Woolly Presents for One Lucky Guy :)

During December and January I was so lucky to get some really precious presents from dear friends, most of them knitting-related (plus some amazing candies and other sweet, sweet details).

I would like to share with you what I got... all of them are very special and I need to find something that as special to make with them. I already have some ideas floating around inside of my head...

Sunsunteje surprised me with a beautiful skein of wool that she spun herself. It is a mixture of merino and silk.. it is amazingly soft and has a very nice shine. The colors are AMAZING as well... it is pretty difficult to describe them! There is some purple, beige and white in it... all beautifully combined.

Hiro, who I had the luck to meet last year on my trip to Asturias (and we managed not to take a SINGLE good picture of us together!) sent me some beautiful wool along with LOTS of candies (and I mean LOTS, so much that I still even have some!) and some other sweet details. She surprised me with a wonderful skein of Lace Silk in a very bright red-fuchsia color (I am really bad naming colors... but it must be something near those two) and one skein of Lace Merino in natural color (light gray). Both from Greta and The Fibers.

My dear friend Svanhvít Lilja, who moved to Sweden with her boyfriend last Autumn, came on Christmas Holidays to visit Iceland. She gave me as a birthday present two skeins of wool that she got in Umeå, the town where she is living. The skeins have no tags so I don't know what the composition is but it feels great to touch, it is both firm and soft at the same time. I think I have knitted anything with red wool... actually I think I don't even own anything to wear that is red... so this is the perfect opportunity to get some red into my wardrobe. I was thinking about a pair of mittens and a neckwarmer, maybe?  :)

Paolo, my italian colleague that was working with me last year surprised me with a very unexpected birthday present. I thought it was so thoughtful of him! He came with this really beautiful icelandic design "roll-case" made out of a woollen tweed fabric with a really pretty cross stitch design on one of its borders. It is REALLY pretty but unfortunately I haven't found a good use for it yet. The pockets seem to be too big and too deep (and they are definitely not enough to put all my needles). 

I have been trying to find something to use it for but nothing has been clicking in my brain! Ideas? They are ALL MORE THAN WELCOME! :)

Mike, my friend from California, that I finally got to know in person last October after having been Flickr friends for quite a while when he came to Iceland (along with Franklin and Stephen). 


He really did surprise me!! He gave me my first Elizabeth Zimmermann's book! "Knit One Knit All". A book devoted to the most simple of all stitches: Garter Stitch. There are some really cool designs that I want to try! And I must admit that this book was somehow and eye-opener for me. I think I had always somehow underestimated garter stitch... now I see it definitely with other eyes. 

In the box  there was also a DVD called "A Knitting Glossary" by E. Zimmermann and M. Swansen. This is truly a BIBLE! It is a DVD full of techniques that are taught by Elizabeth and Meg in a very comfortable format sitting on the sofa of their home. It is a perfect reference to refresh and learn some techniques. 


And last but not least... In one of our last trips to the Álafoss Factory Gummi found a new yarn that has been recently put for sale in the shop. It is called Bolivia, 100% wool (from Bolivia, I guess?). When he saw it he thought he could make THE PERFECT scarf for me! And HE DID! How sweet is that? 

He made this HUGELY LONG (I think it must be over 3 meters long!) scarf that I can wrap around several times around the neck. The colors are definitely MY KIND OF COLORS. It is EXTREMELY cozy and warm! 

What else can I say? Except that I am an INCREDIBLY LUCKY GUY!

Thank you all so much!

And to finish... Yesterday the weather was wonderful... Not a little bit of wind and even not so cloudy. From my home it is possible to see a glacier that is at the very end of a peninsula. The glacier is called Snæfellsjökull (for many of you that will sound familiar because of Jules Verne's novel "Journey to the Center of the Earth"in which an entrance to a passage that leads to the center of the earth is found in this mountain). 


It had been AGES since the last time the glacier was visible mostly because it had been mostly cloudy and not clear enough to let it be seen. Yesterday... I saw this from home:

New book, Aolian progress and my lace super-pupil!

Tomorrow is Gummi's birthday and I was thiking about giving him an amazing icelandic book called Íslensk sjónabók (Ornaments and Patterns found in Iceland). I actually already bought it and gave it to him... I know! I couldn't wait until the actual birthday day! I am terrible!

Even the hard cover of the book is BEAUTIFUL!

This book is a compilation of patterns found in 17th to 19th century icelandic manuscripts. There are actually ten sjónabók manuscripts that have been preserved. The book contains all the patterns found in those manuscripts which have been redrawn digitally. It is a source of ideas with strong ties to Icelandic national heritage.

The book has 783 pages FULL of wonderful patterns that can be used for knitting, embroidery, cross stitch or whatever comes to your mind : ) It also comes with a CD! 

The book is a little bit pricey but it is worth every crown (króna). It is just WONDERFUL and the best of all... Gummi LOVED it!!

These are a few pages so you can see what I am talking about:

All the pages are arranged like this: to the left there are diagrams and to the right the drawings with color of the diagrams.

Some patterns could make beautiful wallpapers!

The Aeolian shawl is growing and growing. I have already started with the edge which is the main part of the whole shawl. At first I had decided to make the narrow edge version but finally I changed my mind and I am going for the full size version. I think it is going to look very, very good. I am very curious to see how it turns out!

This colors look so nice together! Don't you think?

The whole process of knitting this shawl has been pretty smooth. Except for a couple of SILLY mistakes I have made that have made me frog a couple of long eternal rows. The instructions are quite clear except for the set-up edge section which is made out of four charts:

- Right edge chart.
- Edge set-up chart.
- Center edge chart.
-Left edge chart.

The construction is as simple as:

* Knit the 2 or 3 stitched of the garter stitch tab.
* Begin with the right edge chart.
* Continue with the edge set-up chart repeating it as many times as necessary to get to the center stitch.
* Make the center edge chart once (between the stitch markers that are before and after the central stitch).
* Knit the edge set-up chart again as many times as necessary to get to the end of the row.
* Knit the right edge chart.
* Knit the 2 or 3 stitched of the garter stitch tab.

There IS something strange in the way this section is written in the pattern (at least I found it weird)... so I had to make up my own little instruction to get it right.

Today we were just at home, chilling out and Jóhann Birnir asked me, out of the blue, to teach him how to make bobbin lace. He is twelve years old and loves, loves, loooves handcrafts (and sports!). He is a great knitter himself!  Now, how could I possibly say no?!  IMPOSSIBLE!

Very concentrated.

Looking so PRO!

So, we started by loading the bobbins with some yellow, rather thick thread of linen. The first lesson: how to make a half stitch torchon ground. It was amazing how quicky he picked it up!! And how even the ground ended up! He made just a little piece because even though the thread looks really good it was kind of difficult to keep in the bobbins... somehow the knot that keeps the thread from running off the bobbins kept on running making it a little difficult to keep the bobbins in order. Anyways... Jóhann made a beautiful little first work!

Even and perfectly done!

I am so proud!! 

New Books

During March I got two new amazing books:

Victorian Lace Today:

My dear friend Kristina gave me this book as a birthday present, even though my birthday is in December. The problem was that by then the book was not available in the shop, they had only the one to show in the shelf and they didn't want to sell it! So, Kristina decided to give me a gift card from the shop so I could go and see what I could get as a birthday present. The only thing I really wanted (from this shop) was THIS book so I had to wait patiently... THREE MONTHS later the book arrived. Now, I must say that the wait was TOTALLY worth it!

This is a beautiful book, from beginning to end. It has a lot of patterns and a really nice section with instructions with very good and clear illustrations at the end of it. I can hardly wait to start knitting something from it! I'm sure it will be hard to choose among so many cool patterns.

I must admit that I am a bit afraid (well, maybe not afraid but a bit worried) because these patterns look a lot more complicated than the ones from The Knitted Lace of Estonia (another of my big favourite books that I have been using lately)  and Þrihyrnur og Langsjöl (that I bought mainly for one pattern: Hyrna Herborgar).

There are several patterns that involve knitting lace pattern on both sides (I mean, the ones on which the wrong row are not simply purling but doing all the staff, as yo and decreases). The problem with that is the fact that I am left-handed and then I have to be really aware of what I am doing to avoid making mistakes. I have to mirror all the instruction and sometimes that can be a bit confusing. My only experience doing so was the Percy Shawl, in which there is one section, called frost flowers, that is patterned both sides. It was difficult at first, it required a lot of attention but after a few repeats wasn't so bad at all. Now, I can't wait to get rid of my queue to start one of this shawls!!

The Haapsalu Shawl:

My interest for knitting lace began when I knitted the Swallowtail. That was the first time I ever heard of the Lily in the Valley pattern and had to knit these crazy beautiful things called nupps. Thanks to this shawl I got to know that there was an amazing knitting lace tradition in Estonia.


I have always wanted to take a trip through the baltic countries and now I have one more reason to go there!

The first lace book that I bought was Knitted Lace of Estonia, a wonderful book that is definetely on my top list, from which I have knitted already two shawls: Maikell and Hagakiri. Then, one day I was at my favourite yarn store in Hafnarfjörður and I saw this book, The Haapsalu Shawl, I took a look at it and fell in love with it immediately... but I didn't buy it bacause I thought it was a little bit to expensive. Mistake! Because when I finally decided to get it, guess what!? It was no longer available so, the same story... I had to wait. Fortunetely the wait wasn't as long so in just a couple of weeks I became the happy owner of this book.

What I like about this book is the fact that it is more of a pattern dictionary than a book full of recipes for shawls or scarves. It has many body stitch patterns (a lot of variations of the same patterns) and some lace edge patterns. So, there is plenty of room to create something as you wish. It also has really nice illustrations with instructions, some history and explanations about the origin of the patterns (most of them based of nature).

The only think I am not really convinced about is the way the patterns are charted. The charts look too full. Maybe I am wrong and it is better. I don't know. I will only know that when I put my first project on the needles!