At the beginning of January a good friend of mine asked me if I could knit a lopapeysa for her mother who was visiting her from Poland... and as maybe many of you know I can't say no to my friends! So, I took the new task and began from the beginning... as it should be: choosing pattern and colors.
There is a pattern that is hugely popular in Iceland. There is a company of designers that is called
Farmer's Market that took a very classical lopapeysa pattern (Lopi 120) and made some little changes to it (mostly in the way colors are used... because I think that the pattern itself is unaltered) and it became a huge success, mostly I think because the company has a very smart way of showing their products with great photography and style (as you can see in their website).
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| Taken from Ístex.is |
Well... It was no surprise for me that she chose THAT pattern. I almost even expected that, hehe. And when it came to having to choose colors... uuh surprise again!... she chose a color combo that is very similar to the one I have used to knit other three lopapeysas. It is a very nice color combo... it looks really good and classy.
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| Kristina |
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| Laura |
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| Lærke |
So... the colors she chose were moss green as main color, pink (a darker pink compared to the three above) and off-white.
So Marlena's lopapeysa looks like this:
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| Folded and ready. |
Materials:
* Yarn: Double folded plötulopi.
* Needles: 4.5 and 5.5 mm
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| Anna María trying her mom's jersey. She liked it so much that she also wants one! So there might be yet another one like this in the future :) |
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| Detail on the ribbing (see the notes). |
Notes:
* This time I did some things different. This lopapeysa is not exactly as the others:
- I used my new favorite cast-on: The Twisted German Cast-on. I really like it a lot and I highly recommend it. It is very similar to the normal long tail cast on but it adds a twist to the yarn which makes it be stronger and much more elastic.
- I used a different kind of ribbing. For the other three I used just moss stitch. What I did now was to knit one row in 1x1 ribbing and then one knitted row ( *[row1: K1P1; row2: K all] repeat from the *). It is very flat, it has a great texture and I find it somehow to be very feminine but strong at the same time. Does anybody know if this kind of ribbing has any special name?
- The neck line is not as wide in this one. I made it using the same ribbing I described before and it is double (it is folded and sewn inside). For the other ones I just finished the pattern and did the cast-off with no ribbing.
- For the cast-off I used one of my favorite ones: The knit two together through the back loop (is it also called the decrease cast-off??) using a needle 1mm bigger. The result is stretchy enough to do the sewing of the folded neckline.
* When I finished this lopapeysa, while I was putting it on Ravelry I started to count how many icelandic jerseys and vests I have made this far: This is number 20!! And the funny thing is that of those 6 have the same pattern and of those 4 are moss green+pink+off-white and the other 2 are black-gray-white. You see? This is a very popular pattern!
Well, now this pullover must be flying to Poland! I hope that Marlena will use it a lot!
Now, I finally got some pictures of the happy owners of the
honeycomb hats (Mesi) I knitted at the end of last year!
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| Kristín Gaia... she chose this colors, aren't they great together? |
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| Kristín Gaia. |
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| Nicolás. |
And finally... a little secret. I think I have never shared this openly and yesterday I realized that there are even friends who don't know about it (I was actually at a café with Sif yesterday when she saw it... she had no idea I had it!!)... Well, here it is: I have a tattoo :p
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| I got it about a year and half ago... so you can see how important knitting is for me :) |
Ok... that is all for now. Have a great weekend!!
