Tag: lopi

tolt icelandic wool month: skógafjall

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This year marks the third year in a row that Tolt Yarn and Wool in Carnation, Washington has celebrated Tolt Icelandic Wool Month for the month of March. Back in 2015, I released my hat pattern Moon Sprites in conjunction with Tolt’s first celebration, last year Tolt released the beautiful Blaer cardigan by Beatrice Perron Dahlen of Thread & Ladle, and this year I’m pleased as punch to once again be contributing to this celebration of Icelandic wool. This year, I’ve designed Skógafjall, a bottom-up round yoke pullover knit up in Léttlopi (which is probably my favorite weight of Lopi).

For the vast majority of us, choosing Icelandic wool doesn’t mean choosing local wool (the two most obvious exceptions being people who live in Iceland, or people outside of Iceland who raise Icelandic sheep). But it does mean supporting the yarn industry of Iceland, a country whose population is smaller than most cities I’ve lived in – and that means a lot. And the wool itself is reason enough for me to choose it, since it both affordable and adaptable, suitable to many different types of winter (and sometimes summer) climates. It’s definitely suitable to my current northern Norwegian climate, and that is part of how I arrived at the design that became Skógafjall. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the ties between Icelandic and Norwegian wools, and the historical genetic links between the heritage sheep breeds found in these two countries – and all of that led me to want to design a sweater that pointed at that shared heritage in some way.

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So while it uses Icelandic wool, this sweater is inspired by my local Norwegian landscape and the verdant mountains I’m surrounded by in the summer months. The geology of Norway is quite different than Iceland’s – Iceland straddles two continental plates and its geothermal activity means it’s made up of cooled lava fields and volcanic rock, whereas Norway’s rocky landscape is largely sedimentary. The deep green body of Skógafjall gives way to lighter greenery in the yoke and finally a heathery grey at the neck, which mimicks the rocky mountaintops of my immediate surroundings – and they’re easy to see when the tree line is as low as it is in Tromsø.

The yoke pattern is equally evocative of the local landscape around western Washington, which makes it feel like a fantastic fit for Tolt and this annual celebration. The name Skógafjall can be translated as “forest mountain,” more or less – though we’ve dubbed it “a sweater for exploring the forest, mountain, city or sea,” and I think it would be just as at home in all of those places.

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You can find Skógafjall on Ravelry here, or on the Tolt website here. Huge thanks to the whole Tolt team for letting me be a part of Icelandic Wool Month once again, and making sure this pattern got done in time while dealing with my grad school schedule – Anna, Clare, Karen (who knit the beautiful sample!), Kim (who modeled it so beautifully in these photos), and everyone else. You’re all the best. And I can’t forget to mention that Narangkar Glover did a lovely illustration of Skógafjall for a new Tolt project bag, too! It’s available in the Tolt shop here.

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I have Iceland-related knitting plans lined up for this month, although my yarn choice is a little unorthodox – but I’ll save that for another post.

Related posts from previous years:

reading, thinking: seawomen of iceland

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The Sun Voyager, photographed in 2012 in Reykjavík

Jess’s Swatch of the Month post over on the Fringe blog today got me thinking about a book I read a few months ago. Her swatch this month is in Icelandic wool, the Lopi we all know and love, and her post includes a really fantastic short history of Iceland. Several lines caught my attention, among them the following:

“I’m telling you this not because it’s related to knitting, but because it’s central to understanding who Icelanders are.”

I’m someone who’s been interested in Iceland for awhile. I fell in love with Iceland through music first, listening to a lot of Sigur Rós and Múm when I was in high school (Múm’s Finally We Are No One is still my desert island record after a decade and a half of listening to it). Later in college, when I started knitting more than just scarves, I began to get interested in Iceland’s knitting as well (the 2007 Sigur Rós film Heima helped – it documents a series of free outdoor concerts they gave in Iceland and it feels like every third person in the film is wearing a lopapeysa). I’m lucky to have been to Iceland several times now and I’ve done a lot of reading about Iceland’s history, its language (which I’ve studied), and its literary tradition. I completely agree with Jess that this kind of knowledge lends a much deeper understanding of why the Icelandic sheep are the way they are, why the wool is so practical and useful and holds a place of such importance, and how much more beautiful its place in society is because of all of that.

Following that line of thought: I recently read a book that increased my depth of knowledge about Iceland in a very different way. This is not a book about knitting. But this book taught me so much more about Iceland’s history and Iceland’s spirit than I knew before I read it.

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Jess’s post features a quote from Árni Árnason on the lopapeysa: “It resembles the country’s rugged nature and reminds us of the history of farming and fishing when it provided its wearer with a vital shield from the disastrous weather one can encounter in the wild.” Farming and fishing. Sheep, of course, are a vital part of Iceland’s farming history, but I’d never spent much time thinking about Iceland’s fishing industry beyond harðfiskur or fish leather, particularly given the challenges presented by the harsh climate. So I was very intrigued when I came across Seawomen of Iceland by Margaret Willson, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Washington who once worked on fishing boats herself (hat tip to Seattle’s Nordic Heritage Museum, which is how I found out about the book).

I appreciate this book so much for the glimpse it provides into the history of women in Iceland’s fishing industry (which it seems is often overlooked even by Icelanders themselves), but also for its recognition of how dramatically Iceland’s industry and cultural landscape has changed in the previous decades. The mass migration of people from the rural countryside to the city is staggering to think about when considering the ripple effect on the towns that get left behind. So while it’s not a book about knitting, those of you interested in Iceland might find something to interest you here. It’s available on Amazon or directly from the UW Press.

Even if the book isn’t for you, I do hope you’ll enjoy this poem by seawoman Björg Einarsdóttir which is featured in the book, translated with great care by Margaret and her friend Ágústa:

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Thanks to Jess for such a wonderful post today over on Fringe and thank you to Margaret for such an incredible work of research.

currently

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The daylight walks continue to be lovely. On clear days, the colors are unreal. The photo above was taken from Telegrafbukta, the park on the southwest side of Tromsøya. It continues to be one of my favorite places, and at this time of year it’s the perfect place to watch the sunset. (I also finally saw the sun again on Friday! Momentous. Glorious. The days are growing longer at a fast clip now – this is the fun part.)

School is already busy, but that’s no shocker. In my downtime I’m managing to get a bit of knitting done. I finished my Toatie Hottie (no photos yet, though) and I’ve been working on several other projects, but most of those are the kind I can’t show you yet (aka future patterns). So in lieu of that, here’s some things I’d love to be joining in on if I had the time:

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Bang Out a Sweater over at Mason Dixon Knitting – Kay and Ann are leading a KAL of Mary Jane Mucklestone‘s Stopover, a beautiful lopapeysa. Cast on is tomorrow (February 1st), and it’s probably a good thing I don’t have time to join in, because I don’t think “new lopapeysa” is really one of my pressing needs at the moment.

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I’d also love to join in on the Anna Vest KAL hosted by Fringe, starting February 15th. This is one of my favorite patterns from Farm to Needle and while I’m not sure a vest/waistcoat like this would be a perfect fit for my wardrobe, I’d still love to knit it someday (perhaps I could add sleeves, since I am in need of cardigans?). I’m really looking forward to the versions that come out of this knitalong – I’m expecting to see some cool yarn and color choices and I’ll definitely be following along on social media.

Both the Stopover and Anna Vest photos are by Kathy Cadigan.

woolful podcast

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I’m SO excited to be the guest on this week’s episode of the Woolful podcast! If you’ve never listened to the podcast before, it’s absolutely wonderful (and you’ve got 22 back episodes before mine to listen to). The podcast is the creation of Ashley Yousling, who currently splits her time between a tech job in San Francisco and a beautiful ranch in Idaho. I can’t say thank you enough to Ashley for having me on, because I love her podcast and what she brings to our fiber community in producing it. And huge thanks to Tolt Yarn and Wool for sponsoring this episode!

I’ve received so many wonderful comments and messages since the podcast went up and I’m a bit overwhelmed by the love, so thank you all! I was quite excited to see some of you mentioning that I’d piqued your interest in Norwegian sheep breeds, and you’ll be happy to know that Norwegian-specific wool is something I’m hoping to explore more and write about here after I move to Tromsø this summer. I can’t wait to share what I learn.

Those of you who regularly follow the podcast know that with each episode comes a giveaway – and this week we’re giving away a copy of Moon Sprites along with the Létt Lopi to knit it! Many of the comments on the podcast episode mentioned a desire to work on colorwork, and Moon Sprites is a great pattern for that whether you’ve done a lot of colorwork or not – with just seven rounds of simple colorwork, it’s totally appropriate for a colorwork beginner! To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is leave a comment on the episode’s blog post.

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Be sure to visit the Woolful website and listen to those back episodes if you haven’t before! And be sure to check out Ashley’s shop, Woolful Mercantile, while you’re there.

moon sprites & icelandic wool month at tolt

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After releasing my F/W13 collection, I decided I wanted to knit something special as a thank you for the folks in Carnation who had helped make the photoshoot possible – Anna from Tolt Yarn and Wool and her friends and neighbors Shelley and Janya. Moon Pulls was already a collection favorite and I thought it’d be fun to knit each of them a hat inspired by Moon Pulls – and so I did!

While I decided early on that I wanted to write the pattern for the hats, it took a little while for that plan to come to fruition. I had made two different versions of the hat when I knit the prototypes for Anna, Shelley, and Janya, and I had an idea for a third version I wanted to include as well. Deciding how best to incorporate three “views” (in the way a sewing patterns often include different views) into one knitting pattern took me some time, and actually sitting down and knitting different versions took a little bit of time, too. While the hat itself is a pretty quick knit, I had to fit in the knitting of the samples around many other projects.

I knit the first three samples while in Iceland last spring during DesignMarch. Shopping for Lopi at the Handknitting Association’s store in central Reykjavík convinced me that I shouldn’t stop at three samples – one for each view – but rather I should knit at least two per view, in order to showcase different color combinations. There’s such an immense opportunity for creativity with the wide palette of colors Ístex offers. In the end, I knit eight, all of which are featured in the pattern’s pages to give you ideas for color pairings.

Finally, a year after knitting the first pattern sample, Moon Sprites is available! Here’s an overview of the three different pattern views:

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View A – three colors, colorblocked. This matches up with the sleeves on Moon Pulls.

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View B – three colors, without colorblocking. This matches up with the bottom of the body on Moon Pulls.

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View C – two colors only, colorblocked.

This pattern is absolutely fantastic at using up leftovers of Létt-Lopi (or any other aran-weight yarn, for that matter). It makes a great gauge swatch if you’re planning to knit Moon Pulls. And with only a little bit of colorwork (seven rounds in total), it’s also ideal for colorwork beginners. I love how much possibility is packed into one little hat pattern and I can’t wait to see what beautiful versions knitters come up with!

You can find Moon Sprites as a digital download on Ravelry, on Etsy, or on Kollabora, and the printed version is going to press as I type (they should be available at Tolt starting mid-week next week; if you’re a store interested in carrying hard copies, email me at the address listed on the about page).

Special thanks to Kathy Cadigan for the beautiful pattern photos!

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To bring this whole thank-you-hat thing full circle, this month is Icelandic Wool Month at Tolt Yarn and Wool! The Tolt community is celebrating Icelandic wool and its wonderful properties, and you can share your Lopi projects on social media with the hashtag #tolticelandicwoolmonth. It’s worth noting here that Tolt carries Einband, Létt-Lopi, Álafoss Lopi, and now Plötulopi, so you can get your Lopi fix in a variety of weights. Be sure to stop by Tolt if you can to check out Moon Pulls and Moon Sprites in person!

Anna and I were pretty excited when we realized the release of Moon Sprites would coincide with Icelandic Wool Month at Tolt. When she asked if I’d be willing to be one of this month’s guest bloggers, I gladly said yes – so today I’m on the Tolt blog waxing poetic about Iceland! Thanks so much to Anna for inviting me to share!

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fall/winter 2013: moon pulls

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The ideas that came together to form Moon Pulls have been bouncing around in my head since the beginning of this year. On a quick trip to Iceland just after Christmas, I picked up some Lopi in a few beautiful colors. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to make with those skeins of yarn, but I knew they’d become a sweater. A few weeks later, after I was back in Seattle, Cirlia and I were doing the Kenzie photoshoot for Skacel (you can check that out here). One of the patterns Cirlia designed for the mini-collection was the beautiful Cedar Leaf Scarf (rav link), which has these lovely long garter stitch ends. The vibrant orange Cirilia had chosen really highlighted the texture, and I became pretty fixated on garter stitch after that, and visions of long garter stitch sleeve cuffs began dancing in my head.

Eventually, I realized that my nebulous Lopi sweater idea and my desire for garter stitch sleeve cuffs could result in a happy marriage. While I love a super traditional lopapeysa, I knew I wanted to do something a little different with these colors, particularly the bold glacier blue. I landed on a cozy sweatshirt-style fit, and knowing that not everyone loves Lopi right next to their skin, I decided to line the sleeve cuffs and the collar with facings in Schoppel-wolle Cashmere Queen – it’s hard to argue with a cashmere-merino-silk blend.

Moon Pulls is named after a song by the Icelandic band Múm, mostly because I just like the phrase, but I also enjoy the play on words/jeu-de-mots that happens for French speakers, where mon pull means “my pullover.”

Moon Pulls is written for eight different sizes, and a list of yarn requirements and other pertinent info can be found on the Ravelry page here.