Eva's lopapeysa: Details and pictures. Mini lopapeysa TUTORIAL CORRECTION. Northern lights!!

Even though Eva's lopapeysa is already finished and with her in Berlin I have neither shown pictures of it since the steeking neither talked about the details!

So here it is:

Folded and ready to go!

Details:

* Yoke pattern: Taken from Héla, changing the colors and their distribution. (available for free at www.istex.is).

* Yarn: Plötulopi (double thread).

* Needles: 4.5 for ribbing and 5.5 for the rest. Crochet hook 4.5mm.

* Size: To fit Eva.

Notes:

* This lopapeysa was knitted just like any other from bottom up. 

* I made a 2x2 ribbing.

* Knitted the body and the both sleeves and joined them to knit the yoke.

* Since this was going to be a cardigan I added two purl stitches in the middle to be able to sew and steek.

* This was the first time I was knitting a cardigan with a hood. The hood is knitted flat, shaping it with a few increases. 

* The pattern on the hood was also knitted flat. This was the most challenging part of the hole lopapeysa. I had never knitted fair isle flat before.I must admit that I hated it (a little bit), especially the purled rows!

* To make the pattern on the hood is was also necessary to apply intarsia. Also my first time. It wasn't difficult at all! The important thing is to twist the yarns in order to avoid holes where the colors change. 

* Finally, the hood was grafted using kitchener stitch.

* After steeking I made a crocheted border using black double folded lopi with a hook one size smaller that the needles I used to knit the cardigan. I made single crochet (sc) every other stitch along the edge.

Now, a couple of pictures of Eva wearing her new lopapeysa!! [Pictures taken by Kristina, you can check her gallery here]

Eva

The hood.

I made a new minilopapeysa keyring to check if the tutorial I made before was OK.

Trying new colors and checking the tutorial.

Well, I had to fix a couple of things, nothing terrible.

Two changes:

* The decreases of the yoke: The second row if decreases should be [k1, k2tog] instead of [k2, k2tog].

* And the 1x1 ribbing of the seck should be just 1 row and cast off tightly instead of 2 rows.

I already edited the tutorial so now it is alright :)  Sorry about this silly mistake!!

And finally, last night I saw the northern lights for the first time this season! They were not as strong (and also the moon was WAY too bright!) and they were not dancing so much but they were easily spotted.  

This is the first time I see them so early in September... now this is just the beginning of the northern lights season! There will be plenty of time to spot them again... at least until april!

Here are some of the pics I took last night:

Taken from Álftanes.

Aurora borealis over Reykjavík.

Over Reykjavík.

From Álftanes looking to the west.

From Álftanes. I really like it when it is possible to see the reflection of the light on the water.

Driving in Iceland and new keyring

This week I have finally changed my car! I had a little car before, a Citroën C3 which is a really nice car especially because it doesn't spend too much gas but the biggest problem was that it is good only to be used in the city where the roads are paved... and that limited a lot where I could go because here in Iceland there are still A LOT of gravel (or simply stone) roads. The is even a section of the main highway (the one that goes all around the island) that is still unfinished!

This is an example of a gravel road... this one is pretty good though :p

I remember that two summers ago we went to travel to the West Fjords and most of the roads were just TERRIBLE and we were driving a Ford Fiesta... the result was that we managed to break a wheel! Not fun!

The access to many beautiful spots is usually horrible. Like for example:

Látrabjarg

Svörtuloftaviti.

Háifoss.

Öndverðarnes.

Dettifoss (Let's see if you find me in the picture!) 

This is one of my favourite waterfalls in Iceland. I guess that the video says it all.

Somewhere in the West Fjords.

... so after thinking about it for a while... the decision was made and we got a 4x4 jeep! Now it will be so much easier to travel without the fear of breaking the car!

Ok... now all this blah blah is just to show you my new keyring!

I needed a new keyring for the new key of the car. I didn't feel like buying one so I remembered that about two years ago I made on to give as a present to a friend of mine. The result was extremely cute!

2009

So now I made another one but this time for myself:

2011