Icelandic Sweater for a Student Midwife

She will wake in the middle of the night, pull herself from her own bed, and drive to you. She will greet you with a smile. She will rub your back and her hands will take away some of the pain. She will encourage you. She will make it safe for you. She will place your baby on your chest and cover you both with warm blankets. She will hug you when she says "good bye".

Icelandic Sweaters

Before Weaving Works moved to their new location a while back they had a sale in which for $50 you could stuff as much yarn into a bag that would fit.  That is how I got all of this Alafosslopi.  The abundance of Icelandic wool allowed me to explore Icelandic patterns.  First I made a rather large Afmaeli sweater. Using the same pattern but making LOTS of modification I made this grey one. This time I took some of the lighter yarn and over-dyed it, getting these dark purple and forest green colors. 

When it comes to Icelandic patters, there's a lot of weaving in of the yarns to finish the project. I have discovered a little tool to make in go 100 times faster. It's a curved yarn needle---brilliant!  The sweater was suppose to be for me but alas, it's too small. I needed to find someone smaller than me, who appreciates wool, and is not afraid of wearing something that weighs 4 lbs. The perfect receiver: my current student midwife. She's always cold and she doesn't wear store-bought clothes. My only deal with her was that she'd have to let me photograph her wearing it. She agreed.  Now the sweater is blocked and drying. Soon we will take the photos. 

Since I still would like an Icelandic sweater for myself, I made some adjustments with my calculations and tried again. This time I'm going with a button up design. I'm still using the Afmaeli pattern and again I'm making a lot of modifications. Knitting the body is quite boring but I'm just to the part when I can attach the sleeves and start the pattern work. My favorite part! I'm not totally set on colors but the skeins below are what I have to work with.

Good Bye Summer, Hello Fall

Using the yarn from the solar-dyeing project, I whipped up a hat. I'm not exactly sure the dye took perfectly. I had rinsed it well, but without the kind of heat I use on the stove I worried that when I go to wash it someday the color would run out. So I used a black yarn in the hat, not only for contrast but because it wouldn't get discolored if the dye ran.

The pattern is called Icelandic Hat by Astrid Ellingsen, found on Ravelry. It's written in Icelandic so I just looked at the pictures and used the chart for the pattern.