So, the Kidsilk Haze workshop was a day of playing, experimentation and fluffy indulgence.

The following day I was busy because I played in a Netball tournament for a work team – I’ve played once since school and that was last year’s tournament! A huge amount of fun but not much knitting there!

Following Netball, with unbelievably aching muscles there had to be the promise of something good to drag me out of bed early on Saturday…

Hmmm – A day the Iknit Weekender and a course on Icelandic Lopi Knitting  with Ragga Eirikdottir was enough to get me out of bed!

I wanted to learn something new and have a bit of a challenge – exactly what I got!

Ragga told us some of the history of Icelandic knitting and about Lopi yarn – its a kinda “pre-wool” – unspun, light and fluffy and breaks easily 😯

There’s lots of info on the Knitting Iceland site if you want to know more. Definitely worth a look!

Then we got to make a mini Lopaypeysa.

So cute!

From Little Lopi

This is what people always think of as the traditional Icelandic, thick, patterned yoke jumper. Although we learnt from Ragga that this has only been “traditional” since the 1950s!

So what did I learn?

Firstly – German Twisted cast on to start off with – I’d done Long Tail Cast On before  but this is even better – very stretchy and doesn’t have an ugly wrong side either…

From Little Lopi

Try learning it!! ( Lots on Google for Twisted German Cast On)

Lopaypeysa are all knit in the round. Sleeves, body, yoke – the lot. So  I learnt to do magic loop with one circular.

I know!! Every one has been doing that for AGES! I’m normally happy on DPNs and have avoided magic loop. All that shuffling of stitches up and down the needle seemed way too much faffing about for me. But  I gave myself a little kick and decided I was there to learn new things, put away my DPNS and got to grips with it.

I made two tiny sleeves…

…and there was colourwork with two colours (could do that already- phew!)

……and there was joining the sleeves to the body…

Hmmmm 😐

That really stumped me 😐

I’m really not sure what the picture was in my head but I could not visualise how this worked…

Fortunately, I was sitting next to Marianne( excellent shawl knitter and the impossibly neat  hand winder of balls of laceweight yarn) who helped me – Thank you!

I tried to describe how the sleeve join but came out with a long confusing ramble…basically, leave stitches at armpit on sleeve and body on waste yarn and knit back, front and over the top of both sleeves like this…

From Little Lopi

The armpit is kitchener stitched later when you’re done.

A few rounds of  colour work with some nifty decreasing , a ribbed collar and I was done. 😀

From Little Lopi

I had a great time – hard to keep up, learning new things and inspired to find out a whole lot more about…

From Little Lopi