FO: Var

My obsession with all thing Icelandic continues.  While I won't be stocking deliciously fragrant Hakarl any time soon, I am loving lopapeysa sweaters.  Casual, functional, warm colorwork pullovers and cardigans were my go-to this winter.  Now that it is springtime, I still wanted to wear one, so I decided to fight my fear of zippers once again and make a jacket that is still warm and weatherproof without being too swampy-pits on.

The great thing about Icelandic sweater patterns is they all follow a very basic formula for men and women alike- a tube for the body, two tubes for the sleeves, then you join the whole mess when it hits the yoke and decrease down to the neck.  They are perfectly unisex, and while you can add waste shaping for a more flattering fit, I opted not to.  I found a yoke pattern that I loved but it didn't match my gauge (Var), so I mashed it up with another sweater that did (Frost) and added a steek in the front so I could install a zipper.  Both patterns are found in the Istex Lopi 29 book, which is full of patterns that you can just adapt and run with your own creation.

I wanted a longer sweater, a bit oversized, so I know this isn't the most flattering length on someone with curves.  I wanted function over fashion this time around though, and having something that reaches you hip makes for a really warm jumper.  I also added a hood.  It just felt right to be able to have a built-in hat on something that I would wear in such changeable spring weather.  Plus, I've never made anything with a hood before and was long overdue.

I am also getting so much better at installing zippers.  This one I got right on only the second try!  It's practically bulge-free, and the whole process went so smoothly that I have conquered my fear and I'm zipper-ready for anything.

The pattern for the hood also said that you should roll the edge of the hood under and seem it in place, but it does that naturally without any help from me, so I left the edge unfinished.  If you were really inspired, you could do an i-cord edging on it, or extend the button band up and around it, but I think it was fine as it is.

I used up almost all of the Rowan British Sheep Breeds that I had in my stash.  The colors:
White= BFL
Black-Brown= Black Welsh
Brown-Grey= Jacob
I also used small amounts of Grey Suffolk and Moorit Shetland, as I was just down to scraps with those and still wanted to put them to use.  

It's just fascinating to feel the different wool characteristics in this way.  The BFL is by far the softest and silkiest and I want to buy all of it in the world and live in a house made of it.  

I am quite pleased with it.  It's just suck a simple design and only took a few weeks to whip up with no real intense effort needed.  I'm quite sad to see it done, as this is the very last of the instant gratification projects for a while.  On to sock-yarn pullovers!

FO: Riddari, with an acceptable amount of buldge

I have spent way too much time on this beast.  

The actual knitting took me no time- maybe two weeks start to finish?- and it looked just dandy until I took the scissors to it.

The idea of it was an Icelandic-style jumper done in 100% British Wools:  it was fascinating to combine these wools, to get a feel for each one.  The Black Welsh was the roughest to work with- it's rustic and full of lanolin, but it will look like new forever.  The grey Suffolk was a bit softer, but I obsessively picked wires of guard hairs out of it.  The moorit Shetland, lovely and lofty, the BFL silky and soft.  Each is their natural color, making a nice sample of the natural variety of colorful sheep.  I dubbed this "the Cod Wars" sweater- the UK had a series of bullying encounters with Iceland over fishing rights in the rich waters around Iceland, and from the 1950's to the late 70's, the UK would send trawlers there under the protection of warships to fish around Iceland.

 Like I said, the problems started when I took the scissors to the front.  See, the pattern was written for a much lighter weight yarn, but I loved the yoke pattern so much that I did the math and followed the instructions for a child's extra small size knit in a rather tight gauge.  The fabric is dense and impenetrable to wind and water, but perhaps a bit to warm for anyplace but Iceland.  A bit of air conditioning was in order and I decided to run a crochet steek up the front, snipped it into a cardigan and installed a vintage brass zipper.  That's when I started having big problems.

The zipper would not lay flat, creating big lumps and bumps up the front.  Huge ones.  After twice hand-picking and trying to ease the lumps out, frantic calls to tailors and friends were made.  I debated trying to sew it back up and save it as a cardigan, but the colorwork would have looked all wrong.  I decided to outsource, and took it to Susan at Sharpworks down in Herne Hill.  Susan wouldn't do it for me, but advised me to take out the crochet steeks, which was adding a tight line of stitches and extra fabric that was distorting things.  She also advised me to stretch the fabric taught along the zipper to minimize the zipper tape bunching.

I went home, took out the crochet steeks, and eased the zipper in one more time, trying to stretch out the lumps without turning it into a dress.

Ta dum!  An acceptable amount of bulges!  Since I had to stretch the fabric, it's a bit longer then I intended- I could have stretched it more and ended up with a dress.  It's not perfectly flat, but it doesn't look like a tumor is growing under there either.  Oh!  and it's warm enough to be outerwear.  And you know, now that I've been struggling with this for more than a month now, I've noticed that a fair amount of commercially made zip-up sweaters have zippers that don't like perfectly flat as well, so instead of drowning in a river of tears of frustration, I said this is good enough and walked away.

The kicker?  No way no how are Icelandic Lopapeysa traditional to Iceland.  They were developed in the 1950's to make use of the abundance of Icelandic wool, and they are based on styles of traditional knitwear from far-off places suck as Turkey, Sweden, South America, and Greenland.  They quickly became a favorite of tourist and locals alike.

 I do need to clean up my edges a little bit more- I don't have a perfectly clean line running up the front.  What's a few more hours with needle and thread?  I promise you I won't un-pick the zipper again.  Part of the raggedness around the edges are due to the fact that I've tinkered with this way too much and edges began to fray at the same rate as my temper.      

 It's not going to get cold enough here in the South of England to ever need something this fantastically wooly.  A trip to Iceland is in order, or perhaps, one day, a Maine winter will be endured.

The pattern is Riddari.  The yarn is Rowan British Sheep Breeds Chunky, a yarn much bulkier than what was called for in the pattern, but I've been determined to knit down my stash instead of reaching for my bank card every time the urge to knit a sweater hits.

The Butcher of Sheepy things

Like I said in a previous post, I somewhat lost my knitting mojo after then holidays.  Once I got all the gifties sent out to the four corners of the globe, I sat down and looked around and just couldn't find the inspiration to do diddly.

I dislike unfinished projects in general, which is why I was disgusted with myself for having a hat brim sitting on the shelf for more than a month.

A long stretch of simple knitting in the round was abandoned in favor of just not wanting to deal with it for 14 inches.  

I did chip away at a crochet blanket for a while:

The Babette, the best way I could think of to use up all the scraps of sock yarn that I've accumulated the past few years.  A memory of socks and shawls and sweaters, slowly being pieced together in a colorful spread of clown barf.  However...I now need to create more scraps as I'm running out of yarn for it.  

Part of this big stall was the fault of this jumper:

An incredibly warm men's Icelandic lopi sweater called Riddari, knit in the natural colors of sheep of the Birtish Isles: Black Wesh, moorit Shetland, white BFL, and steel gray Suffolk.  It was lovely to knit- the wool was rustic and had a lovely sheepy smell, and it was comforting and joyful to make.

Once I was done and blocked, I decided I didn't want it to be a pullover- a zipper install to let it be worn open would be a good idea since it was extraordinarily warm. So I crocheted steeks, slicked it from nave to throat, and basted in a lovely vintage brass zipper.

Hours later, I was in a mass of ripped seems and bits of thread.

No matter how carefully I install a zipper, no matter how many tutorials I read and follow step-by step, I can not get the stupid giant bulge out.

 Really?

I'm at a loss as to what to do- after picking it out and re-sewing it, trying to keep the fabric loose and the tension even, the bulges would not go away.

Should I try again, send it off to a pro to pic, or try to sew it back up and call it a pullover?