Day 9. Warm and Woolly! Mostly

Our last full day in Reykjavik, and Iceland, saw us picked up at the door (what luxe service!) by Ragga, proprietress, heart & soul of Knitting Iceland. If you are ever coming here, as a knitter, or want a REASON to come here as a knitter, you need to have a look at her web site. The day tours are just the beginning of the offerings and you can plan an entire trip here just for one of Knitting Iceland's events.

We stopped to pick up a fellow knit tourist, Marcia, and quickly found we were hilariously on a wavelength. Marcia's an old-school IT geek by trade (she and Adam had more to talk about on that front), a spinner and dyer, another Journeywheel owner, of all the hilarious coincidences, and owned by cats.

Our first visit was to Ragga's office, a shared creative workspace full of local designers, to pay our ticket and poke around a bit. Then it was off to the West - as all of us on the tour had spend some time doing the "Golden Circle" route, we elected instead for the Woollen West, slightly up into the fjords north of Reykjavik. This drive included an interesting construct - a 5 km long, 165 m deep tunnel UNDER a fjord. The view may have been better above, but to an engineer, what an infrastructure work. Ragga mentioned it saves about 40 minutes on the drive each way, though there is a toll to use it.

On the next stop we were hosted by Gudrun, a botanist and university teacher who is producing naturally dyed Icelandic wool primarily with Icelandic plants, though she does use some imported materials to get the reds/blues or some overdyes. It was great to see how another dyer works with such things, and the care she takes with her production and experimenting. We were a small group and probably a good thing as she's presently working in a small kitchen, but she also showed us her workshop-in-progress as her garage is being converted to shop and workspace (so she might have her living room back!). I have tons of research to do now to try to translate a lot of the plants she spoke of into English.

Gudrun took us out to the wool collective of which she is a member, a craft collective which produces some incredible quality items, including very jealously guarded sweater patterns made no where else - they are kept in a safe, and knitters may only borrow them. All the offerings in their shop are actually juried in, and they are quite proud of their work. We got an inside peek at the loft full of rovings and fleeces. It was so tempting to load up on pounds of beautiful, washed Icelandic fleece, but I stuck to rovings and a couple of samples - for all of packing space, storage at home, and slight concern about customs reasons (clean fleece SHOULD be fine, but as always, it's up to whomever sniffs the luggage.

From here we went to lunch at a lovely restaurant in an old house, which has been renovated, or possibly joined to other structures, to include a theatre and large gift shop. The food was amazing, Adam and I just had the soup and salad bar and it was substantial. The shop had some nice crafts, and many more of the standard tourist offerings, and we unfortunately had to pass on a couple of guided exhibits/museums for time reasons. The shop itself had a fascinating architecture, though, as it was built between the other buildings and a cliff wall, such that the outer walls of the buildings and the cliff face became the inner walls of the shop, with a minimal roof framed on and all the odd openings filled in with fitted plexiglas. It was probably not terribly efficient to heat, but in a country where geothermal heating is plentiful and inexpensive, this is not a major design concern.

After lunch and a browse there, we were off to the Istex spinning mill, home to the Alafoss yarn lines, known worldwide as "the" Icelandic yarn. I must admit, and if you saw my tweet... there was a little bit of falling off the "no more stashing" wagon here. How could I resist? The yarn was between 280 and 420 kr. per skein ($2.50- $4.00, very roughly), we got an additional 10% discount for traveling with Ragga, AND over a certain amount purchased, we're eligible for tax rebates as we leave. Also, some of what I bought is for sharing back home. I also purchased some buttons, which, I was a little careless, cost more than the yarn! I did not realize the price on the packets was per button, so I selected some lots of handmade sheep horn and reindeer antler 5-6 pc sets. Oh well. Still not a horrid expense and nothing I'll get at home, ever.

The only disappointment was that the goat farm that is often part of this tour wasn't available today, as the owners were out of town. So, no visits to the rare and reportedly cute Icelandic goats, though Ragga has promised me a small sample will be available if we pop by the office before leaving town, which we are off to do shortly.

Our last formal tour ended around dinner hour, and both for the sake of a walk, a little more last minute shopping, and seeking food, we tidied up and the wandered back out to Laugavegur to see what we may have missed (not much) or forgotten to pick up (some books and local candies to head home with). We had probably the priciest meal of our trip at an Icelandic fine-dining restaurant near the town square, where we shared the lobster tails grill and an amazing mushroom barley dish from their veggie menu (like a risotto, but only with barley).

After that it was back to the hotel to pack, get paperwork in order, and get some sleep. As I type this, we're just finishing our last Icelandic breakfast, and will head up to finish packing, take a last-minute picture for a late-breaking Flat Stanley project, check out, and pop by Knitting Iceland's offices for the promised cashmere sample and a last chat before we meet our airport shuttle at 1:30. I leave with mixed feelings - I am ready to be home, with slightly less volatile weather, sleeping on a higher-quality mattress and with my own kitties again, but there is so much of this wonderful place, and I've had the barest glimpse. I certainly hope I can come back some day. Iceland will be added to my subjects of perpetual traveller's angst, those places to which I'd love to return but which are also on the 'been there' list when so many new places are not. Perhaps I can find a way to make it a work destination or a research subject in my future textile endeavors. :-)