Stars in My Eyes

I went to Iceland to teach knitting on a tour for knitters–and forgot to bring something to knit.

I left with knitting in my bag, sure. I didn't have a hat or neck warmer to wear on the trip, so I whipped them out en route. But that left me with nothing to knit once I landed.

Of course, in Iceland you are never more than two feet from a yarn display and I picked up two balls of Lopi Einband. Einband is Lopi's laceweight. Fuzzy, warm, decidedly on the crunchy side. Takes dye like a mofo, blocks like a dream.

Total cost: six United States dollars.

I started playing with the yarn during the tour, and now it looks like this. I'm calling it Iceland Sky–fathoms of blue studded with stars and draped in the aurora borealis.










Pattern forthcoming. This week, as soon as the Anna Shawl comes back from the splendid new tech editor, Iceland Sky heads out for him to review.

News Flash: Knitters Are Weird

Film at eleven.

Yoked

For knitters, one of the staggering things about the streets of Reykjavik is that they are so full of people wearing handknits that you almost stop noticing. The lopapeysa is everywhere. What's more, it's on everyone. The hip and the dowdy, the young and the old, the ample and the spindly all hike about with the signature patterned yoke around their shoulders.

On day one, spotting them was sport enough. "Over there," Stephen would hiss in my ear, "by the coffee shop." Mike would snap a surreptitious picture with his iPad, if a photo taken by waving a large, flashy piece of electronic equipment in the air can be said to be surreptitious.

By the end of the trip, we had moved along from mere sighting to identifying according to which Lopi book they'd been published in. "Number 26," I'd say, casually nodding my head in the direction of a passing specimen. "That's four this morning," Stephen would note. Stephen is good at counting things. Mike would snap a surreptitious picture with his iPad, if a photo taken by waving a large, flashy piece of electronic equipment in the air can be said to be surreptitious.

You can attribute the universal popularity of the lopapeysa to many things. It's warm. It's handsome. It's durable. You can buy the yarn for it at the grocery store for thirty bucks.

But that's not the whole story. It also turns out the damned things are addictive to knit. I started my Vetur three days ago with a swatch to test the colors. I have already finished the yoke,



and I'm having trouble setting it aside so that I can eat, sleep, bathe, engage in human contact.



I had to force myself to put it down so I could photograph it and write this. In fact, I'm tempted to stop writing immed

Directions

In order to compensate, in part, for no longer being surrounded by this,



or this,



(click to embiggen; it's worth it)

I have begun working on this:



It's Vetur, a lopapeysa by Védis Jónsdóttir, from Lopi 28. I left Iceland with a sweater's worth of yarn (thanks to Ragga of Knitting Iceland), and had thoughts of designing my own yoke. There's lots of other work on the table, however; and I decided following somebody else's instructions for a change would be a vacation in itself.

So I'm knitting Vetur as written, aside from changing it from the two original colors to four completely different colors.



And using Létt-Lopi (a spun yarn, with a finer gauge) instead of Plötulopi (which is unspun and slightly bulky).

And trimming some of the lower edge of the yoke, since I don't think a large yoke flatters a small person.

And eliminating the pattern from the body and sleeves.

And altering the neckband.

And making it a zippered cardigan instead of a pullover.

And working it from the top down instead of the bottom up.

Aside from that, I'm absolutely going to sit back and let dear Védis do the driving.

Whee.

They Weren't Kidding

Ladies and gentlemen, the yarn section of the grocery store–this one's attached to a mall in Reykjavik. The yarn is just past the dairy case.



Mostly Lopi, but also a very large selection of Dale of Norway. Also sock yarns, mystery acrylics, pattern books, needles, notions, and buttons.



The above is plötulopi (unspun yarn, in wheels), wrapped in plastic to preserve the yarny freshness.

I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Birthplace of Lopi

This was taken at Álafoss, a few hundred yards from the modern Istex mill where Lopi Yarn is produced.



In the early days of the industry, in the late 19th century, this river ran with naturally warm water. The raw wools were washed in it.



Today, the original mill building houses a shop that sells Lopi–including the famous unspun yarns that are put up in little wheels.



Footnote: Across the path from the shop is a former swimming pool that became the recording studio for the band Sigur Rós.



Before this trip I wasn't a fan of either Lopi or Sigur Rós. Boy, did that change in a hurry.

Speaking in Tongues

Before this trip, the only thing I knew about the Icelandic language was that it was sprinkled with letters I didn't recognize, most notably the eth (ð) and the thorn (þ). Aren't they pretty?

Now that I've been here a few days and heard it spoken constantly, I'm in love with it. It has lilt and sparkle. It falls gently on the ear. A casual conversation in Icelandic sounds less like chitchat than a duet. (Or a trio, quartet, or–after a substantial amount of Gull has gone down the hatch–a free-for-all twelve-tone Viking war chorus.)

I love languages and am usually pretty good at picking them up on the fly. But not Icelandic. Three days and I still can't pronounce the name of my street (Þórsgata) in a way that doesn't make taxi drivers say, "What?"

Being unable to decode anything written–menus, shop signs, magazine titles, street signs–is wildly disorienting. The street signs, in particular, make me seasick. Þórsgata is an easy one. Usually you're confronted with Rauðarárastígur, which when spoken properly sounds as though it only has two syllables, neither of which uses any of the letters in "Rauðarárastígur."

To cope, while I try earnestly to improve myself, I've had to resort to remembering street names by what they kinda look like instead of what they actually are. This morning, I'm in charge of navigating myself and my companions (Mike of FiberBeat and Stephen of Hizknits) to a thermal pool we haven't tried yet. It's at the corner of Burgermunch and Snuffleuppagus.

If you don't hear from us in 24 hours, send help.

Addendum: I opened Flickr this morning to be greeted by this.



Go fuck yourself, Flickr.

Lopapeysapalooza

A flock of lopapeysa (traditional Icelandic yoked sweaters) caught on the fly during a community inspection of rams.











Check out the size and spacing of some of these motifs. Notice that strands are often carried for far more than five stitches–and nobody died. No weaving on the wrong side, either. When I asked about this, I was told that Icelandic wool felts so readily to itself that with very little wear, the long floats pretty much disappear into the fabric.

The longer I knit, the more I realize that Elizabeth Zimmermann was right: there are no rules in knitting that cannot be broken.

The tour company that brought me here has produced a thoroughly charming instructional video about these sweaters. Highly recommended.