Knitting -- Icelandic sweaters

The Icelandic "tradition", according to one fan, goes back to the 1950s. The Icelandic sweaters include the Lopapeysa, which you're supposed to knit in Lopi yarn, The Icelandic patterns I've found mostly want you to use bulky yarn.

Let's take the last point first. I found a great pattern but I wanted to use a yarn labeled fingering weight that had a great loft. So of course I had to do the math to get it right.

Icelandic patterns tend to have you using three colors at once at some places. You MUST work with a loose tension. If you can't stand not to pull the yarn tight, you will have to use a larger stitch count than you normally do for the weight of yarn you are using. The more colors, the less give in the fabric. If you don't increase your stitch count, you'll never get the sweater on. Let alone that it won't stretch where it needs to.

Third, two of your yarn colors have to be controlled by one hand. Between that and the need for a LOOSE tension, the best way to handle those two colors is to just run them over your forefinger and not worry about anchoring them with your little finger. Then work SLOWLY and pick the one you need when you need it. 

I also found that I kept dropping stitches and working slowly helped me catch them before I had gone so far that picking them up would have increased the fabric tension. You know what I mean: if you drop a stitch 7 rows back, then picking it up and catching in each of the rows above it makes the fabric tight. You have to massage it to loosen things up. This is trouble in a Fair Isle sweater with no more than two colors per row and it would be death in an Icelandic sweater.

One of the patterns I found uses a technique I saw on the Arne and Carlos site. You do the neck in K1/P1 rib, BUT it's KTBL. This makes ribbing with more give.

Icelandic sweaters tend to have round yokes. Some of them have a rayed pattern with each ray getting larger from neck to armpit. This pattern works like that.

https://alafoss.is/collections/alafoss-lopi

This pattern also illustrates that tradition says to use the same colors as undyed sheep's wool: black, white, off-white, gray, brown. Pattern is more important than color. That said, plenty of the patterns you find online will have other colors.

You have to follow the pattern carefully and increase or decrease where it tells you to. The one I worked had you adding a color at the same time as you worked an increase. So K the new color front and K the old color into the B of the same stitch; if the new color is supposed to come second of course you're going to reverse that.

This site sells the classic Lopi yarn. So do Woolly Thistle and Yarn.com but I have known Yarn.com not to carry all the colors for Brown Sheep yarns, so check Woolly Thistle first.

https://alafoss.is/collections/alafoss-lopi

The original pattern for this jumper had the traditional natural colors, which I changed cos there was some handsome yarn on closeout. I thought the gray was a lighter color but I went with what I got. I got lots of the pinkish color (it was labeled apricot), made a twin set and a new copy of the old Spinnerin pattern I have, as well as the matching socks to satisfy my obsession on that subject. A good time was had by all.

One technique I used on this jumper is from a Youtube video on Lopapeysa sweaters. It worked bottom up and joined the sleeves onto the body at the armpits. Well, as you know, you get stretched stitches and gaps when you do that. The new technique copes with that. When you are ready to add a sleeve, you slip the first stitch on the sleeve and pass the last body stitch over it. Then you put it back on your left needle and knit it. One the other side of the sleeve you do these steps again. When you're done, you use duplicate stitch to close up any stretchy stitches you find.

My pattern worked top down. When I finished the body and went to start the sleeves, the sleeve stitches were on holders. I picked them up, put a slip stitch on the left needle, passed the last sleeve stitch over, then I cabled on the 10 armpit stitches. Then I added one stitch and passed the first sleeve stitch over. 

And that is the latest northern knitting tradition that I have found. I'm going to work another icelandic pattern to use up some old worsted yarn.