Keeping Warm in Orange Lopi
It’s my christmas gift to myself… three and a half years in the making.
Readers may recall that in August 2014 we took a family vacation to Iceland and while there took about a million photos, ate a bunch of wonderful food and bought a bunch of Icelandic sheeps’ wool, commonly referred to as lopi.
In the post linked above, I wrote:
“I don’t tend to brag it up a lot because our culture has this thing about the masculinity of guys who can do arts-and-crafty things. But taking after my late grandfather, I learned to knit when I was a kid and can purl with the practised adequacy of a thirty-something middle-class dude who learned to knit when he was seven…. In other words, just so-so. But still, I can knit well enough for me to buy three skeins of orange-hued Icelandic wool, all of which I will be attempting (in the coming months) to craft into a very basic scarf. Very. Basic.”
Skills, guys. Don’t let anyone tell you that making anything yourself isn’t worthwhile. I built a deck. I did my own flooring. I’ve tweaked my home electrical. And I can also knit myself an epic scarf if I choose to…
But, I digress.
Months turned into a year. A year turned into multiple years. And while I would slowly pick away at the scarf project (usually in the winter when it was cold enough to want a partially knit heavy wool scarf on my lap) it was much slower going than I had originally anticipated. Sometimes it would just sit on a shelf for months and months, and I might unroll the progress and add a few iterations of the pattern before forgetting about it for a while. Other times I would devotedly add to the length a few rows each night for a week or two. Progress, but plodding.
Iceland, and the vacation of years past, faded into a memory.
Then about a week ago I decided that with only a few dozen repeats left on my pattern, I should probably finish the darn thing. No. In fact, I declared I would cross this project off my to do list before the year was through. I would wear my orange scarf to the annual new years fireworks, come hell or high water. So, in lieu of staring blankly at the television each night, I’ve been (ahem) knitting my scarf.
Aaaaaaand?
Alas, it is complete. Six feet of burnt orange, hand-knit, Icelandic wool warmth ready for a crisp Canadian winter.
