By popular demand

…well. Two people asked for pictures. That’s popular, right? :-)

before and after

I have now completed my task. I used to have short hair all the time, except for a short period when I was about 7. Then one day, when I was 21, I decided that I could not live my life without having had long hair. You know, you’ve gotta try everything. So I let it grow, and the plan was to let it grow to hip length and then shave it off. It never quite reached that length, at its longest it was at waist-level. Somehow I grew used to it and then I had a boyfriend who was strongly opposed to me cutting my hair shorter than shoulder length. It seems that guys have quite a fetish for long hair – but he also had shoulder length hair himself, and so thought it would be ridiculous if my hair was shorter than his. He has many strong opinions.

Well, now I’m single and it was time. It feels damn good.

Knitter’s guilt

This evening I went to visit my friend Arna who has just had a baby. I was feeling a bit bad that I didn’t have a knitted gift for them but I’ve been busy with others things, such as wedding gifts. When I walked into their apartment, a half knitted baby sock was sitting on the table and I’ll tell you that for a moment there I forgot that there was a brand new baby in town. I immediately moved, as if by unwordly forces, towards the sock to admire it. It was then that I found out that Arna’s mom is a knitter. We immediately hit it off, and she showed me the FOUR lopi sweaters that she has knitted in the three weeks she’s been here in Finland. I will repeat it again: four sweaters in three weeks!

The baby is by the way really really cute and adorable.

Arna’s mom is also a nurse who delivers babies – is there a specific term in English for that? In Icelandic they are called “Ljósmóðir” which literally translates as “lightmother”. Isn’t that beautiful?

In any case, I don’t feel bad not having knit them a present. They are in very good hands!

Oh, and I’m probably about a kilogram lighter than I was this morning,

Anyone interested in spinning human hair?

Finally some Finished Stuff

I’m back home after a great trip Home to Iceland. I had a wonderful time and the only problem was that it was a too short visit. During christmas I stayed there for two weeks and thought it was far too long, which is why this time I only stayed for a week. But there’s a difference between summer and winter I realized, there’s nothing to do during winter visits because who wants to stroll around town when it’s dark, cloudy and raining? In the summertime you can go all over the place and do all sorts of things, and that I did. I went to the National Museum to have a look at knitting but there was hardly any, I went to the library and borrowed some books on knitting, I bought yarn and knitting books, I met friends (ah, good old friends), I went to the summer cottage and knitted (and went to the brand new hot pot twice), and last but not least I went to my friends Bryndís and Jürgens wedding. That was a lot of fun and see how cute they looked (external link).

For the past month and a half, in total secrecy, I have been knitting on their wedding gifts. Bryndís reads this blog so I couldn’t say anything since I wanted it to be a complete surprise. Many months ago I decided that I would knit them lopi sweaters and many months later I finally began knitting. For Jürgen I made one in natural grays and whites using a pattern from Lopi 25.

The original pattern is a zipped cardigan, but I am a sensible girl. I considered which would be more likely to happen: a) me finishing the sweater in good time and spending many an evening sewing in a zipper by hand or b) me knitting fiercely at the last minute and cursing the day I got the idea to knit them sweaters. I was sensible.

For Bryndís I used an idea I’ve been walking around with for a while. I’ve wanted to try knitting a typical Icelandic yoked sweater but with a stitch pattern instead of the traditional color pattern. Leafing through the Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns I found one which looked like it might work, and it pretty much did (daisy stitch). The color sequence is an inspiration from Þríhyrnur og Langsjöl (Three-cornered and Long Shawls), specifically from “Dýrfinnustaðahyrna”. If I ever make this again, I’d try to do the decreases differently, but honestly, I probably won’t make it again. It’s quite the pain in the butt to knit. I still love how it turned out.

Just as a fun extra info, this sweater was knitted in four different countries, it was cast on in Finland, it flew with me through Sweden and Iceland to the States and back again. It was what made the 21 hour journey bearable.

The married couple were fortunately really surprised, and happy with the gift, and as if that’s not enough, both sweaters fit perfectly (wow! that’s a first!). That makes me one happy knitter.

I mentioned buying yarn. On the way to the summer cottage I visited a shop just outside Selfoss (about 60 km or 37 miles from Reykjavík) called Þingborg. I had seen their website and read that they have their own lopi, and I wanted to check it out – well, I wanted to touch it and see if it’s softer than the lopi from Istex. The shop is really wonderful and mom and I had a chat with the nice lady working there. They don’t have a huge amount of yarn, but what they have is pretty good. I got some plant-dyed wool and some 1-ply lopi in natural colors to make two-colored mittens. I touched their lopi (Þingborgarlopi) and indeed it is softer than Álafoss-lopi. I don’t really have any plans for a lopi sweater at the moment, so I didn’t buy any, but next time I definitely will. The sad thing is that they only have the most basic natural colors.

In Reykjavík I went to the Álafoss factory outlet. I’ve never been there before but I’ll be sure to go again. They had a really good selection of all weights of lopi (being the manufacturers) and the prices were quite low. But you know me and my problem with buying yarn when I don’t have a project in mind. I ended up with only three skeins of one-ply (eingirni) to use for…. two-colored mittens again! Pathetic.

I also bought a cup. It is not the coolest of cups, but the feeling I got when I saw that I could buy a cup with my name on it, complete with freaky letters n’ all, made me all warm and sentimental inside. There it was, a cup with my name on it, not “Sirkka” or “Suvi” or something crazy like that! That’s what living abroad does to you.

My US yarn trip

When I knew I'd be going to the US I got really excited about the possibility of getting some of the fancy yarn I've read about on blogs. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't have a chance to go to any yarn shops since I was traveling with three others (although my mom is a knitter and understands). But I needn't have worried, I managed to visit quite a bit of shops and it was surely strange how often our hotel happened to be within walking distance of a yarn shop. A coincidence or divine intervention?

While I was in Berkeley I met up with Sonja (and her cutie Ása Sóley) for a yarn crawl which started in Oakland and ended in Alameda without a single skein of yarn bought! The reason? It was monday, and apparently yarn shops keep closed on mondays. After coffee at Peet's we ended up in Beverly's (acrylic heaven) where I got some US size needles (on the agenda): no. 1 (2.25 mm) in bamboo, and no. 2 (2.75 mm) and 3 (3.25 mm) in faintly colored metal – very pretty!

The following day I hit the road with my fellow travelers (a.k.a. family). After a night in Napa Valley, we stayed in a beautiful place called the city of Mt. Shasta. The town is at the roots of Mount Shasta and until I found out that the mountain is in fact an active volcano, I seriously considered moving there. Mt. Shasta has a yarn shop and of course I checked it out. Before the trip I laid out a plan. I was only allowed to buy yarn which I absolutely cannot get over here, and in addition I would stick to sock yarn. Fancy, hand-dyed/hand-painted sock yarn. And needles. And stitch markers (which are surprisingly difficult to find here). Oh, and Kool-Aid, although my fabulous sockapal took care of that for me. And zip-loc bags.

In the Mt. Shasta yarn shop, Weston Quilting & Crafts, most of the sock yarn was German (which turned out to be the case for many of the shops I visited). Since I can get that here, I was feeling a bit disappointed, until I spotted a single hank of hand-painted Opal which luckily happened to be in colors I like. Even though looking at the price tag made me gulp, I thought what the heck, it's a souvenir and maybe I won't find another yarn shop ever again in the US! (Boy was I wrong.) I also got some rubber stitch markers.

After Mt. Shasta we drove like the wind through Oregon and Washington, and reached Seattle. I went to three yarn stores there. The first one was Stitches which had very little of interest to me as it was more of a fabric store. I then went to So Much Yarn and spent ages touching every single skein in the shop. They didn't have too much sock yarn (and a lot of it was German), but in the end I grabbed a hank of Mountain Colors in very pretty greens.

While downtown, I also went to Barnes and Noble and got Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick. The best yarn store was, funny enough, 300 m (330 yards – a skeins distance) from our hotel in the University district, Weaving Works. I ditched a sightseeing tour of Seattle's underground just to have enough time to spend in the shop. It sure paid off both for me and the shop owner(s). I got some Koigu, another hank of Mountain Colors in very pretty reds, a bunch of knitting needles, many of which I already own but these were shiny metal ones. Here all the Inox/Prym needles are boring grey. In addition I bought Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush aaaaand: a ball winder! It is the coolest thing ever I tell you.

After Seattle we again drove like the wind through Washington and Oregon staying for a night in Grants Pass. We then hit the winding (scary) road down to the California coast. We had lunch in Garberville where I found some really cool sock needles in shiny colored metal, oh so pretty! The shop was probably called In Stitches and the sales lady was really friendly.

The last night of the trip we stayed in Mendocino and again there was a yarn shop about 200 m (220 yards) from the hotel (not quite as lucky a coincidence as in Seattle since in Mendocino it would be very difficult not to be within walking distance from a yarn shop assuming there was a yarn shop in town). In the Mendocino Yarn Shop there was some Koigu, but unfortunately only one skein of each color and since that's not enough for a pair of socks I had to pass. After spending a good amount of time looking at and touching the yarn, I came out with two hanks of Manos del Uruguay in a nice orange color.

When we were back in Berkeley I walked for about 15-20 minutes to get to Lacis (again, reasonable walking distance from the hotel!). It turned out that they don't sell much yarn, but the very nice sales lady told me they had a fine collection of needles in small sizes, as well as non-mainstream knitting books. I was so captivated by the extremely tiny needles they had, that I simply had to buy these 1 mm (US 00000) ones although I might never use them.

They had even smaller ones, both 0.75 mm (US 000000) and 0.5 mm (US 0000000) but at $5 per pack I thought that perhaps 1 mm is enough of a funny thing. It was true what the sales lady had said about the book collection. They had quite a bit of books that I've never seen. I couldn't control myself and ended up buying four books: Folk Knitting in Estonia by Nancy Bush, Designing Knitwear by Deborah Newton (a bit in the painfully 80's style, but I guess the info is still useable), Knitting: 19th Century Sources published by Lacis (for a list of their books click here) and The Art of Knitting 1892 which is a facsimile reproduction of an 1892 knitting book. Boy did they use small needles back in the days! And why, oh why, didn't I buy all the itty bitty needles at Lacis? Here are all the books I bought in the trip

And shall we have one more look at all the pretty yarn?

My favorite is the red Mountain Colors. And just to finally eat up all of your bandwidth, here are the needle sizes I got:

All in all I'm really happy with my purchases. Maybe a bit too happy, because now I feel like the yarns are so precious that I'll never want to use them.

Back Home

There's home, and then there's Home. Right now I'm Home, in Iceland. I flew back here yesterday and will be staying for a week. I always get quite sentimental when I travel back Home, especially when the flight attendant announces (in Icelandic) "Welcome home". I just love it that they say that!

It's strange how strongly Icelanders are tied to Home. As much as we love to hate this place (and complain about the weather), we always end up moving back – because, you know, this is Home and there's no place like it. The roots here grow strong and deep, and are impossible to rip out.

Yesterday evening the whole family met here at my parent's place for the classic friday hamburgers. We've been having home-made hamburgers on fridays for as long as I can remember. The two people I was most excited to meet again were my nieces, Iðunn and Hildur. They're every bit as cute and adorable as they were during christmas, just half a year older (and now with long hair). It's amazing how quickly these small people grow, when you only see them every 6 months there's a lot of change. Hildur for example had just started speaking during christmas, and now she speaks completely. Kids become much more of a personality when they can speak.

I took some snapshots yesterday and thought I'd share them with you because my nieces are the cutest kids in the whole wide world. Really. When I have kids I want them to be Iðunn and Hildur.

Hildur (left) and Iðunn (right)

My good friends Bryndís and Jurgen are getting married today and I need to finish their wedding gift (ha ha, how typical), so I'll have to go now. Have a great weekend everyone!

Oh, I almost forgot: Gleðilegan Þjóðhátíðardag! (Happy national day – it's Iceland's national day today.)

The trip

Phew, I have an internet connection again. On wednesday last week it mysteriously disappeared, and just returned this morning. The absence was due to some stupidity on my part, and some stupidity on the part of my internet service provider (more on their side of course, I am never wrong). Oh, it sure feels good to be back.

Originally I planned to write a long long post about my trip to the US and overload it with pictures. Then I realized that this is a knitting blog, so what do people care! Besides, it's a lot of work to write a proper travelog, and I'm lazy. So here is a severely cut down version of my trip: I flew to San Francisco, drove with my mom, dad and bro up to Seattle and back. Then I flew home. Nooooo, here's a little bit more and now with a limited selection of pictures. Those of you who just don't care, there's a finished object at the end – you can scroll down now.

It all started in San Francisco. Well, Berkeley to be exact, as that's where I was staying. In the Bay Area (which is oh so big) I went on a sightseeing tour of San Francisco and met Sonja and Ása Sóley for a rather unsuccessful yarn crawl which was a lot of fun all the same.

Mom, dad, bro and I then drove up to Seattle, stopping in various places along the way. Who could resist visiting a town called Whiskeytown? Not us, but unfortunately the town is now under water and all that's left is the general store. The state of Washington greeted us with rain and despite our best efforts to see her, Mount St. Helens was hiding behind clouds.

Animals there were aplenty. We met a giant sheep called Sheepie whose job is to inform visitors about natural science (what a clever sheep), and then there was the giant snail who didn't have much to say. Unfortunately I didn't include a coin for scale in the picture, but I'm telling you, it was at least 10 cm (4'') long. Things are big in the New World.

We reached Seattle, where it was (surprise, surprise) raining. People said that the weather had been real nice and sunny the week before. Last time my brother was there it was also raining, and people said the exact same thing, so we're not so sure if we should believe them. But despite the rain, I really liked Seattle (more than San Francisco to be honest).

On the way back to Berkeley we drove down the California coastline, which is a beautiful place. We saw so many redwood trees that it should last us a lifetime. Like the snail, they were huge. Now I was cleverer and included my parents in the picture for scale, see how small they look! Unfortunately it is impossible to include a whole redwood tree without some serious wide-angle lens, but believe me, they're like twice as high as what you see in the picture.

On the way we visited many cute little towns, like Ferndale and Mendocino. I'd say that I preferred those from the big cities, which were a bit too big and crowded and loud and overwhelming. Who would have known, I'm a small town girl!

Lastly, if anyone knows the person in Ferndale who owns these trees, could you please ask them to have them carved into the faces of the presidents? You know, the ones on the mountain – wouldn't it be perfect?!

All in all, I had a great time. People are friendly (strangers talk to you – it's mindblowing), and the nature is beautiful. Of course there are things which appeared strange to me there, like the truly amazing number of pickup trucks on the freeways (how can they be practical?) and the giant portions you get in restaurants (you must think we're cheapos over here), but that's always so when you encounter a different culture. And that's what makes it fun.

But hey, you ask, what about the knitting? Well, I got quite a lot done, with the long travel there and the driving of 3500 km (2200 miles, of which I drove none). On the flights there I knit a body of a sweater and during the first days in Berkeley I knit both sleeves. I started the yoke on the flight back, but as it was in the middle of the night I made many mistakes, ripped back, and in the end realized that I should probably sleep. I'm not done with it yet, so I'll save a picture until it's ready. On the roadtrip I knit a pair of knee-high socks. The pattern is from a Finnish book (Sukkasillaan) that I fondled at the bookstore for months. Everytime I convinced myself that oh, it's a bit pricey and it's all in Finnish so I probably shouldn't buy it, until one day when I got sick of it and had Sigurlaug with me to say "just buy the damn book"! I'm really glad I did, because there are a lot of nice sock patterns in it, and since I have a basic knowledge of Finnish it's actually not so difficult to understand the instructions. But here they are, Helpot lettisukat:

The yarn I used is Nalle from Novita. It was a skein I bought long ago without having anything in mind for it. I'm obviously very anal, because having yarn without a purpose makes me uncomfortable – in most cases at least. Thus I was extremely happy when I realized that the variegated Nalle would fit for this pattern, and my soul is relieved at having one purposeless skein less in the stash. Note the "one" in the last sentence. For all you Finns out there (and those with access to Finnish yarn), I have gone through significant amounts of stress just to be able to tell you that one skein of Novita Nalle is in fact enough for a pair of knee-high socks! You're welcome ;-)

Next up: My trip in yarn.

Stopover

Thank you all for your really nice comments on the sweater. I'm sorry I haven't replied to your comments, but I have a pretty good excuse. As I told, I went to the US on a roadtrip for two weeks. I'm almost back now. We landed yesterday afternoon in Iceland, and I stopped over for a night here to make the trip somewhat less awful. If I hadn't, I would have had to wait around in Keflavík airport after the 8 hour Frisco flight, fly to Stockholm for 3 hours, wait around Arlanda airport and fly to Helsinki for 40 minutes, arriving at 2 in the night (I'm crap with a.m./p.m., but I guess it's 2 a.m.) and having to take a taxi home as the bus connections aren't that great in the nighttime. Horrible (with french accent). Instead I slept at my parents place in Reykjavík and am leaving for the airport in about half an hour for a direct flight to Helsinki – woohoo. It's a funny thing being here for one night, since I'll be returning in 10 days to attend a wedding of my friends! But I got my grandmothers swift and inspected some things my greatgrandmother knit for my father. That was cool.

I'm jetlagged people! I'm thinking that either we should shrink the earth and eliminate time zones, or then stop this silly business of travelling. I feel profoundly sorry for the people of New Zealand.

Oh, since many asked, the pattern for last posts sweater is the Slinky tree bark rib tunic (I hope I remembered that tongue-twister correctly!) from the Loop-d-loop book (sorry, I'm too tired to insert links). The yarn I used is called Janne and is from a Finnish manufacturer whose name escapes me. It's a cheepie, graduate student budget yarn, 75% wool, 25% polyester (or is it 85/15?) at 2.60 euros per 50g skein. The whole sweater worth was just over 20 euros, just about the same price I paid for a single skein of snobby sock yarn in the US!! Yes, I went completely crazy over there, but more on that later – I've gotta fly!