Gudrun and I took off on our own, and headed to the north of Iceland. On the way we stopped at the workshop of botanist and dyer Guðrún Bjarnadóttir in Hvanneyri. We got some of her plant dyed lace yarn called Hespa. I got some brown – a favorite of the vikings – dyed with a common lichen, and 4 other colors, a range of yellows and chartreuse, all old old recipes using native Icelandic plants. You don’t have to go to Iceland– visit her etsy shop.
Our destination is the textile museum in Blönduós which we will visit tomorrow. We got a little lost, passing through steaming geo-thermal farmland…quite an adventure. We’re staying in a pistachio guesthouse which was once the Post Office, situated right on the River Blonda where it rushes to meet the sea. The source of the river is the glacier Höfsjökull. Though tempted, the river is too dangerously strong to swim in.
That looks incredible. I want to live in that yarn shop!
Beautiful! The yarn, the landscape, everything.