Zippered Lopapeysa

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?