I’m a sheep

I was reading an article about the Icelandic sheep written by someone who seems to love it, and I discovered a funny thing. It seems that Icelanders have inherited their national characteristics from too close contact for too many centuries with our beloved sheep:

The Icelandic breed is not a docile breed. They are alert and fast on their feet. Most of them are very individualistic and flocking instinct is poor. They tend to spread out which makes them good users of sparse pasture. [...] It has been reported they are aggressive toward other sheep and will usually dominate in those situations. [...] Some are nervous but when they get to know their shepherd they get quite friendly.

Updated: I didn’t notice the article was hidden in a frame (gawd those are annoying!). Here’s a link to the actual article.

oh no..

…Sonja tagged me.

Four jobs I have had in my life

1. Cleaning and packing fish in Grandi Fish Factory.
2. Cleaning lady at hotels in Copenhagen.
3. Research assistant at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
4. PhD student.

Four Movies I could Watch Over and Over Again

Hmmmm…. very few. In fact, I really dislike watching movies a second time.

1. Aki Kaurismäki’s Man Without a Past. Actually I could watch any of Aki’s movies again.
2. Mifunes sidste sang (Mifunes last song).
3. Sódóma Reykjavík.
4. Sorry, can’t think of any others.

Four Places I have Lived

1. Reykjavík, Iceland.
2. Helsinki, Finland.
3. Copenhagen, Denmark.
4. Sorry, only three!

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

1. Twin Peaks.
2. Alias.
3. Sex and the City.
4. One Tree Hill.

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation

1. Ukraine.
2. Russia.
3. Estonia.
4. Latvia.

Four Websites I visit Daily

1. Google.
2. Kristján’s selection of Fólk í boði rss.molar.is.
3. The Yarn Harlot.
4. Ruokalistat (lunch menus in Otaniemi, where I work).

Four of My Favorite Foods

1. (Icelandic) lamb tenderloin.
2. Beef tenderloin.
3. Indian.
4. Uunimakkara with mashed potatoes (“oven sausages”).

Even I surprise myself with item nr. 4, these are sausages containing less than 10% meat, and they’re sprinkled with cheese and baked in an oven. Yummi!

Four Albums I can’t Live Without

1. My photo albums.
2. X&Y by Coldplay.
3. The Best of Haukur Morthens (Icelandic singer from … the 50’s?).
4. Suuret suomalaiset tangot (Finnish tango music).

Honestly, I could easily live without these (except the photo albums).

Four Places I’d Rather Be

1. In bed.
2. Someplace skiing.
3. In a hot pool.
4. In sauna at a mökki (Finnish summer cottage).

Four Bloggers I Am Tagging

1. Sigurlaug.
2. Kristján.
3. Arna.
4. Bryndís.

Phew. That took a while!

Knitting Olympics

As many others, I decided to join the 2006 Knitting Olympics, a really cool idea in my opinion! I decided I’ll make loop-d-loop’s lace leaf sweater:

However, since I am used to knitting in the round, I seriously oppose garments which are knitted in parts, and sewn together afterwards. Seriously. So I am going to adapt it to round-knitting hopefully without changing it too much from the original. In the weekend I went and bought yarn for it. I found this really soft “Eskimo” wool from Garnstudio in a nice blue color (but damn expensive!) and now I’m getting really excited to begin knitting!

(The color is much nicer in reality).

I’ve worked a bit on my lopapeysa (lopi sweater) and now I’m really close to finishing the yoke. I’m quite happy with it, I mixed elements from 3 different yoke patterns and I think it comes out nicely. Frank on the other hand hates the green color. He has strong opinions on many things! I’ve shown the sweater to a few people, who all exclaimed “Jeez it looks so small!”. My brother even asked if I was making it for a child. Of course the lopi sweaters are usually quite bulky, but that’s rather unfashionable these days. I keep answering that the sweater is small yes, but really, it’s supposed to be small. I even start making excuses that there’ll come a border for a zipper, and the zipper itself so it’ll add, like, 4cm to the width! People: It really is supposed to be small!

In the background you can see the lopi coat which I made in the autumn. It’s still missing buttons, although I finally managed to sew the second pocket down during the weekend.

Yesterday my lopi samples arrived by post. Yay! They look so beautiful.

In a way it’s sad that lopi is such a scratchy wool. I would not use it for a normal, “daily-wear” sweater due to that, but I just love the color selection so much. The colors are somehow so natural, not like the yarns which have this too perfect homogeneous color. I like a bit of variation.

At the moment I suddenly have many small projects started. This is not usual for me. I’m a bit worried that I’ll just work a bit here and there, lose interest and never finish anything. Let’s see. The wrist warmers are for example stuck. I wanted to put some beads on them, but I just cannot find beads with big enough holes so that I can use a big enough needle so that I can actually thread the yarn through the eye of the needle. It’s an annoying situation.

But soon the Olympics start, better get prepared!

Handy wool hat

This morning the thermometer read -21°C (-5.8°F) so I happily wore my new wool hat and was actually I a bit disappointed that I only have to walk about 300m to the metro, and then 300m from the bus to my office! But oh how warm my face felt ;-). The scratchiness of the wool didn’t bother me too much, so perhaps I’ll skip the fleece lining.

Recent knitting activities

I recently discovered a big and lively community of knitters on the world wide web. It seems that knitters enjoy blogging and posting pictures of their current knitting projects. Since I really enjoy reading those, I decided to start my very own knitting blog. Here’s what I’ve been doing lately.

When Áslaug Edda, the daughter of my friends Kristján and Stella, was born, I started thinking about what I could knit for her. Since I’ve mostly been knitting Icelandic wool sweaters (lopapeysa), it seemed most natural to make a tiny little one of those for her. After discussing the matter with my supervisor Ari, I changed my mind and decided to make a completely different type of sweater. Ari (who has a 3 year old daughter) told me that the best thing to get for kids are very stretchable sweaters that can “grow with” the baby. At the time I had recently learnt brioche stitch, which is really cool since it’s both stretchable and “invertible”, and if you make it in two colors, the inside and outside are slightly different. So I decided to try to make a brioche sweater in two colors, which would be buttoned, since Ari also told me that it’s annoying to dress babies in whole sweaters. So, I bought yarn, started knitting, didn’t like the colors I had chosen, bought new yarn, started knitting again, almost finished the body, noticed a mistake in the middle, did whatever it is called in english when you have to “rewind”, knitted correctly until finishing the body and started with the sleeves. Then it turned out to be really difficult to increase in brioche stitch, without it being visible on either side (since the sweater should be invertible). When I had done the half of one sleeve I lost my temper and gave up. Icelandic wool sweaters are much easier, and I would probably already have finished it in the time it took me to get fed up with this stinking sweater.

So I began the tiny lopapeysa, and as it turned out, it was a really good decision. When I finally gave it to Áslaug, her parents told me they had really wanted to buy one of these for her, but it’s pretty much impossible to get them in such small sizes. I made the sweater using measurements for childrens sizes that Ari found online for me. The yoke pattern is quite simple, since it’s difficult to fit anything complex into such a small area. I did a few mistakes, such as assuming that like with grown-ups, kids arms are much longer than their body. Apparently it is not so! The sleeves are therefore a bit too long. Next time I also have to remember to do a longer body and bigger hood. Here’s Áslaug wearing the sweater:

On the last day of the year I finished a hat which I knitted with Icelandic wool. Since the wool is quite “scratchy” I’m thinking about sewing some fleece on the inside. It should come in handy now that the winter has really hit Finland.

During christmas I began knitting a wool sweater for myself. This picture is a bit old, I’ve now joined the sleeves and body, and started the pattern on the yoke.

In the new year I decided to expand my horizon. Up until now I’ve mostly been knitting “warm” garments from thick wool, such as sweaters, gloves, leg warmers etc. After discovering the knitting blogs and loads of cool patterns I felt like trying to knit something cute and girly from thin yarn and perhaps even variegated. I’ve started Jaywalker socks

but I think that it will take me years to finish them. When you’re used to knitting with 6mm needles, 2mm ones seem, well, awfully small. Since I’m an impatient person it’s a slightly frustrating project! But they just look so cool I have to finish them.

I also started something which should have become wrist warmers. They were a bit bigger than intended so I decided that they’d just end up as leg warmers or even fancy socks. But then I got the idea that they could remain wrist warmers if I’d change to smaller needles for the wrist area. Then they’ll cover half of the lower arm and I like that.

In addition to this I have ideas for at least three sweaters, so I’m cursing the fact that I actually have to work during the daytime ;-)

Knitting blog?

How about it!