Two hats / Some WIPs / Winter is here! / Cozy weekend.

It has been quite a while since my last post here. These last couple of weeks have been somehow very strange. I guess it is always like that when the end of the year starts to approach.

December is always a busy month: Reunions with friends, family and coworkers, Christmas (of course), several birthdays (including mine! Which I personally find really boring because everybody is thinking about something else!

Anyways! Knitting-wise I have been drowning in a sea of unfinished projects later! Suddenly I had a lot of knitting going on because of friends asking me to knit something for them...

What I have managed to finish this far is two hats.

Mesi again. 

This one is for a friend who lives in Germany. He saw the pics of the hat I made for J.B. and asked me if I could make one for him as well.

This one is for the daughter of a friend. I wanted to play it safe in this one and let the girl choose the colors. I think that the colors she chose are really interesting considering that she is around 10 years old. It is not very clear in the picture but the darker color is not just gray it is a blue-greyish color. Very pretty.

Details:

* They are basically the same as the hat for J.B. Except for the the fact that I used smaller needles to knit the gray hat. I used 2.5mm for the ribbing and 3.0mm for the rest of the hat (instead of 3.0 and 3.75mm).

Notes:

* I used the german cast on again in both hats. I think I am becoming a HUGE fan of german cast on. It looks very nice and most importantly it is VERY elastic and durable. I HIGHLY recommend it. And the best of all is that it is not difficult to make!

* I must say it again: I love this pattern! Knitting it is really fun and quick and the result is always pretty. Besides it is really cool to play with color combinations.

So, talking about my queue... I still have two unfinished shawls: leaves and nupps (in the picture) and an Echo flower (that I have barely began... I think I have just made 4 repeats of the first chart this far and no pics yet).

I also have two more WIPs that I haven't photographed yet: 

* Ermar. It is for a friend (actually the mother of the blue-gray hat girl). This is a pattern that I have already knitted before. It is very simple and quick to knit.

I made this one about two years ago for my friend Dyah.

* A scarf. Yes! A boring scarf! I have never knitted one before because I have always been afraid that I won't manage to finish it! These are the boring things that one make for his friends, uh? I still haven't decided the pattern but my friend already gave the yarn for it :)

Now, talking about something else... WINTER IS HERE!! Finally! After a rather warm winter at the end of last week the weather completely changed and it started to snow! It has been really cold since last friday and everything is just beautifully covered by snow!

This was just perfect because we spent the weekend in a summer house in a place that is about one and a half hour away from Reykjavík. It was very cozy!! So all we did was to knit, do some cross stitch, eat good, spend a lot of time in the hot tub while the snow was falling on our heads and took some cool walks. 

So, some pictures? :)

The "summer house"

Just walking around... trying to find the river.

The river: Hrútá

It was really cold and light was just wonderful.

We found an invisible (and apparently naked) man!

Icelandic horses

 And to finish: A picture of Valgarð knitting... so you can see we were all in the knitting mood during the weekend!

Knitting a scarf :)

A new hat for JB / Advances on the lopapeysa

Again, I will start by going a little back in time... I have already knitted a few hats for JB, so let's see:

This fair isle hat was actually the first hat I ever knitted. It is dead simple. I made it using Álafoss lopi (which is one of the bulky forms of lopi but not the bulkiest one). Of course he loved it... it has skulls, hehe.  I think he used it a lot and the coolest thing about it is that afterwards JB knitted himself two of this! One for his little cousin and another as a birthday present for his best friend. Cool isn't it?

Then I made a hat designed by Stephen West, which is I think the only West pattern that I have used. The result was really nice and what he liked the most about it was the fact that it is reversible. Besides it was extremely soft. I made using a double thread of Drops Alpaca which is a really nice yarn and I totally recommend it :)

The, I made a Leethal's Wavy hat. This was a very interesting knit. This was the first hat (and only this far) that I have knitted flat. As every design of Leethal the result is always brilliant! The only thing I regret about this hat is the yarn that I used. I was made with Aslan Trends Bariloche. When I bought it it was amazing to touch... soft and light and the colors were very intersting (a mix of viotet, green and some beige) but after wearing it for a while it became really (and I mean REALLY) ugly. So, I don't think I will use this blend again.



So, now the time to knit a new hat for JB had arrived!

Quite a while ago I added to my favorites on Ravelry a super cool hat. As soon as I saw it I thought it would be perfect for JB. I even thought about the perfect colors for it: the colors of his football team (black and white).

So, here it is:

Details:

* Pattern: Mesi by Suvi Simola (Free Ravelry download).

* Yarn: Falk Dalegarn (2 skeins, one of each color).

* Needles: 3.0mm for the ribbing and 3.75mm for the rest.

Notes:

* This is a brilliant pattern. It perfectly written and what I liked the most was the fact that it looks MUCH MORE complicated than it really is. The charts are very easy to memorize.

* I wanted to try the German cast on to see how it was made and how it worked. It was very simple to make and according to what I read it is supposed to be a stronger and more elastic cast on. I am not sure if it is either of those... but it looks good :)

* It is a really quick knit... and that is always a plus!

* This was my first time using Falk (Dalegarn). It is a really nice yarn to work with. It is soft and smooth, the colors are fantastic as well as the price. According to the label it is superwash but I didn't dare to put it  in the washing machine. So I just soaked it in water with soap, rinsed it and blocked it.

This is my favorite part of the hat. I live the geometry in it. It reminds me of Icelandic runes or even some Mapuche symbols. There is something kind of tribal about it. (This is not JB in the picture, by the way.)

What I like the most about knitting hats for JB is that he always wears them A LOT! And that is just enough to make me really happy.

Now, I am planning to make another one like this. A friend that lives in Germany mentioned that he really liked this hat... so there will be a hat flying to Berlin soon!

I already bought the yarn. It will be Falk again in these colors:

About the lopapeysa I am designing...  I am already done with the sleeves. Actually I am now working on the yoke pattern. It has turned out totally different from what I had in mind at the beginning. I am not 100% sure if I like it.

For now, this is the design I made for the sleeves:

I didn't use the same pattern as in the body because I thought it was too big to be used in the sleeves. 

Now, to finish... some pictures of the little trip we took with WonderMike, Franklin Habit and HisKNITS to Reykjanes where we went up to the cliff where this video of Sigur Rós was made: