A new lopapeysa in progress

A what? A lopapeysa? What the h*** is that?

When traveling to Iceland one of the most remarkable fashion items you encounter is the lopapeysa (translates as wool pullover). Simply everyone wears a lopapeysa: children, grown-ups, city dwellers in Reykjavik, farmers in remote corners of the island, those who are after the latest fashion and those who see clothes just as some practical thing. Everyone.

Lopapeysa mania: everyone in Iceland wears one! (Picture: www.istex.is)

The lopapeysa comes in many different patterns and colours and is hand-knitted with Icelandic sheep wool. When you like knitting and travel to Iceland you end up wanting to knit a lopapeysa by yourself. It is like there is no escape from it. I have gone into the "Knit a lopapeysa!" mania several times and knitted one for myself and one for my boyfriend and one for my grandma and since one and half weeks a new peysa is on my knitting needles, a present for my dad.

Lopapeysa in progress.

I won't reveal the pattern yet but the pullover will be in three colours. I am knitting one of the models from the Icelandic knitting magazine LOPI but use a slightly thinner wool than they suggested, so I had to recalculate the size a bit. (For you knitting nerds: I use Léttlopi instead of two-stranded Plötulopi.) The main colour is one of my favourite wool colours, called "mýri" (marsh colour) in Icelandic. It is a mossy dark green with a few tiny patches of light green and white in it. When knitting with Icelandic wool, one encounters now and then small grass and heather pieces in the yarn. I love to knit those into the pullover, they remind me of the sheep grazing in the highlands getting those beautiful plants stuck into their wool and I would never remove them from my knitted crafts. Here is a close-up picture of the yarn, showing a little piece of heather stuck in the wool.

Close-up of Icelandic Léttlopi in "mýri" (marsh colour).

There are some long fibers sticking out which make the lopapeysas to some extent water-repellent while the shorter soft fibers make them keeping the body heat, so they are really nice to wear in cold and wet weather. The wool might look scratchy, and it is in the beginning, but it softens a lot when washing it carefully with a mild conditioner (I use one without perfume).

I am looking forward myself to see the finished lopapeysa.

Oh, and by the way, the term lopapeysa derived from both Icelandic and French! Lopi means wool and peysa means pullover or sweater, but the word peysa originates from the French term "paysan" (farmer). When French fishermen came to Iceland long time ago they were eager to buy the traditional warm pullovers the farms wore. Pointing at the farmers saying "Paysan!" the farmers assumed they meant the pullovers and happily adopted the term into the Icelandic language.