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Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Hama pearls and plötulopi

The other day it was my mothers birthday and we decided to make our own birthdaycards for her. I´ve told you before that I really love making my own birthdaycards, but this time we wanted to do something very special and totally different. Inspired by all the wonderful Hama-pearls-projects on Pinterest we came up with this:


I made this one - a classic star from the beautiful icelandic patternbook
"Sjónabók"

Freyr (4 y.) made this pretty thing:
Bidenam (5 y.) made this free-style-Hama, I really don´t know why, but it´s a shoe :-) He thought a lot about the colour-combination!
Of course, we had a lot of fun, crafting together - but what I also liked about the Hama-pearls was, that it really helped my boy´s working on their patience!

We gave my mum/grandma this (among other things) mason-jar-crochet-candle-light, I used my own hand-dyed einband (blueberries)
At the moment I'm working a lot with plötulopi, or icelandic unspun wool from Ístex. The interesting thing about this material is, that it is so versatile. You can use as many threads as you want to: just one thread (single) and than you get a feather-light but at the same time very warm garment that you can wear underneath every jacket or coat. If you use two threads, your garment becomes similar to léttlopi (worsted weight), three threads are similar to Álafosslopi (bulky) or just as many as you want to, depending on your project... the fun thing is, that you get really interesting colour-combinations if you use thread in different colours - like in this hat:

7 threads of plötulopi and 1 thread of einband (lace) in 2 different colours - very warm, bulky and cozy and the colour is so very alive!

It has also been very popular to use one strand of plötulopi and einband (lace) together. I´ve never quite understood why that´s any different from using 2 strands of plötulopi or léttlopi - until now. I just finished my first project, using this yarn-combination and now I really do understand why it´s so popular - for many different reasons:

1. single, unspun plötulopi is very fragile while knitting and splits very easally. One thread of the much stronger einband (lace) solves the problem.

2. Using einband opens up endless possibilities in colour-combinations! This way I get the possibility to use my naturally-dyed einband, since I can´t dye the fragile plötulopi with plants like I did here:

1 thread light grey plötulopi and einband, dyed with rhubarb.
3. This yarn-combination is so much lighter than I thought - it´s nothing like léttlopi. It´s feather light, but at the same time very warm and will last for a long time because of the strong einband.

4. It has a wonderful texture... I just love it! It might even become my favorite plötulopi-yarn-combination!!

6 comments:

  1. You have been very creative Kristin, what wonderful cards you made.
    I have been catching up on your recent posts now. Love your knits and the cardigan you remade.
    And the pesto looks yummy, thanks for sharing your own recipe. I have started up my basil seeds now, and if the harvest is good later in summer I would like to try your reciepe.

    Have a lovely week :)

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  2. Æðislegt kortin ykkar!! Ég notaði svona perlur svo mikið þegar ég var krakki. Hægt að nota þær í svo margt!

    Falleg krúsin, kemur vel út og verður fallegt að setja logandi kerti ofan í.

    Rabbabargarnið, er það þá litað með stikonum? Soldið rauðleitt er það ekki?

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  3. Takk fyrir mín kæra! Þessar perlur eru svaka sniðugar... og til í mörgum stærðum í dag. Rabbarbaragarnið er litað með blöðunum - það er eiginlega uppáhalds-liturinn minn þessa dagana. Svolítið sinnepsgulur sem ég er frekar veik fyrir... :-D

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  4. Hilde: thank you! My head is always so overfilled with ideas that I just have to let some of them out to make space for new ones! :-) The cardigan was so much fun to make - I can´t wait to make the next one!
    Growing your own herbs is so much fun and eating them even more!

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  5. Flott húfan úr sjöföldum plötulopa og einbandi ! númer hvað voru prjónarnir ? langar að gera svona húfu :) kv. Sesselja

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  6. Takk Sesselja! Húfan er prjónuð á prjóna nr. 6 og er ákaflega fljótleg og notaleg! Bidenam velur nánast alltaf þessa húfu þó að komið sé vor...

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