Aeolian: A shawl that made me think about my first steps in knitting lace.

My journey on knitting lace began in June 2009, six months after I began to learn how to knit. Lace had alway cought my eye because of how complicated it looked and it was definitely a challenge!

Noro Kureyon

I started to look for patterns on Ravelry until the Springtime Bandit came my way. It looked nice and not so complicated. By then I really wanted to try something that wans't lopi. Since I had started to knit back in December 2008 I had only used lopi, mainly because of its price and how easy it is to knit with it. Among the yarns that I wanted to try it was Noro in its wonderful colors! I began to look for Noro in Reykjavík until I found it in a shop called Storkurinn. Even though it was HUGELY expensive I bought 5 skeins to give a try.


The result was ok. I made a Springbandit that looked fairly well:

Springtime Bandit

In Skógafoss

By knitting this I learned a couple of things:

* Crochet provisional cast on.

* Read charts.

* That decreases slant! Yes... that was a huge discovery! And that slanting thing meant that I had to switch all the decreases of the pattern in order to get the lace well made  because I am left handed!

* Blocking. This was the first project that I had to block and stretch for real. I remember that I had to block it twice because the first time I was so afraid of breaking the shawl that I didn't get it to blossom and show the pattern nicely!

About Noro... I think that it is totally over rated and over priced. It was really nothing special about it. It even had lots of knots! (I gave Noro a second chance but this time with Silk garden... it was much nicer and softer (and more expensive as well) I made a baby surprise jacket).

The shawl ended up frogged and later on became a cowl that my sister owns now.

Cabled cowl.

After I finished my first shawl  I saw the Aeolian for the first time on Ravelry and I fell in love with it. I liked it so much that I decided to try to knit it. The furthest I got with it was the swatch which was a loooong and painful process. I think that I was definitely aiming to high with the little experience that I had by then in terms of knitting. I found it hard to handle the thread (einband, the thinest band I had tried that far) and the beads were a headache.

Aeolian: Swatch July 2009

I put the Aeolian to sleep but a few weeks ago Kristín Hrund, Gummi and me were talking about how much we wanted to try to knit the Aeolian so we decided to make our own knit along (KAL). It will be really fun to see how similar or different out shawls turn out!

Now, I guess that after having knitted a few shawls the Aeolian will be much more simple than it did back in 2009!!

I am using on skein of Evilla 8/2 that I had left from knitting last Hyrna Herborgar that I made. The colors are so nice and go so strangely well together.  For now I am done with the set up chart and 6 repeats of the Yucca chart. The pattern calls for 4 repeats of the Yucca chart for a shoulderette and 12 for a shawl. So I am making something in between.

Aeolian: July 2011.

I decided not to use beads this time. I think that it would be too much added to the color changes. But it will definetely have the nupps in the edge (I love nupps! Both to make them and the way they look!).

I have also finished the little bobbin lace sample that I was making with the new cotton thread that I found in Reykjavík. I am very, very happy with it! This is the first somehow more complicated pattern that I make using the bobbins. It is a combination of the exercises I made at the beginning.

I am very pleased with this little piece!!

In this little sample it is possible to see:

* A foot (which is the base of the piece).
* A torchon ground (made using half stitch).
* Spiders.
* A fan (the orange section).

It is so nice and relaxing to work on bobbin lace! And it is above all very rewarding to see the results even though it is a small piece.

Now I am thinking about the next piece to try!

Odyssey

I love living in Iceland and everything that comes with that but I am not sure if I have said before that sometimes it can be pretty difficult to find some things here in here... so everytime that I am thinking about making something I have to cross my fingers and hope for the best to find all the materials I might eventually need.

Taken from Wikipedia

Sometimes (or most of the times) it is an odyssey that requires going to many stores spread all over the city with the hope of finding at least something similar to what is needed. Well, actually, most of the times I end up getting something that is not exactly what I wanted and somehow I have to manage to make it work as I want.

I can get very disappointed and grumpy sometimes because of this. I REALLY need to learn to control that... but it is so hard! I think that living in Iceland has made me become a more patient person... even though in the eyes of other (and especially Gummi) I am still very impatient!

Let's see. The last odyssey was finding thread for bobbin lace. I already mentioned little bit about this last time. When I was visiting Asturiasm where I bought my set of bobbins, I bought just one 500m skein of cotton n°20: big mistake... I should have bought A LOT more. I didn't think it would be so difficult and expensive to get some good thread here.

I began searching for threads and managed to go to four shops with very little success. In most of them they had only polyester thread or very, very fine cotton thread. Most of the people I talked with looked at me as I was speaking chinese when I was telling them that I wanted some cotton thread, something from n°20 to 70 to make lace.

Taken from the website of Heimilisiðnaðarfélag Íslands.

I checked the website of Heimilisiðnaðarfélag Ísland (The Society of hand and homecrafts of Iceland) and according to it they had all the materials for making bobbin lace, as I mentioned in the previous post, I went there and they actually had linen thread but the woman working there didn't know much about what I was talking about... strange because I thought they were supposed to know what they have to offer. They really don't have a big variety of materials so I ended up buying just one skein of linen (with no number... ) and some more "un-numbered" thread for a terribly huge price.

Linen.

More Linen

Last week I went to take a look at Storkurinn, a shop downtown in Reykjavík that sells mainly wool and also has a section with quilting materials. For my surprise they also had a lot of cotton thread in wonderful colors! But only n°30! Anyways... I bought a couple (and for a very nice price: only 560 ISK or 3.5 € each). As soon as I came home I tried them!

Cotton 30.

This is what it is looking like so far:

The beginning.

Slowly growing :)

I really like how the half stitch torchon looks like with the spiders in it. The first time I made cloth stitch I didn't like it at all but now I think it looks pretty cool (it is also maybe because I know how to make it better now :)

Have I ever said how much I love lopi? One of the many reasons why I love it so much is exactly what I have been writing about now: It is possible to find it EVERYWHERE. And I mean EVERYWHERE and at an amazing price!

And talking about lopi... I finished the Harebell Fichu! Well, it is almost, almost done! It is now blocking and I still have to seam the ends. It looks like this now:

Harebell Fichu: Blocking.

More pictures soon!

Now I need to think about what to knit now! I am little clueless... I will have to dive into the books and Ravelry to find some inspiration!

Fichu: A learning experience.

After finishing the wedding shawl I felt that I needed to knit something small, not so complicated and especially quick to get some instant satisfaction. A few months ago i bought the book Victorian Lace Today and I still hadn't try to knit anything from it. So this was the perfect opportunity to do so!

After checking the book several times I decided to go for the Harebell Fichu.

Taken from Victorian Lace Today

It seemed to be the perfect project for the pink einband that I had in the stash. So, I read the pattern, the beginning seemed ok even though I had no idea how to make the  picot border that the pattern calls for. In the end it wasn't anything so terrible, at least nothing that reading some forums in Ravelry and a good video in Youtube could't solve.

So, for those who don't know how to make a picot the things is a simple as casting on two stitches (at the beginning of the wrong side) using the knitted on cast on method and then casting those two stitches off using the basic knit bind off. This video is very clear.

The real problem began after completing the garter stitch band. Now I had to knit the lace section and attach it to the band on the go following a set of instructions that tell what kind of join has to be made. This was a bit challenging. The way the edges are made in the patterns of this book are totally different from everything I had made before: picking up stitches and knitting or knitting separetely and sewing or grafting to the body.

Before starting it was even hard to see or imagine the structure of the Fichu. I made this simple drawing to show how it is worked:

Fichu schematics

In this technique the edge is knitted perpendicular to the border where it will be attached instead of parallel as I had always made it. So, in this case I am knitting the lace section which is only ca.30 stitches wide and every 2 or 4 pattern rows I am joining the lace to the garter stitch band following the pattern which tells what kind of join to make in order to avoid holes.

This is the way the joins look like. Pretty neat, isn't it?

At first I wasn't very sure about how this would work but now that I have already made almost half of it I must say that this works perfectly well and the joins look great! I am really enjoying the process of making this fichu. And one funny thing: I wanted to make a simple and quick project, ha! I was reading about this Fichu and it is apparently one of the most complicated patterns in the hole book, hehe.

This is what it looks like while knitting it.

A couple of weeks ago I received a message/surprise on Ravelry from Asun. She wanted to give me a couple of skeins of silk that she had left after finishing a project! How generous is that?! I felt really flattered about becoming the owner of those two skeins especially because I have never knitted anything with silk!

Well, the envelope arrived at the end of last week. I got this cute blue box with a little card, two skeins of black silk and two pens! I still don't have enough words to thank Asunción for this!

Now I already know that my next project will be made with silk... the question now is what. I still have some time to think about it since I am quite busy with the Fichu :)

About bobbin lace. I am almost done with all the excercises. So I decided to begin with the patterns section. I started with pattern number 1. I didn't do much of it because I thought I was doing something wrong and also because I think that the thread I am using was too thick for it. Anyways, I want to show you what it looks like:

Then I made the pattern number 2. For the color section I used embroidery thread. It was the only color thread that I had at home. I think it looks really cute:

Details: Cotton thread n°20, blue embroidery thread, 16 bobbins

And I also made number 3. But I think that this one was a total DISASTER. The thread is definitely too thick. It is cotton n°20. I think I should have used n°30 or 40 for this. Too bad I realized so late that tt was getting to chunky. For this pattern I got some help from Eva (thank you so much again!) because I was clueless about how to hand the bobbins to begin. Well, this is the chunky result:

Details: Cotton n°20, 30 bobbins.

I also got a new toy! Yes, another camera. This time a Zenit E which is very special because this is a version that celebrates the Olympic Games in Moscow  1980. The camera is beautiful: leather body and perfectly working, even the selenium cells for the lightmeter work like new!

These are some pics of the first roll I used with it:

Grótta

Hveragerði

JB

HF

And one last thing: Yesterday I went to Heimilisiðnaðarfélagið Íslands (Society of handcrafts of Iceland) to check some threads for bobbin lace because according to their website they had materials to make lace there. Well, they had some threads but only linen and just one number (and the price was not very nice: 17€ (2.800 ISK) for 500mt). They were also selling a pack of 50 bobbins and a bobbin lace pillow for 485€ (80.000 ISK). TOTALLY out of reality! I got my 50 bobbins for 25€ (4.000 ISK) in Spain and I made my own pillow with an Ikea table for only 30€ (5.000 ISK). So I saved 430 € (71.000 ISK)!! Unbelievable! I will DEFINETELY have to buy threads online!! What is it with prices here! That is something I really cannot get used to!

Ýmislegt or various things

I have not been knitting much lately, at least not as much I normally do. The bobbin lace has me too excited and it is taking a lot of time to achieve every exercise (which are getting more complicated, of course).

I still have a few things to finish but for now, priority number ONE is to finish the Liliac Leaves Shawl. It is going pretty well. I am done with 20 repetitions of the pattern and I am planning to make 30 and see how long it gets. The idea of Irene is to wear to over the shoulders and tie it on the back so it has to be long enough to cover shoulders, back and be tied.

Liliac Leaf Shawl: Progress

After I finish the body of the shawl I have to calculate the number of stitches that I have to cast on (it will be a HUGE amount of stitches!!) to knit the edges. I will make it in the Estonian traditional way: Edges are knitted in stitch stitch always (WS and RS) so it knits really fast and the edge is made in two parts that are I sewed on the body of the shawl. I have done that once before and the result is pretty neat.

Maikell: Detail of sewed on edge.

Maikell: Body and edge. It is not so easy to tell where the sewing was made.

Svanhvít Lilja with her Christmas present on Christmas day :)

For now, my goal is to have the body done hopefully on saturday. I still have a little more than three weeks to finish it. Irene will be going back to Italy at the end of the second week of July and I want her to take the shawl with her.

I really want to finish this shawl soon. I need to start something new!! I am already thinking about the next project and it will be from a book called Victorian Lace Today. I found the perfect, cute shawl for a friend! I will let you know which one is it when the time to begin with it comes!

Mirage (Taken from Rowan 49)

Last week, my dear friend Laura from Asturias, asked me for some help to understand a pattern from the last Rowan magazine. I had never read a pattern from Rowan before and I must say that it was pretty complicated to understand exactly what had to be done! It kept me thinking and reading the pattern (it was actually a paragraph only) over and over again for almost one hour! I thought I understood it but to be sure I contacted the people from Rowan and to my surprise I got a reply REALLY quickly and very detailed!! I also got some help from a forum in Ravelry (Ravelry people NEVER fails! It is so cool to know that there is always someone there ready to help!) and after all I wasn't so lost on terms of what I understood from the pattern at first.

One thing that I learned (and that I hadn't noticed before): British terminology is SO different!! I think that until now I hadn't come close to any british patterns... things like a simple YO (yarn over) is a YFWD (yarn forward?!!) among others.

Tomorrow people will be meeting in Reykjavík (in a place called Austurvöllur) for knitting in public on the World Wide Knit in Public Day. I am thinking about going. Since I began to knit I have never taken part of it but this year will be different. The only concern I have is the weather. According to the metereological office it will be raining... if so I don't think I will go. But you never know! The weather prediction changes constantly here in Iceland... it is actually fun to look at the website of the office regularly and check how they change the reports many times... even during the same day!

About bobbin lace (aka the new obssession). I am already done with exercises n°3 and 4.

Exercise n°3 was about cloth stitch. I am not very happy with it. The net section look good but the solid parts (cloth stitch) don't. I was checking pictures on the net and it wasn't that I was making it terribly wrong (though I made some mistakes... some turns with there shouldn't be). It always looks kind of messy. So, cloth stitch: Definetely not one of my favourites.

Exercise n°3: This kept me busy for several hours!!

Detail: The net looks ok but the solid parts... not so convinced.

Exercise n°4: This was a wonrderful exercise! It was about spiders! I made a sampler  with three different kinds of spiders: a diamond spider (not very pretty I think). A crossed spider (my favourite one) and a group of little croessed spiders. I still have to work the tension better. As you probably can see in the pictures the some legs of the  spiders are a little bit too loose. I have to practice more!

Spiders sampler.

Not my favourite one. I really need to watch the tension much better.

I really lked this one. The same again: Some legs are too loose.

Four spiders.

Yesterday I developed a couple of films that I took two weekends ago, when Sjómannadagur (Sailor's day) was celebrated in Reykjavík's harbour. I still have to scan the negatives so the pictures will come on the next post :)

For now I will just hang a picture I took when we were coming home from Spain. Landscape in Reykjanes (the area where Keflavík airport is) is so nice... lava fields, moss fields. geothermal fields and amazing cliffs. In this picture if you look carefully you will find a lighthouse (Reykjanessviti) :)

Coming home.

Trying something new.

On our visit to the town of Avilés my friend Laura took us the shop of a friend of hers. The shop is called La dentelle (you can check the website but it is still under construction: www.ladentelle.es). The shop owner, Bea, showed us the place and all the stuff that sells: patchwork, embroidery, felt, beads, books and many other things to make handcrafts.

Among all these things one cought my eye especially: bobbins. I remember that I saw or read some time ago bobbin lace somewhere and I thought how difficult that must be! But now, while I was in the shop, I thought that I had the same idea about knitting, that it was something almost impossible and so difficult that I would never ever be able to learn it. Well, here I am now... knitting almost anything I want. Then, why not try some bobbin lace? The worst that can happen is that it won't work so I bought a set of 50 bobbins, some thread, big pins and two books. I didn't but the pillow to work on because I she didn't have the one that I wanted to get so I decided to wait until she gets it to order it on the net.

In the meantime, I started to read about bobbin lace on the internet, blogs, websites, videos in Youtube, etc. While investigating I found a really nice blog that had a little step by step tutorial to make a pillow at home. It is very simple: just some fabric, foam, sand and shoe box. Mine is almost done... I just have to make the show box look a little better but oter than that the pillow works perfectly!

Bag full of sand, foam and all covered with linen.

It doesn't look very "elegant" but it works :)

One of the books a got comes with excercises in increasing level of complexity. I got ready to begin with the first excercise, so:

1st step: Prepare the bobbins. Load them with thread:

2nd step: Prepare the pillow. Pin the pattern on it.

3rd step: Put the bobbins on the pillow and let the fun begin!

This first excercise aimed to learn how to make the half stitch. It was so hard but again... this is just a very basic stitch.  I can't stop looking at it and see how the thred shapes so perfectly... this really MAGIC!

If you look very carefully your will find two mistakes I made... but I guess it is alright since it is my first time doing anything with bobbins :)

Excercise n°1 finished :þ

Close up

I am very happy with the result and now I am looking forward to starting with the second excercise!!

About the lopapeysa: It is done!! I just have to graft the underarms, sew the neck to make it double folded and block it! Pictures will come after it is blocked :)

Last week I also bought a new toy: A multilens camera. It is a funny camera. It takes four panoramic pictures per frame so it is possible to catch "movement" with it. I am finishing the first film roll during the weekend... next week I'll show how it worked!

This has been a week full of experiments! We made sushi for the first time! I love sushi but never eat it because I refuse to pay the RIDICULOUS price they ask for it here in Iceland. It is unbelievable. So, we decided better to try to make it ourselves and it worked!! Here are some pics of the process:

And to end, summer doesn't seem to want to come to Iceland. The last couple of weeks have been pretty cold. The only sign of summer is the light. Days are getting REALLY long. It barely gets dim for a couple of hours which is GREAT! This is a pic I took from home a few days ago around 23.30h... it is just wonderful :)