things knit: in Iceland

plethora of knitting instruments, a photo by gradschoolknitter on Flickr.

Iceland had no small share of knitted items, and in a folk museum in Skogar (the same one in which we saw the turf-roof houses, as pictured yesterday) we came upon an impressive number of knitting machinery. This is only half of one room of fiber arts tools. There were spinning wheels and knitting machines and spools and a weaving loom... the list goes on and on.


Old spools, made of lamb leg-bones.

There were also some beautiful examples of Icelandic knitting:


Traditional Scandinavian Mittens.


Replaceable insoles for shoes and slippers.

As well as practical, every day items:


Knitted riding socks. To go over the boots, without a heel, to fit around the spurs.


Knitted straps for stirrups.

And perhaps my favorite:


Fisherman's gear.

Perhaps you'll understand why on the close-up:



They made the mittens with 2 thumbs each, one on each side of the mitt. That way, if the thumb wore out during a long days work (rowing, pulling on ropes, climbing things, etc), the sailor could flip it around and worry about darning the other one later. Ingenious!

Finally, back in modern day Reykjavik, people are still knitting:



And myself? Well, of course I knit! Most of the driving time I knit on a long overdue blanket (which I made quite a bit of progress on, but still looks much like a blob when photographed), and occasionally (when the need for something more compact was felt, say, on a plane) I worked on these:


(I bumped up the contrast and exposure on this so that you could actually see the cabling... black + cables = not very capturable on film...)

Pattern is Milo from Cookie A's Sock Innovation.
Yarn is Paton's Australia Patonyle (in black, of course).
Needles are Hiya Hiya US 1s. I'm so sad, I lost one on the way to Iceland somehow... but 4 will suffice.

Tune in next time for the 3rd and final installment of "Things in Iceland", where I talk about things bought in Iceland... you knew it was coming, didn't ya?