Our own little Aeolian Knit-Along

The other day, when knitting with Rodprjonar and G. we were talking about how we all wanted to knit the Aeolian-shawl - and that´s when we decided to make our own little Aeolian-knit-along. The interesting thing about our knit-along is to see how different one shawl can look, depending on the yarn, implementation and knitter! I just can´t wait to see how R. and G. shawls look like! Here you can see Rodprjonars version.
So far, I´ve learned a lot by knitting this piece - for example nupps... they look really pretty but I hate making them... knitting those 7 stiches together is so hard to do!
I´m using my own hand-dyed yarn in 2 brown shades for the main-charts and 1 yellow/brownish shade for the edge-chart (dyed with 2 different types of lichen). I love the way the colours look - they are quite uneven and alive... really hard to describe and you can´t really caputure them on pictures. (If you click on the pictures, you can see them fullsize)

A new salve, saffron and rhubarb

Remember THIS post about a skinproblem-salve for a dear friend? Well, I finally made the salve yesterday after waiting for almost 2 weeks for beewax (they didn´t have it at the store). Like I planned, I used lavender-ssential oil, because I didn´t really like the smell of it before. I´m happy with the result, since it makes your skin really soft and hast a really nice scent. My friend got it yesterday and was excited to try it out - I´m excited myself, to see what effect it has on her skin.

The herbs:

the salve:

Yesterday I met some really nice knitting-friends. I was so happy and really surprised when Rodprjonar and G. gave me some saffron they bought in Spain and some rhubarb to dye my wool with - what a nice thing of them to do! :-) Now I just can´t wait to try to get some colour out of those things! I love the scent of saffron and how nice would it be to make something out of wool, that might have the smell of that spice and reminds me of a really nice evening with some knitting-friends?

Growing your own chilis

The other day, I found a dry chili in my fridge and decided to open it up and put the seeds in the earth, in a mini-greenhouse I bought in a "Tiger-store" for almost nothing. This was something I have really been wanting to try out, since me and B. (my husband) LOVE chili - and if his mother could do it in West-Africa, why shouldn’t I be able to do it in my kitchen-window in Iceland? ;-)

We didn’t have to wait for a long time for first green leaves to come out of the earth. The best thing is, I really didn’t have much work with it, because my mini-greenhouse did all the work for me (even the watering). When the small plants were big enough, I put them in some bigger flower-pots and then they exploded! I still can’t believe how big they have grown in such a short amount of time and the whole family is waiting impatiently for some chili’s to show up! This is so much fun - the next thing I´m going to try out in my mini-greenhouse are orange- and lemon-stones!

The first green leaves:

the first 2 leaves:

Today:

An Experiment

The other day Rodprjonar asked me if it was possible to dye a knitted piece. I couldn´t stop thinking about this so I just had to try it out. I had a knitted piece, that I made some mistakes in and wasn´t going to do anything with but throw it away - the perfect object for my experiment!
I cooked it for a short amount of time in some moss along with some yarn I was dyeing and found out: of course it is possible to dye a knitted piece. It turned out really well - the colour was nice and even and the cooking did not ruin the lace. The only problem is, when the piece is very large, you would have to use a really huge pot, which I don´t have.

Before:

after:

Progress on Kyrrð

I just finished the 9th (out of 22) repeat of the scarf-part of Kyrrð... and the more I knit, the more fun I have! And of course, I'm always getting quicker and quicker. I´ve never started a project until now, that I just can´t stop working on. I´d love to make another Kyrrð when I finish this one, using my own hand-dyed yarn!

A walk

Here some pics of my walk along the seaside this morning. Nobody was there but me. It was just me and nature... It is such a beautiful day... sun, no wind at all, the ocean looking like a mirror, the smell of angelica, heath and seaweed in the air... some horses resting, the mountain Esjan looking so beautiful, the birds singing and the best thing is, I found more icelandic moss to dye my wool with, then I could carry this time! Can´t wait for my next walk...

Birthdaycakes

Þór (Thor) Bidenam Balemasson, 5 years old

Yesterday we celebrated my older sons 5th birthday. One of the most important things on your birthday when you are 5 years old - at least for my boys - is the birthdaycake. At first, he wanted a mumin-cake, then Spiderman and at last he wanted a car-race-cake. And what my birthdayboy wants, he gets! :-)
I made a chocolate-cake (from mommur.is) with fluffy-buttercream-frosting (Martha Stewart) and fondant:


And here some birthday-cakes I´ve made in the past:

Bidenam 2 years old:

Bidenam 3 years old

Bidenam 4 years old

Freyr 2 years old: Freyr 3 years old

Lace hat - from "Fleiri Prjónaperlur"

This week weather has finally been great in Iceland: sunny and warm... so I sat on my balcony doing nothing but enjoying the summer and decided to make myself a hat I´ve been wanting to knit for some time know. It´s impossible for me just to sit there, doing nothing - don´t know how to do that!

I had just got some beautiful kambgarn in a retro-yellow/brownish colour that I love - unfortunatly they are not selling this colour anymore so those two skeins where just leftovers in Álafoss where I always buy my icelandic wool. I´ve already made two more hat´s like this (Sparihúfur from Fleiri Prjónaperlur) for two cute cousins of mine and really wanted one for myself. The only thing I made different this time was to repeat the pattern one more time to make it bigger since I´ve got a lot of hair to cover up on a "bad-hair-day" ;-)
The interesting thing about this pattern is, that I never really understand what I am knitting (the process of the lace-pattern)... I just knit what I´m supposed to and all of a sudden I´ve got a lace-pattern I didn´t see coming! :-D I´m so happy with the result, it´s my favorite at the moment...

I tryed to make some pictures of me myself, wearing my new hat... not an easy thing as you can see: