*another week of furious knitting later* and I’ve made an Icelandic hoodie for Tim, my birthday present to him. He chose the Grein design on p108 of Knitting with Icelandic Wool, the knitting book I bought while in Iceland, but wanted it to be a zip-up hoodie.
I guess I should have seen that coming; a hoodie is far more his thing, and since obviously you want them to want to wear it, I complied. It’s not hard to convert the jumper to a hoodie, but it’s a little bit more work and takes about one extra ball. The hoodie is still knitted in one piece like Sam’s jumper with two short grafted seams underneath each armhole. However, instead of knitting in the round I just split the front in two, continued knitting on for the hood, and afterwards neatened up the opening front edges with one row of single crochet. Finally I sewed in an open ended zip (Spotlight) by machine. Which means yes, unlike Sam’s jumper which was mostly a blissfully heavenly affair of mindless non-stop knitting, in this case I had to turn around and do purl rows as well. Not quite as quick and mindless as knitting in the round, something I find to be an enjoyably zen-like meditative exercise. I had to actually think about it, harrumph…
The book doesn’t have any adult sized hoodies that I could use the pattern for – and can I just say, what were they thinking?! – so in consultation with Craig’s Icelandic hoodie that we bought over there I knitted Tim’s the following way:
After finishing the yoke pattern and before knitting the neck hole ribbing, you have 72 st on the needle and wrong side facing…
change to 4.5mm needle, P one row, inc 1 st in centre of row (73 st)
(K1 P1) repeat until last st, K1
(P1 K1) repeat until last st, P1
rep last 2 rows once (4 rows of ribbing)
change to 6mm needle;
(P1 K1) twice, P1, K to last 5 st, (P1 K1) twice, P1
(P1 K1) twice, P1, P to last 5 st, (P1 K1) twice, P1
rep last 2 rows until work measures 35cm from last rib row
divide row in half, fold halves wrong sides together, and graft stitches together.
This gives you a plain stocking stitch hood with a wide moss stitch border.
I used Alafoss Lopi, in the colours, from left:
indigo (9959), light indigo (9958), light denim heather (0008), ecru heather (9972) and black heather (0005).
Actually, using that ecru heather, a leftover from Sam’s jumper, was a punt. The white-ish parts of this jumper were supposed to be ash heather, a pale grey, however I ended up having to use most of the that ball for Sam’s jumper. And since I ended up with more of the ecru heather leftover than I did of the ash heather, I used that, hoping that there might be enough to do the pattern in this jumper. The gods were smiling upon me, because there was, just enough!
Funny barely amusing story; the night I was getting close to the end of the ecru heather strip I stayed up til, like 12.30 or 1am or something crazy like that, knitting like a mad thing, because I just could not stand the suspense; would I have enough of the ecru heather, or would I not?? I HAD to know!!
The relief when I did was, er, palpable.
Yeah, my life is filled with gripping moments like that 😉
And now, well! I only finished the hoodie today and I’m actually dying to leap straight into a new knitting project, like, right now! start a rather special new design that I came across recently.
But my wrists are aching. 🙁
Maybe a little break is in order .
