Planning to knit a lopapeysa (Icelandic sweater)

Pattern books from Lopi

These last years there has been an increasing interest in the Icelandic sweater.  I have always liked the yokes of these sweaters. But since I am not much of a sweater knitter I have never knitted one.  However, after encountering them over and over again on the Internet, Ravelry and blogs I have decided to knit one.
First I browsed images on Google, then I looked for patterns on Ravelry and the yarn company sites. I then decided to buy some pattern books from Lopi - I tried to find some with more traditional patterns and colours.

These sweaters are not as old as I first imagined. They date from around the 1950´s. Here are some links if you want more information about them:
Wikipedia - Lopapeysa
Plan Iceland - Lopapeysa, the Icelandic sweater
Contributoria -  The (knitted) fabric of society - The story of the Icelandic sweater

Swatch, knitted with needles 6,00 mm

After deciding which pattern I wanted to knit I realised that the main part of these sweaters is knitted on needles 6.00 mm. I had to search our house for needles that thick - I have never knitted a project the required needles that thick. I found a pair of plastic needles (don´t ask) that I could use for the swatch. I then realised that my knitting was tighter than the recommendations in the pattern. I probably could have solved this the easy way by changing to thicker needles and thus get the required amount of stitches that would correspond to the pattern. 7.00 mm - Hmmm .... No. I decided to recalculate the pattern adapted to my gauge on needles 6.00 mm. It takes a bit of thinking but it is not to complicated.

Alafosslopi, yarn from Istex.

I then turned my mind to that of colours. Alafosslopi now is available in a lot of different colours. I had learnt that the original sweaters were often knitted in bright and rather daring colour combinations. But I have always liked the natural colour scale, so I decided that my first lopapeysa would not be a brightly coloured one.

KniPro Zing

Yes, I also had to buy new needles for this project, both double pointed (I do not want to be caught using the plastic needles) and circular ones. I decided to try the new needles from KnitPro called Zing.

I am looking forwards to knit this sweater. but I have decided that I first have to finish some ongoing projects - otherwise they could turn into UFO´s. Hopefully I will get started before Christmas.

See the finished sweater here.