I said my “Icelandic project” was too big for the train now – wanna see?!

I’m making the Afmæli Lopapeysa in the strange, unspun plotulopi yarn I talked about in my Iceland! post.

I’m doing the top right one!

It is worked in the round from the bottom up. You make the body and two sleeves then join them into the joke for the really fun, colourful fairisle stuff. There is some detail above the rib on the body and sleeve to keep it interesting…

Pretty!

The fairisle wasn”t the bit that gave me problems though. Because the yarn is so fragile (unspun pencil roving) I was struggling to holding without breaking and to get tension.

I stupidly decided to change the way I held the yarn halfway through the body. I got to the armholes of the body and had a quick try on.,, it was wide enough to fit me,Ben and both cats in it 🙁

Rip, Rip, Rip … surprisingly the yarn didn’t complain about being ripped too much and I found that now I had gotten used to the yarn, my tension was bang on – strange huh? When it breaks the yarn is very easily spit-felt back together so I have begun to relax using it. The old thing you need to be aware of is that you can’t just yank the next couple of yarns off the plate – you do need to show some respect and gently pull the inner and outter strands off a few yards at a time (another reason this is a bad idea on a crowded commuter train when you have two colours going)!

Most of the knitting so far has been very boring stocking stitch with no shaping – ideal brainfree knitting…

Now it has got to the fun part – the yoke!

I’m really enjoying the yoke- I don’t have all the colours the pattern calls for so I’ll do a progression of green, yellow, orange, red, orange, yellow, green.  So far I’ve done green and I’m into yellow…

That is too large for the train!

Wanna see closer?

Pretty?

And, if you’re like me – you’ll want to see how neat the inside is too?

No bad for a beginner…

The English summer is being very helpful and being horribly cold and windy so I’m getting a lot of encouragement to finish this but, you wait. The day I finish the heatwave will start!