furthest I got with it was the swatch which was a loooong and painful process. I think that I was definitely aiming to high with the little experience that I had by then in terms of knitting. I found it hard to handle the thread (einband, the thinest band I had tried that far) and the beads were a headache.

Aeolian: Swatch July 2009

I put the Aeolian to sleep but a few weeks ago Kristín Hrund, Gummi and me were talking about how much we wanted to try to knit the Aeolian so we decided to make our own knit along (KAL). It will be really fun to see how similar or different out shawls turn out!

Now, I guess that after having knitted a few shawls the Aeolian will be much more simple than it did back in 2009!!

I am using on skein of Evilla 8/2 that I had left from knitting last Hyrna Herborgar that I made. The colors are so nice and go so strangely well together.  For now I am done with the set up chart and 6 repeats of the Yucca chart. The pattern calls for 4 repeats of the Yucca chart for a shoulderette and 12 for a shawl. So I am making something in between.

Aeolian: July 2011.

I decided not to use beads this time. I think that it would be too much added to the color changes. But it will definetely have the nupps in the edge (I love nupps! Both to make them and the way they look!).

I have also finished the little bobbin lace sample that I was making with the new cotton thread that I found in Reykjavík. I am very, very happy with it! This is the first somehow more complicated pattern that I make using the bobbins. It is a combination of the exercises I made at the beginning.

I am very pleased with this little piece!!

In this little sample it is possible to see:

* A foot (which is the base of the piece).
* A torchon ground (made using half stitch).
* Spiders.
* A fan (the orange section).

It is so nice and relaxing to work on bobbin lace! And it is above all very rewarding to see the results even though it is a small piece.

Now I am thinking about the next piece to try!

Harebell Fichu: Finished!!

 The Fichu is finally finished and blocked!!

After blocking laying flat.

Against the light.

When I started it I thought it was going to be an easy project. Well, I was wrong. It took me a while to get it but once I did... everything went just smooth and fine.

Details:

* Pattern: Harebell Fichu.

* Book: Victorian Lace Today.

* Yarn: Einband (Icelandic lace).

* Weight: 62g (So it was one ball and a little more)

* Needles: 3.5mm

Pattern detail: I would say that these are flowers, aren't they?

Things I learned:

* How to make a picot edge.

Picot edge.

Picot edge detail against the light.

* Attatching the lace section to the band making joins along live stitches that lay perpendicularly to the direction of knitting (wow this sounds weird!). Look at this diagram I draw to (maybe) understand the idea a little bit better. The joins look actually really good. They are very even and somehow invisible.

Section. It is possible to see the joins that are right below the band (where the inverted V is)

Difficulties:

* First of all, to understand the pattern and the construction of the Fichu (Diagram).

* In terms of knitting I HATED making the S1K4togPSSO (Slip one stitch was ok. Knit 4 stitches together was TERRIBLE! And passing the slipped stitched over was a piece of cake :p)

* Blocking: This is the first rounded lace project that I knit and blocking it was a real challenge. The challenge was to have it even and nicely rounded and well proportioned. It took me over an hour to get it done (and a lot of sweating and pain in the knees and back!). I started by pinning the inner circle trying to have as rounded as possible.Then I put one pin in each picot trying to stretch it evenly. After having the outer circumference all pinned I just removed the inner pins... they were no longer necessary.

I think that the time, sweat and pain definetely paid off!

Blocking

Against the light.

Final thoughts: It was really nice to knit this piece even though all the difficulties (from which I learned a few new things :) The Fichu is very light and airy and the lace pattern is just beautiful. If you have the book... definetely give it a try!

Odyssey

I love living in Iceland and everything that comes with that but I am not sure if I have said before that sometimes it can be pretty difficult to find some things here in here... so everytime that I am thinking about making something I have to cross my fingers and hope for the best to find all the materials I might eventually need.

Taken from Wikipedia

Sometimes (or most of the times) it is an odyssey that requires going to many stores spread all over the city with the hope of finding at least something similar to what is needed. Well, actually, most of the times I end up getting something that is not exactly what I wanted and somehow I have to manage to make it work as I want.

I can get very disappointed and grumpy sometimes because of this. I REALLY need to learn to control that... but it is so hard! I think that living in Iceland has made me become a more patient person... even though in the eyes of other (and especially Gummi) I am still very impatient!

Let's see. The last odyssey was finding thread for bobbin lace. I already mentioned little bit about this last time. When I was visiting Asturiasm where I bought my set of bobbins, I bought just one 500m skein of cotton n°20: big mistake... I should have bought A LOT more. I didn't think it would be so difficult and expensive to get some good thread here.

I began searching for threads and managed to go to four shops with very little success. In most of them they had only polyester thread or very, very fine cotton thread. Most of the people I talked with looked at me as I was speaking chinese when I was telling them that I wanted some cotton thread, something from n°20 to 70 to make lace.

Taken from the website of Heimilisiðnaðarfélag Íslands.

I checked the website of Heimilisiðnaðarfélag Ísland (The Society of hand and homecrafts of Iceland) and according to it they had all the materials for making bobbin lace, as I mentioned in the previous post, I went there and they actually had linen thread but the woman working there didn't know much about what I was talking about... strange because I thought they were supposed to know what they have to offer. They really don't have a big variety of materials so I ended up buying just one skein of linen (with no number... ) and some more "un-numbered" thread for a terribly huge price.

Linen.

More Linen

Last week I went to take a look at Storkurinn, a shop downtown in Reykjavík that sells mainly wool and also has a section with quilting materials. For my surprise they also had a lot of cotton thread in wonderful colors! But only n°30! Anyways... I bought a couple (and for a very nice price: only 560 ISK or 3.5 € each). As soon as I came home I tried them!

Cotton 30.

This is what it is looking like so far:

The beginning.

Slowly growing :)

I really like how the half stitch torchon looks like with the spiders in it. The first time I made cloth stitch I didn't like it at all but now I think it looks pretty cool (it is also maybe because I know how to make it better now :)

Have I ever said how much I love lopi? One of the many reasons why I love it so much is exactly what I have been writing about now: It is possible to find it EVERYWHERE. And I mean EVERYWHERE and at an amazing price!

And talking about lopi... I finished the Harebell Fichu! Well, it is almost, almost done! It is now blocking and I still have to seam the ends. It looks like this now:

Harebell Fichu: Blocking.

More pictures soon!

Now I need to think about what to knit now! I am little clueless... I will have to dive into the books and Ravelry to find some inspiration!

Fichu: A learning experience.

After finishing the wedding shawl I felt that I needed to knit something small, not so complicated and especially quick to get some instant satisfaction. A few months ago i bought the book Victorian Lace Today and I still hadn't try to knit anything from it. So this was the perfect opportunity to do so!

After checking the book several times I decided to go for the Harebell Fichu.

Taken from Victorian Lace Today

It seemed to be the perfect project for the pink einband that I had in the stash. So, I read the pattern, the beginning seemed ok even though I had no idea how to make the  picot border that the pattern calls for. In the end it wasn't anything so terrible, at least nothing that reading some forums in Ravelry and a good video in Youtube could't solve.

So, for those who don't know how to make a picot the things is a simple as casting on two stitches (at the beginning of the wrong side) using the knitted on cast on method and then casting those two stitches off using the basic knit bind off. This video is very clear.

The real problem began after completing the garter stitch band. Now I had to knit the lace section and attach it to the band on the go following a set of instructions that tell what kind of join has to be made. This was a bit challenging. The way the edges are made in the patterns of this book are totally different from everything I had made before: picking up stitches and knitting or knitting separetely and sewing or grafting to the body.

Before starting it was even hard to see or imagine the structure of the Fichu. I made this simple drawing to show how it is worked:

Fichu schematics

In this technique the edge is knitted perpendicular to the border where it will be attached instead of parallel as I had always made it. So, in this case I am knitting the lace section which is only ca.30 stitches wide and every 2 or 4 pattern rows I am joining the lace to the garter stitch band following the pattern which tells what kind of join to make in order to avoid holes.

This is the way the joins look like. Pretty neat, isn't it?

At first I wasn't very sure about how this would work but now that I have already made almost half of it I must say that this works perfectly well and the joins look great! I am really enjoying the process of making this fichu. And one funny thing: I wanted to make a simple and quick project, ha! I was reading about this Fichu and it is apparently one of the most complicated patterns in the hole book, hehe.

This is what it looks like while knitting it.

A couple of weeks ago I received a message/surprise on Ravelry from Asun. She wanted to give me a couple of skeins of silk that she had left after finishing a project! How generous is that?! I felt really flattered about becoming the owner of those two skeins especially because I have never knitted anything with silk!

Well, the envelope arrived at the end of last week. I got this cute blue box with a little card, two skeins of black silk and two pens! I still don't have enough words to thank Asunción for this!

Now I already know that my next project will be made with silk... the question now is what. I still have some time to think about it since I am quite busy with the Fichu :)

About bobbin lace. I am almost done with all the excercises. So I decided to begin with the patterns section. I started with pattern number 1. I didn't do much of it because I thought I was doing something wrong and also because I think that the thread I am using was too thick for it. Anyways, I want to show you what it looks like:

Then I made the pattern number 2. For the color section I used embroidery thread. It was the only color thread that I had at home. I think it looks really cute:

Details: Cotton thread n°20, blue embroidery thread, 16 bobbins

And I also made number 3. But I think that this one was a total DISASTER. The thread is definitely too thick. It is cotton n°20. I think I should have used n°30 or 40 for this. Too bad I realized so late that tt was getting to chunky. For this pattern I got some help from Eva (thank you so much again!) because I was clueless about how to hand the bobbins to begin. Well, this is the chunky result:

Details: Cotton n°20, 30 bobbins.

I also got a new toy! Yes, another camera. This time a Zenit E which is very special because this is a version that celebrates the Olympic Games in Moscow  1980. The camera is beautiful: leather body and perfectly working, even the selenium cells for the lightmeter work like new!

These are some pics of the first roll I used with it:

Grótta

Hveragerði

JB

HF

And one last thing: Yesterday I went to Heimilisiðnaðarfélagið Íslands (Society of handcrafts of Iceland) to check some threads for bobbin lace because according to their website they had materials to make lace there. Well, they had some threads but only linen and just one number (and the price was not very nice: 17€ (2.800 ISK) for 500mt). They were also selling a pack of 50 bobbins and a bobbin lace pillow for 485€ (80.000 ISK). TOTALLY out of reality! I got my 50 bobbins for 25€ (4.000 ISK) in Spain and I made my own pillow with an Ikea table for only 30€ (5.000 ISK). So I saved 430 € (71.000 ISK)!! Unbelievable! I will DEFINETELY have to buy threads online!! What is it with prices here! That is something I really cannot get used to!

Good news in my e-mail.

Yesterday when I came back home from work I checked my e-mail and I found a message with this picture:

JC, the happy owner of a lopapeysa that has travelled from one pole to the other.

Yea! JC, my friend in Buenos Aires, Argentina, already got his lopapeysa!!! It arrived much sooner than I expected!!

It is amazing to see him wearing it and think that this pullover has travelled more that 11,000km! And it is even more amazing to see how good he looks! It fits him so well! (well, except for the arms that are little bit too long). He said that it came just in the perfect moment. It has been pretty cold in Buenos Aires lately so, according to him, we will wear it ALL winter!

I was a little worried about the size... I have this problem with sizes that I have mentioned before but it seems that I am finally starting to get it right... well... after having made already 16 lopapeysur I guess that I have gotten enough practice to get things right : )

I am very, very, very happy and not only because the pullover is ok but also, and especially, because my friend is happy.

Lupines: During summer they are EVERYWHERE (This is just on my way home). They make even the most cloudy summer days (which are very often here) feel good!