Yet Another Lopapeysa, Some Pics and a Little Secret

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).

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. 

Kristina

Laura

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:

Folded and ready.

Materials:

* Yarn:  Double folded plötulopi.

* Needles: 4.5 and 5.5 mm

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 :)

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!

Kristín Gaia... she chose this colors, aren't they great together?

Kristín Gaia.

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

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!!