The wonderful Lóa sent me a pattern book from Iceland for Christmas. I decided to try making another lopapeysa, this time from the book and with a zipper. It was a bit of a challenge for a number of reasons.
1. I don’t read Icelandic.
2. I’ve only knitted one other sweater, this time it called for a zipper.
2. My wool/needle size didn’t match the pattern.
As I don’t read Icelandic I tried to find an Icelandic pattern online that was translated into English to help me out. Luckily numbers are the same in all languages so I could easily read when it called for 35cm for example. The size needles I decided to use didn’t match up with anything I was reading so that meant I had to make an educated guess for the appropriate number of stitches. Yikes! Scary times. I think I added about 30 stitches to the body and 15 to each sleeve to make it work.
Knowing that I was kind of ‘going rogue’ with this sweater I was worried what would happen when I added the sleeves and started on the colour patterned yoke. Somehow, I don’t know how, but somehow, it lined up perfectly.
The next challenge came when adding the zipper. When knitting in the round I knew that I needed to provide some slack/space between the purled row, and hand stitched the two rows when I finished knitting. The feeling in the pit of my stomach, knowing I soon had to grab my scissors ,was a little terrifying. I knew that if I didn’t sew up the rows correctly it could all come apart. At some point though you have to just take a deep breath and make the cut.
After that very scary moment I lined up the zipper and started hand stitching. It turned out exactly how I hoped!
Very happy with this project. I still have quite a bit of Icelandic wool from my trip so there will likely be more sweaters in the future. Maybe next time I’ll do something with buttons?
Flott peysa!!!!! Þú ert svo Íslensk elskan!!!!!!!
Afi gamli.
good job 🙂