Getting ready for winter.

It is starting to get colder and colder here and I realized that I don't have many "winter accessories" in my closet.

I have only one short scarf with buttons that I made a long time ago... it was a real odyssey. I made it using brioche stitch and I think I started it abut five times! I found that brioche stitch was not so difficult to make but as soon as I made a mistake it was a huge disaster! I got completely lost and took me a long time to fix it! Now, all the effort was totally worthwhile.

Brioche stitch is really nice, it makes a reversible fabric that is squishy and warm.

I made this one with Bulky lopi on 9mm needles. 

Hats, holy hats! I have made quite a few of them but I am NEVER satisfied with them! I am just not a hat person. It has to be really, really cold so I get to wear one.

There are two of them that I have used the most:

Cabled hat

Made with Eskimo by drops.

And Haka:

Also made with bulky lopi. 

So, now it was time to make a new scarf and hat.

Two years ago I made a cabled neck warmer using some Noro kureyon that I had after having frogged a shawl I made with it.



I never wore it...  I guess I didn't really like the colors (and to be honest, I really don't like Noro at all. I don't understand why it is so expensive!). The good thing is that when my sister came to visit me liked it a lot! So she went back home with a new cowl :)

Since I liked the pattern so much I decided to make another one. This time with a yarn and colors that I really liked. I began to knit it about a year ago and then the project fell asleep in the stash basket (along with a couple of other things!) until a few weeks ago when I decided to finish it once and for all!

The pattern looks MUCH better in one color.

Details: 

* Pattern: Cabled cowl by Lion Brand

* Yarn: Cascade 220.

* Needles: 5.0mm

Notes:

* I made a much shorter version. The pattern called to make it 50cm long and then lightly felt it. I made it just 30cm long and no felting.

* I like cables a lot. They make the fabric look look warm and cozy. And well, they don't only have the looks... they are REALLY fun to knit!

I also decided to look for a hat. Searching here and there I found this wonderful fair isle hat:

I like the simplicity of the pattern.

Details:

* Pattern: Peacock by Karen Borrel.

* Yarn: Cascade 220. Less than one skein of the main color.

* Needles: 4.5mm

Notes:

* I didn't make any changes to the pattern. I followed it just as it is.

* When I saw this hat the first thing that cought my attention were these two bicolor bands at the beginning and at the end of the fair isle section. I had absolutely no clue about how to make them but it was really easy! And they look very nice! Knitting always surprises me. It is so nice to discover new things that are made with the same simple elements of basic knitting. In this case purling. Yes, the bands are made just using purl stitch and some twisting!

* I decided to use cascade 220 to match it with the cowl. Besides this yarn is simply amazing. It is so soft and nice to work with! And it is incredibly warm! I totally recommend it.

* I love pompons, so even though if the pattern wouldn't have called for one I would have made one anyways :)

Now, to finish with accessories, I am knitting a pair of mittens. I think I have said before that I am not a big fan of knitting anything that comes in pairs... but I really need a new pair of mittens. It is really silly that i have only ONE pair that I made almost three years ago! This far, I am done with the first mitten... one more to go!

And to finish, a few pics. These one were taken in a place called Arnastapi in Snæfellsnes. It is a little village next to sea. The most amazing thing about this place are the cliffs and lava formations.

Cliffs and Eva.

When walking close to the cliffs it is possible to find a couple of holes. It is not possible to see it in this picture but the sea is on the bottom of this hole.

There are also a couple of lava bridges... they are pretty cool. 

Needles in a frame and trying to make a pattern.

Remember all the things that Judi sent to me?

Among all the things there was a pair of needles that belonged to her grandmother. A pair of double pointed needles size 3 (3.25mm) and 11" (27cm) in lenght.

Well, I think it is such a nice piece (almost like a museum piece) that I was thinking that it would be nice to have them framed. To do so I needed to find a nice frame that would honour the beauty of this needles.

Last weekend we went to a farmer's market very close to Reykjavík (in Mosfellsbær) to buy some fresh and locally produced vegetables.

Tiny market in Mosfellsdalur

When we were coming to the market and just before entering into the farm I saw a couple of women that were taking things out of their car and putting them on a table. They were probably getting rid of some old things by selling them outside of the market. One of them was very familiar... I actually recognized her almost immediately: it was Hafdís Huld, an icelandic singer (know fro having been part of a band called Gusgus and now for her solo career).

After having bought some vegetables I stopped by to take a look at what they were selling. And yes! They had a perfect frame for my needles! So, I bought an old frame for only 250 ISK (about 2USD)!!

This is how it looks :)

For those who don't know her, this is one my favourite songs and video of her:



A little bit about knitting.

On Ravelry, in the Spanish swap group, a few weeks ago was proposed to make a new KAL and this time it would be to knit a lopapeysa. The KAL was suposed to begin in September but there is a little bit of delay because some of the people who is taking part of it are waiting for the wool (lopi) to arrive (since they made the order on the internet).

In the mean time I have been thinking about what pattern to use for the yoke, sleeves and waist. I really didn't feel like using any from the magazines. I think I have alreadt knitted all myt favourite ones so that meant only one thing: It was time to try to make my own pattern.

With the help of the book Íslensk sjónabók I have been trying to make the charts using paper and color.

Messy charts!

It is not as simple as I thought. It is kind of complicated to find the right spots to put the decreases but with some patience I guess I will work this out. I still haven't finished the yoke pattern... I guess i will decide how to finish on the go. I don't know. I will see.

I already chose the colors and decided to begin just to see how the waist pattern would look like. I think it doesn't look so bad at all!

What do you think?  :)

Besides this I am knitting a shawl based on an Estonian pattern and recently me, Gummi and Kristín have started a new KAL. We are now knitting a Hyrna Herborgar (which will my my 3rd!). Which reminds me that I still have to post the pictures of our first KAL (the Aeolian!).

Next time I will be talking abut the new shawl, the new KAL and the old KAL pictures!

Now, I want to hand a few pictures from the southeast... pictures of Vatnajökull, the largest glaciar in Iceland as seen from the road : )

This is in Skaftafell, a national park. 

What I found in the stash (1st part)

If you have been reading this blog you might remember that last week I went through my stash and cleaned it a little bit. It had been ages since the last time I had done that so some surprises came up through out the process.

I didn't only find a lot of yarn, some of them I didn't even remember why I bought them! But also some of my first "knitting attempts"! I thought I had just thrown them away but (luckily) I didn't. It was so much fun to have them again and see how TIGHT I was knitting!

As I said in one of my previous posts it was my mom who showed me the very basics maybe eight or ten years ago. I remember that she gave me a pair of 4mm straight needles and some acrylic wool to start with. She showed me how to cast on (long tail cast on) and make knit stitch and purl stitch. So, when I picked up knitting again two and half years ago under the guidance of Gummi (gingig on Ravelry) and internet it was pretty easy to cast on but when it came to knit wow! I was so stiff! After knitting a tiny rectangle I had so much pain in my wrists! And missing a stitch was terrible! I got paralized and went right away to Gummi crying out for help!

First garter stitch rectangle (it is tiny!)

My mom tought me to make the knit stitch using the back loop of the stitch. I think that is a normal practice in Chile (actually I confirmed it when my sister came to visit me and I saw her doing exactly the same). That got me a little confused at first because Gummi and most of the turorials I checked in the internet showed knitting through the front loop. So that was a new thing to learn (adding to that the fact that I am lefthanded so it took always an extra effort to undestand things, both for me and for the one who was teaching me). 

When it came to purling I must say I had a bit more trouble. I just couldn't get it at first. Somehow I was ending up with all my stitches twisted after every purl row. I found the solution to this problem at Knittinghelp... WHAT A GREAT WEBSITE! I learned most of the basic and some more complicated technics there. They have amazing videos and all of them are so clear! But purling kept on being one of my least favourite things to do (until I discovered the Norwegian purling... which is just WONDERFUL).

First knitting in the round, cuff and one stripe!

After trying knitting flat, I wanted to try circular knitting which gave me the great surprise that no purling was necessary at all! I took my first steps, again, by the hand of Gummi and Knittinghelp. I remember I even tried the magic loop! (but I must admit that I don't like it at all, I prefer double pointed needles) along with knitting in the round I added color: I made one stripe!

My first FO was a pair of mittens (I used as a model a pair of mittens that I had bought in the Red Cross) which contain all the things I had learn that far: knitting in the round and making stripes. But I had to learn how to make decreases in order to be able to finish them. I made some mistakes doing that because at the time I didn't understand that my stitches would slant in a different direction because I am leftie. In fact, I didn't even know that the decreases had different slanting directions at all!

First fair isle attempt

When I began to knit my goal was to make a lopapeysa. So, in order to so I had to learn fair isle. This is my first attempt: terrible! I was knitting so tight! The floats are too short and the piece of fabric looks horrible!

It took me knitting a whole lopapeysa that ended up being too small for me and with a fair isle yoke that was all wavy because of the tension to learn how to make it right. When I finished the lopapeysa and tried on I got so angry because it was too small for me that I frogged it ALL! (fortunetely I took a picture of it, hehe). 

First lopapeysa: FROGGED

After this huge fail, I decided to go for smaller projects to learn fair isle. Since I already knew how to knit in the round I went for a pair of socks. I made a simple pattern on paper and started to knit them. The result was ok. At least the tension in the colorwork was good but the pattern itself was aweful.

Then I made a hat that looked A LOT better than enything I had knitted before. It was my first nice fair isle project: the right tension, a pattern that looked good and the perfect size! 

Now, I felt I was ready to start a new lopapeysa and the result was this:

Orói

Now that I look back, learning how to knit has been such a nice "journey"! A journey with a lot of frogging but always interesting and fun!