Afmaeli Lopapeysa

Hello world! What can I say? I enjoy my master courses tremendously, but they do take some work.
 Lets show you the last thing I finished before mid terms: my Afmaeli sweater. After I finished my Jenny at the Fair I was a bit lost as to what to knit next. I was a bit restless in my knitting, so to speak. I started a couple of things, but nothing felt quite right and was subsequently able to keep my focus. This hardly ever happens, I have a to-make list of unspeakable length. When I’m at the tail end of a project, I start planning about what my next project is going to be. This time though, I didn’t find my flow in any of the projects I decided on. I decided to turn back to an old love, one that always feels right; the lopapeysa.

The pattern, Afmaeli, was designed by Védís Jónsdóttir in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Istex. It is one of the most popular Icelandic sweater patterns on Ravelry, probably in part because it is a free pattern, but mostly because it is just a really attractive design. For the yoke, two options are given, one with a normal uni colour background, and one with a multicoloured background. I opted for the latter, because I never say no to a good rainbow coloured yoke.

I used a black heathered Lett Lopi for the main colour. I had it in my stash for quite a while, initially for a different sweater. As any knitter with an addiction for icelandic wool, love for colourwork and a fondness for yoke sweaters will readily admit, you tend to have a stockpile of scraps and leftover balls from previous sweaters.

I really enjoyed knitting this lopapeysa, which was a relief after my initial indecision. I loved, loved, loved working on the yoke. I mean I always love working on yokes, however this one is special. I have yet to see a colour combination in which I doesn’t suit this sweater, but I especially like the yokes with the multi coloured background effect.

I did make some changes to the pattern. For one, I included shaping. This is not included in the Afmaeli pattern itself, but it is easy to add. I copied the waist shaping from the Grettir pattern, as I’m really pleased with the shaping there, and it fits really well. I did not use the short row neck shaping from Grettir’s pattern. I know most people really love them, but they don’t always work out for the better for me. I think this sweater fits better in the shoulders and in the back than my Grettir sweater, which makes me wonder whether I should just give up on short row neck shaping all together. Another thing I changed was make the yoke less deep. I’m quite short, so to keep the proportions and not end up with a comically deep yoke, I skipped some of the yoke rows on the chart. This was another easy change as they include quite a lot of main colour rows in the chart, before you are supposed to start the colourwork. I skipped most of these rows. Finally I changed the stitch count on the sleeves, so my sleeve would have a complete pattern repeat, instead of a miss-matched one, which the original pattern ended up with.

 Spring weather has arrived in these parts. While the pictures don’t suggest it, the forest is still quite barren, but there are little signs that this is about to change soon, and the first new greens are creeping upwards. Sunny weather will soon take over. This means that this sweater won’t get many outings until the colder weather returns, but when it does, I’ll make sure that this one will be worn a lot. Enjoy your weekend,