The long five days of Easter weekend are over and now everything goes back to normal again. Even the weather decided to calm down a bit around here. The weather during Eastern was CRAZY even scary at times.
The wind was blowing almost constantly during most of the weekend while we were getting all you can imagine falling from the sky! In a matter of minutes it went from sunny to cloudy, raining to hailing to snowing and then sunny again. Take a look at this two clips: sunny and snowing and a few minutes later somekind of blizzard!
As I said: CRAZY!
Despite of the weather,I would say it was nice, nice weekend. This kind of "cozy weather" kept us mostly at home except for one day that we decided to go out biking because the weather seemed to be calmed enough to do so but in the middle of our "trip" guess what!? Yes, rain and hail... not fun considering that we live on top of a hill so biking all the way up (which under the best conditions is terrible) was HORRIBLE! We watched some movies, played some games, cooked and baked bread, had friends visitings. In one word: COZY.
Settlers of Catan
Sourdough bread
Skyrterta
"Sunday breakfast"
Sunday, humm sunday was really nice... chocolate eggs! I really like icelandic chocolate eggs. They come in different sizes and filled with candies but the thing I like most about them is that each of them come with a little message inside (called málsháttur in icelandic). My favourite this year was: "Sá sem þekkir aðra er lærður sá sem þekkir sjálfan sig er vitur" which translates "the one who knows others is educated the one who knows himself is wise". If you want to know more about icelandic eastern eggs look at this video that I found :)
About knitting: I finally finished my lopapeysa (Vetur n°3) that I was knitting using one thread of plötulopi (and that was actually the second one after having knitted exactly the same one but resulting in a size that was too small for me). As soon as I finished it I darned all the loose ends and blocked it. The new size is a lot better than the one before but still I think it is not perfect. It is a little bit short in the arms and sleeves but nothing terrible. As I mentioned before I find it really hard to knit for myself. I am too critic about the things that I made but this time and I decided just to relax and enjoy the pullover as it is and see all the god things: I love the colors, love the pattern, it is very light to wear (so it will be PERFECT FOR SUMMER) and I can wear anything I want on it! So mission acomplished!
I also finished the first one I made before (the little one) and blocked it. They look so cute together! But they are not exactly identical:
* The pattern above the ribbing is slightly different
* The pattern on the sleeves is different. I made more simple in the new one.
* The neck is different. For the last one I decided to make it double (folded and sewn). It gives a more finished look to the F.O. and at the same time makes the neck line more resistant than just simply binding off.
And here I am wearing the holy lopapeysa :þ
Liliac leaf
As soon as I finished both pullovers I started with the wedding shawl for Irene. At first I wansn't totally convinced about the pattern that Irene chose but now that I am knitting it and seeing how it is developing I am really liking it... and a LOT. What I like most about it is the garter stitch frame that surrounds every leaf. I guess that it doesn't show so well right now... but you will see it after it is blocked. The other great thing about this pattern is how simple and easy to memorize it is! I think that (at least) the body of the shawl will be ready pretty soon.
Remember that I got my Zenit camera last week? Well, I already tried it and it works WONDERFULLY! I had forgotten how much fun it was to use a fully manual camera and how exciting it is to have the film developed and get to see if all those things you pictured look how you were expecting them to look like. FANTASTIC! I feel like a kid with a new toy.
I am done with two 36 exposures films. This is a little sample of the pics I have taken (and also some of the pics posted above):
Whenever it comes to knitting something for myself is always complicated. Things are usually either too big or too small or I see all the little mistakes I could have possible made while knitting and so on. Most of the times that I knit something for myself I end up giving it away!
Of all the things I have tried to knit for myself I have only kept:
* A lopapeysa which was the first one that I could finally say "yay! It fits perfectly on me!"
Haka, THE hat I have.
*A hat, that I rarely wear and not because I don't like it but because I am not really a hat person... I don't like the way I look with a hat on. So, to wear a hat it has to be really freezing cold and I have to feel that my ears are about to fall off! (I would love to be a hat person!!)
My favourite scarf.
* A short scarf with buttons. This was a HUGE achievement. I was still very new into knitting when this scarf came across. It looked very simple but NO! It wasn't at all. It is Brioche stitch. It has been my only experience with it and it was so hard! I remember that I couln't make any mistakes because it was so hard to "read" the stitches. I started it several times and everytime I made a mistake I had to frog it all and start all over until I managed to make it all without making any mistakes! I have used it A LOT.
I would really like to have a closet full of things for me made by me... but it doesn't seem to work.
The last thing I tried to knit for myself was a lopapeysa. I wanted it to be very light and easy to wear under any kind of jacket. Lopapeysas are usually a bit chunky and not very comfortable to wear under a jacket, parka or wind jacket (unless it is huge). So, I wanted to try to knit a lopapeysa using only one thread of plötulopi. I am a HUGE fan plötulopi because it is much softer than létt lopi or álafoss lopi and it is so much fun to knit with it. Until now, I had always used it double., which makes a gauge that is similar to Létt lopi but I find that the stitches look much better and the colorwork results absolutely flat and beautiful.
Everybody is always saying that it is so difficult to knit with a single thread of plötulopi because it breaks all the time. NOT TRUE. The thread is really strong. I must have broken it no more than three times and it was only because I was clumsy or just steped on it and pulled it. It is amazing for long the fibers of lopi are! And how strong they are because of that!
Vetur (pic taken from Lopi 28)
I have always liked the yoke pattern of a lopapeysa called Vetur but without all the snow pattern of the body. The pattern is written for Álafoss lopi so I had to calculate the gauge for single-strand-plötulopi. I am using 3.5mm needles for the rib and 4.5mm for the rest and I got .... stitches in 10cm.
I have been wanting to have a grey lopapeysa for a long time and I found that combined with dark brown and off-white looked just great! There are so many beautiful colors in plötulopi that sometimes it is SO hard to choose!
I cast on with double-stranded-plötulopi and then continued to knit with one strand. I must say that the stitches don't look as pretty as when knitting with two strands, it is a bit difficult to keep an even tension but over all it looks good. Once I had it finished I thought everything was alright but no, no. It was too small for me! Both, a bit to tight (not terribly tight though) and a bit too short in the body section but the sleeves were ok. I did definetely something wrong with the numbers. I probably miscalculated the number of stitches in needed to cast on. This time I didn't have a FURY attack and frog everything, I just left it in the basket waiting to be blocked and hopefully find someone who would want it. And I did find someone!!
Vetur I: Too small and unblocked but found an owner!
Irene and her Vetur (II)
Soon after I finished this lopapeysa, a friend of mine from Italy that is now living in Iceland for half a year, asked me if I could knit a lopapeysa for her. I asked to search in the internet for patterns or an idea of how she would like it to be. She did so and to my surprise she chose Vetur!! But like me, she wanted it without the !snow". The colors she chose were black, grey and white, a color combination that I personally don't like so much (at least for me, I am much more into earth tones) but apparently it is very easy to combine. We also decided to make it with létt lopi, a much more known yarn for me since I have used it several times and I know exactly the gauge I get (as well as with double-stranded-plötulopi). The whole process went pretty quick, considering that at the same time I was knitting a shawl.
In general, whenever I am knitting a lopapeysa all I want is to get to the yoke section a soon as possible. Knitting the body and the arms can be tedious and boring. No action at all! I am usually always complaining while knitting those sections (and poor Gummi is always just listening to me, hehe) until I arrive to paradise: THE YOKE!! Colorwork is so exciting. It is almost like drawing. I love to see how with every new row it is possible to see a little more of the drawing you are knitting.
Once I finished this second Vetur (and the shawl shortly after) I thought it was time to give another try to MY VETUR made with single thread of plötulopi. I started a new one... this time (hopefully) the right size. I recalculated the stitches and yes, I was about 10 stitches smaller last time. So, it all began again. By now I have already finished the body section and one sleeve... I am getting closer to paradise! I will keep you all posted about how it goes!
Vetur III: Hopefully finished over the weekend!
PS: I am also starting to thing about the next shawl I want to knit. I am little bit undecided. But it will be something definetely from either of the two new books I got. For now, I already bought the yarn I will use. It is a blend of linen and wool from Evilla and I beautiful dark orange color!
And to finish: Spring doesn't seem to want to come (not that I have a problem with that... if it were winter all year it would more than fine with me!) and yesterday (as most of the week) was windy, cold and started to snow one more time... today in the morning it was all white outside... wonderful! Too bad it will probably not last too long but it seems that there more snow coming over the weekend!
(I made the video yesterday from the balcony of my apt. Watch it with audio so you can hear the wind!)
