Icelandic Fixation

What do you do when you've discovered your new favourite yarn? Mostly soft, a little scratchy, REALLY warm, deliciously airy. Well, sounds like you're describing icelandic yarn.

As I inch my time through life towards becoming an old lady, I thought why not speed up the process a little. Being a little old lady at heart in my early 20s is cool, right? Right.

Anyhow, winter serving as an excuse - ahem, WinterLikeOnlyNorthernCanadaKnowsHowToMake (and possibly Siberia, but that's far) - I decided to undertake a rather large knitting project. Large by my standards. It's not yet another giant scarf, those are actually quite easy, they're simply time exhaustive. It is a lovely sweater. After knitting a rather funny elfish hat with bells and using the leftovers for hand-warmers, I wanted an excuse to use the lettlopi yarn again. It's such a breeze to knit with; it has a wonderful, fuzzy texture, it's light and airy, and it's 100% pure icelandic sheep wool. And the Gods only know how much I love working with completely natural fibres. Acrylic can't compete with this stuff. From personal experience, pure synthetic fibres can't hold a candle to the natural ones. Even though technically acrylic is slightly warmer than wool (exact citation in a textile textbook somewhere in a box, packed away), it doesn't breathe as well, it's not as comfortable, and it doesn't retain as nice an appearance once a garment is knitted.

The pattern I used is found here: www.ravelry.com veurfringurinn/weatherman
Available in both English and Icelandic, nominal cost of $6 US dollars. It's a simple pattern, excellent for a first time sweater project.

It seems typical for icelandic sweaters to be done in this sequence: knit the body from the hem up, knit the sleeves from the cuffs, join the body and sleeves in the round, work the pattern and the decreases in the yoke, knit the collar. And bam: wearable coziness. Don't skip over the blocking step. It's important if you want the sweater to fall properly. Plus, it smells like lanolin (wet sheep) while you steam it and it's great. Yes, trust me.

When you think about it, hand knitting is definitely not the right craft if you want to make a buck or two. It took about two and a half months of work - evenings and weekend-free time - to complete this piece. Cost for the balls of yarn came to about $65-70 CAD. So now you know, if someone ever gifts you a handmade sweater, it's worth gold. Seriously. There are no other pieces like it, and so much time and effort went into it, you better treasure it until the end of eternity.

As per usual, my efforts to document this project have been concentrated at the end of the process, hence there are only pictures of an almost completed, and completed sweater.

Colour work

Kitty helps

Done knittng

Blocking

Tah-Dah

Toastie-toes, or at least that's the hope

What is dreadful?
Spiders, Milk forgotten in the fridge, dog puke on the carpet, wet cat food... Many things, indeed.
Frozen toes though, they deserve a golden award. Frozen toes five minutes after a shower. Frozen toes that keep you from falling asleep for three hours until they warm up. Someone else's frozen toes in the back of your knees keeping you from falling asleep until they warm up.
So, in an effort to curb this dreaded thing, I decided to make myself some shmancy-shnice-shlippers. I vote we add this word to the Oxford Dictionary. Anyone to second the motion? Anyways, here's how I made these lovelies.

A while back - about a year or so - I came across this picture.

The pattern is just so attractive, and they look so playful. They became the inspiration for my newest pair of warm-feet-envelopes.

From previous experience, I knew that knitting slippers fully out of yarn - especially nice (read expensive) yarn, such as soft wool or other animal fibers - would deteriorate quite quickly on the pressure points under the feet. And require darning just a few short months after being completed. And since I refuse to use phentex, had to come up with a way to reinforce the bottoms. The lady at the yarn store suggested adding a soft leather sole - brilliant. But I thought I'd save myself the effort by dispensing altogether having a knit sole. In the end, I decided to knit an upper, and use suede for the sole. Quite like a simplified version of a mukluk really, which fits really well since I now live in Northern Canada.

And because I don't like doing anything the easy way, decided to come up with my own pattern and everything. I started by knitting a swatch in my chosen yarn, a fine, but not quite sock-weight baby llama yarn, to get my gauge. Once that was established and I measured my foot, I came up with a pattern that would fit nicely. And had fun coming up with a simple design, using two colours and somewhat fair-isle-esque technique.

After spending a few evenings knitting and binge watching documentaries, I had my uppers all done. You know what's really satisfying? Blocking the knitting once it's completed. Getting it to unfurl with the steam, and then lay flat and happy.

Once those had cooled, I seamed them at the back, and knitted a cuff in a bulkier yarn.

Then, while wearing one, I traced around my foot on a piece of paper and came up with an acceptable sole pattern. Which I then cut out of the suede. I'm not sure which animal it is, I'll venture and guess deer?

With an awl, I poked holes about every centimeter along the perimeter of the sole, then whip-stitched the upper to it. With any luck, they should last for a while and keep me toesies warm.
And if not, then I'll add a layer of rabbit fur on the inside.

 And voilà!