Iceland

I received a very nice brochure from Tauck travel company.  Moppy had used this company as had Laurie and Hank Sammons and both had liked the service that they received from Tauk.  One of the offerings they presented was a cruise in Iceland.  WOW!  I just think that I had never looked at Iceland before....REALLY looked.  In my mind it was a small to medium sized island ....not the huge island that the map in the brochure presented:



Here is a map that shows the location better:



I just checked and all 8 eight day cruises of Iceland by Tauk are sold out for this year!

But what caused me to decide to write this blog was many things.  First I listened to an interview with Stephen West on the Vogue site and Stephen said that he was knitting in Iceland.

http://vogueknitting.com/knitterviews

He said he is not in Reykjavík ...he is someplace further north.  And it seemed to me that his comment was that the isolation of the area made him slow down and affected his knitting.  I will relisten to his interview and try to clarify or reinterpret what I heard.  I think he said he is in Isafojordur.

In addition to the interview is the fact that I often sit next to our resident expert on Iceland:  Kristin Ornolfsdottir.  Kristine is our knitting groups Mitten expert!  She knits amazing mittens from Icelandic wool as quickly and as efficiently as old time knitters turned out dish cloths.





It seems crazy not to take advantage of all of these facts to actually know more about Iceland and knitting.

Two more pieces of information that I want to add to this blog post is that Stephen West is good buddies with Nancy Marchant....the lady who does the Brioche.  Nancy is a neighbor to Stephen in Amsterdam.  I bought several of Nancy's books because they are amazingly pretty!



Stephen referred to the Boneyard shawl as having  shawl started this "whole thing"....I believe he meant that his OWN design of the Boneyard shawl started him on his shawl "kick".  So, of course, I had to go to Ravelry and look at the Boneyard shawl.  I am not sure that the one that I chose was his first.  There are lots of interpretations of his original shawl.

Boneyard shawl



Here is another person's interpretation of the boneyard shawl that is very pretty:



And if you go to the Ravelry site, you can download the boneyard shawl pattern

Try a striped Boneyard Shawl with extra edge increases for an elongated wingspan. Pattern variation here!

The interview with Stephen West can be found at:

http://vogueknitting.com/knitterviews