A very late birthday present: Echo Flower

For a long time I wanted to knit something for my friend Anna María but for some reason or another I never got to do it until now!

At the beginning this shawl was conceived as a KAL with Kristín Hrund and Gummi (we have knitted together already two shawls: Aeolian and Hyrna Herborgar). But the original plan was to knit a Laminaria. We began together and after knitting a few rows we all realized that we didn't like the way it looked so we aborted the mission and took the Echo Flower instead.

The problem was that December came on our way and our KAL fell asleep for a good while. In my case not only because December was terribly busy but also because I had to finish some other projects urgently!

Now, it is finally finished! And most importantly, I finally gave it to Anna... whose birthday was at the beginning of January but anyways!

So, here it is:

Echo Flower Shawlette

Details:

* Pattern: Echo Flower.

* Yarn: Einband.

* Needles: 4.0mm and 5.0 to cast-off

* Flower chart: 9 repeats.

* Nupps: 9 stitches.

* Cast-off: with double thread using the K2Tog method.

Notes:

* This is the second Echo Flower that I knit. The first one was made with Malabrigo lace, which I think was too expensive and nothing extraordinary (except for the color that was really nice, you can see it here).

* I think that Einband is much more nice (and MUCH, MUCH, MUCH cheaper and when it comes to blocking... it blocks BEAUTIFULLY and it holds the shape for a long time (unlike my experience with Malabrigo).

The Border.

* This pattern looks very complicated on paper, especially those 2-into-9 and 3-into-9, which aren't so complicated at all. Those are actually, in my opinion, the most fun part of the whole shawl!.

* For the body I decided to make 9 repeats. Since the beginning I knew I didn't want to make a shawl but a shawlette that would be worn around the neck. I thought that that would suit Anna María's style BEST.

The Body: 9 repeats.

* The nupps. I LOVE nupps. I could knit nupps ALL DAY, EVERYDAY! I made them of 9 stitches because I really like my nupps to stand out and be very visible. Besides, nupps are a great sign of handmade :)

The nupps: 9 stitches. And the bind-off: K2Tog with a double thread.

* The cast-off: I used a double thread, as indicated in the pattern, but I used the K2tog method instead of the P2Tog. I really don't understand why the latter one is proposed as a cast-off for this shawl. For me, K2Tog seems to work perfectly done with a needle one size bigger and very loosely.

* Blocking: I think this is one of the easiest shawls to block that I have made! It took me 10 minutes! I used blocking wires only for the upper section and then pins for every point.

Folded ad ready!

* And finally about the color: Anna María LOVES yellow. I think she is one of the very few persons that I know who loves it, and wears it a lot and what is best: It looks great on her. Actually, the day I went to visit her to give her the shalw she was wearing yellow! As you can see in the picture below! hehe.

Anna María wearing her Echo Flower :)

I have not been taking to many pictures lately... I still have a roll of film at home that I haven't developed and another one in the camera since December! It will be fun to see those pics that I barely remember!

These are some pics I took at the beginning of January. It is at an old cementery that is down town in Reykjavík. It is a really cool place to go for a walk...







I guess that now I will begin to take more pics again... now that days are starting to get longer and longer everyday!!

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!!

Today is a Great Day!!!!

Today, exactly right now, as I am writing this post my DEAREST friend Laura is getting married in Asturias, Spain!!

Today I woke up with this nervous feeling as if it was me who was going to get married! My stomach is full of butterflies for them both! I would have loved to be able to come to their wedding but they decided to have this just with their families and throw a party later this year... which of course I am not going to miss!!

So, because of this GREAT occasionI I HAD TO knit something for the bride! I must say that the decision of what to make wasn't difficult at all. It had to be something delicate and beautiful. Anything better than lace?

The pattern choice was also very easy... it had to be a Hyrna Herborgar for several reasons: it is my favorite pattern, it is the most beautiful shawl that I know (yes, I know, I am a bit obsessed with it!) and last but not least it is an icelandic design.

So, here it is:

Blocking

Details:

* Pattern: Hyrna Herborgar (from the book Þríhyrnur og langsjöl).

* Yarn: Cascade Heritage Silk (a mix of silk and merino).

* Needles: 4.0mm and a 4.5mm hook to cast off.

Notes:

* As you many of you know this is not the first Hyrna Herborgar that I knit (if you want to see the other: one and two and three) This is actually the fourth one! So, knitting it was pretty smooth since I already know all the tricks of this pattern... and that helped me a lot because I was knitting against time!

* This was the fist time I was using Cascade Heritage Silk. The yarn is amazing. It is a real pleasure to knit. The only boring thing was that I had to buy a WHOLE new skein just to make the crochet bind off row! And this yarn is not exactly one of the cheapest. Now I have a whole skein that I guess will become something for the baby of a friend that will be born in a few months.

* Blocking this shawl is becoming easier and easier everytime! I was a little worried after blocking it because I found that the yarn had a little bit of "memory" ad it was shrinking a little bit on the borders. I had to use some steam to correct that.

* Finally, I wanted to thank my friend Sif, who gently went out with me in  a very cold (but amazingly beautiful) day to have some cool pics of the shawl.

Fortunately the package arrived on time so Laura received her present!  This morning, she sent me an SMS telling me that she was on the way to the church and that she was wearing the most beautiful shawl in the world!!

I am so happy she liked it and most importantly that she is wearing it on this so very special day! Even though I am not physically there my thoughts are with them!

All the best wished of happiness and prosperity for the newly married couple! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

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: