Reykjavik

 It's Saturday and I arrived in Reykjavik on Wednesday, so I've had a few days to look around this small but cheerful city.  It is VERY touristy, as there has been an explosion in tourism over the last decade.  A lot of the central businesses are now directed at tourists, and my guidebook (Rick Steves) says that locals do most of their own shopping in malls and edge of town places.  But still, it doesn't feel overly busy or crowded, and the service staff are all quite friendly (many of them are also foreign nationals). The high prices for almost everything have been hard to get used to, especially food, but I've just stopped converting to British pounds to save my sanity.

On the busy shopping streets of Skolavordustigur (I'm not even going to try to reproduce the proper Icelandic spelling) and Laugavegur, almost every block has two or three souvenir shops and they are almost all selling some form of Icelandic knitting either as jumpers, hats, gloves, earwarmer headbands, socks, blankets or ornaments.  Many of these appear to be machine knitted, and I have heard that a lot of them are produced outside of Iceland even though most claim to be made from Icelandic wool. Many of them are in a nasty scratchy wool, knitted at a very loose tension (probably for speed, or to save money?) but I expect many of the potential customers are not knitters. Certainly lots of the tourists on the streets are wearing the jumpers and matching hats, even though the jumpers are priced at c £110 and up, hats about £30.  Some of the tourist stores are also selling balled yarn, although it was Garn brand from NOrway in at least a couple of stores. I havent seen any other forms of craft supplies or craft stores but perhaps these just aren't located in the central tourist area. It is refreshing to see knitting held  in such esteem as a desirable souvenir.  I havent seen as many cardigans on sale, although the Alafoss store (an Icelandic brand) did have some nice ones in terms of colour. I did buy a machine knit earwarmer band in an Icelandic pattern because it is quite windy here even on the days when it was warm enough that I didnt feel I

Cute mini sweaters but priced at c £25!

needed my actual hat. 

The recommended place to buy authentic Iceland jumpers is at one of the Icelandic Handknitting Association stores, and there is a big one on Skolavordustigur.  This is bigger than it looks from outside, and must have had literally hundreds of jumpers and cardigans on sale, presumably all handknit.  These felt a much better quality wool, and were also knit to a tighter better quality tension.  The prices are also higher to reflect the handwork and better quality, c £200 upwards. In the back room, they sell lots of yarn such as balled LettLopi yarn, and the flat wheels of unspun Lopi yarn that is combined and knit together as two or three strands for traditional knitting. They also stock a number of knitting books in both English and Icelandic with patterns and instructions for traditional and more contemporary knits. I was looking in one of these and it said that the diamond yoke sweater that is so iconic was actually only designed in the 1950s I think.

The Handknitting Association also sells some small kits for hats, and I was able to substitute my own choice of LettLopi yarn colours for the kit I chose. It will be a nice souvenir of Iceland.  (coincidentally, my holiday knitting in the evenings is a hat using some of the yarn I bought in New Zealand!).  I find Lopi yarn too scratchy to wear against my skin, and I would get too hot in an actual heavy jumper, but I will be fine with a hat.

Today I visited the Saturday Kolaportid fleamarket held indoors near the Old Harbour.  Several of the traders here were selling secondhand knitwear for less (c £80ish) but there was a real mix of the poor quality jumpers versus nicer jumpers probably knit by an actual person.  So it would be buyer beware. But there were also some stalls selling new, or newish, knits such as hats, socks and mittens which were better quality.